rM H- 
 
U N I V ER5 ITY 
 OF ILLI NOIS 
 
 170 
 
 W15u 
 
 1897 
 

 
UNCLE HENRY’S 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY 
 
 3Y 
 
 HENRY WALLACE 
 
 EDITOR OP “WALLACES’ FARMER,” DES MOINES, IA. 
 AUTHOR OF “CLOVER CULTURE,” ETC. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 DBS MOINES, IOWA 
 
 WALLACE PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 1897 
 
no 
 
 /fu. 
 
 1*97 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
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 v 
 
 Twenty years hence the farm boy of to-day 
 will mainly control the business of the state and 
 nation, as it is now controlled by the farm boy 
 of twenty-five years ago. To aid in starting this 
 farm boy on the right track and make his path¬ 
 way plainer and easier, is the object of this pub¬ 
 lication in its present form. I have known how 
 the farm boy feels, for I have experienced his 
 isolation, his hopes, his ambitions, his lack of 
 experience and knowledge of the world, and 
 hence I know his need of a kindly, sympathetic 
 friend outside of the family, who will suggest 
 rather than advise, guide rather than lead, who 
 would rather commend than censure, and who 
 is a boy in feeling though a man in years and 
 experience. 
 
 Nothing was further from the writer’s thought 
 at the beginning of these letters than to write a 
 book. The first was merely an effort to make 
 matters smoother between a father and his son. 
 The rest followed, I scarcely know how. This 
 book wrote itself; like Topsy, “itgrowed.” The 
 marked favor with which the letters as first pub¬ 
 lished in Wallaces’ Farmer have been received, 
 and the desire expressed on every hand to have 
 
them in permanent form, leads me to hope that 
 it will do its part in fitting the farm boy for his 
 high destiny. The farm boy with his robust 
 health, his independent spirit, his training in the 
 primary virtues of industry, economy and uj)- 
 rightness, and his opportunities for clear think¬ 
 ing, may be the ruling power in this nation if he 
 is rightly guided. To do his part in guiding the 
 farm boy aright is the desire and ambition of 
 
 Henry Wallace. 
 
 Editor W places’ Farmer, 
 Des Moines, Iowa, 
 September, 1897 . 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FARM BOY AND HIS FATHER. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 It has occurred to me that matters 
 might not be going just exactly right be¬ 
 tween you and your father, and that a 
 word from one who has been both farm 
 boy and father might do good to both of 
 you. I do not think for a moment that 
 there is anything seriously wrong, only 
 that neither of you are as happy in your 
 relations with each other as you ought to 
 be and can be. I take it for granted that 
 you love and respect your father; not quite 
 in the same way that you love your mother, 
 because the affection that you bear to the 
 one is distinctly different from that which 
 you bear to the other, and must be in the 
 very nature of things. I take it that you 
 have a good father who loves you dearly 
 
6 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 and who above all things else desires that 
 you be a strong, true, brave, noble man, 
 who will bear his name with honor when 
 he is lying in his grave. I know he thinks 
 more of you than he does of the farm and 
 all that is on it, saving always your moth¬ 
 er and your brothers and sisters. I take 
 it that you are a good boy, and there is no 
 reason why you and your father should 
 not be as happy together as people can be 
 in this world. If you are not, it is likely 
 that both of you are somewhat to blame, 
 and I will venture a guess as to why you 
 are not as happy as I would like to see 
 you. 1 
 
 You, perhaps, think your father is need¬ 
 lessly exacting in some things. He wants 
 that stable cleaned out promptly and thor¬ 
 oughly, and wants the pigs fed just so 
 every time, whether it is wet or dry, or a 
 good day to go fishing or a bad one. He 
 wants the cows milked clean, does not 
 want any loud talking while milking, and 
 he wants the milk cared for just so, and if 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS FATHER. 
 
 7 
 
 you fail in any of those things he does not 
 like it, and you do not see why he should 
 be so particular. Now, I will tell you why. 
 Your father was probably a little bit care¬ 
 less himself when a boy; he sees the mis¬ 
 take; he knows how difficult it was for 
 him to get over this habit, and he does 
 not want you to have the same kind of 
 trouble. 
 
 You do not see why he disapproves of 
 your going out with a lot of other boys 
 whom you regard as good fellows, but who 
 have some bad habits, such, for example, 
 as using profane language or indulging in 
 obscene talk. Now, I will tell you why 
 he does not want you to go with those 
 boys. He possibly went more or less with 
 that class of boys himself and knows from 
 experience that they are not the kind of 
 boys with whom you ought to associate. 
 
 He objects to your going out at night 
 unless it be to some literary, or to make a 
 social visit to youi neighbor. Now, he is 
 perfectly right about this because he has 
 
8 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 had experience and you have not. You 
 do not see why he insists on your going 
 to church every Sabbath and to Sabbath- 
 school, even if you are tired and sleepy 
 and would like a good, long day’s rest. 
 Again I tell you why. He felt when he 
 was a boy just as you do, but years have 
 taught him the necessity of acquiring 
 steady and regular habits of industry, 
 morality and religion. Your father has 
 lived a long time, has had lots of exper¬ 
 ience and knows a great deal that books 
 can not teach, and he would like above all 
 things else to be able to impart that ex¬ 
 perience to you, which he knows that he 
 can not impart except by insisting on your 
 acquiring it by the doing of it. That is 
 the only way that anything worth learning 
 can be learned. In all these things your 
 father is exactly right. 
 
 You perhaps feel that he ought to give 
 you a chance to earn something for your¬ 
 self; that there ought to be something on 
 the farm which is your very own, or, as 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS FATHER. 
 
 9 
 
 your sister might say, your “ownest own.” 
 Well, I think so, too. I think you are 
 entirely right in this, and if I were in your 
 place I would, some day after supper 
 when he was not troubled in any way, talk 
 the matter over with him in a manly, open 
 way. Nothing pleases a father so much 
 as to see his boy develop manliness. I 
 would talk to him about this, but I would 
 make a square bargain that if you are to 
 have a pig, or a calf, or a colt on the terms 
 agreed on, it is to be your hog, or your 
 steer, or your horse when it is disposed of, 
 and you are to be the sole judge, after 
 asking his advice, as to how you are to 
 use that money. 
 
 You think your father should not bind 
 you down so closely as to the plan you 
 are to take in doing certain things about 
 the farm. You want to exercise your 
 own judgment, and have, so to speak, b 
 little leeway. You are willing to do the 
 things he wants you to do, but you would 
 like to do a little planning and thinking 
 
10 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 for yourself as to the way of doing them. 
 Here you may be right and again you may 
 be wrong; but I think he had better say 
 to you, “My son, there are certain results 
 that I want accomplished: I think you 
 had better do this way, but if you see a 
 better way, try your hand.” You will 
 probably find that his way is the right way 
 after all, but it will do no harm to find 
 that out by experience. 
 
 You may think that your father is a 
 little of an old fogy in some matters con¬ 
 nected with farming. There is a possibil¬ 
 ity that he is, and again there is a possi¬ 
 bility that his long years of experience 
 enable him to see through the fallacy of a 
 lot of theories that you may not be able 
 to do as yet. Therefore, I would advise 
 before condemning his ideas, to study 
 them quite thoroughly and weigh careful¬ 
 ly what you may see on the other side. 
 He may not be able to give you as good 
 reasons as you may see on the other side 
 on paper, but I suspect that he has the 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS FATHER. 
 
 II 
 
 common sense of it pretty firmly fixed 
 under his gray hairs, and may not have 
 the patience to sit down and argue the 
 thing out with you. 
 
 I would like for you to have a profound 
 respect for your father’s views on all ques¬ 
 tions. They may be wrong; no doubt 
 many of them are; but you should remem¬ 
 ber that “knowledge comes but wisdom 
 lingers.” It may be that you know a good 
 deal more than your father. If so, it is 
 because you take it after your mother; 
 but whether you really know it must be 
 clearly established by actual results, and 
 not assumed. 
 
 In order to have a proper respect for 
 your father, you must not call him “dad,” 
 or “pap,” or “pa,” or “the old gent,” or 
 “the governor,” as I have heard a good 
 many English boys call their fathers. 
 There is but one name that he is entitled 
 to, and he is entitled to that every time; 
 and that name is “father,” never “the old 
 
12 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 gentleman.” The very act of calling him 
 father will make you respect him and 
 respect yourself, and smoothe out any 
 little trouble that there may be between 
 you. It is essential to your growth and 
 future happiness that you and yo.ur father 
 have the most perfect understanding with 
 each other. By and by he will come to 
 trust you implicity. First, he will be to 
 you a sort of older brother; and as the 
 years go on he will learn to depend on 
 you, to lean on you, so to speak, and by 
 and by will be disposed, when he begins 
 to lean heavily on his staff, to pay as much 
 deference to your opinion as you did to 
 his when you were a little boy. You 
 thought then that father knew it all. He 
 will think after awhile that you know it 
 all, and that whatever you do is about 
 right because you do it. 
 
 I write this to you because I have known 
 boys who took a different course from 
 that which I advise you to take, and who 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS FATHER. 
 
 13 
 
 have blighted their own lives and their 
 fathers’ lives, and broken their mothers’ 
 hearts, and I do not want you to do 
 either. 
 
 Affectionately, 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE FARM BOY AND HIS MOTHER. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 You will, I am sure, pardon me if I ven¬ 
 ture to write to you on some matters that 
 are in a manner sacred, and I do, solely 
 because I believe I can do you some good 
 for which you may thank me ever after¬ 
 wards. Your Uncle Henry is now over 
 sixty years old, and can, therefore, talk to 
 you as he would not have dared to do 
 twenty years ago. He has all his life had 
 much to do with boys, has boys of his 
 own, and thinks that a bright boy, clean 
 in life, in word and thought, is every whit 
 as noble and admirable a character as a 
 bright, pure-minded, beautiful girl. He 
 has all his life noticed that a boy of this 
 class has almost invariably a good mother, 
 and more than that, that he is a good 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS MOTHER. 
 
