256 Wisconsin state agricultural society . 
An illustrious man in dying called for more air ; it would have 
been better to have given it to him before he came to that pass. 
There are yet other gentlemen who carry their heads high, who 
affect to look down upon the tiller of the soil. These are the 
commercial gentlemen. The farmer, however, is not to be tarred 
with the same rope with those that go down to the sea in ships, 
for he treads nearer to the Creator than they do. With them, it 
is perpetual moving day; they are ever busy toting their traps 
from place to place, in the hope, sometimes a vain one, of en¬ 
hancing their value. But the farmer drops a seed in the furrow; 
the earth and the sun and the air conspire together, the seed as¬ 
sumes new form, the plant expands and yields an hundred fold. 
This is the miracle of vegetation to which he has ministered. But 
he has a higher function still. The word agriculture means, in 
strictness, the working of the field or ground. It has, however, 
been given a wider sense, and includes the breeding and rearing 
of domestic animals. It is said, that he that causes two blades of 
grass to grow where but one grew before deserves well of his 
country. How much more deserving is he who stands sponsor 
for a litter of pigs, or is the indirect parent of twin lambs! He 
beats the grass grower by one degree, for the lambs eat the grass 
and man eats the lambs. The greatest usefulness of the farmer 
is in the improvement of his live stock, and the after effect on his 
less intelligent or less well to-do neighbors. 
What has made England the greatest modern benefactress of 
the world ? Hot her constitution, not her conquests, not her col¬ 
onies (colored fictions on the map), but her pigs, her poultry, her 
stately short-horns, and her steel limbed thoroughbreds. 
The awkward squad of words which have thus far been mus¬ 
tered, have been arrayed right loyally under the banner of agri¬ 
culture. But there are two sides to every question, and the 
farmer, if not an actual culprit, stands a suspicious character. He 
is charged with using up the earth’s surface by continual cropping. 
He is accused of wearing the worsted from off, what the irrever¬ 
ent call, the Almighty’s footstool. In this, at least, he has a neg¬ 
ative defense. For, if he is fraying the outside, those that descend 
into the vulcan holes of iron and coal mines, are tearing the very 
stuffing out of this venerable piece of furniture. 
