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tiful, shall' speak your name with praises ! The birds in 

 their boughs shall sing to you their joyful thanksgivings ; 

 sweetly shall humming insects lull you with their mur- 

 murs ; even the zephyrs shall fan you with cooler, softer 

 wings as they revel among the shadows, while the worn 

 and exhausted traveller calls down earnest blessings on 

 him who planted the beneficent trees. But wrath and 

 woe to the man, who, with impious hand, strikes a blow 

 at the root of the ancient shade trees that his fathers have 

 planted and fostered. 



I know hardly a greater blessing, a sweeter delight, 

 than that of living out of doors in the pure, healthy, in- 

 vigorating, open air ; and this is a blessing, peculiar al- 

 most to the farmer's life. I Avould pray for nothing 

 earthly, more delightful, than the precious privilege of 

 thinking, writing, sleeping, breathing and living during 

 the leafy time of year, in the glad sunshine and free air 

 of heaven. And it is thus the farmer drinks in freedom, 

 and is inspired with the noble love of liberty, so that 

 while the denizens of cities, walled up in narrow streets 

 and enslaved by still narrower custom and usage, too 

 often exalt merclaandise above humanity, the man of the 

 free air and open fields is the uncompromising foe of op- 

 pression, the stanch friend, the fearless and determined 

 advocate of freedom and Wmanity. It is a glory also of 

 the farmer's life, that it teaches him to value things — 

 realities above all mere forms and shows and empty names. 

 He is called upon, not merely to think, but to do ; not to 

 plan only, but to accomplish ; not to fancy, but to create ; 

 not to talk or write, but to live. He leatns to understand 

 the uses and beauties of all things in nature on the earth 

 about him. Every thing confers on him a peculiar pleas- 

 ure, ministers to him its own peculiar delight. There is 

 a charm to the intelligent farmer in the grass fields, in 

 the waving grain, in the bending fruit trees, in the great 



