574 



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



their parents into professions, idling away month 

 after month in a musty briefless law office with 

 little or no business, making themselves de- 

 spised by honest hard-working men, by their 

 attempts to live without ivork, which has come 

 to be a wsynonym for " living genteelly." Or 

 perhaps the luckless wight is turned into a 

 doctor ! to peddle drugs and to endanger human 

 life by empiricism. Look at the swollen ranks 

 of doctors and lawyers for proof. If, with the 

 same education they have been obliged to re- 

 ceive to graduate themselves as M.D.'s or law- 

 yers, these same young men would go back on 

 to the farm and labor earnestly and with the 

 enthusiasm necessary to eminence in any pro- 

 fession, the results would soon be manifest on 

 the farms and farming systems throughout the 

 country. 



" When we cast about for the reason and oc- 

 casion of so much false philosophy among our 

 farmers in directing the economy of life for 

 their children, we find .that it is mainly the 

 ignorance of that class of men who decry " book- 

 farmin'," "larnin'/' and " eddication,'' for 

 farmers. Foolish men, do not wonder that you 

 are overlooked when occasion has need of 

 a man, and that you have no position in society, 

 and (taken as a body) little influence among 

 men ! 



" There was a time when the farmers of New- 

 England were an influential body of men, 

 renowned for their many virtues. They bore 

 themselves with all the innate but quiet dignity 

 of men — men true to themselves and their 

 calling, and true to others — true to the calls of 

 patriotism, steadf^ist in the cause of right in 

 legislative halls, in the jury-box, in politics, and 

 in religion. The " homestead" was a nursery 

 of domestic virtues and happiness, to which its 

 nurselings looked back in the toils of after life 

 with veneration and love. It was as near patri- 

 archal as any form of domestic discipline could 

 be in these latter degenerate days, and around 

 the hearth-stone, and under the shade of the 

 family try sting-tree grew and flourished every 

 domestic virtue, and a patriotism under the 

 teachings of good men and good women, that 

 the artificial manners of now-a-days are choking 

 out of life. " How are the mighty fallen !" — 

 The " good man" of the farm is rarely looked 

 up to and respected now as then, and farm-life 

 has become a difierent kind of life. Why is 

 this? It is because, and only because the body 

 of farmers at present in the same section 

 of country have not the same thorough educa- 

 tion — simple, it is true, but none the less 

 thorough, well-directed education that the men 

 of old acquired, and that, too, at a time when 

 the facilities for spreading education and useful 

 knowledge were comparatively limited. It is a 

 f;\ct that in the farming community of New- 

 England the standard of education is not as high 

 as it was eighty years ago. The farmers of 

 those days had more general information — more 

 extended and profounder views of human life — 



more and fresher ideas. They had juster 

 notions of morality, a correct acquaintance with 

 the laws of the land enough to enable them to 

 conduct business matters with better judgment 

 and more securely than the same class of men 

 at present, who can hardly make a trade with 

 each other out of which a law-suit might not be 

 hatched. How many out of a hundred of them 

 at this day can write a free legible hand-writ- 

 ing? — how many a terse, intelligible letter? 



" How many of us have seen the grey-haired 

 veterans of a long, peaceful, rural life, men who 

 made their mark in their day and generation, to 

 whom we have looked up with respect — relicts 

 of the giants of other days — going down with 

 slow and measured pace to the impenetrable 

 shades. And when shall we see their like 

 again ? Not till the standard of education is 

 raised among the tillers of the soil ; till the 

 young man is educated on the farm and for it ; 

 till he is taught home habits and home enjoy- 

 ments ; till he has that cultivation of the mind 

 that fits him to enjoy books and sources of 

 culture at home, as a relief from care and labor; 

 till he can relish simple pleasures, and needs not 

 the excitement of the turf and the noisy festivi- 

 ties of a bar-room for his amusement. Farmers 

 educate your children ; give them priceless 

 boons, of which no money-panic, no commercial 

 crisis, no prowling incendiary or midnight 

 thief, no human agency, can rob them. Inspire 

 them with a love of the beautiful, and to do 

 this teach them that "a thing of beauty is a joy 

 forever," by surrounding them with beautiful 

 object, natural and artificial. 



" Teach them a love for the cultivation of the 

 mind and the virtues of the heart, by surround- 

 ing them with good readable ^books, and pro- 

 curing for them the tutorings of enlightened 

 teachers. This seems to sound chimerical and 

 visionary as relating to farmers, but it is a prac- 

 ticable thing — more feasible among ruralists 

 than among any other class of men. The far- 

 mer can do much more in this way for his 

 children than the care-worn jaded man of a pro- 

 fession, whose brain is always overheated, and 

 whose time is too much occupied to pay the 

 necessary attention to these minutioe. I am 

 aware that these things cost money, and if 

 really thoroughly entered into, will take a large 

 dividend out of the yearly revenue, but it will 

 pay you better tiian any bank-stock or bond and 

 mortgage. Make your home beautiful and 

 pleasant to your children — make it the elysium 

 of their childhood and youth — give them advan- 

 tages for mental culture, and encourage them in 

 it, and they will be far less likely to roam "out 

 West" and leave y©u alone in your old age ; 

 fewer of them will' wreath the midnight bowl, 

 and fill a drunkard's grave at six-and-twenty, 

 and when you turn your face to the wall, you 

 will feel conscious that you have discharged 

 your duty towards them, and although perhaps 

 your estate is not so large, you have taught 

 them better how rationally to enjoy what you 



