How to Prosper in Business.—In the first place, make up your mind to accomplish whatever you undertake; decide xii upon some particular employment; then persevere in it. DESIGN AND PLAN OF THE WORK. in the lofty position, among the various occupations of society, it is designed to hold. The yeomanry of a country are its vital energy-its meat-its drink-its raiment; and, by their intelligence and consequent controlling power, should be its chief glory. And the scientific farmer, too, may daily feel, that through the laws of material nature, he is holding special communion with the Great Source of wisdom and goodness. It is he that, in his ordinary avocations, investigates, analyzes, and applies the mysterious laws which govern the world. In none of his labors is there the least occasion for the legerdemain, the quackery, or the knavery that so much, in other spheres of action, enter into the business of life. Another object of the author is, to combine with matter already alluded to, subjects usually treated of in separate volumes. All of these need not here be enumerated. In the number and among the more prominent, are Hints on the proper education for persons in rural life; a list of Books most suitable for the little Family Library of every agriculturist; the importance of Newspapers and other periodicals for constant use; the agricultural influences that should be manifested in our general and local governments; and also various Tabular Compends of permanent character. If these and other miscellaneous articles, to be included in the volume, may be found elsewhere, they add more value to the work than they do to its cost. Besides, in a book, to be an Every-day Household Compend-a kind of Vade-mecum for hours of leisure-all its contents in time will become familiar as household words, and its teachings will become so identified with all the mental associations of its members, as to appear like intuitive knowledge, and, of course, to have an every-day influence more ready and powerful than arises from the exhibition of the same truths in any other form. Nothing circulates so rapidly as a secret. All difficulties are overcome by diligence and assiduity. This is the secret of success. The gifted Hannab More says—“ A sound economy is a sound understanding brought into action. It is calculation realized. It is the doctrine of POPULAR ERRORS ABOUT AGRICULTURE. Princes and lords may flourish or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made; When once destroyed, can never be supplied. It has been a popular error in our country, that the exercise of talents is not necessary in the business of agriculture; that a person, naturally stupid, will make a decent farmer; and that education, in its common acceptation, is of no advantage to him, and, perhaps, an injury. Acting on this ridiculous assumption, how often has it happened, that if in a family one son was supposed to have a little more intellect than the others, he alone was favored with the advantages of education; perhaps sent to college; then devoted to one of the learned professions, or to merchandise; while the others, without education essentially superior to that of the cattle and horses, were kept at home to till the ground. The consequence has been a natural one: the business of agriculture has been degraded, and farmers have been looked upon as a class inferior to those in other occupations. Society, in acting on such false premises, in the course of time has converted mere fiction into a reality. For, if you treat a class of persons as inferior to all others, they soon feel and act as if they were inferior-more and more so with the lapse of time. By this process, the serfs of Russia have been reduced to their present degraded condition, scarcely indicating that they belong to the same species of other men. And may it not be supposed, that much of the inferiority of the African race may be referred to a similar cause? The cause is undoubtedly sufficient to produce such a result. However, we deny altogether the truth of the assumption, that the business of agriculture will ordinarily be followed advantageously by persons of no mental capacity. On the contrary, we affirm that the highest grade of talents will as much lead to superior results as in other business and other occupations. The ox, and the mule, and the horse, perform valuable service; without them we should not be able to carry on The miser starves himself that his heirs may feast. proportion reduced to practice. It is the foreseeing contingencies, and providing against them." Hope is a bright and beautiful bird; it comes to us 'mid darkness, and sings the sweetest song when our spirits 14 are saddest; and when the soul is weary, and longs to pass away, POPULAR ERRORS ABOUT AGRICULTURE. the business of life; especially on the farm. But, if they had the reason of their owners, would they not labor much more advantageously-without the cost and the delay of drivers? So, likewise, with laboring men. If, for a long period, or generation after generation, they are placed in positions to feel as if they had not mental endowments above the brutes-to do only what is prescribed for them-and they will become, as it were, incapacitated for reflection and reason-will present a spectacle of beings without soul-without mind-without ambition-and almost without self-respect. Even machinery, remaining a long season unemployed, if wood, becomes stiff and unyielding, and, if metal, rusty and wholly unfit for use. Animal mechanism, likewise, in time, from perfect inactivity, will lose much of its locomotive power. If the child were never taught to walk, would it know how to use its feet and legs in their appropriate functions? Surely not. Would the hands and fingers ever present such wonderful exhibitions of skill in embroidery, in painting, and in music, without previous instruction? Surely not! It is the same with the mind. It must be exercised-it must be kept active-it must be taught how to put forth its powers, or it will resemble the untaught, the unused physical organs of man, and be even more inapt for its legitimate offices than the rusty, and the stiff, and unyielding machinery. Persons in other occupations adopt a different process of labor. The shoemaker, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the wheelwright, the mason, and even the tailor, is ordinarily obliged to serve an apprenticeship of years, before they are