 15 
 
 mother's boy as long as his mother lives. 
 You have no doubt read the account of 
 the inauguration of President McKinley, 
 and you know that his tenderness toward 
 his aged mother lifted him in your opinion 
 much higher on that occasion that any¬ 
 thing that he said in his inaugural address. 
 You have often heard it said of some bad 
 man, “There must be something good 
 about him after all or he would not be so 
 kind to his mother.” I can assure you 
 right now that your whole after life will 
 depend very much on the way you treat 
 your mother. In all past ages men have 
 noted this fact. “Honor thy father and 
 thy mother,” said Paul, “which is the first 
 commandment with promise.” That prom¬ 
 ise was, “Long life and life and prosperity 
 to such as keep this commandment,” and 
 noting the fact that disobedient boys come 
 to a bad end, an inspired writer said: 
 
 “The eye that mocketh at his father,—and despiseth to 
 obey his mother, 
 
 The ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young 
 eagles shall eat it.” 
 
l6 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 This is a simple statement of this princi¬ 
 ple that there is a very close and intimate 
 relation between a boy’s success in life 
 and the filial affection which he shows to 
 his father and especially to his mother. 
 It is in the home and in early childhood 
 that we acquire those qualities that make 
 us truly successful. We learn to love by 
 first loving our mother, we learn respect 
 and reverence from our father, and we 
 learn to respect the rights of others from 
 our brothers and sisters. From my heart 
 I pity the boy who is either motherless 
 or fatherless, and scarcely less do I pity 
 the only son or daughter. They are 
 all necessarily dwarfed specimens of hu¬ 
 manity. Note the little apple in the heart 
 of the blossom. The blossom is the home 
 in which the fruit is enfolded until it is fit 
 to endure the sunshine and the storm. If 
 the blossom is injured the apple never 
 amounts to anything. Even after it grows 
 to maturity and the blossom has long since 
 fallen away, it still leaves its mark on the 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS MOTHER. I 7 
 
 apple. So it is in your home life. “Poor 
 boy/’ we often say, “his father died when 
 he was a baby,” or, “He had no mother,” 
 or, “He was an only child,” when we wish 
 to excuse weakness for which there is no 
 other palliation. 
 
 You are entitled, my dear boy, to all the 
 good a good mother can do you, but you 
 can never realize this until you are good 
 to your mother, and the one proof of this 
 love will be in seeing that the wood is al¬ 
 ways dry, that she has as little drudgery 
 as possible to do about the farm, and that 
 her mind is ever free from care. 
 
 Now, let me tell you of some things 
 that you will be tempted to do. Some 
 boy will wish you to join him in something 
 you know your mother would not approve. 
 He will sometimes sneer at you and call 
 you “mother’s boy,” and say you are 
 “tied to your mother’s apron strings.” I 
 would not advise you to knock that boy 
 down, because the sneer is directed at 
 you and you can afford to let it pass, but 
 if he says anything against your mother 
 
1 8 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 you have my permission to slap his 
 mouth. Do not let any boy of your age 
 or size say a word disrespectful of your 
 mother. Let her religious convictions, 
 her ideas of duty and propriety, her faults 
 even, be too sacred to be found fault with 
 by mortal man. 
 
 You are likely, as you approach man¬ 
 hood, to put too little store in your 
 mother’s judgment. When a boy gets to 
 be from sixteen to nineteen or twenty he 
 is apt to speak lightly of women and 
 think lightly of his mother’s influence. 
 She may not be as good a scholar as you 
 are, may not know half so many things, 
 but your Uncle Henry would take her 
 judgment offhand in preference to yours 
 in all matters that affect character or life. 
 When you get to know women better 
 than you now do, you will find they have 
 a very queer way of guessing at the rights 
 of things and guessing right nearly every 
 time. A man reasons, a woman divines; a 
 man thinks things out, awoman feels them 
 out. Your mother is not infallible nor yet 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS MOTHER. Ig 
 
 *| perfect, but she is so nearly certain to be 
 right about matters that affect your char¬ 
 acter and life that you can not afford to 
 treat her intuitions lightly. If you do, you 
 will make a mistake. 
 
 When you become a man you will have 
 a wife of your own, or ought to. You 
 won’t own it to me, but I you suppose are 
 thinking once in a while about that time. 
 She may be a little jealous that any 
 woman should share your affections; 
 possibly she may not be able to help it, 
 but let me say to you that she knows more 
 about other women than you do or ever 
 will. If you are as good to your mother 
 as you ought to be she will in the proper 
 time take your girl into her heart and life 
 as a daughter indeed. 
 
 You will be all the happier if you make 
 your mother your confidant in your love 
 affairs. Confidentially I may say to you, 
 she is ordinarily about the only one of 
 the family you can advise with freely on 
 that subject. Your brothers and sisters 
 might laugh at you, and you do not like 
 
20 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 to talk to your father about it, but I as¬ 
 sure you that you can have no better 
 adviser in a matter which may be hap¬ 
 piness or misery unspeakable to you than 
 your own mother. There is something 
 very beautiful and touching in the affection 
 of a mother toward a good boy when her 
 hair is white and her step tottering. His 
 hair, too, may be gray, but to her he is a 
 boy still, repaying in tenderness and 
 kindness and helpfulness that quenchless 
 love which she lavishes upon him from 
 childhood to manhood. By kindness and 
 tenderness, by making her your confidant 
 now, yOu can make your mother the hap¬ 
 piest of women and at the same time do 
 much to make your own life a success. 
 One little act of kindness shown her each 
 day will do it. 
 
 Affectionately, 
 
 Your Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE FARM BOY AND HIS TEMPER. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 I have not sized you up as a goody- 
 goody boy such as too often figure in 
 Sunday school books. Such boys are 
 too often like the apples that ripen 
 too early, indicating that the tree is on 
 the decline. I do not think there is much 
 danger of your dying early on account of 
 being too good for this world. I have 
 seen you get mad and fight and some¬ 
 times heard you say words not found in 
 the dictionary. I do not approve of these 
 things; neither will you when you are 
 older; and yet I have more hope of a boy 
 built in that way than of one who is goody 
 good, and a great deal more than of one 
 who prides himself on his cunning and de¬ 
 ceit, or who delights in doing little, 
 
22 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 underhanded, mean things, such as telling 
 tales out of school, and meanwhile playing 
 the role of a saint. But, my boy, if you 
 are to make your mark in this world you 
 will have to learn to curb that temper, a 
 thing which you can never do until you 
 learn to curb that tongue. 
 
 I know how many things there are 
 about the farm that make a boy mad and 
 let his tongue loose at both ends. There 
 is, for instance, the experienced brood sow 
 that will go the wrong way when you drive 
 her, that will not lead worth a cent, and 
 goes about where she pleases. Her pigs 
 seem to lie awake nights thinking how to 
 get into the garden or potato patch, and 
 when you discover the little rascals they 
 clear out with an air that seems to say: 
 “Didn’t we come it over our bubby?” 
 Then there is the cow that opens the gate 
 as if her horns were hands, and that other 
 cow that kicks on the slightest excuse and 
 generally manages to get one foot in the 
 bucket when it is half-full. Then, there is 
 the wise old brood mare that will come 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS TEMPER. 23 
 
 at your call in the pasture and take the 
 corn out of your hand, but if you reach 
 for her foretop, will show you her heels, 
 and let you feel them, too, unless you are 
 lively. I do not wonder that you get 
 angry and are tempted to take a club to 
 the sow, beat the cow with the milk stool 
 and whip the old mare—when you get a 
 chance. I have felt just that way many a 
 time. Then, there is the balky horse that 
 looks around over his shoulder when he 
 comes to a soft place in the road or to a 
 little hill, and stops and stays stopped—a 
 regular quitter that will neither be coaxed 
 nor forced to budge an inch, and seems to 
 enjoy your anger. You may be pushing 
 the mower in hay harvest and about every 
 rod or two the sickle runs into a gophei 
 hill and you have to stop and back, and 
 clean it off, and are scarcely back in your 
 seat until you run into another hill, and 
 this time you say, “Confound the gophers,” 
 or perhaps worse. Or, you may be in a 
 hurry to get off a load of hay and get in 
 another before the rain and the horse fork 
 
24 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 takes a tantrum and drops the forkful too 
 soon or twists around and will not drop it 
 at all, and your father loses his temper 
 and comes tearing in to know what keeps 
 you so long at the barn. 
 
 Oh, the farm is a grand place to try a 
 boy’s temper. It is almost sure to rain at 
 the very time when you are promised a 
 day’s fishing, and the best horse on the 
 place goes lame when you expect to take 
 your best girl to the Fourth of July. At 
 least that is the way it used to be. Never¬ 
 theless, my boy, you will have to get the 
 better of your temper or your life will be 
 somewhat of a failure, and the less you 
 curb it the more of a failure your life will 
 be. 
 
 For a boy or girl to get mad and fly off 
 the handle is somewhat excusable; for a 
 man, never—well, hardly ever. “Be ye 
 angry and sin not,” said an inspired 
 apostle who, himself once got angry and 
 called the chief justice a “whited wall,” 
 which means simply a first-class scoundrel, 
 so I presume there is an anger that is al- 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS TEMPER. 
 
 25 
 
 together justifiable; at least I hope so, but 
 “let not the sun go down upon your 
 wrath.” The boy is not supposed to have 
 gained control of himself; the man is. I 
 know men, and a good many of them, 
 who are very strong in many ways, have 
 nearly every other element of great suc¬ 
 cess but this one of self-control, and they 
 sometimes make stark fools of themselves 
 and lose the respect of their best friends 
 because they fly in a passion on very 
 slight pretexts; or, what is even worse, 
 sulk and pout and then go home at night 
 and kick the dog, scold their wives, if 
 they dare, and their children go off to the 
 barn or to bed for fear of their father's 
 anger. This is what may happen you 
 when you become a man unless you get 
 control of your temper and your tongue 
 while you can. 
 
