Address. 1 5 



our farms and ourselves profitably and comfortably. Of course, those that 

 know everything are incapable of learning- anything more. They remind me 



of an incident on a recent trip of one of the Illinois river packets a light 



draught one, as there were only two feet of water in the channel. The 

 passengers were suddenly startled by the cry of "man overboard." The 

 steamer was stoped, and preparations were made to save him, when he was 

 heard exclaiming : " Go ahead with your darned old steamboat, I'll walk 

 behind you." Now, if there are any here so smart that our steamboat is 

 too slow for them, we would respectfully recommend them to go ahead and 

 let us follow more slowly, and as Pat said of the harrow, after the teeth fell 

 out, we shall " go a bit smoother without them." 



There is another class of objectors who are continually exclaiming that 

 farming don't pay; that other kinds of work is more agreeable and point 

 to the wealthy merchant, the millionaire, banker, and the railroad ercesus, 

 as more worthy of imitation. It would be a sufficient answer to these 

 croakers to say, that the necessity for farmers exists and will always exist, 



and that the work must be done by somebody, and must be made to pay 



must become agreeable by habit I don't suppose it is agreeable to the 

 blacksmith, the machinist, the factory operative, the effeminate clerk, the 

 toilers in cities, on the vasty deep, in mines, the myriads of workers above 

 and below ground, who follow their trades from dawn to twilight, to pursue 

 their various occupations so continuously, and get but the pittance of their 

 day's wages, and have in too many eases no house nor permanent home 

 and when they die leave their families to the cold charities of the world' 

 It certainly can't be agreeable to the hard working ministers all over the 

 country " to be, to do, and to suffer " for the small salaries they receive, 

 and in comparison to the numbers engaged, there are as many lawyers, 

 doctors and a great many more merchants and petty tradesmen, who receive 

 less in the way of comfortable living, and a certainty for the future, than 

 farmers. All these hard working orders occasionally look up to the few 

 comets who rush madly across our spheres with their golden tails, and wish 

 vainly that they too had the talent of turning everything into precious 

 metals, but the wish is just as preposterous and fertile, as the wish of every 

 soldier in the ranks to be an officer, of every child to be at once a grown 

 man or woman, of every operative to be the wealthy manufacturer, of every 

 boy to be a Grant, a Lincoln, or Washington. Leaving out the lucky few 

 let us look around among the great multitudes, and see if we can better 

 our condition by exchanging places with them. In the city of New York 



