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gold in Persia can never bribe the man who can live contentedly on turnips."

"The farmer," says Franklin, "has no need of popular favor; the success of his crops depends only on the blessings of God upon his honest industry."

ence.

But we are not to be content with possessing the comforts and necessaries of life. These are not the exclusive aims of existWe desire to be useful, we wish to do good,—we want to be esteemed. "I hold," says Lord Bacon, "every man a debtor to his profession; from the which, as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves by way of amends, to be a help and ornament thereto." Are we not also debtors to our country, which in an unprecedented degree in the world's history, affords us opportunities of carrying out our aims and wishes without interference, and aids us by its bountiful soil, beneficent government, and its hospitable climate, in the pursuit of the substantial things of life? In what way can we as farmers best pay our tribute to our country and calling for these goodly gifts and privileges?

In the first place, we must remember that no one, no matter how high his position, can arrogantly say as did Louis XIV., "I am the state." We, the people, are the state, and each one of us is identified with its well-being, its welfare, and its progress. We must therefore give our country, next to our Creator, our best consideration, and in promoting the interests of our calling, ourselves and our families, never forget the motto blazoned upon our national escutcheon, "The one is made from the many." It requires the effort of all to preserve and maintain the integrity of the commonwealth.

Secondly. It must be self-evident to us all that a country without a people can be no nation. A Roman matron when inquired of as to her jewels, pointed to her children. Our matrons in fashionable life, if report speaks truth, may be more priceless than rubies, but it is by the wearing of other jewels than those. "Sparrowgrass" has sagely remarked that "children are a good thing to have in the country!" That seems to be the prevailing idea in our large cities and towns, where extravagance and selfishness absorb all the finer feelings of human nature, and the burdens and blessing of maternity are to be borne chiefly by

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those who have health and happiness in the country. that it should be so. The vast proportion of infantile deaths even among the healthy but hard-worked portion of the city population from those nurseries in the midst of the fetid air of those crowded marts, are not propitious to a prolonged or healthy existence.

About the middle of the last century, great excitement was caused in England and Europe by the publication of a treatise by Mr. Malthus, attempting to show that the population was increasing so fast that unless some check was resorted to, there would be a difficulty of procuring food. A scientific examination of the whole subject soon disproved the theory of the essayist, but in the interim many suggestions were offered on the subject of restraining marriages and reducing the increase of the people. Dean Swift even ventured to suggest that the most agreeable way to get rid of fat babies was to eat them! We need have no fears on the score of inability to support a population in our country. Without taking into consideration the constant and necessary checks upon population, by death caused by diseases, wars and the natural end of existence, the extravagance of fashionable life, the selfishness of men and women, we have ample room and verge enough to sustain the rest of the universe, if the land should be cultivated to its fullest capacity, and as but a portion of the Old World's inhabitants are likely to settle here just now, we can maintain those that do, and our own population, with even the present slighting style of culture. Let us not be afraid, then, to emulate our fathers in the possession of large families. Among them the average number of children to a family was from eight to ten. In our day it is reduced to three.

Children may increase the cares as they do the blessings of life, but a philosopher saith, "they mitigate the remembrance of death." (6 Happy is the man," saith the Psalmist," that hath his quiver full of them!"

Next to having children, it is important to educate them. Education in what is called the best society is apt to consist more of the ornamental than the useful. Humboldt tells us that an Oronoco Indian, though quite regardless of bodily comfort, will yet labor for a fortnight to purchase pigment wherewith to make himself admired, and that the same woman who

would not hesitate to leave her hut without a fragment of clothing on, would not dare to commit such a breach of decorum as to go out unpainted! Even so our semi-civilized votaries of fashion think more about the costliness of their dress than the fitness of it, and hesitate not to outrage all the decorums of society at the demand of the milliner. Girls without the least taste for music are compelled to labor at the piano with an assiduity and perseverance that, applied to the attainment of useful knowledge, would make them accomplished women, and boys waste time enough in elegant pursuits to make them learned and useful members of society. It was a custom among the Jews that all boys, of whatever degree, should learn a trade. Rabbi Judah saith, "He that teacheth not his son a trade, does the same as if he taught him to be a thief;" and Rabban Gamaliel saith, "He that hath a trade in hand, is like a vineyard that is fenced." In compliance with this good and useful custom of the Jews, our Saviour was put to the trade of a carpenter, and St. Paul to that of a tent-maker. The historian Gibbon relates that among the Christians brought before the Emperor Nero were the two grandsons of St. Jude the apostle, who was the brother of Jesus Christ, and when examined concerning their fortune and occupation they showed their hands, hardened with daily labor, and declared that they derived their whole subsistence from the cultivation of a farm in the village of Cocata, of the extent of about twenty-four English acres. The term education, as commonly understood, implies acquiring information from books and public teachers. But there are educations prior to that, consisting of the moral and physical discipline, of primary importance, and within the reach of all, however remote from the school-house, or restricted in finances. We do not believe in the dogma that "all children are born good," but we do not hesitate to say that to parental misconduct and neglect is traceable a great part of the perversity of children, and cannot doubt that if the parents exhibited more self-control, less irascibility, more justice and generosity, there would be less exhibition of evil passions in the children, and they would be better prepared to carry out in their future life the golden maxim of doing unto others as they wished others to do unto them.

