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and trims his sails, so will come success or failure. Henceforth he has one governing thought, one aim, and to that everything is subordinate. From the first, everything tends to give him a full and clear idea of his chosen business, its duties and its difficulties, and what he must do to secure its amplest rewards and achieve its highest triumphs.

Now, how is it with the education of farmers? There are exceptions, of course, but not enough to disturb the general rule. The farmer sends his son to the village school, where he learns to read and write and cypher. He is set to do the light chores about home, until, gaining in strength, he is put to harder tasks. As he grows up, he learns to plant, to mow, to harvest, to perform the ordinary work of the farm, but only in the way he sees his father perform these labors. He may or may not observe the rotation of crops, the application of particular fertilizers, the production of certain results, but if he does, he knows not, thinks not, of the reason of the thing. To all intents and purposes, he is performing a mere mechanical task. Whether or not he is to be a farmer, whether that is to be the business of his life, remains undetermined. Neither he nor his father have come to any settled understanding upon this. Like Mr. Micawber, he is waiting for something to turn up,— some opportunity to go to the city, to go to sea, to go into trade, but all the time with mind unfixed, with no clear purposes, no distinct aims. If he remains upon the farm, and becomes a farmer, the chances are that he does it from the force of circumstances, and because that seems to be the only resource left him, and not from choice. And then he goes on as he began, and as his father has gone before him. Now what is needed is, and it is of primary importance, that the young novitiate for farming should be trained to his business, with the understanding from the first that it is to be his business—one in which he is to earn his living and acquire a competency, one in which, from the start, he shall be spurred on by the laudable ambition to excel and make his mark. Why should there not be in this the same method and system as in other em

ployments. Why should he not begin with the idea which is to control his course, so that every effort and every experience may be made to tell in his general education and to bear upon final results. The boy upon the farm, who is to be a farmer, when he has had the proper rudimentary education of the schools, should commence his profession in earnest, knowing and feeling that he has commenced it. If he is put to any particular farm-work, he should understand why that work is to be done, and why at that time, and if told to do it in a particular way, he should understand why it is to be done in that rather than in a different way. He should be led to inquire the reason of and for everything, to think and judge, to read and study, to learn theory and practice together, and test the former by the latter. In this mode, and in this only, can he commence his career with the same advantages which attend the young man entering upon any other kind of business. It is generally the first step in life which gives direction to its whole future march. It is the resolution early formed which imparts courage to youth and strength to manhood. Let the young farmer but have a fair start, and he need not ask any

odds.

In the next place, and of equal, and perhaps greater importance, the young man who is to become a farmer should at once feel and realize that the occupation upon which he is entering is not a mere mechanical routine of labor-that while it is one which may require severe physical toil, it also calls for and demands the exercise of the highest intellectual faculties. How absurd is the idea that the brightest boy in a family must be sent to school and college, and trained up as a merchant or professional man, while his brother, not thought fit for anything else, will do to make a farmer of. While the father thinks so, the sons of course imbibe the same notion, and this shallow fallacy of thought hardens into real and disastrous fact —and the result is, that just what is most needed to encourage, improve, ennoble this great fundamental art and science of life, to wit, intelligence, mind, are withdrawn from it to be

expended upon other pursuits. And this idea so acted upon, while it tends to draw many of our best young men from the farm, has also this bad result, that it depresses and discourages those who are left, and leads them to believe that farming is mere drudgery, that they must work harder, fare poorer, be happy lives than their Now, do you believe

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worse paid, and pass less pleasant and fellows who pursue other employments. that God put man in the Garden of Eden, "to dress it and to keep it "that from thence he was sent forth "to till the ground," and was told, "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground."-that in his providence it was ordered that the great majority of mankind should cultivate the soil, while the whole race should thus be fedthat to the moral, political and social elevation of man, as well as to the full and healthy development of his physical powers, agriculture should be necessary and essential, and yet that it should give no scope for the exercise of his intellectual faculties, of that "living soul" which he became when God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life?" No-here, as everywhere else, "wisdom is strength and knowledge is power." Why is there such a difference-what causes the disparity in the condition of farmers? Why are not all alike prosperous?, Why is it that this farm is fertile and productive, and its owner prosperous and happy, while the one which adjoins it is sterile and unfruitful, and its owner an unsuccessful and disappointed man? There is no natural or irremediable difference in soil or climate. There is the same health and strength and muscle in the men. The sun shines as genially, the rain descends as seasonably, the dew falls as gratefully for one as for the other. It is because in addition to more diligence and economy, and perhaps to more industry, one brings to his work more judgment, more intelligence, more mind, than the other.

