There is a quiet about the life of a farmer, and the hope of a serene old age, that no other business or profession can promise. A professional man is doomed some time to find that his powers are wanting. He is doomed to see younger and stronger men pass him in the race of life. He looks forward to an old age of intellectual mediocrity. He will be last where once he was the first. But the farmer goes as it were into partnership, with nature--he lives with trees and flowers--he breathes the sweet air of the fields. There is no constant and frightful strain upon his mind. His nights are filled with sleep and rest. He watches his flocks and herds as they feed upon the green and sunny slopes. He hears the pleasant rain falling upon the waving corn, and the trees he planted in youth rustle above him as he plants others for the children yet to be.
Nearly every farmer's boy took an oath that he would never cultivate the soil. The moment they arrived at the age of twenty-one they left the desolate and dreary farms and rushed to the towns and cities. They wanted to be book-keepers, doctors, merchants, railroad men, insurance agents, lawyers, even preachers, anything to avoid the drudgery of the farm. Nearly every boy acquainted with the three R's--reading, writing and arithmetic--imagined that he had altogether more education than ought to be wasted in raising potatoes and corn. They made haste to get into some other business. Those who stayed upon the farm envied those who went away.
There are hundreds of graduates of Yale and Harvard and other colleges who are agents of sewing machines, solicitors for insurance, clerks and copyists, in short, performing a hundred varieties of menial service. They seem willing to do anything that is not regarded as work--anything that can be done in a town, in the house, in an office, but they avoid farming as they would leprosy. Nearly every young man educated in this way is simply ruined.
Boys and girls should be educated to help themselves; they should be taught that it is disgraceful to be seen idle, and dishonorable to be useless.
Remember, I pray you, that you are in partnership with all labor--that you should join hands with all the sons and daughters of toil, and that all who work belong to the same noble family.