 Now let me whisper a secret: That cow 
 and the brood mare would not be half so 
 “ornery”if somebody had not been in the 
 habit of losing his temper. That balky 
 horse would never have learned to balk if 
 
26 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 his first owner had had good horse sense 
 and controlled his temper. I do not say 
 that any measure of self-control on the 
 part of the owner will take the contrariness 
 out of a hog, but it will take away the op¬ 
 portunity of showing it. 
 
 You ask me how to control that temper. 
 Let me confess to you that it is not an 
 easy matter, but where there is a will 
 there is a way and a wise father and 
 mother will help you in this good work. 
 Your Uncle Henry had a furious temper 
 when a boy. He got mad when he was 
 turned down at school, and flew off the 
 handle about something or other nearly 
 every day. He remembers very distinct¬ 
 ly his first lesson in curbing his tem¬ 
 per. His father put a J. I. C. bit on him 
 one morning very neatly. He did not 
 like something at the breakfast table and 
 on being reproved flew off as usual. The 
 first thing he knew he got a dash of very 
 cold water in the face, and then another 
 and another. The shock enabled him to 
 get control of his nerves. He then and 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS TEMPER. 27 
 
 there found that he could control his 
 temper if he but tried. It is all nonsense 
 to say that a boy can not control his tem¬ 
 per. Did I not see you the other day in 
 a passion when working on the road? The 
 other boys laughed at you and you looked 
 around and saw your best girl coming in 
 a buggy and lookingas sweet and cool as a 
 rose after a shower, and in a second you 
 were all smiles and touched your hat to 
 her and felt a little ashamed of yourself 
 all that day. No matter how angry you 
 are you can hold your tongue when a 
 stranger for whom you have great respect 
 is present. If you can d'o it with this out¬ 
 side help, you can, if you try, do it with¬ 
 out it. 
 
 Bear this in mind, that sinful anger is 
 never a mark of strength or of manliness, 
 but always of weakness. It is a sign of 
 immaturity—vealishness, if you wish to 
 call it such. It never contributes to hap¬ 
 piness and always makes a sensible man 
 feel cheap and mean when he comes to 
 himself. I am free to say that I have 
 
28 
 
 LETTERS OT THE FARM BOY. 
 
 never been angry without good cause, 
 and let my tongue loose without after¬ 
 wards loathing and despising myself. One 
 cannot afford to lose his self-respect and 
 hence to maintain it is obliged to secure 
 self-control. 
 
 One can sometimes do by indirection 
 what he can not do directly. When a farm 
 boy I once caught a preacher whistling 
 on Sunday morning, which I was taught 
 was a very great sin, and ventured to ask 
 him why he did it. He colored up and 
 said: ‘Til tell you, my boy, how I got 
 into the habit. I had a fearfully bad tem¬ 
 per when I was a young man and resolved 
 to whistle whenever I found my temper 
 rising. I then got into the habit of 
 whistling whenever I was thinking serious¬ 
 ly about anything, and I was just now 
 thinking over my sermon, and it whistled 
 itself.” Another once told me he got 
 control by counting three before he let 
 his tongue loose on the other fellow. 
 Mind this, if you can keep your tongue 
 between your teeth you will have little 
 trouble with your temper. 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS TEMPER. 2 g 
 
 I don’t say a man should never become 
 angry. Far less do I say he should not 
 show resentment. There are some things 
 on the farm and a thousand times as 
 many off it calculated to make a true 
 man’s blood boil and fill him with 
 righteous indignation, and he ought by all 
 means to show it. Neither man nor boy 
 has any right to stand insult or endure 
 wrong without showing resentment, and 
 that in a most pointed way. A man or 
 boy who allows another to wrong him or 
 insult him without resenting it lacks 
 something essential in the proper makeup 
 of a true man, and actually becomes an 
 an accessory to wrong doing. I think the 
 recording angel conveniently forgets to 
 report the boy who knocks down the 
 bully who by brute force terrorizes weak¬ 
 er boys. If I had the reporting to do I 
 would look the other way, and if I hap¬ 
 pened to see it would report a credit 
 mark instead. The public sentiment that 
 justifies a brother in putting a bullet hole 
 through the man who ruined his sister is 
 
30 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 not wholly evil. It teaches brutes to con¬ 
 trol their passions and fools to hold their 
 tongues. Resentment, however, to be 
 effective, must be with perfect self-control. 
 If you have to show your teeth do it de¬ 
 liberately and show just enough and no 
 more. If you bite, do it with perfect cool¬ 
 ness and to good purpose. You can never 
 do this unless you control your temper. 
 The boy to be feared is the boy who can 
 knock you down and smile, whose eyes 
 are ablaze with fire and yet under perfect 
 control. It is this that marks the really 
 strong man that I wish you to be. 
 
 You will be surprised to find how much 
 the habits of the stock on the farm will im¬ 
 prove when you get control of yourself. 
 On many farms the live stock uncon¬ 
 sciously tell the observant man just what 
 kind of a temper the owner, or some of 
 the boys, or perhaps the hired man, has. 
 Remember what Bobbie Burns said: 
 “Know, prudent, cautious self-control is 
 wisdom's root.” So thinks your 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE FARM BOY AND HIS CHUM. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 If you are to become the good and true 
 man that your father and mother hope 
 you will be, it is very important that you 
 choose the right kind of a friend. Tell 
 me the kind of a chum a boy has, and I 
 will tell you what sort of a boy he is and 
 what type of a man he is likely to become. 
 
 I sometimes think that it is essential to 
 the right development of a boy that he 
 should have, first, a dog; second, a chum; 
 and third, and last, his best girl. It is a 
 little too soon to talk about “the last and 
 best” yet, but if you have fallen in love 
 with the right kind of a dog and selected 
 the right kind of a chum, you will not go 
 far wrong on the best girl; and if you do 
 not find her, she will happen in on your 
 
32 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 path by accident, or Providence, when the 
 right time comes. Your father knows all 
 about that, I am sure. I like the boy that 
 likes a good dog, a dog that is bright, 
 honest and industrious—that looks you 
 square in the eye without flinching, and 
 will fight for you when it is time to fight, 
 and there is something wrong with the boy 
 that likes a downright mean, cowardly 
 dog—a dog with a bad conscience. 
 
 After the dog, but generally along with 
 with it, comes the chum, and he is the 
 making or marring of more boys than 
 parents think. 
 
 I like a boy who has one particular 
 friend about his own age, a friend or 
 chum with whom he delights to be, and 
 stands by through thick and thin in all 
 things right and honest. We have no 
 right, whether men or boys, to stand by 
 any one through thick and thin who is not 
 in the right. Our allegiance to right is 
 above and beyond our obligations to any¬ 
 thing or any person on earth. Do not 
 forget that. If the boy’s chum is a thor- 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS CHUM. 
 
 33 
 
 oughly good, manly boy, the mother may 
 feel that her boy is safe. It is not every 
 boy, nor every farm boy, that is fit to be a 
 farm boy’s friend. There are whole classes 
 of boys that he should avoid as friends, if 
 he does not wish to sup sorrow sooner or 
 later. I say “avoid as friends.” I do not 
 say avoid altogether. You are soon to go 
 out into a world that has all sorts of peo¬ 
 ple in it, from the worst to the best, and 
 you will have to mingle with them more 
 or less, and you should learn to touch the 
 worst and not be defiled. You may as 
 well begin now and learn to be among the 
 bad and yet not be of them. 
 
 To begin with, have the least possible 
 to do with the boy who likes to use bad 
 language; who loves to tell smutty stories, 
 and who has a low opinion of women, 
 especially of girls of his own age. That 
 is the worst sort of a boy that you can 
 have anything whatever to do with. If 
 you like that kind of a boy I pity you. I 
 pity your father and mother, and I sin¬ 
 cerely hope you will never marry. If you 
 
34 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 choose him as your friend, you will in a 
 few years not be fit to look a decent girl 
 in the face. If you should afterwards re¬ 
 pent and be converted, you will not even 
 then be able in all your life to get rid en¬ 
 tirely of his corrupting influence. I know 
 men now who are trying to be Christians, 
 and who vet, I am told, when they fall in 
 with old chums and the like, vomit filth 
 like a turkey buzzard. These men had 
 filthy chums when they were boys, and 
 they will be more or less filthy when they 
 fall in with filthy folks as long as they live. 
 Think what a hell it must be for a man to 
 carry around with him filthy recollections 
 which in his better moments he loathes and 
 hates, and to keep on doing it until the 
 end of his days. He had about as well be 
 chained to a corpse. Keep your mind 
 clean and pure and make no friendships 
 with a filthy minded boy. 
 
 Do not make a chum of a profane boy. 
 He may have many good qualities, but he 
 speaks of the God who made him in a way 
 that even he would not allow any boy to 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS CHUM. 
 
 35 
 
 speak of his father or mother. Either he 
 does not believe there is a Supreme Being, 
 in which case he is not a fit companion 
 for you, or he defies Him, which is worse, 
 or he is an ignorant fellow and uses pro¬ 
 fane language only by way of emphasis. 
 In neither case is he fit to be your chum. 
 You expect to be regarded as a gentleman 
 when you grow up, and even if there were 
 no sin in it, you do not want to get into 
 the habit of using language that by com¬ 
 mon consent is never heard in the societv 
 
 * 
 
 of gentlemen and ladies. 
 
