Where one is enabled to withstand the sweeping tide of temptation, five are submerged in its angry waves and hurried on to ruin. Every year finds hundreds, thousands, of such victims irrecoverably allied to the fallen and vicious of every class. Parents throughout the country have not failed to realize this startling truth, and to sorely mourn the strange inclination of their sons to encounter the snares and pitfalls of city residence and fashion. In brief, let the country lad be as well educated for the farm as his city cousin is for the bar or counting room. And by all possible means, let the farmer be led to properly estimate his high and honorable position in the community.
History tells of one who was called from the plow to the palace, from the farm to the forum.
And when he had silenced the angry tumults of a State, resumed again the quiet duties of a farmer. He referred to Burns the plow-boy, afterward the national bard of Scotland. And Burns himself has left evidence, that he composed some of the rarest gems of his poetry while engaged in rural pursuits. It would require volumes, to enumerate the noble men who have imperishably recorded their exalted appreciation of rural life and enterprise. Every age has augmented the illustrious number.