18 



I speak for another reason. The next great period will no 

 doubt witness large changes from the present social condition. 

 For twenty years past, at least, the country and its pursuits 

 have been constantly drawn upon — depleted — roblied of their 

 natural reproduction by the factitious attractions held out by 

 the denser communities, to induce the young to forsake the 

 plough and hayfield, and join in the chase after wealth in an 

 hour, and eminence in six lessons without a master. To such 

 an extent has it gone that a smooth-faced boy, even, seeing 

 in his folly no quicker method, resorts to train- wrecking, 

 thinking in this bold way to force a large and sudden income 

 without labor. But it seems as if the insane thirst that had 

 driven men away from the sure and peaceful path, and made 

 them cry, as did a distinguished politician of Maine, that he 

 ''within four years Avould be either in hell or in Congress," 

 must soon experience a crisis. The land is, meanwhile, starv- 

 ing for labor, the sod gets thick on the old cornhills, and the 

 fields that would give the tiller a safe and not too toilsome 

 living, run to bushes, because he has gone to the city for more 

 than a living and got considerably less than one. It is against 

 this unnatural distribution of things that your efforts, O hus- 

 bandmen of Essex, may well be directed. You are in part 

 responsible for the leaning of this social tower, that threatens 

 more its fall than does that of Pisa. The jobbing and man- 

 aging crowds of State street and Wall street may boast of 

 refined manners and elegant homes ; I do not care : theirs is 

 not a high, a noble, a beneficent civilization. They may dis- 

 play wealth and feed fat in luxury ; but so could the courts of 

 Pharamond and Charles IL and both were cursed with a cor- 

 ruption to which our own erratics even now seem tending. 

 In your hands, I say again, is the medicine for such frenzies, 



