most healthful signs in a people.  Our broad and diversified land affords
abundant opportunity for the gratification of every rural taste, and
those who form such tastes will never complain that life is losing its
zest.  Other pleasures pall with time and are satiated.  We outgrow them.
But every spring is a new revelation, every summer a fresh, original
chapter of experience, and every autumn a fruition of hopes as well as of
seeds and buds.  Nothing can conduce more to happiness and prosperity than
multitudes of rural homes.  In such abodes you will not find Socialists,
Nihilists, and other hare-brained reformers who seek to improve the world
by ignoring nature and common-sense.  Possession of the soil makes a man
conservative, while he, at the same time, is conserved. 

The culture of the land is no longer plodding, ox-like drudgery, nor is
the farm a place of humdrum, brainless routine.  Science offers her aid on
every hand, and beauty, in numberless forms, is ever present to those who
have eyes and hearts capable of recognizing it.  The farmer has a literature
of his own, which every year is growing in proportions and value.  He also
has time for the best literature of the world.  It is his own fault if he
remains akin to the clod he turns.  Is it not more manly to co-work with
Nature for a livelihood than to eke out a pallid, pitiful existence behind