b REV. MR. 



of the elements of success. The farmer must have practical intellect, 

 accurate judgment, and keen perception. Men of less practical abili- 

 ty may follow some business that requires the same strokes every day 

 until it becomes a routine, and they follow it with as little thought as 

 the horse moves in the tread-mill. But the farmer is obliged to think 

 about his work every day and every hour. His judgment must be 

 good, for he must trade as well as work, and a few poor trades are fa- 

 tal to his success. He must also be capable of laying plans for the 

 future. It is a common remark among farmers, "He was good to 

 work, but had little calculation, and ftiiled to pay for his farm." 



Farming is most emphatically a mathematical business. No man 

 needs a scientific education more than the farmer. The farmer must 

 be what is termed a posted man. He must understand the practical 

 questions of the day, because there is hardly a question of the times 

 that does not affect the market. He must have a keen foresight, that 

 he may be able to decide whether dairying or wool-growing will be 

 most profitable for the next five years. The successful farmer must be 

 a man of the* most unfaltering perseverance ; for his money is made 

 slowly, and by careful, patient endeavor, year after year. The hot 

 blood and fever pulse of ambition are of little account to him. 



Let no man advise an enterprising and gifted young man to go into 

 some business above farming, for there is nothing above farming. 

 The work of the farmer educates the worker. A striking example of 

 this is found in the effect this pursuit has upon our Irish immigrants. 

 They come here with spirits crushed by ages of tyranny, bearing upon 

 their brows the impress of the iron heel of despotism. Yet a few 

 years residence upon our freer soil, under the influence of our free in- 

 stitutions, develops some of the noblest specimens of manhood. But 

 this is more apparei^t among those who select farming as a pursuit, 

 than among those who take some other branch of employment. Not- 

 withstanding the truth of all wc have said for agriculture, it is never- 

 theless true that, farming to-day. is not what reason teaches it ought 

 to be. It is a business of which the resources are yet latent, and they 

 remain latent, in great part, from the fact that mechanics and trade 

 are draining the farms of the chief enterprise of the country. Young 

 men aspire to some other business, at which they can get rich faster, 

 aud thus farming is left to the unenterprising and the immigrants. 



Farming requires the application of more thought. Thought dis- 

 covered a new Massachusetts under the old Mass. Thought has put 

 the plowshare beneath old New England, developing the rich sub-soil, 

 so we have a new New England and this soil of the new N. E. is 

 found to be richer than that of the old N. E. Drainage has discov- 

 ered the best soil where it was supposed nothing more useful than al- 

 ders would grow ; and irrigation defies the drought caused by the clear- 

 ing away of the forest. But there is another problem to be solved — 

 It is, what shall recompense the soil for the constant drainage of her 

 wealth in the products that go to supply our manufacturing towns? 

 When we look into the east, at the exhausted soil of Assyria, and then 

 at the process that is rapidly bringing our own soil into the same con- 



