18 



reply, "it is the State Gas House ! and these fellows with the good clothes an<3 

 'natural weaknesses"* manufacture the most of the gas." 



The question as to farming paying is mostly of comparison. Tt will not do 

 * compare our condition wilh the wealthy merchants and manufacturers, but 

 with the mass of laboring people who are earning a living in factories, shops, 

 cities and uncongenial places, with more expenditure of muscle, less present 

 comforts, more precarious future, than falls to the lot of the farmer. Wher 

 you come to talk about being rich, you will find as much dissatisfaction amoi. 

 those whom we should consider well off. as among the poorer classes. "L 

 man is as well off, 1 ' said Astor, "who is only worth a million of dollars, as 

 he would he if lie were rich." And one of the stories told <vf Rothchild, the 

 Jewish Banker, is that when he read that the income of Louis Philippe, the 

 then king of France, was only fifty dollars a minute, his eyes filled with tears 

 for he was not aware of the existence of such destitution ! 



We are very apt to think, with some envious bitterness, of men rolling in 

 wealth, and do not stop to consider that these men are in a small minority, not 

 only compared with the whole population, but even compared with the num- 

 ber engaged in business of the same kind. Just look around now. and see how 

 in every city there are hosts of business men who are in trouble and anxiety, 

 whether they may not lose all they have accumulated by long years of work. 

 Thousands of artificers, mechanics and laboring men in the trades who are men 

 free-handed and live only from hand to mouth, thrown out of employment and 

 depending for their bread for themselves and families upon the dole of the 

 union's or public charity. 



The possession of all imaginable comforts, is no reason why a man should 

 quietly submit to even a slight discomfort, if the cause can be removed, but it 

 will be very foolish to allow any discomfort, however great, to make him for- 

 siet the advantages he enjoys. "God," said a college preacher 1o the graduat- 

 ing class, " means very few of us to do anything in particular," and, there- 

 fore we are at liberty to look about and better our conditions as we can. But 

 it wa^ the evident intention of the wise creator that the country should support 

 the cities, and that there should always be a race of men, called farmers, who 

 should live in the country and raise the necessary crops. A good many of us, 

 therefore, have got to get our living in the country, and dig out a living for 

 other people from the soil. Dissatisfaction, and longing for some other busi- 

 ness, are not always proof of our capacity to succeed in any other than the one 

 we arc in. If you inquire into the wrecks stranded all along the shore of our 

 cities and towns, you will find that a large percentage are farmers' sons who 

 have left the farm to embark in a business with which they were unacquainted, 

 and have come to grief. The men that fail in business, whether merchandise 

 or agriculture, or anything else, are generally those who have had no proper 

 education for the calling they engage in, no real love for it, carry it on in a 

 prefunetory manner, and have failed to do their duty as men and citizens. 



That was'tn the method of our fathers, — they loooked upon their profes- 

 sion with pride and pleasure, considered agriculture an art to be associated with 

 juui assisted by intelligent enquiry, — made the best of parents and citizens, and 



