xuberance
around them. In their minds is no under-draining, no subsoiling. Earth
with all her interests takes unrelaxing hold of their potato-patch, but
they have eyes only for the potato-patch. Accustoming themselves to the
contemplation of little things, considered separately and not as links
in the universal chain, their angle of vision has grown preternaturally
acute. Things they see, but not the relations of things. They dwell on
desert islands. For all the integrity of Nature, they fail to learn
integrity. The honest farmer is no more common than the honest merchant.
He abhors the tricks of trade, he has his standing joke about the
lawyer's conscience: but the load of hay which he sold to the merchant
was heavier by his own weight on the scales than at the merchant's
stable-yard; the lawyer who buys his wood, taught by broad rural
experience, looks closely to the admeasurement; and a trout in the milk
Thoreau counts as very strong circumstantial evidence. The farmer does
not compass sublime swindles like the merchant, nor such sharp practice
as the lawyer; but in small ways he is the peer of either. We do not say
that farmers are any more addicted to their characteristic vices than
the lawyers and merchants are to theirs; but that they have their
peculiarities, like other classes, and that the term _honest_ is as
necessary a prefix to _farmer_ as to any other noun of occupation. We
admit all this, but we believe it is the fault of the farmer, and not of
his circumstances.

"His fault!" says the farmer, and say many men of whom better things
might be expected. "How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and
that glorieth in the goad, that driveth oxen, and is occupied in their
labors, and whose talk is of bullocks?" How? By "seeking her as silver,
and searching for her as for hid treasures." For remember, O farmer! the
despairing question is from below, the inspiring answer from above. It
is not the Bible, but the Apocrypha, that casts doubt upon agricultural
education. There is wisdom to him that holdeth the plough. Honor and
health and wealth and great-heartedness are to be found in the soil.
Earth is not one huge incumbrance to weigh man down; it is the means by
which he may rise to heavenly heights. Earth has been the mother of
dignity ever since her Maker's eyes looked upon her, and the Maker's
voice pronounced her very good. And "Very Good" is the true verdict.
Ignorance, stupidity, and sin insist upon pe