AGRICULTURE OF MASSACHUSETTS.

ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS ON THE FARM.

[From an Address before the Essex Society.]

BY OLIVER S. BUTLER.

MEN fail of success because they have failed to find the proper orbit in which God intended they should move, and on this pivot turns the failure or the success in farming. The principal factor in this difficult problem is the man. The successful farmer is one who chooses his vocation for the love of it, and comes to it with just and proper conceptions of its nature and duties, and in pursuing it is not disappointed.

If a man really hates or detests his business, and pursues it from necessity, he ought not to expect to succeed; and his failure ought not to be attributed to the nature of his business, but to the nature of the man. He must not only come to his calling with a love for it, but with just and proper conceptions of its nature and duties. If a man enters upon any business with wrong conceptions, or improper notions in regard to its nature or the duties required, he will be sure to fail of success. First he will be disappointed, and then comes discontent, and then defeat and failure; and many a farmer has failed of success in his chosen calling from this very cause. I have known many young men, who having read our agricultural literature, or perhaps listened to the after-dinner speeches at our fairs, have come to entertain a sort of rose-colored view of agriculture, and, having chosen farming for their business, have been undeceived when it

was too late to retrieve their steps. Perhaps they did not really think that the corn would grow without planting; or that the cows would come up into the parlor, and ask to be milked; or that the hens would lay three eggs a day in the dairymaid's lap: but then they had no adequate conceptions of the skill required, and the labor to be performed, in order to force from the reluctant soil the richest treasures, and to wring from apparent defeat the assured success for which they have toiled.

The successful farmer, then, is one that brings to his calling an ardent love for the same, and the most just conception. of its nature and its duties. And he must also possess a sound, healthy physical system: we regard this qualification as indispensable. While we freely admit that the invalid may regain his health by gentle, moderate exercise among the healthful scenes of farm-life; and that the imbecile may not starve on the farm so long as his inherited acres remain to him; and that the gentleman farmer may do much to improve his lands and his stock, as well as for the development of new methods of culture, in which all his brethren may share, without putting his own hands to the plough or the hoe; and that it shows both goodness of heart and wisdom of mind, when the aged and the infirm retire among the scenes and the associations of their youth to spend the evening of their days in peace and the happy reflections that come from a well-spent life: still we must insist that the man who must expose himself to the elements, and brave the storms of winter, and bear the heat of summer; the man who must guide his plough with his own hands, and pitch his new-mown hay over the great beams without a patent fork; the man who must build his own walls, and ditch his own meadows, will need to have a strong, healthy body, well developed, well trained, and under perfect control. He needs, and must have, a physical system that does not need any of your bitter drugs to give a relish for its food, or a cathartic to work it off, or powerful opiates to bring sleep to his eyelids. The successful farmer not only needs a healthy, vigorous body, but a sound, well-balanced mind, with the broadest culture. Away, forever away, with the notion that any ignoramus will do well enough for a farmer, or that farming is to be prosecuted simply by main strength and

stupidness. Oh, no! Such is the nature of your calling, that it requires the broadest culture and the most varied acquirements.

In almost every other vocation the man of one idea may succeed, but not so with farming. Why, think for a moment of the elements, the forces, the properties, the influences, the laws, developed and undeveloped, that he must come in contact with, and understand, if he would succeed. Take the young farmer out on to his broad acres, and let him look beneath his feet, and contemplate the soil out of which he is to draw his treasures, and ask him to make that his study, until he understands its component parts, its marvellous mysteries, its various needs and adaptation to the different crops he may wish to cultivate; and how long would it take him? Then let him attempt to enumerate and analyze and annihilate, if he can, all the countless horde of insects and vermin and reptiles, with their modes of life and propagation, that lie in ambush, waiting to devour the precious seed as soon as it falls from his open hand; then let him attempt to analyze the influence of light and heat, of wet and dry, upon his varied crops; then let him look into his barnyard or stalls, and watch his growing herds; let him attempt to become familiar with the different breeds of cattle, the best adapted to his climate and business, with the best methods of treatment, and feeding that will give him the best results; then let him look above into the heavens overhead, and what mysteries meet his gaze, and invite his investigation, from the shifting clouds, the varying winds, and the mellow sunset-tints, to the storms and tornadoes that devastate his fields, and blast his hopes! How endless the variety of subjects that meet him on every side, and challenge his investigation! The successful farmer an ignoramus! impossible, impossible!