 Under no circumstances choose the 
 bully of the neighborhood or of the school 
 for your friend. Boys are often tempted 
 to do so. You may admire his strength, 
 his seeming courage, his brute force; you 
 may think yourself safe under his protec¬ 
 tion. Do not do it. It is brain force com¬ 
 bined with moral courage and integrity 
 that rules the world, not self-assertion or 
 brute force. Avoid the bully as much as 
 possible. Do not quarrel with him; do 
 not give an opportunity, if you can help it, 
 
36 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 for him to bully you. Keep away from 
 him as much as possible, and when you 
 see that your unwillingness to submit to 
 his domination is regarded as an insult, 
 get you a pair of boxing gloves and prac¬ 
 tice with your father or brothers or the 
 hired man in the barn, and then, lick the 
 bully. Down at the bottom the bully is 
 always a coward. I suffered much, when 
 a boy, from this breed of cattle. My 
 father told me that if I ever got into a 
 fight at school, I would get a licking when 
 I got home. I endured tortures from the 
 bully of the school because it was known 
 that John Wallace would not allow his 
 boys to fight. I broke over the rule once 
 —my father never knew it,—and I had 
 peace afterwards. Why do I insist on this 
 point? I will tell you. The bully is a 
 brute as a boy; a failure as a man. He 
 develops a type of character that makes 
 men fear him and hate him. He never 
 has any true friends, and the man that 
 cannot attach men to him as friends is a 
 failure even though he be worth millions. 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS CHUM. 
 
 37 
 
 You do not want to develop that type of 
 character; therefore do not choose that 
 sort of a boy as your chum. 
 
 Do not choose for your chum the boy 
 who cannot control his temper. That 
 sort of a boy is not sate. He may have 
 many good qualities, may mean well, but 
 he is not safe. Solomon, the wise old fel¬ 
 low, saw this point long ago when he said: 
 “Make no friendship with an angry man, 
 and with a furious man thou shalt not go.” 
 He will make it more difficult for you to 
 control your temper, and you never know 
 when he will fly off and shame you. You 
 had better be loaded down with disease 
 or debt than with a temper you cannot 
 control. 
 
 Choose as your chum the boy that re¬ 
 spects his father, loves his sister, fights for 
 his little brother and adores his mother; 
 the boy that is clean in his speech and in¬ 
 stinctively shuns the vulgar and profane; 
 the boy that never quarrels when i f can 
 possibly be avoided, but will not be in¬ 
 sulted without resenting it in manner and 
 
33 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 words, and if necessary as a last resort, by 
 blows; the boy that is industrious, eco¬ 
 nomical, and has a profound respect for 
 things sacred. Choose as your friend the 
 boy that has good blood in him; that 
 comes of the best stock of people in the 
 teighborhood. It matters little whether 
 lis father is rich or poor. Wealth should 
 cut no figure in a boy’s friendships. In 
 point of fact it seldom does. The only 
 real republic that exists in this world is 
 the republic of boyhood. This is one rea¬ 
 son I like boys better than I do girls, and 
 I used to like girls a good deal, and do 
 yet. Boys do not recognize class distinc¬ 
 tions until they become men and get 
 spoiled. If your father is poor and you 
 are the right sort of a boy, the best wo¬ 
 man in the neighborhood will be glad to 
 welcome you as her boy’s chum, and if 
 your father is rich and a wise man, he will 
 welcome any manly boy to his home as 
 the friend of his son. He knows the value 
 of good blood in a boy, and by good 
 blood I mean that he comes from a good 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS CHUM. 39 
 
 family whose instincts are right, who nat¬ 
 urally like things that are honest and pure 
 and of good report, whether they have 
 made money or not. If you choose this 
 sort of a boy as your chum, it matters very 
 little whether you live in town or country. 
 There is not much danger of your falling 
 into bad habits. Boys of lower instincts 
 may call you proud and stuck up because 
 you try to keep yourself out of the dirt. 
 Never mind; down in their heart of hearts 
 they respect you all the more for it. 
 
 If you want your chum to be true to 
 you, you must be true to him. A boy 
 that would have friends must show him¬ 
 self friendly, and there is a friend that 
 sticketh closer than a brother. That 
 friend is the right kind of a chum. That 
 is not the way the preachers interpret this 
 text, but it is what Solomon meant; at 
 least so thinks 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE FARM BOY AND HIS READING. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 I need scarcely tell you that your future 
 will be largely influenced by your reading. 
 Tell me what a farm boy reads and I can 
 tell you what kind of a boy he is; tell me 
 what he continues to read and I can tell 
 you what he is likely to be. The boy who 
 is not a reader in this day and age of the 
 world is very likely to be a nobody. 
 Whether, if he reads, he will be any credit 
 to himself or his fiiends will be determined 
 largely by what he reads. The farm boy 
 should read not for amusement or recrea¬ 
 tion, but to learn what he needs most of 
 all to know. He is a new beginner in this 
 world and his future is all before him; it 
 will beabout whathe makesitand it is more 
 important for him than any one else to 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS READING. 41 
 
 know the truth, the real facts of life, and 
 especially those facts that bear upon the 
 profession, business, or occupation that 
 he may choose for the future. The farm 
 boy of all others has no time to fool away 
 in reading truck, of which, I am sorry to 
 say, the world is altogether too full. Of 
 books, I would say first of all read the 
 Bible. Its first chapters are the oldest 
 literature of the world. You want to 
 know where you came from, what you are 
 here for, and where you are going, and 
 this is the only Book that can tell you 
 anything reliable and accurate regarding 
 these three all-important questions. I 
 would not have you read the Bible solely 
 as a religious duty, nor have you regard it 
 with superstitious reverence. I would 
 have you read it as you would any other 
 book that contains information which it is 
 of the utmost importance for you to know, 
 It is the only book that I know of that 
 will tell you the exact truth about men 
 and things. It is the only book that 
 teaches the absolutely correct way of liv- 
 
42 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 ingand states principles, belief in which is 
 essential to the highest success. I would 
 have you read this until i becomes like 
 the iron in your blood, and would have 
 you do so all the same if there were no 
 other world than this. The great nations 
 of the world are all readers of this Book; 
 so are its great men. The just laws of the 
 world all have their roots in it. It teaches 
 men how to keep clean morally, mentally 
 and spiritually; and whatever else you 
 may omit, you can not afford not to know 
 what this book teaches. I would, there¬ 
 fore, first of all, have you read this Book 
 which the people who have made the 
 world what it is believe to contain the re¬ 
 vealed will of God. You can make no 
 mistake here. If it condemns you, it does 
 so to make a man of you; if it commends 
 your course, you need not fear for the 
 future, either in this world or the next. 
 By all means read the Bible. 
 
 As to other books, it is easier to tell you 
 what not to read than to read. If you 
 wish to learn how to express yourself in 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS READING. 43 
 
 the clearest, simplest and most forcible 
 English, read Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. 
 It will teach you much more than this, but 
 it is worth reading once a year for the 
 next ten years for this only. If you wish 
 to know what men, and especially women, 
 are, master Shakespeare. Read the plays 
 over and over until you get hold of the 
 idea, then study the characters in detail. 
 You can afford to read some of these 
 plays every year. I would have you a 
 man of few books. There are but few 
 books in this world that the farm boy has 
 time to read or that it would pay him to 
 read. It is the man who reads few books, 
 and reads them over and over again until 
 they are part of his being, incorporated in 
 his very nature, that will make his head¬ 
 way in the world. He is the man to be 
 feared by his foes and trusted by his 
 friends. Never under any circumstances 
 read a book that is written in bad spirit, 
 that sneers at things sacred, that raises 
 doubts which it cannot satisfy, or a ques- 
 
44 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 tion which it does not attempt to answer 
 fully and fairly. 
 
 You say you have no time to read these 
 books. Take an old farm boy’s word for 
 it that you have more time now than you 
 are likely ever to have again. Now, as to 
 your school books: Master them every 
 one completely and thoroughly. Do not 
 finally lay away a school book until you 
 are certain that you know everything that 
 it can teach you. It is not the man who 
 knows a little of everything who makes a 
 success of life, but the man who knows a 
 few things and knows all about them. In 
 addition to this, read history, particularly 
 of your own country and of the English 
 people and of the race from which your 
 father sprung. With diligence you can 
 do all this before you leave the farm, if 
 you ever leave it, and whether you are a 
 farmer or a business man you will never 
 regret taking this advice. I want you to 
 be a strong man, fit for any position you 
 may be called upon to take in the world, 
 and you cannot do it unless you are a 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS READING. 45 
 
 reader, a thorough reader, and a reader of 
 the right kind of books. 
 
 You will read newspapers of course. 
 You do not lose anything by not having 
 the daily paper. A good weekly paper 
 will give you all the news of the world 
 that is worth knowing. Your county paper 
 will give you all the local news. You 
 should keep yourself posted on what is 
 going on in your own community. If you 
 wish a monthly compendium of the best 
 thoughts and most important events of the 
 world, take the Review of Reviews. It 
 will cost you ^3.00 a year and save you 
 the necessity of getting any other maga¬ 
 zine. 1 would have you throw aside any 
 newspaper that is written with a bad spirit, 
 or that would make you believe that the 
 world, this country in particular, is going 
 to the bad, or that will make you believe 
 that the parties to which you do not be¬ 
 long are full of bad men. You will be 
 told continually that the republicans are 
 rogues, the democrats fools, and the pop- 
 ulists cranks. Now, there are some rogues 
 
40 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 among the republicans, some fools among 
 the democrats and some cranks among 
 the populists; but the great majority by 
 far of all these parties are good people 
 who wish well for their country and are 
 patriotic to the core, but differ honestly 
 as to public policies; and the newspaper 
 that teaches that all other parties are evil 
 and enemies to their country, is a news¬ 
 paper that is not fit for a farm boy to read. 
 Avoid every book or paper that apparent¬ 
 ly loves to point out the evil in other men. 
 That paper or book is itself evil, and the 
 fact that it gloats over evil is the best of 
 all the proofs of its unfitness for any 
 healthy farm boy to read. I do not say 
 that you should not read novels, but you 
 have no time to read them now. When 
 your mind is more matured, when you 
 need recreation, you can read novels prof¬ 
 itably, but not the blood and thunder vari¬ 
 ety nor the sentimental truck, but novels 
 like those of Walter Scott and Charles 
 Dickens that portray life as it is. At 
 present stick closely to books and papers 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS READING. 47 
 
 that give you the facts which you need 
 for your guidance in life. This letter, my 
 dear boy, may seem like a sermon, but 
 believe me, it is exactly what I would do 
 if I were once more a farm boy. 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE FARM BOY AND HIS FUTURE BUSINESS. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 Next to selecting a wife, the most im¬ 
 portant step you will take in the next 
 twenty years will be the selection of the 
 means by which you are to earn your 
 bread and butter. It is possible this may 
 be chosen for you. You may be the only 
 son, or the oldest son, may be thoroughly 
 in love with farming, and be entirely con¬ 
 tent with the lot that has been cast for 
 you. If so, I count you happy, very 
 happy. If you will now but read and 
 think and keep your eyes open, your ears 
 also, and become a thoroughly up-to-date 
 or a little-ahead-of-the-times farmer, while 
 you may not get very rich, you will have 
 a good chance to get as much real good 
 out of life as any man I know. 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS FUTURE BUSINESS. 49 
 
