essential to life, the one calling on which every
other depends, should be the Canaan accursed, servant of servants to its
brethren? Is it reasonable to suppose that God gave us this beautiful
round world, source of all our wealth, almoner of every comfort,
possessor and dispenser of all grace and loveliness, yet with such
poison in her veins that they alone are safe who deal with her at a
remove,--she withers the hand that touches her? The ancients believed
better things than these. They reverenced the Mighty Mother, and fabled
a giant's strength to him who craved a blessing by the laying-on of
hands. We know that a curse was pronounced upon the earth, but why
farmers should be so forward to monopolize the curse it is difficult to
conceive. It is generally supposed that all the descendants of Adam are
equally implicated. It is not the farmer alone, but the minister and the
mechanic as well, who is to eat bread in the sweat of his face. One
product of the earth was no more accursed than another. Wheat and barley
and corn are no more under a ban than gold and iron and timber, which
all come from the same bountiful bosom; but while artificers in gold and
iron magnify their office and wax fat, the farmer depreciates his, and
according to his own showing is clothed upon with leanness.

Surely these things ought not so to be. Looking at this earth as the
divinely prepared dwelling-place of man, and looking at man as divinely
appointed to dress and keep it, to replenish and subdue it, we should
naturally suppose that there would be an obvious and preeminent
adaptation of the one to the other. We should naturally suppose that the
primary, the fundamental occupation of the race would be one which
should not only keep body and soul together, but should be especially
and exactly fitted to develop and strengthen all the powers called into
exercise, and should also be most likely to call into exercise a great
variety of powers to the fashioning of a healthy and beautiful symmetry.
Looking still further at the secondary occupations, we find our views
confirmed. The shoemaker must bend over his lapstone, and he becomes
stooping and hollow-chested. The blacksmith twists the sinews of his
arms to strength, but at the expense of his other members. The
watchmaker trains his eyes to microscopic vision, but his muscles are
small and his skin colorless. A very large majority of the secondary
callings remove men from the open air, often from