The farmer should be the last man to have inadequate conceptions of his mission, the last to disparage it. As a man thinketh so he is, and so will he do. "Possumus, quia posse

videmur." We are able when we have faith in our ability. If farmers generally consider their calling ignoble and low, that it is mere bodily toil, a sullen contest of animal strength with inert matter, that they are but hewers of wood and drawers of water, so will it be and such will they become. But if, on the other hand, they have just and true ideas of themselves and their vocation, that it is elevated and ennobling, that not only are they with strong hands to wage successful war against brute forces, but that ripe with intelligence they are to share in the triumphs of mind over matter, then will they and all things around them be transformed. They will walk the earth with a more elastic step. The very grass beneath their feet will wear a livelier green. The blue sky above their heads will bend more brightly. The summer breezes will whisper new hopes. The winter storms will inspire fresh courage. Thinking, reasoning, as well as working men, with cultivated minds and aspiring souls, they will respect themselves and be respected of others, they will dignify and adorn labor, they will feel and know, and the world will see how enviable and exalted is their position, and that with the farmer's lot there' is none which can compare for real happiness and solid good.

Having started, then, to become a farmer, not with a sort of floating idea that such may possibly be his permanent business, but, in the first place, with a fixed and well-defined purpose, and, in the second place, with a correct idea of the nature and importance of the business, and what it imperatively demands. for full success-the young farmer is ready to go to work, or rather he is ready to learn how to work, to serve his apprenticeship, to fit himself for the duties of life. In truth, this preparation is to last his whole life-time. Whoever has to deal with nature and her processes, is a perpetual learner. He studies in a school whose lessons are never completed, whose teachings have no end. The great forces and the very elements are his instructors. Each rolling year, each passing season, unfold new problems to be solved, new mysteries to be fathomed, and the scholar, as he grows wise, grows humble, for

he realizes how infinite is the wisdom of the Creator, how wondrous are his ways. And when death ends his labors, and he goes down to rest in the bosom of the earth he has lived upon and loved so long, it is with the humility and yet with the faith of a child, that in another state of being, where the vision will be clearer and the soul unfettered, he will pursue his studies and gain truer views, as he basks in the light of infinite knowledge.

But how shall the young farmer prosecute his work? Of course industry is to be inculcated,-unfailing, never-tiring, which finds for every hour some work to do, and without which nothing can be accomplished. Economy, too,—which allows no waste or extravagance, which saves the little here. and the little there, which accumulates, earns, produces, before it spends and consumes, which is the handmaid of industry and the foundation of wealth. Habits of order, also, should be impressed, which for every labor has its time,-which never puts off till to-morrow what can as well be done to-day,which has a place for everything and keeps everything in its place, that order or system, which although it may seem more natural to some than to others, is yet the result of discipline, and can be cultivated and acquired by all,-which is as necessary upon the farm as in the office or work-shop, and the practice or neglect of which may be, and often is, the turning point between success and failure.

In this connection, a word upon the keeping of accounts would not seem to be out of place. I do not speak now of farm accounts, technically so-called,--the account which every farmer should keep with every department of his farm, without which it is impossible to calculate the most beneficial mode of its management, and the improvements of which it is susceptible, and which is just as important to him as to the merchant or manufacturer are their complicated books. And yet, if there were time, it would be a profitable theme. For illustration, suppose a farmer should say to his son who is training to succeed him, "Here, take this lot of land, cultivate it, ex

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