There was quite a general assent to this proposition among the group. The idea of the first speaker was, that because he possessed money, his sole duty was to keep it, and that gentlemen farmers were great simpletons for doing otherwise; never for a moment imagining that if for himself it were a luxury to hoard, it might be with the others a still greater luxury to spend.
In many neighborhoods, the advent of a gentleman farmer is not hailed with genuine hospitality. He is too often regarded as a foolish man, because he spends his money freely, even though it be scattered among the sneering crowd. However thoroughly he pulls down, however judiciously he builds up and improves, the masses neither appreciate nor comprehend. They see him exterminate the most impenetrable hedgerows with no other remark than as to what the job will cost. He drains the immemorial marsh, abolishes the spatter-docks, squelches the frogs, digs up the dead apple-trees, and brings in a huge stand of clover. The latter they can comprehend, because they know what clover is. They have been educated to believe in it; but of most of the former operations they know nothing, and having a vague idea that they cost great sums of money, condemn them as useless and unprofitable fancies.
But among the gentlemen farmers of this country are to be found its loftiest minds, its purest patriots, its greatest public benefactors. They have imported our celebrated breeds of domestic animals, sometimes at enormous cost, and in many cases have propagated them with no view to their own profit. The farm-stock of entire neighborhoods has been regenerated by this infusion of new and better blood. They build neater and more convenient barns and outhouses; they patronize new plants and tools; they ditch and under-drain the swamps and meadows; they plant vast orchards of the choicest fruits; they try costly experiments exclusively for the public good; their labors enhance the value of the lands around them; they are the animating spirits of half our agricultural societies, and, in a hundred ways, by precept and example, with a generous outlay of means, have made themselves the models of improved processes which have acted powerfully in inducing others to imitate their management.
Yet these men are sometimes pitied because their labors afford them no profit, as if the whole duty of man lay in the acquisition of six per cent. It is not important that their labor should result in profit; and if of no consequence to themselves, why should their failure to realize it be so distressing to others? It would cost them quite as much to live if they had remained in the city. The only real money difference is, that what they spend is disbursed in one place instead of another. There is the vast collateral gratification of living where the most comfort is to be obtained. They have tramped and sweltered over the hot pavements of a city long enough. Now they have broad acres and health-inspiring breezes, glorious lawns, trees loaded with abundant crops of luscious fruit, gardens whose contents would be coveted by the tenants of every city market, society enough, books, and whatever they may order the daily mail to bring them. It is perhaps the most valuable incident in the whole aim and practice of gentleman farming that profit is not the object.
But if these establish pleasant homes by restoring the waste places of the earth, it is not accomplished by merely scattering at random the contents of a well-filled purse. Taste and inclination must combine to make the whole effort effective. Take these two last ingredients, substitute industry and economy for the purse, and then unite all in the person of a persevering man, penniless though he be, and a home may be established, less pretentious, it is true, but within which Love will gladly seek to fold his wings, evermore to nestle round the heart, while Time, sure in his approaches, but lavish of his compensations, will lift up the modest occupants into the sunshine of a grateful independence.
CHAPTER XXIV.
UNSUCCESSFUL MEN—REBELLION NOT RUINOUS TO NORTHERN AGRICULTURE.
LOOKING back upon the incidents of my city life, I confess that increasing years bring with them an increasing respect for those who do not succeed in life, as these words are commonly used. Heaven has been said to be a place for those who have not succeeded upon earth; and it is surely true that celestial graces do not best thrive and bloom in the hot blaze of worldly prosperity. Ill success sometimes arises from superabundance of qualities in themselves good, from a conscience too sensitive, a taste too fastidious, a self-forgetfulness too romantic, a modesty too retiring. I will not go so far as to say, with a living poet, that
“The world knows nothing of its greatest men;”
but there are forms of greatness, or at least excellence, that die and make no sign; there are martyrs who miss the palm, but not the stake; there are heroes without the laurel, and conquerors without the triumph.
It cannot be denied that there is a class of men who never succeed in business. With a fair amount of earnest industry, they are still unable to get on. Bad luck seems to be their fate, and they are perpetually railing at fortune. In this they are not without sympathy. There are hundreds of simple, good-hearted people, who regard them as ill-starred mortals, against whom an inscrutable destiny had set itself, and who are always ready to pity their mischances and help them in their last extremity. But is not that a very foolish philosophy which refers the misfortunes or the prosperity of individuals to preternatural causes, or even natural causes entirely foreign to the persons? Some people, it is true, owe a great deal to accident. Much of their success is due to circumstances not of their own making. So it is with others who suffer disappointment or disaster. But in those cases in which failure or success is certainly dependent on no extraneous agencies, but on one’s own means and energies, I am confident that no little of the complaint of our hard lot is misdirected, and that the charity which helps us out of our successive difficulties is misplaced. In plain words, our failures in this or that thing are often attributable to the fact that we engage in enterprises beyond our power. The world is filled with examples of this truth. We see hundreds of men in all professions and callings who never achieve even a decent living. The bar of every city is crowded with them. They swell the ranks of our physicians and theologians, and swarm in the walks of science and literature; in short, they run against and elbow you everywhere. They are the unfortunate people who have mistaken their mission. They are always attempting tasks which they have not the first qualification to perform. Their ambition is forever outrunning their capabilities. They fancy that to call themselves lawyers, doctors, divines, or the like, is to be what they are styled. Their signs are stuck thickly on doors and shutters all over the city, but they are without honor or employment. Of course they never prosper. They have no fitness for their vocation, no practical skill, no natural talent, and hence they fail.