But in order to the most varied and thorough cultivation. of the man, or the successful investigation of these varied subjects, he must become familiar with the agricultural literature of his times, and, if possible, of all times; for a farmer without an agricultural library would be like a hoe without a handle, or a rake without a tooth. But the successful farmer must be more than a reader of books; he must do more than take the products of other minds and

experiments, and use them without knowing why he must be a thoughtful man, a progressive man. Now, the difference between the automatic reader of books and the thoughtful man is as wide as from the centre to the poles. The unthinking man is like the bucket that goes to the well to be filled with water, or the sack that goes to the mill to be filled with grain. The water that fills the bucket, or the grain that fills the sack, cannot do either vessel any good: it may do them much harm by over-filling, or filling beyond their capacity. This filling process is all too common. There are too many empty buckets and sacks on our farms to-day; and they are found everywhere, even in our churches and lecture-rooms, -empty heads waiting to be filled.

The thoughtful man is altogether a different person. He finds a subject for his thoughts, and a lesson for his learning, in every thing around him. The thoughtful farmer never takes the tiny seed into his hand, without studying the law of germination, of development, and death. He never takes hold of the handles of his plough, without studying the form and structure of the machine, and how it might be improved so as to leave his furrow straight and smooth; and, if he is very thoughtful, he goes down below the furrow of his plough, and studies geology and mechanism at the same time. He not only looks into books, and reads them well; but he makes books for others to read. He not only consults authors, and compares their different theories; but he becomes an author himself, and constructs theories for others to follow. He not only reads history; but he makes history. He not only familiarizes himself with the deductions of science; but he develops and elaborates and utilizes science, and makes it contribute to his success as a farmer.

Another necessary element of success in the character of the farmer is a well-balanced and well-developed moral nature. For no man can be truly honest who has not a welldeveloped moral nature; and honesty or integrity of character is the basis of all greatness or goodness in any individual. But such is the condition of the farmer's life, and such is the nature of the elements and properties with which he constantly comes in contact, that all tricks, all deceptions, all sham and duplicity, should be forever banished from the farm. This is all the more needful for the

farmer in order to strengthen his faith and confidence in the God of the seasons, against the time of trial. There comes to every man and every family a time of trial and disappointment, when the mind is bewildered, and the heart grows faint, and hope dies out, and comes not back with the morning light. But there are trials and disappointments that are peculiar to the tiller of the soil. For after he has selected the seed with the greatest care, and planted it in the most congenial soil, and cultivated the growing crops with the greatest care and persistency; and when every indication would seem to warrant a large and even bountiful harvest, and he begins to count his gains as sure, then comes the drought of summer, and he waits for the coming rain; but it comes not. The earth is parched and dry beneath his feet. The heavens above him are red with their brazen heat, and the disheartened farmer must look on his withering and wasting crops, as helpless as the shipwrecked mariner floating on at the mercy of the great deep sea; for to make an effort of resistance is to cope with the infinite forces of

nature.

But suppose a remnant of what gave so much promise a short time since is left him, and he begins to hope that something, after all, will be left him; then come the swarming insects, and the countless hordes of vermin that crawl at his feet, or fly in the air; and, after these have taken their share of the precious fruits, there is but little left for the early frost, that leaves our cornfields as black and as barren as the plains of the Nile when the overflowing tides refuse to come. But suppose this picture to be a little overdrawn、 Suppose the harvest redeems the promise of the spring-time and the summer, and the root-crops groan and grow, and the corn-fields laugh in the sunlight, and the trees are loaded with their golden fruit, the granaries are full, the barns can hold no more, the storehouses burst forth with their rich treasures; then he is told that the markets are full, and that there is no sale for his products at a remunerative price, and he knows not whether to pray to be delivered from his friends or his enemies. Now the farmer, standing in the presence of such defeat, and sometimes disaster, as this, needs a wellcultivated moral nature, that will produce in him a faith and confidence in God, the Creator and the Ruler of this uni