Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1882-04-14

The farmers Office is precise and impor-
tant, but you must not try to paint him in
rose color you cannot make pretty compl-
ments to fate and gravitaton, whose minis
ter he is. He represents the necessities. II
is the beauty Of the great economy of the
world that makes his comeliness. He bends
to the order of the seasons, the weather, the
soils and crops, as the sails Of ship bend to
the wind. He represents continuous hard
labor, year in, year out, and small gains. He
is a slow person, timed to nature, and not to
city watches. He takes the pace of seasons,
plants and chemistry. Nature never hurries;
atom by atom, little by little, she achieves her
work. The lesson one learns in fishing
yachting, hunting or planting Is the manners
of nature patience with the delays of the
season, bad weather, excess or lack of water,
patience with the slowness of our feet, with
the parsimony of our strength, with the large
ness Of sea and land we must traverse, etc. The
farmer times himself to nature, and acquires
that livelong patience which belongs to her
Slow, narrow man, his rule is, that the earth
shall feed and clothe him and he must wait
for his crop to grow. His entertainments
his liberties and his spending must be on a
farmers scale, and not on q merchants. 1t
were as false for farmers to use wholesale
and massy expense as for states to use a
minute economy. But il thus pinched on
one side, he has compensatory advantages.
He is permanent, clings to his land as the
rocks do.
He has grave trusts confded to him. In
the great household of nature the farmer
stands atthe door of his bread-room and weighs
to each his loaf. 1t is for him to say whether
men shall marry or not. Early marriages
and the number of births are indssolubly
connected with abundance of food or, as
Burke said, imam breeds at tho mouth"
Then he is the board of quarantine. The
farmer is o boarded capital of health, as the
farm is the capital of wealth and it is from
him that the health and power, moral and in
tellectual of the cities come. The city is al
ways recruited from the country. The men
in cities who are the centre of energy, the
driving wheels of trade, politics, or practical
arts and the women OF beauty and genius are
the children or grandchildren of farmers, and
are spending the energies which their fathers
hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty fur
rows, in poverty, necessity and darkness.
He is the continuous benefactor. He who
digs well, constructs a stone fountain, plants
a grove of trees by the roadside plants an
orchard, builds durable house. reclaims
swamp, or SO much as puts stone seat by.
the wayside, makes the land so far lovely
and desirable, makes a fortune which he can
not carry away with him, but which is useful
to his country long afterward. The man
who works at home helps society at large
with somewhat more of certainty than he
who devotes himself TO charities. If it be
true that, not by votes of political parties
but by the eternal laws of political economy,
slaves are driven out Of slave state as fast
as 1t is surrounded by free states, then the
true abolitionist is the farmer, who, needless
of laws and constitutions, stands all day in
the field, investing his labor in the land, and
making product with which no forced labor
can compete.