*3 



With more trials, vexations arid annoyances, and more 

 frequent temptations to complain of his lot, and more 

 unexpected losses — here and there — than a man in almost 

 any other calling, he will still, remembering - the great 

 compensations of his life, possess his soul in patience, 

 and learn from daily experience and observation how best 

 to provide against avoidable accidents ; at least, will 

 make it sure they do not come from his own carelessness 

 and neglect. Pursuing the even tenor of his way, paying 

 his taxes without grumbling, going to town meetings and 

 sometimes having something to say, and to church ; send- 

 ing his children to school, and, perhaps, one to college, 

 he is not carried off his feet, nor disturbed by all he reads 

 and hears about great fortunes made in a day, or, if not 

 quite so rapidly, yet at the expense of honor and honesty, 

 of health and the enjoyments of home ; nor by great 

 booms in real estate somewhere in the South or AVest. 

 He will not sell his farm for half what it is worth and go- 

 to Florida or Southern California, in the expectation of 

 more money and less labor in the orange groves of the 

 former state and the marvellous growths of trees and 

 fruits and vegetables of the latter. 



He hears the call to " fresh fields and pastures new," 

 and he longs for them, but he believes in having them at 

 home — making them with his own hands, by his own 

 labor and skill, by good cultivation, with good manure 

 and enough of it. He is not deluded by the cry of a 

 virgin soil of unexampled fertility in far off western 

 fields, when he can restore the fertility of the old and 

 bring back the more than blushing beauty, the vitality 

 and productive capacity of the earlier and youthful life. 



One of the orators of this society, years ago, said in 

 his address. " the first and great motive to be urged upon 