 It may be, however, that there are a 
 good many of you, more than the farm 
 will support; or it may be that you do not 
 like farming, or that you have the town 
 fever. You may have neighbors and 
 neighbors’ boys who think that farmers 
 are an oppressed people, Ishmaelites, with 
 every man’s hand against them, and you 
 may have taken up their notions; or you 
 may really be better fitted by nature for 
 something else than farming. In either 
 case I want to have a square talk with you 
 whether it does any good or not. To be¬ 
 gin with, I do not think that all boys born 
 on the farm should stay on it. There are 
 too many of them. It will take fewer and 
 fewer people to do the farming of the 
 future, that is, in proportion to population 
 —fewer and better farmers. The towns 
 and cities need this over-plus of the farm. 
 
 There are two kinds of boys that other 
 professions, and when I speak of the town 
 I mean the members of all the other pro¬ 
 fessions and lines of business which for 
 the most part live in town, can use. These 
 
50 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 kinds or classes of boys are, first, the real¬ 
 ly bright, thinking, progressive boys, 
 strong in health, vigorous in mind, clear 
 in thought, energetic in action, honest in 
 purpose; and second, the young fellows 
 who do not like the farm, who think that 
 fortunes can be easily made in town, that 
 town life is an easy life; who are not am¬ 
 bitious; who had a soft snap on their moth¬ 
 er’s breast when they came into the world, 
 and have been looking for a soft snap ever 
 since—born tired—possibly not their fault, 
 who are willing to be hitched and un--h' 
 hitched like their father’s horses. +- The 
 town can use these on the streets, or in 
 the factories and offices where the work 
 is done by the day or hour, and but one 
 thing is to be done, which becomes auto¬ 
 matic after a while so that they can al¬ 
 most fall asleep and keep on doing it. 
 
 This last class is very apt to take the 
 town fever. To them it seems high life, 
 fine houses, nice lawns, lighted and paved 
 streets, people well dressed, working in 
 shady offices, crowds on the streets, bands 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS FUTURE BUSINESS. 5 I 
 
 of music, pretty girls, churches, theaters, 
 games, society, comfort. They do not 
 know and can not be made to believe, ex¬ 
 cept by experience, that every city has a 
 White Chapel where vice reigns supreme 
 and which no city in the world has been 
 able to control fully, much less entirely 
 suppress. They do not know the care¬ 
 worn faces that look out of windows on 
 the back streets, filled with failures, tail¬ 
 ings, so to speak, that the town has hid¬ 
 den out of the way. 
 
 If you think, my dear boy, that town life 
 is easier than country life, on the whole, 
 or that it gives more average comfort, or 
 that it has less care or requires less exer¬ 
 tion, or that it makes better men on the 
 average, then you are entirely mistaken. 
 The farm boys that come to town and in 
 
 v 
 
 ten, fifteen or twenty years live in those 
 fine houses and run those large establish 
 ments and shape the policies of the city 
 and state, are of a different class of boys 
 altogether. They are boys who learned 
 to ride and shoot and tell the truth on the 
 
 ut tWfcR s ’ v | 
 
52 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 farm. The first gave them courage, the 
 second accuracy and steadiness of pur¬ 
 pose, and the third that integrity that lies 
 at the basis of all success in life; in short, 
 the qualities that make a man a success 
 on the farm will make him a success in 
 the city. 
 
 If you wish to choose some other pro¬ 
 fession or business, and I do not say that 
 you should not, you should understand, 
 first of all, that success can be won in 
 none without indomitable energy, hard 
 work, and a determination to succeed that 
 can be baffled by no difficulty, and above 
 all things else, without integrity of char¬ 
 acter. I wish to whisper in your ear that 
 you can acquire these things better on the 
 farm than you can anywhere else; there¬ 
 fore do not be in a hurry about choosing 
 your profession. Your constant care 
 should be to acquire those qualities that 
 lie at the basis of success in any business 
 that a man ought to follow; in other words, 
 of any honest business. When you are 
 rooted and grounded in these, it is entire- 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS FUTURE BUSINESS. 53 
 
 ly safe to choose that business that suits 
 your inclinations and that opens up nat¬ 
 urally to you. 
 
 I am a great believer in Providence, by 
 which I do not mean anything supernat¬ 
 ural or special. I believe that every boy’s 
 life is a plan of God, and that if he ac¬ 
 quires character, integrity or complete 
 wholeness or soundness—that is, becomes 
 what farmers call a straight up and down 
 man—there will be an opening that will 
 lead him into the line of business he ought 
 to follow. I believe that if a man pre¬ 
 pares himself by acquiring all the inform¬ 
 ation possible, avoiding bad habits, bad 
 company, and uses his time to the best 
 advantage, matters will so shape them¬ 
 selves that he will find himself in the 
 place where he of right belongs. Oppor¬ 
 tunities come right along to the man who 
 is ready to use them. If the farm boy has 
 acquired habits of industry, economy, 
 truthfulness and uprightness, and his 
 inclination leads him to be a preacher, 
 lawyer, physician or business man, he 
 
54 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 need not have the slightest fear of fail¬ 
 ure barring accidents and sickness, or 
 an ill-fated marriage, if he will but take 
 the first opening that points in the direc¬ 
 tion of his inclinations. Rest assured, 
 however, that nothing worth having in 
 this life ever comes without hard work, 
 clear thinking and right living. 
 
 There are, perhaps, some boys on the 
 farm who imagine there is some short cut 
 to wealth; that dishonesty wins; that 
 rogues prosper; and that it is little matter 
 how you get money, or office, provided 
 only you get it. This is about the worst 
 mistake any boy can possibly make, and 
 the boy who has that notion and does not 
 get over it, can be very safely set down as 
 a foreordained failure. There is nothing 
 in this world that pays as large a dividend 
 in the long run, as good old-fashioned 
 honesty. I do not mean the corporation 
 style of honesty. I mean old-fashioned 
 uprightness, which is more than paying 
 debts, and much more than telling the 
 truth in form. It is doing the right thing 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS FUTURE BUSINESS. 55 
 
 at the right time, in the right way, with 
 every man, whether friend oi foe, at all 
 times and everywhere. There are not half 
 enough of men imbued with this kind of 
 uprightness to meet the demands. They 
 are wanted in every great store, factory 
 and bank, and it is this kind of men that 
 in the end lead in all the professions. A 
 farm is the best place in the world to grow 
 them; therefore, do not be in a hurry to 
 leave the farm, and do not make a final 
 choice of your profession or business until 
 you are sure you are doing the right thing. 
 If you conclude to stay on the farm and 
 be a really up-to-date farmer, I am sure 
 that you will get the maximum of com¬ 
 fort. If you choose something else and 
 succeed, you will, in all probability, after 
 success has been achieved, want to go 
 back to the farm. The most of the farm 
 boys who have the town fever and come 
 to town and fail, would get back if they 
 could. Mind you, I do not say that you 
 should not leave the farm, but do not be 
 in a hurry to make up your mind. 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE FARM BOY AND HIS FUN. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 I have written to you heretofore on the 
 serious things of life, the matters that will 
 affect directly your future usefulness, and 
 the neglect or observance of which will 
 do very much to make you a failure or 
 success in life. I have said nothing about 
 amusements, or as you say, “fun/’ and 
 you may, perhaps, wonder whether your 
 father and your Uncle Henry ever had any 
 fun when they were boys. Your father, 
 perhaps, does not say much to you about 
 his boyhood. He is so much concerned 
 in looking after his farm and stock that 
 he says little to you about the fun he had 
 when he was a boy, thinking perhaps it 
 beneath the dignity of a grave, middle- 
 aged and busy man. You sometimes won- 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS FUN. 
 
 57 
 
 der whether he ever had a boy’s life, 
 whether he learned to dance, to shoot or 
 skate, or play foot-ball; or whether he 
 went to the show or circus. You can 
 make up your mind that he went to the 
 show, and, after looking at the wild ani¬ 
 mals hastily, took in the circus every 
 chance he got, and that your grandfather 
 went with him to see that no harm hap¬ 
 pened to him, and that your father might 
 have been seen eating gingerbread and 
 casting sheep’s eyes at one of the prettiest 
 girls in the neighborhood, who may now 
 perhaps be your mother. Besides, he no 
 doubt went ’coon hunting in August and 
 September, went to corn huskings, per¬ 
 haps was the captain at one of these an¬ 
 cient contests, and was on the lookout for 
 red ears; and if you ask him he may tell 
 you what that means. He went to apple- 
 butter boilings, and to wood choppings 
 when there was a quilting bee at the same 
 house at the same time, and if a fiddler 
 would even now strike up one of the old, 
 simple melodies. I’ll venture that you 
 
58 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 would notice a far-away, reminiscent look 
 in his eyes and his feet might even keep 
 time to the long forgotten music. 
 
