24 



No birthday has ever given me more pleasure. My ancestors since 

 1(540 have been fanners in Essex County. I was early initiated 

 into the mysteries of farming as it was practised seventy years 

 ago, and worked faithfully on the old Haverhill homestead, until, 

 at the age of thirty years, I was impelled to leave it, greatly 

 to my regret. Ever since, if I have envied anybody, it has been 

 the hale, strong farmer, who could till his own acres, and, if he 

 Deeded help, could afford to hire it, because he was able to lead 

 the work himself. I have lived to see a great and favorable 

 change in the farming population of Essex Count} 7 . The curse of 

 intemperance is almost unknown among them ; the rum-seller has 

 no mortgage on their lands. As a rule, they are intelligent, well 

 informed, and healthily interested in public affairs ; self-respectful 

 and respected; independent land-holders, fully entitled, if any 

 class is, to the name of gentlemen. It may be said they are not 

 millionaires, and that their annual gains are small. But, on 

 the other hand, the farmer rests secure, while other occupa- 

 tions and professions are in constant fear of disaster ; his deal- 

 ing directly and honestly with the Almighty is safer than specula- 

 tion ; his life is no game of chance, and his investments in the 

 earth are better than in stock companies and syndicates. As to 

 profits, if our farmers could care less for the comforts of them- 

 selves and their families, if they could consent to live as their an- 

 cestors once lived, and as the pioneers of new countries now live, 

 they could, with their present facilities, no doubt double their in- 

 comes. But what a pitiful gain this would be, at the expense of 

 the decencies and refinements which make life worth living. No 

 better proof of real gains can be found than the creation of pleas- 

 ant homes for the comfort of age and the happiness of youth. When 

 the great English critic, Matthew Arnold, was in this country, 

 on returning from a visit in Essex County, he remarked that, 

 while the land looked to him rough and unproductive, the land- 

 lords' houses seemed neat and often elegant, with an air of pros- 

 perity about them. "But where," he asked, "do the tenants, 

 the working people, live?" He seemed surprised when I told 

 him that the tenants were the landlords, and the workers the 

 owners. 



Let me return my sincere thanks to the Essex Agricultural 

 Society for the kind message conveyed in thy letter ; and, with 

 the best wishes for its continued prosperity and usefulness, I am 



truly thy friend, 



John G. Whittier. 



