6 



spring and in the golden fruit of the harvest ; the loving ear, 

 Avhich heard him in the fallino; shower and in the surmno; wave. 

 And for Avhat does our young man give up the quiet, the beauty, 

 the freedom of rural life ? To sport and flutter for awhile in the 

 gay saloons of fashion, to waste the vigor and freshness of youth 

 and early manhood in the pent-up air of some office, mill or 

 counting-room, or, perchance, to be the servant of servants — the 

 servant of the people — now basking in their smiles, now shivering 

 in their frowns, kissed at one moment and kicked at another, with 

 no special cause for either kick or kiss. Few errors of opinion 

 are more harmful than the underestimate of the worth and dignity 

 of rural pursuits, which hurries so many of our young men from 

 the farm into the already crowded ranks of professional and com- 

 mercial life. The exchange and the forum may have some bril- 

 liant prizes, but how many fail compared with those who win, and 

 how many of those who win find the fruits of victory turn to 

 ashes in their grasp. Who shall garner up the blighted hopes, 

 the wasted frames, the broken hearts that lie thickly strewn on 

 the fields of the world's conflict and struggle ? 



I know that I have always looked upon rural pursuits with a 

 loving eye ; but, weighing them in the scales of a sober judgment, 

 they will be found wanting in nothing essential to a happy, manly 

 and useful life. 



If a young man seeks a competence of this world's goods, 

 there are no shares — factory, bank or railroad — that in the long 

 run pay better dividends than the ploughshare. Agriculture, 

 even in New England, pursued with system, with a wise economy, 

 and with the skill which results from science, tested by experience 

 and experience illumined by science, yields as much wealth as it 

 is good for a man to have, more than the average of other pur- 

 suits, enough, at any rate, to enable us to live comfortably, to 

 educate our children, to provide for the rainy day or shady slope 

 of life, and to obey the calls of Christian charity and neighborly 

 kindness. More than this cometh of evil. We are beginning to 

 understand that, even in this world, the rich man has no place in 

 the kingdom of rest and of peace. When we add the compara- 

 tive certainty of the farmer's gains, his exemption from the sud- 

 den reverses which test so severely not only the mental but the 



