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only remind you in closing, what you well know to be the fact^ 

 that farming is the healthiest, the most independent and prof- 

 itable of all the occupations, and presents to the young men of 

 our country the surest road to comfort and competence. It is 

 the most productive in sturdy, honest minded, brave and in- 

 telligent men. 



Jefferson truly said " Those who labor in the earth are the 

 chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose 

 breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and 

 genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that 

 sacred fire which otherwise may escape from the face of the 

 earth. Corruption of morals in the mass of cultivators is a 

 phenomenon of which no age nor nation has furnished an ex- 

 ample." Let not the young men be allured from the safe and 

 ennobling pursuits of agriculture by the dazzling wealth of a 

 few wicked gamblers obtained by grossest fraud and robbery. 



The words of Solomon are as applicable now as when he 

 uttered them, " He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of 

 bread ; but he that followeth after vain persons shall have 

 poverty enough." 