judged capable of laboring in their respective trades. A man may be a shrewd and even a profound merchant; but who would trust him, before he had been taught, to build a steam-engine? A man may be a first-rate physician or lawyer, but who would think of going to him for the manufacture of a case of mathematical instruments? Or who would think of going to the shoemaker for the repairing of his watch; or to the tailor to get his horse shod? Yet while, by common consent-even, as it were, by the instincts of society-an individual in other trades is looked upon as a fool or a knave, if he advertise to do things before he has learnt how to do them; yet it is constructively supposed that the merchant may leave his ledger; the blacksmith his anvil and bellows; the physician his nostrums; the sailor his quadrant and log-book; and the tailor his press-board and shears, and become a first-rate farmer, without instruction and without books, in less time than is required to raise a pair of whiskers. Repentance without amendment is like pumping without stopping the leak. it warbles its sunniest notes, and tightens again the slender fibres of our hearts, that grief has been tearing away. “What are you going to give me for a Christmas present?" remarked a gay damsel to us the other day. We meekly replied, that we had nothing to o fer but our POPULAR ERRORS ABOUT AGRICULTURE. 15 The whole of this popular prejudice, or popular error, or whatever you please to call it, arises from a false estimate of the very principles on which agriculture is based. If this earth were a simple substance, not subject to chemical change; if this substance, under the influence of the atmosphere, the sun, and the rain, when furnished with a particular seed, would produce a particular vegetable in all its perfection, with the uniformity and regularity of the formation of shot in the tower, from the descent of melted lead; or, if animals were the certain product, in full and unvaried stature and perfection, of a single involuntary agent, those false assumptions might pass for realities; and first-rate farmers might spring up in profusion, and with the rapidity of mushrooms in the nights of autumn. Instead of this, the earth is a wide and deep laboratory of agents, complex, and, to the unlearned, mysterious, which, by certain processes of analysis and combination, under self-operating laws, or the hand of well-taught man, will yield all the formations of beauty and beneficence on which we gaze with wonder, and on which it is ordained that we shall subsist. Why should it be thought that it requires more talent and skill to convert iron ore, one of these imbedded substances, into pure iron, then steel, and then fine cutlery, than to convert others into wheat, or broccoli, or rich fruit? The untutored and unskilled Indian may, indeed, by rubbing the former on a stone, produce a coarse cutting instrument; but this bears about the same resemblance to wellpolished cutlery, that the agricultural products of the unskilled operator bear to those products under the supervision of the farmer who is skilled in Nature's mysteries. It is by no means asserted that all agricultural knowledge must be the result of manual labor. The professional man, the mechanic, and the merchant, by reading and study, may understand more of its principles than is acquired by the unlearned and unthinking farmer in his lifetime. Ordinarily, principles are learnt by reading and study, but, from the application, become the reliable instruments used in all the departments of labor. And it is no uncommon occurrence, that persons ing from other occupations, especially merchants and professional gentlemen, and devoting themselves to agriculture, ultimately become the very best farmers. Their past habits of life prepare them for systematic and appropriate labor. They have been accustomed to trace effects to causes and causes to effects; to investigate and comprehend the reason of whatever process presents itself to their consideration. If any process fails to yield the desired consummation, their business has been, in subsequent efforts, to remedy the evil; to vary the process so He who knows himself best, esteems himself least. retir humble self." The smallest favors gratefully received," was her prompt and merry response. Industry is the price of happiness; and spirits broken will revive by labor, and gain 16 the wonted elasticity and strength. If you can live free from want, POPULAR ERRORS ABOUT AGRICULTURE. A shrewd and as to meet every possible exigency in the case. This mercantile discipline is the very thing wanted in agri- indeed, would it be to human life, if the physician were as ig norant or as heedless in his prescriptions for the maladies of the human body as the farmer often is in applications to the soil. And, let the merchant be as negligent, in reference to financial results in his business. as the farmer often is to rational and scientific calculations for good harvests, and seldom, indeed, would he rise to affluence, or even obtain a competence. Hence, if merchants generally, on relinquishing business-professional men, from failing health or any other cause-and especially politicians, who have completed their career in public lifewould uniformly devote themselves to rural occupations, a green and vigorous old age might be the reward to themselves, and their wisely-directed labors in farming would be of immense value to the great interests of the producing classes. Let this be done, and the most prominent physical and mental attributes of old age would not be seen; the wane of human existence would frequently exhibit the cheerful buoyancy of manhood in its prime; and, what is equally desirable, there would be no waste portions of human life; the whole of it, to its final verge, as God ordained, would be crowned with deeds of useful occupation, and with a full measure of social bliss; and, hence, at no period subsequent to childhood, would persons be debtors to the world for a subsistence, but always casting upon her bosom a full equivalent for everything drawn therefrom. A sparkling eye beneath a wrinkled front The veteran shows, and, gracing a gray beard With youthful smiles, descends toward the grave In such a case, to whom would old age be burdensome, or an Who He that believes his own relatives his best friends is frequently mistaken. and have wherewithal to do good, care for no more-the rest is but vanity. |