222 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
crawl, only occasionally to be started into an attitude of amaze¬ 
ment at the prodigious products of the minds of men around us, 
and again to relapse into the contemplation of our own inferior 
condition ? We answer emphatically, No ! 
With regard to our occupation, we should rather look upon this 
lovely earth of ours as the beautiful landscape of God’s creation 
imbued with the powers of life, to breathe and feed, yielding its 
elements and products to the nursing and delicate operations of 
our hands. While we follow’the plow, we should perceive its use ; 
we should see in it how the polished mind of man has infused 
mechanical science into its structure; we should mark well the 
work it has to do, and its adaptation to the work ; we should con¬ 
template those seeds we commit to the earth, and believe it not 
the work of chance that they grow, and that they, too, are imbued 
with the germinating powers of life and light, and characterized in 
their existence by the qualities of good and bad ; and we should 
know that perfect analogy which characterizes life in its concep¬ 
tion, growth in its progress, the product of its results, and the 
final death of all vegetable as well as animal creation. 
But above all and over all, we should contemplate ourselves * 
that we are a part of the special work of God’s hands, placed here 
and employed to direct and govern all these things. They are not 
artificial objects, on which we are to expend our happy thoughts 
and lives ; they are the delightful things of nature on which you 
operate, and nature co-operates with you in all your labors, and 
sweetens them to your contented spirits. Rest upon this as a 
grand secret of your constant attachment to agricultural pursuits. 
You work with nature and only modulate and benefit by her 
functions, as she takes up and quickens and completes the 
work of your hand. 
There is a moving, living, acting principle in your labors which 
distinguishes them from other pursuits. The earth yields its strength' 
and increase to the seeds you cast upon it, to the cattle that walk 
upon it; the winds seem to blow, the rains to fall and the waters 
to run for you ; the very frosts and snows of winter give salutary 
checks to the rankness of vegetation, lighten the soil, and destroy 
what is noxious ; and every principle of animal and vegetable or¬ 
ganization and existence co-operates to support and enrich you.. 
