In ancient times the sacred plough employed
The kings and awful fathers of mankind.
A work of this character--a book for the home--would be
manifestly halt without some consideration of that grand subject,
Agriculture,--the tilling of the continents of this wide earth, to whose
fruitfulness the oceans apply their beneficent offices; to whose
generosity the sun lends his quickening rays of brightness and beauty.
"The awful fathers of mankind" to-day pay attention to the "sacred
plough" as in ancient days, aye, thousands of times as much attention!
The tribes which then wandered upon the globe have now increased until
Nature must needs groan with the load of her gifts to sustain them, and
the rulers must scan the sky, and send the telegraph out-riding the
storms, to warn the husbandman that danger to his crops
approaches--danger, which if not averted, were more deadly than the
hatred of an enemy on a foreign strand.
The magnificent, conservative forces of our Republic live upon its
farms. There is our safety in the hour of trial! Rome fell because