Practical papers —farm husbandry. 357 
within twenty-five years you will find farmers in congress helping 
to make your laws, and preventing land grants and other schemes 
of robbers ; then, farming will be a favored and a fortunate occu¬ 
pation, and }^our successors will be the lords of the land. But, 
gentlemen, mind what I say ; if you are careless and neglect this 
great opportunity, another class will take the lead, and will keep 
it, because of their brains, rather than of their bodies, and will take 
control over you, and you must fall to the rear, take back seats 
and become a mere peasantry, cultivators of the land, just as it is 
in Europe, to-day. Farmers, come together for self-protection, and 
bring well trained brains to the performance of your work. Shed 
the light of cultivation and refinement upon your profession, and 
it must and will be a success. When this success is achieved, an£ 
it will be your own fault if it is not, then, my friends, whether 
you are in the councils of the state or nation, in the workshop, or 
whether you make the plow or guide the same, let your constant 
aim be the moral and intellectual improvement of your people. 
By this education, we shall be better farmers, better mechanics, 
better citizens, better neighbors, better husbands and better men. 
But I have digressed from what I intended to say. 
Two things more, and I have done. I wish you to plant fruit 
trees ; begin, and you will have no trouble. Nothing pays better 
than fruit; not only plant apples, but raspberries, blackberries and 
other small fruit. They thrive in this latitude, and when fully 
ripe, give your children plenty of this fruit and plain bread, in 
lieu of fried meats and larded short-cakes, and you will have very 
little of the multitudinous bowel complaints and fevers which in 
the summer season sweep your children to their graves as though 
they were only born to die. Lastly, I desire you to remember 
that you have one other important duty besides raising blooded 
stock. Look to the minds of your boys and girls who are to spend 
their youthful days beneath your roof; they demand your atten¬ 
tion ; the child instinctively loves the beautiful, and reaches its 
tiny hands out and attempts to seize a beautiful flower which it 
had never seen before, and could not have learned to desire. All 
children love flowers, and if you will pay attention to a child, you 
will find that things habitually presented to the eye direct the 
taste, and even create it, and have their influence upon the minds 
