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cited. Tlie farmer of experience likewise soon learns how 

 much he may be aided by a good education in his calling ; and 

 thus is he prompted to secure such an education for his chil- 

 dren. But above all, his active habits give him so much phys- 

 ical vigor, that the old adage may be applied to him ; mens 

 Sana in cor'pore sano ; a sound mind in a sound body. He 

 can sit down calmly to his books with little of that nervous ir- 

 ritability and restlessness, and little of that cloudiness and de- 

 bility of intellect, that torment and retard so many of sedentary 

 habits. Those only can appreciate the value of such a state 

 of body and mind, who have had to struggle with its opposite* 

 If I may be allowed to give my own experience on this subject 

 I would say, that decidedly the best time for study which I 

 have ever known, — when the mind was the the clearest and 

 the nerves most quiet, — was the evening that succeeded a hard 

 day's work in hoeing or mowing. After having mowed an 

 acre of grass, 1 found my mind prepared to mow an acre of 

 Geometry or Astronomy ; and often in subsequent days, when 

 study was a task, and there seemed to be a muffle over the 

 mind, I have sighed for the return of that period, when the in- 

 tellect had as keen an edge by night, as the scythe had by day. 

 Of the reflex influence of education upon agriculture I might 

 say much. It is this indeed, almost exclusively, that dis- 

 tinguishes the farmer of New England from the serf of Russia ; 

 the one, about as low in the scale of humanity as is possible ; 

 a servile animal, with scarcely more of intellect than the ox or 

 the horse ; the other, an intelligent freeman, with sagacity to 

 know what his rights are, and with the determination to main- 

 tain them ; far more independent than the European lord, 

 who, with all his wealth and his castles, is a slave to his meni- 

 als. The American farmer has enough property to supply all 

 his reasonable wants, but not so much as to make him misera- 

 ble. He knows how to take care of himself, and is not com- 

 pelled, therefore, as most of the wealthy are, to commit his 

 happiness into the hands of mercenary hirelings, or unpaid 

 slaves. And it is his education merely, that gives him such a 

 proud pre-eminence over so vast a majority of hisfellow.men. 