 If he did not go to all these things, 
 your Uncle Henry did, and a right good 
 time he had, particularly when it came to 
 getting away with the nice things with 
 which the tables groaned in those days. 
 There was something particularly fine 
 about the pies and cakes, fried chicken, 
 sweet potatoes, doughnuts and apple 
 dumplings. Sometimes I wonder whether 
 women have forgotten how to make these 
 things; and then again I wonder whether 
 a boy’s appetite does not account for the 
 superiority of the old-time cooking. I 
 presume the last is the correct solution. 
 To be perfectly honest about it, I would 
 rather go ’coon hunting even yet, than go 
 to base ball or football, and if I heard the 
 well known bark of the best ’coon dog in 
 the neighborhood that showed a ’coon up 
 a tree at midnight, I think I would get up 
 at once and start after that ’coon a good 
 deal more readily than I was accustomed 
 to get up on a cold morning. 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS FUN. 
 
 59 
 
 Your father, if he is the wise man I take 
 him to be, wants you to have fun, not as 
 the business of life, but as recreation; and 
 your Uncle Henry regards fun, genuine, 
 kindly fun, as essential to a boy’s devel¬ 
 opment as food, clothing, or education. 
 In fact, amusement is education in the 
 broadest, truest sense of the word; but it 
 should be the spice of life and not the 
 substantiate; the pie and custard after the 
 meal, and not the meal itself. There is, 
 however, healthy and wholesome fun, and 
 unhealthy and vicious fun. The one is 
 life, the other is death. One develops 
 true manhood, the other dwarfs it. The 
 boy who learns to enjoy the right kind of 
 fun when a boy, will enjoy it all his days; 
 and the more genuine fun he has as a boy 
 and man as the diversion of life, the longer 
 he is likely to live and the better his life 
 is likely to be. I expect to have fun, or 
 diversion, all my days, and the longer I 
 live the better I seem to enjoy it. 
 
 Now, as to these different kinds of fun. 
 There is no real, genuine fun in anything 
 
6o 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 that is bad or vicious, nor is there any fun 
 in anything you would be ashamed to 
 have your mother know all about. There 
 is no genuine fun in playing with a deck 
 of greasy cards in the hay loft. If your 
 mother approves of playing cards, do it in 
 the sitting room; if she does not approve 
 of it, do not play at all. I do not know 
 one card from another, and I do not think 
 I will lose anything if I never learn. 
 
 There is no genuine fun in inflicting 
 needless pain on anything that lives. The 
 fun that does a boy good nearly always 
 involves some kind of physical exercise, 
 and with that skill of a high order. Every 
 boy should learn to shoot, to ride, to swim, 
 to play ball where the games do not nec¬ 
 essarily involve risk of life or limb, or an 
 undue strain on some physical organ. I 
 do not like some features of football; but 
 it has, nevertheless, the essential feature 
 of all good outdoor games, intense energy 
 in action. That is what we all enjoy, 
 whether in a horse race, dog fight, base 
 ball or football, and the farm boy natur- 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS FUN. 
 
 61 
 
 ally takes to amusements which require 
 physical exercise rather than such games 
 as chess and billiards, which require more 
 delicate skill and calculation, and for the 
 same reason that lambs and colts and 
 calves and even pigs play—to develop 
 their muscles. As we get older and the 
 muscular system becomes fully developed, 
 we care less for these exciting games and 
 take our amusement in a quieter way. 
 
 Fun, however, is not all physical. Every 
 farm boy should belong to a lyceum or 
 literary, and should cultivate by way of 
 amusement, not merely the intellectual 
 side of his nature, but his sense of wit and 
 humor. It will be a great help to every 
 farm boy in after life if he will learn how 
 to be a good story teller. Story tellers, 
 we are quite well aware, are born and not 
 made; so are orators and poets; but every 
 boy who is not totally devoid of wit and 
 humor, can learn to be a reasonably good 
 story teller if he will but study and prac¬ 
 tice. I have always regretted that I failed 
 to join a club while at college, which met 
 
62 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 once a month for the sole purpose of 
 practicing telling first-class stories. The 
 man who can tell a clean story that spar¬ 
 kles with wit and humor is always a favor¬ 
 ite. He is the life of every company. It 
 makes success as a public speaker sure to 
 begin with, and the ability to tell a first- 
 class story or get off a real good joke, 
 helps a man out of many difficulties all 
 through life. A farm boy can have plenty 
 of clean fun in learning how to tell a good 
 story. In fact, I know of no better way 
 You will see, therefore, my dear boy, 
 that your father and I want you to have 
 lots of fun. There is no reason why your 
 life should not have sport in it and plenty 
 of it. You will be all the better for it 
 both as boy and man. “All work and no 
 play makes Jack a dull boy.” Fun is not 
 the end of life by any means, but it makes 
 life better worth the living. Only let the 
 fun be clean and wholesome, whether it 
 be in the line of sports which develop 
 strength of muscle, steadiness of aim, 
 skill of hand, control of nerves, or whether 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS FUN. 
 
 63 
 
 it be in games that require accurate calcu¬ 
 lation, or whether in telling stories or 
 jokes. No right-minded boy will ever 
 willingly listen to a vulgar, or even half¬ 
 vulgar story, no matter how funny it may 
 be. This is absolutely corrupting. There 
 is no reason why a farm boy when he comes 
 of age, should not have had twenty-one 
 years of life as full of joy as can be exper¬ 
 ienced off the farm or on the farm in the 
 twenty-one years that follow, provided 
 always that he lives in a fairly good neigh¬ 
 borhood. Even if he does not, he can get 
 more real fun out of the colts and calves 
 and pigs, and especially out of a first-class 
 collie or other well bred dog, than the 
 town boy can get out of all the sources of 
 amusement that are at his disposal. After 
 all, there is no place on earth where real 
 genuine fun can be had so cheaply and so 
 easily as on a well managed stock farm. 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE FARM BOY AND HIS EDUCATION. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 You are, perhaps, growing restive on 
 the farm. It has been the dream of your 
 life to secure an education. You have 
 envied the man who could talk well from 
 the pulpit or platform; who could write 
 for the newspapers; and you attributed 
 this power to the fact that he had some 
 time or other secured an education. You 
 have heard it stated so often that an edu¬ 
 cation is a fortune in itself, that could not 
 be stolen or lost or burnt up, that you be¬ 
 lieve it, and think that your fortune would 
 be made if you could secure an education. 
 You have, perhaps, talked to your father 
 about it and he has discouraged you. He 
 has possibly said to you, as mine did to 
 me over and over again, that an education 
 
THE FA /M BOY AND HIS EDUCATION. 65 
 
 would unfit you for the farm; or perhaps, 
 that he would like above all things to give 
 you an education, but that an education is 
 expensive, and that it is entirely beyond 
 his power, consistent with his obligations 
 to your brothers and sisters. You have 
 talked with your mother about it, and she 
 sympathizes with you, tells you she will 
 lo the best she can, perhaps cries over 
 the fact that it is not in the power of the 
 family to afford you this education. You 
 have, perhaps, become discouraged over 
 this state of affairs and concluded after all 
 that there is nothing left for you but to 
 plod along, make a living as best you can, 
 crippled for life for want of an education 
 which some of your chums are in a fair 
 way to receive. 
 
 If so, you are taking a view of the sub¬ 
 ject entirely too dismal. There are three 
 points I would like you to bear in mind: 
 First, that there are hundreds, yes thou¬ 
 sands, of graduates of colleges who would 
 like to change places with you provided 
 they had the money they have spent for 
 
66 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 their education. They would use it to 
 make a first payment on an “eighty” and 
 Jvtock it, and be content to be farmers all 
 their days. 
 
 Second, that there are thousands of 
 boys of your age that are now receiving 
 an education who, when they graduate, 
 will have contracted expensive habits and 
 will be kicked around by practical busi¬ 
 ness men like old shoes in the street, for 
 the simple reason that their education has 
 not taught them to do any one thing well. 
 
 Third, that a large per cent, of the men 
 who are moulding and shaping the poli¬ 
 cies of the neighborhood, of the state, and 
 of the nation, had no better opportunities 
 for an education than lie clearly within 
 your reach. They succeeded and you can, 
 provided you have sufficient sand, or clear 
 grit, to succeed. 
 
 First, I would like you to get a clear 
 idea of what an education that is of 
 any practical value, really is. It is not 
 something that can be poured into you as 
 you would pour water into a bucket. A 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS EDUCATION. 6? 
 
 good many townspeople and some farmers 
 talk about sending their children away to 
 be educated, as they send the sugar box to 
 the store to be filled. This cannot be 
 done, no matter what time or money may 
 be at hand. The human mind takes in 
 knowledge as the plant takes up moisture, 
 by free action from within, and grows, and 
 is trained or educated by the act of appro¬ 
 priating knowledge. No teacher, no book, 
 no school or college can educate you. 
 You must educate yourself. You envy the 
 town boy who has the opportunity of go¬ 
 ing to the high school where he can learn 
 Latin and Greek, higher mathematics, 
 geology, botany, and all that, without 
 paying either board or tuition. You say 
 that if you had that chance you would get 
 an education. That depends on what sort 
 of a boy you are. The education you 
 would get in this, or any other, school 
 would depend on how hungry you are for 
 knowledge, how willing you are to apply 
 yourself, and the natural strength of your 
 mind. As a rule, I do not believe the 
 
68 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 town boy who graduates from the high 
 school is any better fitted for the duties 
 of life than the country boy who gradu¬ 
 ates from a good country school at the 
 corner of four sections. The town boy 
 knows more things, perhaps, but the prob¬ 
 ability is that he does not know them any 
 better and lacks the superabundant health, 
 the keen, inquiring mind, and the practical 
 knowledge that the farm boy must acquire 
 on the farm if he is worth raising. 
 
