The Golden Censer Part 31

in the city, the swords which were yesterday plow-shares will surround the glaring pile, and steadfastly blot out of existence the conspiracy of the beer-saloon and the "dead-fall;" when the bayonet of the gaudy foreigner shall glisten on our coasts, the ranks of farmers will hurry, side by side with the metropolitans, to chase the adventurers back into the seas.

"Agriculture," says Zenophon, "for an honorable and high minded man, is the best of all occupations and arts by which men obtain the means of living." How true this is! One would think

"BUSINESS"

in the days of the Greek were carried on just as it is now--the concourse of a pack of men turned wolves, hungry for trade, and devouring each other in the absence of common sustenance. To succeed in business in a city in this epoch, and to be at the same time a high-minded and honorable man, is very rare--is usually the result of employing lieutenants to do the "business," and keeping the "dirty work"

away from the knowledge of the princ.i.p.al. But when the farmer drives a bargain with

"THE GOOD G.o.dDESS"

how clean is the transaction! There is no lying, no cheating, no treachery, no rivalry. How frank and open is the face of him who has concealed nothing! How hearty is his laugh--for has he not laughed with nature--with the twitter of the birds, with the low beating of the bells? Has he not faithful friends--friends of a life-time? When he has gone into debt has he not paid? Has he ever considered

FIFTY CENTS ON HIS NEIGHBOR'S DOLLAR

a full return, and has he walked into his neighbor's parlor (shabby for lack of the fifty per cent) and congratulated him on the return of the holidays? A spade is a spade with him. A thief is a thief. He does not like thieves. He says so. Neither does his city cousin like thieves. His city cousin is very careful not to say so. He does not like monopolies, he says so. Neither does his city cousin like monopolies. His city cousin would "turn off" any clerk who said so very loudly, let alone saying it himself. He does not like corruption and hypocrisy. On this point his city cousin has

POSITIVELY NO OPINION,

as "it really would ruin his business." Thus we see the farmer--free, ingenuous, independent. Thus we see the city merchant--smooth, prudent, sycophantic. Thank G.o.d for Agriculture! And now

CANNOT WE INSPIRE YOUNG MEN

with a little truer idea of life? Cannot we teach them that money in itself is not what they want above all things? How little wealth the really wise find necessary! On the farm is health, independence, high standing--all within the reach of any young man. He certainly sacrifices one or two of these objects when he enters a city. He can get money but he will lose his health. If he get true independence he will be

ONE OUT OF TEN THOUSAND,

all the rest of whom are slaves. With the new combinations forming in the business of the world, new experiences are constant. The man employing three hundred fortunate workers to-day, may be himself searching for work next year. The man getting $5,000 a year to-day may next week be trying to find labor at a dollar a day, and may absolutely fail. The financial panic has no such thing in store for the farmer. He will live on, just as his brook runs on, and when the sleek magnates in the hotel-parlor decree that he must lose his farm, as they need it for a "colony," he will rise up and smite them, and thereafter the sleek magnate will be an affair of the past. Young man, if you have not an absolute genius for something else, stay on the farm. Read books which will make you desire to be a pure man, just for the n.o.ble name it will give you. If you can get as great a desire to be a good man as you have to be a purse-proud man, you will be on the right track; for you will see that honesty is easier in the perfumed fields than it is in the polluted air of a city business-house. Read over the biographies, and see how certainly all our great men got their greatness in the open air of the country. Take a big city, for instance. Has it not surprised you to see how few great men New York or Chicago have furnished to the nation? The city levels men. It drags them down. Their individualities are put into a dredge-box, and the flour of mediocrity is scattered on all alike.

"IN A MORAL POINT OF VIEW,"

says Lord John Russell, "the life of the agriculturist is the most pure and holy of any cla.s.s of men; pure because it is the most healthful, and vice can hardly find time to contaminate it; and holy because it brings the Deity perpetually before his view, giving him thereby the most exalted notions of supreme power, and the most fascinating and endearing view of moral benignity."

Farmers, you take pains to get two teams, so that the boys can take hold at the ploughing and in the corn. See to it that you also get the boys a light wagon, so that they can go to a picnic or a bee without discommoding you.

START YOUR BOYS OUT IN THIS WAY,

and they will not abuse their opportunities. Instead of going six miles on Sunday to a lake or river, they will "turn out" of their own accord and go to church with their heads up, self-reliant, perhaps just a little bit proud. Why? Because when they sneak off to a river, it is because they have nothing with which they are decently pleased for all their hard toil. Make your home a pleasant place for your sons, even if it be at great hazards. It will all come out right. Give the children some comforts before you take big chances on a short-horn herd. Rig up a bath-room, a swing, a sort of gymnasium. Buy games of recreation, such as your taste approves. Buy above all things good books and plenty of them. Remember some book in your own old childhood-home! What a gigantic influence that book has exercised on your whole life! It does not seem to you that your sons will pay so much attention to the books in _your_ house, but they will. Some one book will furnish a key to a life--will sway its reader while young, while old, until he goes over the bounds of its dominion into the next life. You and Society both desire your young people to

STAY OUT OF THE CITIES.

