244 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
agriculturist; and the successful farmer would never have attained 
so marked success, but for his readings of the agricultural reports 
in the Tribune, or some other equally valuable papers. But 
when the editor and farmer exchange places in practical life, then 
it is one finds that the hoe he wields yields a bread so expensive 
in the “ sweat of his brow ” that he has no faculty to manage it, 
while the other discovers that the “cylindrical hoe” whose iron 
nerves he is expected to touch and control, casts out a bread of 
instruction whose. mysteries he has never sufficiently studied. 
Yet, as the editor could never survive without the bread of the 
soil, so the intelligent and successful farmer must languish and 
die without the bread of the types—each to his own calling, both 
honored alike by success. 
So of other vocations; they have no exchangeable values, in 
the synonymic sense of the term. “A gentleman farmer,” as the 
phrase is used conventionally, is but another word for failure— 
another sad rendering of “ shabby gentility.” But it is no better 
with the hard fisted farmer. He becomes restive and ambitious ; 
his thirst for sudden wealth and independence increases; he invests 
in stocks or railroad securities, and the shrewd director or wily 
operator manages the rest. He has embarked in a business of 
which he knows nothing, and his chances for gain are about equal 
with one who should furnish the capital to establish a faro bank, 
and then relinquish all right to direct how the establishment should 
be run. 
But no more with the farmer than with the merchant, the 
lawyer or the student, who abandons a calling wherein success 
has attended upon his efforts, to engage in the active business of 
tilling broad acres. Unless backed by a fortune or a gold mine, 
the sheriff’s levy and the auctioneer’s flag close the last scene of 
his agricultural drama. 
Emerson has said in substance, though not literally, that the 
man of culture from the city has placed his mansion in the coun¬ 
try, commanding a golden sunset and a fine ocean view. Here, 
removed from the heat and turmoil of the town, surrounded by 
his books and works of art, he can let his great brain throb on 
grandly. Of a fine morning, engaged at his desk, prosecuting his 
literary daily task and feeling a little fatigued, he refreshes him- 
