The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1891-04-15

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80 long existed in Great Britain, the
establishment of great country estates,
the homes of wealth and culture,
throughout all the best portions of our
country. This state of things existed
in the South under the regime of slav-
cry, and from those plantations came
nearly all the great men of that section.
In the North, also, it is from the farms
that the strength of the cities has come,
but city life and city habits have so soon
undermined b 9TH the physique and the
morale of these families that they have,
as rule, entirely disappeared in the
second and third generations. The
very few exceptions seen in New Eng
land, of the survival of important fami.
lies with continued vigor has been
where they have remained in the coun-
try, as has been the case notably with
the Adamses and @uincys of Massa-
chusetts. Notwithstanding the almost
| gigantic vigor of Daniel Webster, a
product of granite New Hampshire,
no male of that family now exists
Where are the male representatives of
any of the great Boston families of a
hundred years ago7 The business and
wealth of that great and rich city is
now mainly in the hands of the de-
scendants of mechanics, farmers and
workingmen, and even of the day
laborers and peddlers of the earlier de-
cades of this century. In congress,
Massachusetts has been represented al
most entirely by new men, including
some of foreign birth and alien religion
Who would have thought, forty years
ago, of seeing the proud metropolis of
Puritan New England represented at
Washington, and worthily, too, by the
Irish Catholic mechanic Collins, and
the Jew clothier Morse?
1t is to be noted that it is from the
middle classes that the manhood and in
tellect of the nation is mainly recruited
The firm basis of mind is soundness of
body, and especially soundness of nerv-
GUS tissues. AS DIR. Searcy observes,
"a good brain is accompanied by ex-
cellence in other structures y; and on
this basis stands that " ability to think, !"
upon which he lays much stress. He
asserts that "these two elements,
ability to think, and knowledge, consti-
tute intelligence -; and we know that
by its intelligence mankind will always
be commanded. A country life is far
more favorable to human development
than city life, but country living
alone is not enough. A plodding, I'M
thinking life in the country tends to
degeneration, intellectual and moral, as
certainly, if not 80 rapidly, as city life.
Ability to think can be maintained and
increased only by mental exercised
Without this, even the physique of our
New England yeomanry manifestly de-
clines, and may be even destroyed, in a
few generations. Many of our strongest,
most virile country families have been
destroyed in two or three generations
by an utter neglect of mental and moral
training. Every one who reads this
can remember striking instances con-
firmatory of this statement. A country
life simply is not specific condition of
human development. But family vigor
is transmissible, and, even with bad
habits, it does not disappear in a single
generation.
DIR. Searcy lays down this PROPOSE
ton: -" If the family or the race modes
of action have been repeated sufficient
length of time, habit or trait is fixed
according to the number of generations
repeating it," Here we see the
foundation principle of the perpetual
ton of families and races. Strength
and vigor of mind and body, so far as
any of us possess them, are mainly an
Inheritance for which we are indebted
to the virtues of our ancestors; and il
is an inheritance which implies and in
cludes all other good things. They
should, then, be made primary in every
family that has the honorable ambition
to perpetuate itself in long and worthy
linz. The conditions of the farmers
j t are most favorable for this, but
they alone are not sure. Along with
plain living must go high thinking, and
here the life of the farmer is exposed
to the most danger. Mental training is
the weak spot on the farm, and the
man that knows by experience how
much labor goes to the training of a
trotting colt may never think that his
sons and daughters can profit as much
as colt by discipline and instruction.
The rule with the boy, the girl, and the
colt, is the same. To fix the desired
traits, we must have repetition, and the