10 



the intimacies of their homes, by the wayside, with strangers, on 

 all occasions, little and large, and in all the relationships and in- 

 tercourse of life, — if what I saw in them was a fair sample of their 

 style of life, then they are gentlemen, and would be found, on 

 close acquaintance, to have all that is essentially graceful and 

 chivalrous in the manners of gentlemen, aye, and would be recog- 

 nized by all true gentlemen throughout the world, as members of 

 their noble fraternity, the select and God-ordained aristocracy of 

 the race. 



But there are weightier matters to consider. I am not here to 

 flatter the farming class. They know well enough already the 

 advantages of their condition, the dignity of their calling, and 

 their supreme importance in the body politic. I would rather ask 

 permission to speak some words of counsel and warning. Claim- 

 ing at least an honorary membership with the class, by birth, by 

 all the memories of childhood, and by the uninterrupted associa- 

 tions of a lifetime, I shall feel privileged to speak frankly of some 

 of their deficiencies, dangers and duties. There is time but for a 

 single point. 



I confess, then, to a feeling of some solicitude respecting the 

 intellectual condition and prospects of the agricultural classes, 

 even in New England. 



It has been maintained by some good thinkers that there is 

 something in the life of farm laborers, as a class, less favorable to 

 mental vigor and alertness, than the life of mechanical laborers, for 

 instance, as a class, and that working farmers, as a body, are in 

 fact less intellectual than mechanics, as a body. This alleged 

 inferiorty is accounted for in part, by the fact that farmers gener- 

 ally are more solitary in their labors, do not work so much in 

 companies, and have therfore less opportunity and fewer provo- 

 catives to that constant discussion, and exchange of thoughts, by 

 which intellect is stimulated, sharpened and kept awake. Then 

 again, the work itself of farm laborers, in its ordinary details, 

 though it admits of, does not absolutely require, that concentra- 

 tion of thought, and that active play of the inventive and adaptive 

 faculties, which are required for success in mechanical or com- 

 mercial pursuits. 



And I have heard it maintained further, that there is some 



