ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN^ ASSOCIATION. 85 
was born at Farmington, N. H., of very poor parents, and 
at ten, bound to a farmer till twenty-one. Says the wiiter, 
here he had the usual lot of a farm boy—plain, abundant 
food, coarse clothing, incessant work, and a few weeks of 
schooling at the district school in Winter. In these eleven 
years, by twilight, firelight, and on Sundays, he read over 
one thousand volumes of history, geography, biography, 
and general literature, borrowed from libraries, and individ¬ 
uals. Horace Greely was born at his fathers’ farm, 
Amherst, N. H. In boyhood he was fully occupied with 
his hard work on the farm, and his father, in spite of hon¬ 
est industry, became bankrupt when Horace was nine years 
old. At fifteen he procurred a situation in a printing 
office. William A. Buckingham, eight years governor of 
Connecticut, taking her through the war, was the son of a 
thrifty farmer, a deacon in the church. Of his mother it is 
said one of her daily household sayings to her children was 
“ Whatever else you are I want you to be Christians.” In 
the region where she lived her memory is cherished by all, 
in the records of good words and deeds. The education 
of this man, it is affirmed, was a striking specimen of New 
England, based first on the soil, in the habits and associa¬ 
tions of a large and well-conducted farm. At twenty he 
left home, and entered a dry goods store as clerk, doing the 
last three years on the farm as much work as any of his 
father s hired hands. Daniel Webster’s father was a small 
farmer, living in the wilderness, and, it is said. “ but for a 
system of education, which pushed the means of instruc¬ 
tion into remote solitudes, would never have been neard 
from in public life.” Our poet, J. G. Whitter, was the son 
of a farmer, and worked on the farm till eighteen years of 
age, and to crown all, the president elect of these United 
States, James A. Garfield, is to-day a farmer, living on his 
farm—a home thus described by an eye-witness : ‘‘ The 
house is quite a large wooden one, not at all elegant, but 
the whole place, barns and all, is the residence of a well-to- 
do farmer in appearance.” 
These men, and many more we might mention from 
the same class, represent not only intellect, but integrity, 
and uprightness— many, if not all, Christianity. 
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Upon these principles is our nation founded, and upon 
