Everything
should be kept in order--gates should be on their hinges, and about all
there should be the pleasant air of thrift. In every house there should
be a bath-room. The bath is a civilizer, a refiner, a beautifier.
When you come from the fields tired, covered with dust, nothing is so
refreshing. Above all things, keep clean. It is not necessary to be a
pig in order to raise one. In the cool of the evening, after a day in
the field, put on clean clothes, take a seat under the trees, 'mid the
perfume of flowers, surrounded by your family, and you will know what it
is to enjoy life like a gentleman.

In no part of the globe will farming pay better than in Illinois. You
are in the best portion of the earth. From the Atlantic to the Pacific,
there is no such country as yours. The east is hard and stony; the
soil is stingy. The far west is a desert parched and barren, dreary and
desolate as perdition would be with the fires out. It is better to dig
wheat and corn from the soil than gold. Only a few days ago I was where
they wrench the precious metals from the miserly clutch of the rocks.
When I saw the mountains, treeless, shrub-less, flowerless, without even
a spire of grass, it seemed to me that gold had the same effect upon
the country that holds it, as upon the man who lives and labors only for
that. It affects the land as it does the man. It leaves the heart barren
without a flower of kindness--without a blossom of pity.

The farmer in Illinois has the best soil--the greatest return for the
least labor--more leisure--more time for enjoyment than any other farmer
in the world. His hard work ceases with autumn. He has the long winters
in which to become acquainted with his family--with his neighbors--in
which to read and keep abreast with the advanced thought of his day.
He has the time and means for self-culture. He has more time than the
mechanic, the merchant or the professional man. If the farmer is not
well informed it is his own fault. Books are cheap, and every farmer can
have enough to give him the outline of every science, and an idea of all
that has been accomplished by man.

In many respects the farmer has the advantage of the mechanic. In our
time we have plenty of mechanics but no tradesmen. In the sub-division
of labor we have a thousand men working upon different parts of the same
thing, each taught in one particular branch, and in only one. We have,
say, in a shoe factory, hundreds of men, but not