The safety of our Great Republic entirely depends upon the existence of a conservative cla.s.s of independent individuals, unable to become crazed, through laziness, over some miserable idea unconnected with the business of living. When any great wrong is to be righted by absolute force it is necessary that the body exercising that force should be amenable to a sense of practical justice. If it shall be necessary to take the railroads away from their owners, or to close the boards of trade, or to go the other way and farm out the post-office and machinery of the government to get rid of the crime of office-hunting,--why then, the action of independent men is necessary--the doings of wage-workers are not satisfactory, and are almost always fatal to the order of things which was to be renovated. If this Republic have any vitality not enjoyed formerly by the democracies now buried in the yellow pages of history, it is the tremendous scope of her quarter-section farms. Not many years ago one of the largest business houses in Chicago put up a placard, just before election, stating that the proprietor considered his interests justly the interests of his clerks, and it was decidedly to his interests to have the Honorable Barnacle Bigbug re-elected. All employes were requested to note well. You see the crime of this dry-goods "prince" (how we all run to idiotic t.i.tles!) lay in subordinating the good of the State to the good of his particular millions. He totally forgot that the good of each clerk was as much to be looked after by the Government as the good of his own ambitious flesh and blood. He drowned every principle of democracy in the monarchical desire to "get it all and then give some away." The desire to give away is where the theory gives away. Now this can never happen on the farm.

The plutocrats must always tremble before the man with hay-seed in his hair. They cannot reach him. They cannot tempt or debauch him. Teach this to your sons. Teach it with horses, buggies, churches, picnics, schools, books, rest, and travel. Take the boys to the rank-smelling cities; show them the factories, the store-gangs, and the street gangs.

Then they will go home with joy in their hearts, and when Old Brindle moos and Old Sorrel whinnies in recognition at their gate you may be sure that the greedy city will never swallow up your st.u.r.dy sons, the pride of your declining years. I have been somewhat earnest in this because my life on a farm was harder than circ.u.mstances make imperative nowadays. Clearing is heavy work. The culture of an Indiana opening among stumps that make a field look like a drag turned wrong-side-up leaves little chance for gymnasium or bath-room. But all that is gone by. I have been earnest, again, because

THE FOREIGNERS

are all getting our farms, while our own folk seem to think that a precarious existence as a rich man's slave in the city, is a more sensible thing than to take advantage of opportunities for which the people of other worlds tear out their heart-strings, leave native climate, language, habits, government, everything, and hurry hitherward.

For shame upon ourselves!

My lord rides through his palace gate; My lady sweeps along in state; The sage thinks long on many a thing And the maiden muses on marrying; The minstrel harpeth merrily, The sailor plows the foaming sea, The huntsman kills the good red deer, And the soldier wars without a fear; _Nevertheless, whate'er befall_, _The farmer he must feed them all_.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

TEMPERANCE

O thou invisible spirit of wine; if thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee--devil.--Shakspeare.

Society has much to attend to. The whole wonderful mechanism by which those citizens who now do measurably right, can have blessings far beyond the totals of luxuries enjoyed by Kings a few centuries ago--this whole mechanism, I think, has been perfected by one law, the self-interest of the cla.s.s wielding the force necessary to compel the change desired. To-day, among the evils which we suffer,--not as results of the new civilization, but as vestiges of the old barbarism,--is the abuse of stimulants. The effects of this abuse are, perhaps, next to atrocious crime, the most discouraging which menace the march of progress, and

EVEN THE ANNALS OF ATROCIOUS CRIME

so closely link the curse of strong drink with deeds of violence as to totally extinguish the mark of difference in the minds of many good men.

Society as to-day organized, commits the keeping of a woman to the hands of a man, who in turn, is legally free to condemn her to the horrors of companions.h.i.+p with a man (that man being himself) bereft periodically or continuously of his moral motives of conduct. He is ent.i.tled by law to return to his wretched home with murder in his heart, and to vent upon a woman from whom he fears no defense, the anger which

IT WOULD BE UNSAFE TO MANIFEST

toward the person who may have originally inspired the pa.s.sion. The point at which this cruelty becomes practically illegal is that limit which the wife puts to her own endurance, which in turn, is generally gauged not by her own powers, but by the personal safety of her children. So long as her own life seems to be alone in jeopardy, she waits to be killed--as in the notable case at Minneapolis, Minn.,--and Society permits itself to be called in simply to attend the funeral of the murdered woman, who, however, is often buried as a victim of some hypothetical disease, invented to take the blame off the prevailing order of things. Now while this is

ENTIRELY HORRIBLE IN THE ABSTRACT,

the abstract is notoriously a false way of getting the general drift of things. The abstract philosopher, the moment he is charged with the practical conduct of an affair, as a general rule, fails ignominiously, even in his own opinion. With regard to drunkenness, for instance, let us ask ourselves: "Is drunkenness less prevalent now than in olden times?" Yes. "Is the condition of the woman better, in addition to the improved habits of the man?" Yes. Therefore, it is evident Society,

THE GRAND MACHINE

(let us never say "Society" when we mean spike-tailed coats), has an eye on the scourge of Rum, and will eventually stamp it out. "But why,"

asks the Impracticable, "does not Society stamp it out at once?" "Why does not the sun s.h.i.+ne twenty-four hours in America on the Fourth of July?" Simply because America is not the whole world. Neither is the subject of the murder of wives and the degradation of offspring the whole affair with which Society deals.

THE FIRST GREAT DUTY OF SOCIETY