plishing the work than by offering a mental reward to their sons and daughters that will induce them to remain at the homestead? The hearthstone should ever be pleasant to you and attractive to your children. It is the school where they are to learn the lessons for their future guidance, and it is the sacred place where your declining years are to be passed. Make it cheerful and joyous by all that science and art can contribute. It is not a sufficient incentive to the young man and young woman to remain upon the farm, that farm life is the school of true manhood; that it develops man's physical nature to its fullest capacity; that it induces industry, frugality and temperance; that it can be made the source of wealth, and is ever free from the annoyance of business life. It is not enough that it makes one independent in mind, energetic and self-reliant. It is not enough that, of itself, it expands the intellect and heart and leads to a direct association with nature in all her varied forms of beauty and of grandeur. Nor is it yet enough that early associations exert their power to bind young men to the farm. Some stronger, more attractive agency must be sought, and what can it be but a higher mental and social culture, and, as an inseparable consequence, a greater moral attainment.

There is too much seclusion and too much toil. There are not social pleasures enough. Let your boys have a voice in the plans on the farm; in buying and rearing and selling stock; in the sale of wood and hay, and whatever you have to convert into money. Let them feel that they have an interest in the homestead and a share in the profits of their labor. Let your daughters have some control and responsibility in the house, and the means of intellectual culture. Let there be no niggardly dealing with any member of the family if you would make such a home as was pictured to you in the days of your early life. What we need and must have, borrowing suggestions but not words, is less toil, less drudgery, less exclusiveness, less distrust of our own abilities, less deferring to the opinions of others; more thought and study, more mental culture, more social pleasures, more freedom from the dull routine of farm life and household duties, more holidays, more music and poetry and hilarity at the fireside of home; more agricultural and mechanical fairs; more gatherings like this, where the farmers come up in a body to express their opinions and receive suggestions from others; where mechanics mingle with the tillers of the soil; where the merchant will lay aside his anxieties about bills and notes, and meets with him who cares little for banks that

close at four and drafts at sight; where the physician may leave patients to faithful nurses; lawyers give over briefs and clients; where the schoolmaster is abroad to learn as well as teach; where the clergy shall leave the rural lessons of the patriarchs and learn the culture of the present. A sensible clergyman of a neighboring state, on this subject, says:

"Is it wise for tillers of the soil to send forth so many of their sons and daughters to other pursuits? Is it wise, young men of the farm, to leave so many of the old homesteads, hallowed by all the memories of kindred and childhood, to relapse into barrenness and desolation? Why should you seek the city or the great West for fortunes, when you have them at your doors? Do you desire riches? You have in your soil greater riches than are found in the sands of the Pacific. Do you long for heroic deeds? Here are conquests worthy of your efforts. Do you seek pleasure, and the enjoyment of life? Where can you secure more of earth's happiness than in the pursuits of the farm, surrounded by the friends of your youth, taught under the same roof, worshipping God before the same altar where your fathers learned and worshipped? Let us then cleave to the paternal acres, and make them more fruitful and more beautiful."

Thus, said an eloquent tongue, from the promptings of a warm heart and a clear head; and in closing let me say, as I have often said, that the farmer has a continued labor before him, mental and physical, summer and winter, in seed time and in harvest. This demand isdaily increasing. Each new city that springs up in the wilderness or by the sea adds verdure to your hills and wealth to your store. Each wheel put in motion is an additional inducement for you to labor, and to think while you toil. Every institution erected in our growing towns enhances the profits of the farm. Our beef and pork, our flour and corn and our unequalled fruit are annually exported across the waters to feed Europe's starving millions, or to contribute to the luxuries of the rich. The eyes of continents are upon the American farmer; the poor and suffering throughout the world look to America as the great almoner of nations. Our granaries, with care and thought and labor, shall be like those of Pharaoh, in the years when famine shall visit and war shall scourge the old world.

Manufacturing and commercial cities, and the powers of the east, must render an equivalent for every bushel of corn, every pound of beef, every barrel of flour or of apples, which steam or

canvass shall take from our door. Though winter snows fall heavily upon you, and early frosts clothe your fields with withered leaves, you need not doubt. Your lands are not exhausted beyond recovery; your plains are easy of cultivation; your meadows may yet yield a munificent harvest; your forest lands still groan beneath their growing riches; your hills are full of wealth; your barns have been linked by iron bands to the best of markets, and the products of your soil, the fruit from your orchards, your butter and cheese, the timber from your woods and the granite from your quarries, are more valuable than certificates of stock or money in banks.