 Before going any further, let me ask 
 you if you have gotten all you can get 
 out of the little white school house at the 
 corner of the four sections? Have you 
 mastered the three R’s—reading ’ritin*, and 
 ’rithmetic? Are you quite sure that you 
 are thorough master of these? Can you 
 solve all the problems that come up on 
 the farm? Can you measure the different 
 fields and tell how many acres are in them 
 as accurately as your father can, who has 
 plowed them for the last ten or fifteen 
 years? Can you tell how many bushels 
 of corn there are in the different cribs? 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS EDUCATION. 69 
 
 How many cubic feet of air there are in 
 each room in the house? How many gal¬ 
 lons the well or cistern will hold? Ca- 
 you spell accurately and pronounce cor¬ 
 rectly? Can you punctuate? Can you 
 write a legible hand, and read so as to 
 convey to the hearer the sense of what 
 you read? You can learn all these things 
 at the country school, and if you can do 
 all this, you can do more than some col¬ 
 lege graduates I know. If not, you had 
 better take down your school books and 
 master their contents so thoroughly that 
 they will be like the iron in your blood. 
 
 Do not think for a moment that I un¬ 
 dervalue an education. No one can well 
 value it more highly than your Uncle 
 Henry. It is the educated mind that 
 rules the world, from the farm to the 
 throne. I want you to have an education 
 that will bring out the best that is in you, 
 and I want you to get it yourself, the only 
 way this kind of an education can ever be 
 had; and the place to begin is with the 
 three R’s, and just where you are on the 
 farm. If you are determined to have this 
 
70 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 sort of an education, nothing can keep 
 you from it. “Who wills, can.” Until 
 you give up yourself you can never be 
 beaten in anything you undertake to do 
 that can possibly be done. If you are, I 
 had rather not say contented, but deter- 
 termined to be a farmer, which I hope 
 you are, you can be a fine, well educated 
 farmer, without any financial aid from 
 anybody. 
 
 Devote the next year or two to master¬ 
 ing thoroughly the subjects taught in your 
 common school. Get on good terms with 
 the teacher whether you go to school or 
 not, and get his, or her, help. Put your 
 wits to work in gathering together enough 
 money in the next year to give you one 
 term at the Agricultural college of your 
 state. Send for a catalogue, map out the 
 studies that you intend to pursue, and 
 keep your mind constantly at work in that 
 direction. If you accomplish these two 
 things in the next year, or two years, you 
 will have made a first-class start in the 
 direction of getting an education, and 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS EDUCATION. 71 
 
 when you go to school you will go with a 
 first-class thirst for knowledge, with a de¬ 
 termination to get it, and a clear idea of 
 the value of every dollar. The boy who 
 starts in in this way will “educate” twice as 
 fast as the boy whose father sends him to 
 be educated with plenty of spending 
 money. 
 
 Meanwhile, do not neglect your reading, 
 but be careful what you read. The habit 
 of reading worthless books is not a virtue 
 but a vice. The habit of skimming over 
 good books is a vice of scarcely less mag¬ 
 nitude. The man to be prized by friend 
 and dreaded by foe is the man who reads 
 few books, but those of the best, and 
 reads them so that he not merely knows 
 all they contain, but catches their spirit. 
 
 Whether you are to be a farmer or a 
 professional man, give close attention to 
 farm problems. One of the worst hum¬ 
 bugs of the day is the idea that prevails 
 among educated men that a knowledge 
 of the dead languages is very impor¬ 
 tant, if not essential, to the training, or 
 
72 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 education, of the mind. That their study 
 gives this training is true. They act as a 
 grindstone to sharpen the mind; but the 
 problems on the farm, the question of the 
 movement of the water in the soil, the 
 structure of the plant, the methods of 
 digestion and assimilation of food by live 
 stock, the detection of diseases among 
 plants and animals, and the best methods 
 of prevention and cure, furnish the mater¬ 
 ial for just as good a grindstone upon 
 which to sharpen your mind, as the lan¬ 
 guage that some people used who have 
 been dead about two thousand years. Ed¬ 
 ucation, after all, is simply the fitting of 
 the eye to see, of the hand to work, of the 
 mind to perceive truth, of the tongue or 
 pen to express it; and it is by the practice 
 of all these that we educate ourselves and 
 become strong, true men. You will see, 
 therefore, that education is not a bonanza 
 given to the rich; that it is something that 
 can not be cornered like grain on the mar¬ 
 ket; that it is something of which the man 
 can not be deprived who has the deter- 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS EDUCATION. 73 
 
 mination to get it, and that the share of 
 the education which any man can receive 
 under any circumstances, is determined 
 mainly by two things: his natural endow¬ 
 ments and his determination to develop 
 them. Neither money, nor schools, nor 
 teachers, nor position, nor anything else 
 can make a strong man out of a boy who 
 has not the brains to begin with, or who 
 has not the thirst for knowledge and the 
 determination to get it. If you have these 
 you will get the education, no matter how 
 far off it may seem now. If you do not 
 have them, nothing in this world can give 
 you a real education. 
 
 It will help you a good deal if you will 
 from time to time inquire into the history 
 of men that are making things go about 
 their way in state and nation. Many of 
 these men never saw the inside of a col¬ 
 lege, of an academy, or a high school. 
 They had no more money with which to 
 obtain an education than you have. They 
 do not now have what the world would call 
 an education, but they have the real ed- 
 
74 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 ucation, the development of the mind, the 
 power that the real education gives; and 
 that is what you are after, or should be; 
 and having that you have everything. 
 What you need is to be thoroughly waked 
 up. I have had many teachers in the 
 course of my life, some of them drill mas¬ 
 ters and grad-grinds who pounded a lot 
 of knowledge into me which was of no 
 particular use then, or ever afterwards; 
 and others who filled me with boundless 
 enthusiasm; who set before me a high 
 
 ideal intellectually and morally; and the 
 
 > 
 
 latter are the only profitable teachers I 
 
 ever had. This is precisely what I am 
 
 trying to do for you. If I can thoroughly 
 
 awaken you to the fact that there is but 
 
 one life before you, that you must make 
 
 the very best out of the talent nature has 
 
 given you, must “hitch your wagon to a 
 
 star,” if you want to get along, I shall 
 
 have done what I started out to do in 
 
 writing these letters; and if you take my 
 
 advice, you will thank me to your dying 
 
 dav. 
 
 * 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE FARM BOY AND HIS START IN LIFE. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 You have no doubt from time to time, 
 heard your father or your mother, or both, 
 say that if they could only live to see 
 their children well started in life, they 
 would be entirely satisfied. For this they 
 cheerfully toil, save and endure hardships 
 and privations that come to all of us 
 sooner or later. They are not so particu¬ 
 lar as to what business or profession their . 
 children may adopt. They would prefer 
 to have them become farmers and far¬ 
 mer’s wives, and settle somewhere near 
 them; for to the parents the children are 
 children long after the grandchildren 
 come. While they would prefer, as a rule, 
 that their children should be farmers, they 
 will not object to one or more of them 
 
76 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 engaging in business. Many mothers 
 would like to have one of their sons be¬ 
 come a preacher; and every mother would 
 like to see her daughters married to men 
 of good character and well-to-do. This 
 is what they mean by “a start in life.” 
 
 If you keep your ears open when talk¬ 
 ing to farmers who have not succeeded 
 well, you will frequently hear them say 
 that the trouble with them was that they 
 never had “a start.” Other men have suc¬ 
 ceeded because they had a start. Some 
 lay the blame for not having a start to 
 being born poor; others to ill-health; 
 others to a sickly wife or children; and a 
 few are honest enough to admit that they 
 spent their best years in sowing wild oats 
 and are now reaping the harvest. They 
 have evidently given up the hope of ever 
 doing more than making some sort of a 
 living, for the reason that they failed to 
 get a good start at the right time. If you 
 will get on as intimate terms as you can 
 with the men who have made a success of 
 farming, (and I advise you on general prin- 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS START IN LIFE. 77 
 
 ciples to do this,) some of these men may 
 tell you how it was that they got their 
 start while others failed. You will be sur¬ 
 prised if you get down into the history of 
 the lives of successful men to learn how 
 few of them ever got a start in the way of 
 money being given to them by relatives. 
 You will find in almost every case that 
 these successful men made their own 
 start; and where they did not make their 
 own start, they were thoroughly, and, as 
 they thought at the time, severely trained 
 by parents who knew from their own ex¬ 
 perience some things which I will try to 
 tell you in this letter. 
 
 The point I wish to impress upon your 
 mind first, is that this getting a start is 
 one of the most important things in your 
 life. You came into this world, if I recol¬ 
 lect right, about eighteen or twenty years 
 ago. Time has been pushing you on right 
 along. It has never stopped a minute for 
 you to think what you will do. It will 
 never stop until it pushes you through to 
 the other world. It gives you one chance, 
 
7 $ LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 and only one. By this I mean that you 
 have but one life to live, and if you are to 
 make a success in life, you must start 
 right. If you fail in this, while you may 
 redeem yourself to a greater or less ex¬ 
 tent, you will never be the man that your 
 mother and father hope you will be, or 
 that your Creator intended you to be. As 
 time will not stop for you to think, you 
 had better do a good deal of solid think¬ 
 ing while your time is going on, as to how 
 you can make the right kind of a start in 
 life. You will never in all your life spend 
 time more profitably. 
 
 In the first place,I want you to rid your¬ 
 self entirely of the idea that a start in life 
 means only the accumulation by inheri¬ 
 tance, by gift, by trickery of one kind or 
 another, or even by honest work, of 
 enough money to set you up in business. 
 More or less money is essential to a suc¬ 
 cessful start in life; but after all it is not 
 the start, even when earned by your own 
 hands and brain. It is the evidence that 
 the start has been made, but it is not by 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HrS START IN LIFE. 79 
 
 any means the start. Most farm boys 
 think that if they had a thousand dollars, 
 or even five hundred, they would be well 
 started. They say, “It takes money to 
 make money;” and while there is some 
 truth in this, it is not by any means the 
 whole truth. The real start in life does 
 not consist in what a man has, but what 
 he is; and the value of a money start is 
 not in the money at all, but in the quali¬ 
 ties of body, mind and heart that have 
 been developed in making that money 
 honestly. The boy who is shrewd enough 
 and dishonest enough to make a thousand 
 dollars by the time he is twenty-five years 
 old, by sharp practice, by overreaching, or 
 by gambling on the Board of Trade, may 
 think he has made a good start. Some of 
 his neighbors may think so, too. His 
 father and mother maybe foolishly proud 
 of him; but I want to tell you that he has 
 made a start the wrong way, and it were 
 a thousand times better for him if he had 
 saved a hundred dollars in that time by 
 honest work and careful economy. In the 
 
8o 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOT. 
 
 last forty years your Uncle Henry has 
 seen a good many young men make that 
 kind of a start, and to-day he can not 
 think of one of them who is not either 
 scratchinga poor man’s head, or has failed 
 to retain the confidence of those who know 
 him. 
 
