Year: 1872

The glory Of the farmer is that it is his to
construct and to create. Let others borrow
and initiate, travel and exchange, and make
fortunes by speed and deXteritv in selling
something which they never made, all rests
at last upon his primitive activity. be
stands close to nature; obtains from The
earth bread; the food which was not he has
caused to be. And this necessity and duty
give The farm its dignity. All men feel this
Ia he their natural employment. The first
farmer was the first man, and all nobility
rests on the possession and use of land.
Men do not like hard work very WELL but
everv man has an exceptional respect for
tillage and feeling that this is the orgi-
nal calling of his race that he himself is
only excused from it by some circumstance
which made him delegate it for time to
other hands II he has not some skill
which recommends him to the farmer, some
product which the farmer will give him
corn for, he must himself return to his due
place among the planters of corn.


The profession has its ancient charm of
standing nearest to God. the First Cause.
Then the beauty ot nature, the piety, and
tranquility. the innocence of the country
man, his Independence, and all the pleasing
art~ belonging to him, the care of bees, of
poultry, Of sheep, of cows, the dairy, the





action on the working, in giving him a
strength and plain dignity, like the face ami
manners of nature, all men are sensible of
All Of us keep the farm in reserve as an
asylum where to hide our poverty and our
solitude, If We do nos succeed in society.
Who knows how many remorseful glances
are turned this way from the competitions
of the shop and the counting-room, and
from the mortifying cunning of the Courts
and the Senates. After the man has been
graded so that he has no longer the vgor
To attempt active labor on the farm, yet
when he has been poisoned by town life
and drugged by cooks, and every meal is a
force pump to exhaust by stimulus the poor
remainder of his strength, he resolves
'Well, my children, whom | have injured,
shall go back to the land to be recruited
and cured by that which should have been
my nursery and shall now be their hospital.


The farmer is a person of remarkable
conditions. His Office is precise and i'm
pcctant, and it is of no use to trv and paint
him rose color You must take him Just as
he stands Nothing is arbitrary or senti-
mental in his condition, and therefore one
respects in his office rather the elements
than himself. He bends to the order of the
seasons the weather and the soils, as the
sails of ship bend to the wind. He makes
\
He is a slow person, being regulated by
time and nature, and not by city watches.
He takes the pace of the seasons, of the
p1ntS, and of chemistry. Nature never
hurrles, and atom by atom. little by little,
aCCOmphShes her work. The lesson one
iraruS in tlShlng, hunting, or in planting, is
HE manners OF nature; patience with the
delays of wind and sun, DELAYS of the sea-
sons excess of water and drought, patience
with the Sl0wness of our feet, and with the
lIteneSs of our strength, with the large
ness of sea and land. The farmer, or the
man with the hoe, times himself to nature,
aud acquires that immense patience which
belongs to her Slow, narrow man-he has
to wait for his food to grow His rule is
that the earth shall feed him and find him,
and he must be no large Spender. His
spending must be a farmers spending and
not merchants.


But though II farmer may be pnched on
The one side, he has advantages on the 9TH
er. He is permanent; he clings to his land
as the rocks do.


The farmer has great health, and the
appetite OF health, and means for his end
lie has broad land in which to place his
home. He has wood to build great fires.
Tie has plenty of plain food. His milk at
least Is not watered. He has sleep cheaper
and better and more of it, than citizens.
lie has grand trusts conliled to him. In
me great household of nature, the farmer
stands at the door of the bread room and
weighs to each his loaf. 1t is not for him
to say whether men shall marry or not
Early marriages and the number of births
are indiSsoluhly connected with the abund-
ance of food, for, as Burke SAYS, "Man
breeds ut the mouth" The farmer is the
Board OF Quarantine. He has not only the
lite but the health of others in his keeping.
He is the capital of health as his farm is
the capital Of wealth. Aud it is from him
and his influence that the worth and power,
moral and intellectual, of the cities come.
The city is always recruited from the
country The men in the cities who are
HE centres of energy, the driving wheels
in trace of politics, or art or letters the
women Of beauty and genius are the child
rem and grand children of farmers, and are
spending the energies which their hard,
silent life accumulated in the frosty furroW
in poverty, in darkness, and in neceSsity
in the summers heat and winters cold
Then he il a benefactor. He who digs and
builds well, or makes a stone foundation; :;
lie who plants a grove of trees by the road
side, who plants an orchard or builds a
durahle house, or even puts a stone seat by
the WAySide, makes the land lovely and de-
Nlrable, and makes a fortune which he can
not carry with him, but which is useful to
his country and mankind long afterward.
The man that works at home moves society
throughout the world. Ralph Waldo En-
erSOu.