But what if the picture is not all true? What if there is not so much profit? What if every seed cast into the earth does not yield an hundred fold? Is it man's only motive to gather gold? Is it his whole destiny to labor, amass riches and to die? If our farmers could but believe, when their farms are unincumbered and they have a few hundreds at command for emergencies, that they have enough, and would spend their future income in the improvement and adorning of their dwellings and their minds, then might they be like Shakespeare's true laborer, "Owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad with every man's good, and content with his own farm."

Such should be our aim; let such be yours. Young men, be content with these farms your fathers have tilled so long, and which have never suffered them to want. Never allow the passion for wandering to possess your minds. Let not the broad prairies of the West, let not the sunny fields of the South, let not the golden sands of the Pacific tempt you from these familiar scenes. Abide by the homestead, as your fathers have done; respect your calling and you will compel others to respect it; read, study, learn; refuse to rely forever on the judgment of others who know less than yourselves. Do this and you will be sought; your advice will be required in the transaction of business; you will be demanded to fill the highest places of honor and of trust, and you will never grieve for the degeneracy of those who bear your name.

NEW HAMPSHIRE IN COMPARISON WITH

OTHER STATES.

[Address by J. Frank Lawrence, Esq.]

Within the year just passed my business has led me over nearly every portion of New England, and in contact with the agricultural portion of the people of almost every nook and corner of these northern states. Of course I have not neglected to inform myself somewhat of the other industrial pursuits of these people, but I propose to speak to you more particularly in regard to agriculture, and to convince you, as I am myself convinced, that notwithstanding we so often hear New Hampshire spoken of as poor and sterile, and a good state to emigrate from, that it is nevertheless a good state to live in, and for all the purposes of active business and a home, it stands in the front rank of these six New England states.

There are, doubtless, some now hearing me who know perhaps as much, or more, in regard to this subject as myself, but the larger portion of you have never seen New England in all its extent, and you too readily, especially the young, accept the idea that New Hampshire is the most sterile portion of the country, and that your sons and daughters can improve their fortunes by going West, and cannot damage themselves by going even anywhere..

Let me begin with our eastern sister, Maine. I have traveled the entire length of every railroad of this great state, and by other means have become considerably acquainted with every section of it, except that at the extreme northern portion, called Aroostook. Wonderful stories are told of the productiveness of the soil there, much of which is undoubtedly true. But the climate there is so severe, the warm season so very short, the expense of clearing these forests so great, the cost of establishing a home there,

with the certain prospect of giving one-half the crops to get the other half to market, have made the very people who are so enthusiastically extolling this section hesitate to go there themselves.

The fact is that northern Maine is owned by people living in its southern portion, whose interests, of course, demand the settlement of this section; but the late census of the state shows how little influence these persuasions have had upon a people, who value their present privileges too highly to go where they know they cannot enjoy any themselves or reasonably look forward to any for their children. Any man now hearing my voice, who has traveled over that section of the state beyond the Penobscot, will say I am not exaggerating in the least, when I say that I have never looked upon a more bleak and gloomy section of this entire country than this, especially that along the coast from Rockland to Eastport and Calais, though of course in a section so large as this, there are occasional sections of good land, but they are so very small and scarce, that they become exceptions rather than the rule.

Bangor is a smart city, consequent upon its being at the head of navigation on the Penobscot, making it the distributing point for the necessaries of life for northern Maine, and in return receiving the lumber from the country above; but outside a circle of a dozen miles this evidence of thrift does not extend. The traveler who shall start from Bath, some thirty miles beyond Portland, and follow the coast to Rockland, will find not only a rocky coast, but that outcropping ledges and thin soil extend miles inland, while from Rockland to Belfast and Bangor, he will find a moist, cold, broken country, whose people gain much of their living by other means than by tilling the soil, while the Penobscot rolls along in a narrow basin cut for it, between the hills, with scarcely an acre where it overflows its banks and enriches the soil.

Indeed, in all the vast country beyond the Kennebec, I do not think our New Hampshire farmers would find much land that they would call unusually good. It would be useless to deny the existence of good land in the Kennebec valley, although in its whole length there are but few intervales, where it overflows its banks, making natural mowing lands, as do the rivers in our

own state.

The Sandy river is an exception; for here, in my opinion, is the garden of Maine, though only a small section, comparatively.