8 



amount what has been sunk in bankruptcy, and then average the 

 remainder among all those who have engaged in mercantile pur- 

 suits, and I am confident that average would not exceed that of 

 the whole farming class. Farming is as profitable on the average 

 as any other pursuit. The same intelligence, industry and moral 

 rectitude and self-control which produce prosperity in other avoca- 

 tions, will produce it in this in an equal degree on the average. 

 In cities and in commerce, money runs more into heaps, and there 

 are greater inequalities. We are deceived by the few instances 

 of great Avealth thus acquired. We must look to averages. The 

 heaps are comparatively few and far between. The holes are 

 many and wide and deep, and a ghastly spectacle of life they pre- 

 sent, such as is not to be seen among the green hills of the rural 

 districts, where none, indeed, are very rich, but where even the 

 poorest poor can hardly be said to know what real poverty is. 



We find thus among farmers that condition of moderate pros- 

 perity and comfortable, but limited independence, which the wise 

 have always regarded as most favorable to virtue and content- 

 ment, to patriotism and good citizenship. 



This class of farmers, which for convenience of composition I 

 have called the second, is in reality ^Vs^ in numbers, in power and 

 in national importance. Indeed, it is every way so vastly pre- 

 dominant, that it may be said almost to absorb the other, and I 

 fear it was putting too fine a point on the matter to make the dis- 

 tinction at all. 



There is one way of putting this distinction that is inadmissible, — 

 that by which the smaller class is sometimes spoken of as gentle- 

 men farmers, the others being plain farmers. Gentlemen are of 

 no one class in society, but are individuals scattered through all 

 classes. Soft hands, rich clothes, and a leisurely or luxurious life 

 do not constitute a man a gentleman, nor the fine language and 

 graceful manners that characterize the more exclusive social circles. 

 The gentlemanly qualities pertain to the soul, and consist of kindly 

 dispositions, the unselfish spirit, forgetting one's self in taking 

 thought for others, acting and speaking in deference to the feel- 

 ings, wants and interests of others, loving to gratify and benefit 

 them. These qualities naturally express themselves in certain 

 courteous and intrinsically graceful modes or manners, which in 