The Persians did not, like their neighbors, wait to impose punishments upon those who broke the laws, but taking things

higher, were careful from the beginning to provide that their citizens should not be such as were capable of meddling with any action that was base or vile. We, living remote from public haunts, have the best opportunity to bring up our families in habits of virtue and orderly industry. We can instil into the minds of our children the graces of simplicity, truth and honesty, and rare will be the instances in which these inculcations, if properly and early implanted, will be departed from. Upon these characteristics all other education may be engrafted; without them, the latter will be but the fringe without the garment. Boys and girls want, above all, a good home education to start with. Labor in this hemisphere is honorable to all classes, and we have opportunities above all other classes of society of teaching our children the value of industry on the farm and in the house. A distinguished authoress (Mrs. Stowe,) has recently announced herself an advocate for the foreign system of having public bakers, cooks, &c., in our villages, that the labors of our households may be lightened. Far distant be the time of any such innovations in our old-fashioned homely habits. What the farm is as a school to the boy, the house is to the girl, and we have enough women already in cities and towns who, devoid of useful employment and of homes, find their time pass idly on their hands and are enabled only to devise appliances to get rid of the hard-earned money of their husbands on dress and gewgaws of fashion. The daughters imitate the examples of the mothers, and so expensive have the habits of those devotees of fashion become, that among fortune hunters the proposition is seriously maintained that the surest way to acquire a competency would be to marry one of these mantua-maker's blocks, and sell her clothes!

A witty woman, commenting on Mormonism, exclaimed: "How absurd! Four or five wives for one man; when the fact is, each woman in these times ought to have four or five husbands to support her decently!"

The great want in male and female education is thoroughness. We are taught too much book knowledge at once, and taught it too early in life. A boy who has been brought up on a farm during his tender years, with occasional attendance in winter at the common school, is much more likely to acquire rapidly and thoroughly subsequent knowledge, and attain eminence even in

professional pursuits, than the one who has been hot-housed all his life in infant and boarding schools. The history of all our public men will furnish evidence of this fact. The strong mind needs the strong body for its support. The strain upon the physical in all pursuits in which the intellect is continually brought into activity, is immense, and it requires the continued infusion of fresh blood from the country to fill the vacancies in the pulpit, forum and legislative halls.

Let us see, then, that our boys and girls have a thorough training at home in morals, manners, labor, and the elements of book learning, and at the proper season give them all the facilities of a higher intellectual education. Don't be afraid of their knowing too much. It is too late in the day to present an argument in favor of farmers' sons becoming thoroughly educated. Public opinion has forced the establishment of institutions adapted especially to their wants. The State has ascertained that its relations towards agriculture demand that it should make provision for the continual growth of that class of men upon whose labor, patriotism and intelligence, it leans so heavily. The success of the agricultural college at Amherst is assured, and it is gratifying to know that the best students are the hardest workers in the field, thus showing that physical and intellectual labor are in no wise incompatible.

"The education which a man needs to enable him to act well his part in life is threefold: that of the head, the hand and the heart. With the head he knows, with the hands he does, and with the heart he is guided to will and to do what is right."

Upon these main branches may and should be engrafted the ornaments of life. Tastes should be cultivated. The ordinary isolation of the farmer's life should be broken into by the interchange of frequent friendly visits among neighbors, by the establishment of reading circles, farmers' clubs, at which the females should be frequent guests; and farmers' festivals, at which all should gather, and talk and laugh off the megrims of life, which, like cobwebs, will gather and remain until some fresh arrival brushes them away.

Almost as necessary as education of the mind is care and attention of the body. Exercise and diet have nearly as much to do with the mental condition as with the body. It has been affirmed that man partakes of the nature of the animal of which

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