tasteful proprieties of a well-appointed home, to the support of
his muscles? I am aware that there are instances of a better life
than this among the farmers, and I should not have written this
article if those instances had not taught me that this everlasting
devotion to labor is unnecessary. There are farmers who prosper in
their calling, and do not become stolid. There are farmers who are
gentlemen--men of intelligence--whose homes are the abodes of
refinement, whose watchward is improvement, and whose aim it is to
elevate their calling. If there be a man on the earth whom I
honestly honor it is a farmer who has broken away from his slavery
to labor, and applied his mind to his soil.

Mind must be the emancipator of the farmer. Science, intelligence,
machinery--these must liberate the white bondman of the soil from
his long slavery. When I look back and see what has been done for
the farmer within my brief memory, I am full of hope for the
future. The plough, under the hand of science, is become a new
instrument. The horse now hoes the corn, digs the potatoes, mows
the grass, rakes the hay, reaps the wheat, and threshes and
winnows it; and every day adds new machinery to the farmer's
stock, to supersede the clumsy implements which once bound him to
his hard and never-ending toil. When a farmer begins to use
machinery and to study the processes of other men, and to apply
his mind to farming so far as he can make it take the place of
muscle, then he illuminates his calling with a new light, and
lifts himself into the dignity of a man. If mind once gets the
upper hand, it will serve itself and see that the body is properly
cared for. Intelligent farming is dignified living. For a farmer
who reads and thinks, and studies and applies, nature will open
the storehouse of her secrets, and point the way to a life full of