The Council Bluffs nonpareil. [volume] (Council Bluffs [Iowa]) 1857-1867, 1858-11-27
THE FARMER AND HIS LIFE.

Some time since, Ralph Waldo Emerson
| Delivered an address before county Agri-
cultural Society. It does not read much Ike
the ordinury productions Of that character.
Hear how the sage dlscources upon the fur.
mer and the farmers life:
! The farmer Is person Of remarkable con-
dltlons. His Office is precise and important,
and 1T is of no use to try TO paint him in
rose color. You must take INN lust as h
stands. Nothing is arbitrary or sentimental
in his condition, and therefore one respects
rather the elements of his Office than him.
self. He bends to the order of the seasons
and the weather and the soils, rs the sails Of
the ship bend to the wind. lie makes his
gains little by little, and BY hard labor. lie
is slow person, being regulated By time and
nature, and not by city watches. He.takes
the best of the seasons, Of the plants and Of
chemistry. Nature never burrips. AID atom
by atom, little by little, aecomplishcs her
work.
/ The lesson one learns fsh;nr. Yachting
hunting, or in planting, Is the know edge Of
nature: patience with the delays 0f wind and
sun, delays of the seasons, excess of water
and drouth, patience with the slownesS of cur
feet and with the litteRess of our strength,
with the argenesS Of sea and LAND. Thcfarm.
er or the man with the hoe, times himself to
nature and acquires that immense patience
which belongs to her. Slow, narrow nun
he has to wait for his food to grow. His rus
is that the earth shall feed him and find him,
and in each he must be graceful spcndor.
His spending must be a farmers spending
and not merchants.
But though farmer may be pinched on
one side, he has advantages on the other.-
. fP pprmanpnt. ha rlipr, IN bi- 10 md
rocks do. Here in this town farms remain
m the same families now for seven or eight
generations, and the settlers of 1885 have
their names still in town and the same gen
cral fact holds good in all the surrounding
towns in the county. This hard work will
always be done by one kind of men not bv
scheming spectators, not by professors, nor
by readers of Tennyson, but by men of
strength and endurance.
Tire farmer has 4 great life, and great
appetite and health, and means for his end.
lie has broad land in which to place his home.
lie has wood to burn greut fires. lie has
plenty of plain food. His milk at least is
not watered. He has sleep, better and more
OF 1t than in cities. But the farmer has
grand trusts coniied to him in the great
household of nature. The farmer stands as
the door Of every family and weighs 70 each,
their life. 1t is for him to say whether men
shall marry or not. Early marriages and the
number of births are indissolubiy connected
with abundance, or rs Burke said-'Man
breeds at the mouth" The Farmer is the
Board of Quarantine. lie has not only the
life but the health of others in his keeping.
lie is the capital of health as his farm is the
capital of wealth. And it is from him and
his influences that the worth and power,
moral and Intellectual, of the cities comes.
The city is always recruited from the country.
The men in the cities who are the centers Of
energy, the driving wheels in trade, or poll
tics, or arts or letters the women OF beauty
and genius, are the children or grand chill
dren of farmers, and are spending the ener-
ges which their hard, silent life accumulated !
in frosty furrow, in poverty, in darkness, and
in necessity, in the summers heat aud VIM
ter's cold