THE INTELLIGENT FARMER.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 123, 24 May 1879, Page 4

THE INTELLIGENT FARMER.

(From San Francisco Bulletin ) The farmer, of all living men, needs to think continually. His farm is a bundle of possibilities, immeasurable in extent, and incalculable in number. There is a reason which stands with quiet patience behind each operation of nature's lawe, and each task which comes to his busy hands is charged, and doubly charged, with deepest meaning. Elasticity and cohesion unite to hold tbe nails he drives into his fence poets ; gravitation helps him to irrigate; the wood of century-grow-ing oaks is bottled up sunlight for his bearth-Btone ; mysteriously over his fields of wheat currents of electricity flow like rivers, and sunlight which baa crossed dim leagues of space, helps to colour bis red astracan apples. Whoever knows these and similar things, ought to make his life a daily blessing, and live as if indeed in the very presence of endless power, and limitless beauty, and all-abiding affection. It is at one time tbe grass growing noislessly and toiling with all its little strength to fulfil its destiny and be ripe grain. Or it is strange, sweet contentment of lowing herds as they move softly past in the twilight hour. Or it is the jocund roorniag time when "Ho for tbe field!" is the word. Such moments will mean more and be sweeter to the intelligent farmer than to one who is careless and ignorant, because he wil! understand each subtle hint and connection. But there are for the thoughtful farmer of to-day other problems more serioua than those of nature's operations. He who attempts, in so far as in him lies, to cultivate the intellectual parts of 1m nature must feel that there are mysterious problems which haunt the very atmosphere. Labor and capital ; free trade and protection; production and overproduction ; currency, and other questions of vast import and terrible significance, are before the people. The farmer who will not take the time for thought on questious of social and political science in this rapid, busy age, 13 a deserter from the ranks of earnest men. We need active thought and systematic effort. If- men will only think for themselves, truth wins. The plainest of men be- \ comes a hero, and his blunt words shape men's souls when he has forged his sentences by many an hour of lonely thought and sharp questioning. Fare mers must meet together as often as possible and discuss with good naturand fairness the great questions which daily loom up more evidently before us. Good government is not a sentimental affair of holiday oratory ; neither is it a mechanical arrangement, once to be started and thenceforward safely perpetual. Nothing else which toiling men bave created is one-half so complex, so much in need of continual, thoughtful care, as that nice relationship of counterbalancing powers and checks which we call & government. So ifc becomes each intelligent farmer, and, «4broader terms, each intelligent man,

whatever be his work, to search for himself the records of history, the pages of the best writers, the thoughtful conclusions of human leaders, taking nothing on trust, and listening to no temporary, unreasonable clamor. Honest, self-poised, fearless men, whose : reasons are deeply wrought and are their own, are what we need most in these eventful years.