 If you are to succeed you must get a 
 start of the right kind, and you cannot get 
 that without a good deal of hard work, 
 close economy, and more or less of self- 
 sacrifice. You will have to work, and you 
 will have to think, and you will have to do 
 without a good many things which at the 
 first blush you would like to have. I will 
 first tell you about some ways in which 
 you will not get a start. You will not get 
 the right kind of a start by going in debt 
 for a courting buggy, to spend your even¬ 
 ings in going to dances, circuses, etc., with 
 some good looking girl, who, if she would 
 speak out, does not value you above one 
 of her hairpins, who eats your caramels 
 and ice cream, thinking, if she thinks 
 about you at all, that you are a silly goose 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS START IN LIFE. 8l 
 
 for wasting your substance in that kind of 
 entertainment. She more than half sus¬ 
 pects that the buggy is not paid for, she 
 knows you are wearing more stylish 
 clothes than you can afford, and she 
 secretly makes up her mind that while she 
 will have all the fun she can with you, she 
 will say “Yes” to an entirely different sort 
 of a fellow. 
 
 You will not get a start in life by form¬ 
 ing the bad habit of smoking or chewing, 
 or drinking beer and an occasional glass 
 of whisky, nor by having “a high old time” 
 when you go to Chicago with a carload 
 of your father’s cattle. 
 
 You will not get a very good start in 
 life by imagining that, being raised on the 
 farm, you therefore know all about farm¬ 
 ing, concluding that books and papers 
 that discuss farm problems are not worth 
 your notice. 
 
 No matter what business you may choose, 
 there are three or four things that you 
 must have if you are to start right in life. 
 
82 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 You must have a capacity for steady, end¬ 
 less, hard work. There is no honest busi¬ 
 ness or profession in life in which this is 
 not a prime requisite and an absolute con¬ 
 dition of success. 
 
 You must think as well as work. It 
 takes more than hard work to win. It is 
 hard, intelligent work, where the thinking 
 brain guides the hand, working according 
 to a well defined purpose. My father 
 used to say to me: “Henry, if you don’t 
 think, it makes very little difference 
 whether you work or not.” That was 
 sound advice fifty years ago; it is sounder 
 advice to-day than it was then. 
 
 Getting a start in life means being ab¬ 
 solutely honest. I do not mean by honesty 
 merely the willingness to pay debts. That 
 is a part of honesty, but a small part. I mean 
 uprightness, integrity, reliability, truthful¬ 
 ness. I mean that quality embraced in 
 all these words that will lead your neigh¬ 
 bors and all who have any business with 
 you, to rely absolutely upon you, with the 
 utmost confidence that you will do what 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS START IN LIFE. 83 
 
 you say you will do, and that you can be 
 depended upon under any circumstances; 
 or, in the expressive language of the farm, 
 you “will do to tie to.” 
 
 Now, the value of the first thousand 
 dollars you may earn, is not in the money, 
 but in the training that making it in an 
 honest way will give you along these lines. 
 Therefore, start out to make this thousand 
 dollars, commencing with five, ten, fifty, 
 one hundred, or five hundred dollars 
 earned by yourself, by your own unaided 
 efforts, digging it out as the miner digs 
 the gold out of the Klondyke. There 
 will not be so much trouble in the making 
 of it as in the saving, in avoiding the 
 spending of it for useless things, and in 
 putting it at interest as fast as made; or 
 better still, investing it in young stock to 
 which you will give your personal care, 
 and thus learn to feed and breed, to buy 
 and sell. It is astonishing how fast a 
 young man on the farm who has a kind 
 and wise father, can accumulate money in 
 this way, and with it the qualities of mind 
 
84 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 and heart and hand that make the real 
 start in life, no matter what the future 
 profession may be. When these qualities 
 have once been acquired, the amount of 
 money that has been accumulated in ac¬ 
 quiring them is really a secondary matter. 
 Any farm boy who has been well born— 
 by well born I mean has come of good, 
 honest, respectable parents, whether they 
 have much of this world’s goods or little 
 —who has fairly good health, and such 
 education as a common school can give, 
 can acquire them if he will; and if he does 
 not, he has no one to blame but himself. 
 He must, however, bend every energy to 
 its requisition. He should not think too 
 much about the girls until he has made a 
 start. The good ones of them will keep. He 
 must avoid acquiring expensive habits, 
 and diligently school himself to hard work, 
 clear thinking and honest living. 
 
 In every department of life, whether 
 manufacturing, merchandising, or railroad¬ 
 ing, the patrons of every profession are 
 looking for boys who have that kind of a 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS START IN LIFE. 85 
 
 start. If you go into any city, large or 
 small, in this broad land, you will find 
 that the men who are running things had 
 that kind of a start, and got it themselves. 
 Boys who have that kind of a start do not 
 need to do much advertising. True man¬ 
 hood has a ring to it which all worthy 
 men recognize, and that ring can not be 
 counterfeited successfully. There is no 
 place where a start of that kind can be 
 obtained as well as on the farm. Having 
 secured the money part of the start, the 
 farm boy can spend it in obtaining an ed¬ 
 ucation in college, or in the particular 
 branch of business, or the particular pro¬ 
 fession which he chooses to follow; and 
 barring sickness, accident, or an unwise 
 marriage, nothing can prevent him from 
 making a success in life. He may not be¬ 
 come a millionaire. A few, but only a 
 few, really honest men do. He may not 
 rise to a high political position, and yet 
 he may; for after all, honesty is the best 
 politics, although few professional politic¬ 
 ians seem to think so; but he will secure 
 
86 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 the confidence of all who have to do with 
 him, all this world’s goods that he really 
 needs, and more too; and when time 
 pushes him out of the world, as it does 
 all of us, he will have left the world a 
 good deal better than he found it, which 
 at last is the highest measure of success. 
 
 This is the kind of a man I wish you to 
 become. It is in your power, when you 
 start out resolutely, to make this start, or 
 live to regret in after years that you did 
 not take the advice of your 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE FARM BOY AND HIS HABITS. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 When you and I were quite small we 
 had a great difficulty in learning to walk. 
 We first crept, then with great effort we 
 learned to stand alone by a chair, then to 
 take a single step, then two or three in 
 succession. Our mothers encouraged us 
 to make longer ventures, and by and by 
 we learned to walk across the floor, fall¬ 
 ing down, perhaps, two or three times; 
 and when we succeeded we felt that it was 
 the proudest day of our lives. Every step 
 at the beginning required a distinct effort 
 of the will, of which we were then con¬ 
 scious, but it was not long until we walked 
 without conscious thought or movement. 
 In other words, it walked itself. We had 
 acquired the habit of walking. 
 
88 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 It took us a long time and much con¬ 
 scious effort to learn to talk. First, we 
 managed the easy words of one or two 
 syllables, then of three, and by and by, 
 with much toil and pains, we managed the 
 big words, and the w’s, v’s and the h’s. 
 We were quite proud of ourselves, and 
 our parents were prouder still of us, when 
 we learned to talk, or rather, when it 
 learned to talk itself; and the only trouble 
 they had for some years afterwards was 
 that we talked entirely too much. We 
 had formed the habit of talking. 
 
 It took you and me a long time to learn 
 to read. We had first to learn the name 
 of one letter, and then of another, with 
 their appropriate sounds, and then com¬ 
 bine the letters and sounds, so that we did 
 well when we could make out one word 
 at a time. We formed the habit of doing 
 this, and now we can read faster than we 
 can make the sounds. Some people have 
 learned, not merely to take in a word at a 
 time, but a sentence; and can skim over 
 the pages of a book, and get the sense of 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS HABITS. 89 
 
 it, in a way that those who have not 
 learned to do so, can scarcely understand. 
 At least, I can not. They have formed 
 the habit. 
 
 When you were in my office last, you 
 noticed how very rapidly the stenographer 
 handled the keys of the machine. It 
 would be slow work for you and me, but 
 if we had formed the habit it would do 
 itself. It was slow work for the stenog¬ 
 rapher to learn to take down talk in short¬ 
 hand, but it became so easy for a man I 
 once employed, that it required no thought 
 at all; and on a hot day he would go to 
 sleep taking it down, and I used to have 
 waken him. He had formed the habit. 
 
 For several months of my life I had to 
 take down speeches and lectures in long- 
 hand, and I got into the habit of leaving 
 out nearly all the vowels in writing, and 
 part of the consonants. Since then I have 
 written a hand that few can read. I get 
 to thinking, and the pen wiggles—that is 
 all; and often I cannot read it myself, un¬ 
 less I know what I am writing about—a 
 very bad habit. 
 
go 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 I have given you these illustrations of 
 the power and force of habit for a distinct 
 purpose. You and I are simply bundles 
 of habits. Every time we do anything 
 it becomes easier to do it in the future, 
 until by and by the doing of it becomes 
 unconscious, automatic—it does itself. It 
 is, therefore, of the utmost importance 
 that we form correct habits in doing, in 
 thinking, in living. If we learn to do a 
 thing badly and form the habit, we will in 
 all probability do it badly all our days. If 
 we form the habit of doing things wrong, 
 and if we form the habit of doing bad 
 things, we will in time become bad men; 
 for badness and goodness are, to a certain 
 extent, at least, matters of habit. 
 
 When your Uncle Henry was a boy, he 
 was very anxious to get over a great deal of 
 work. For instance, he was anxious to be 
 the fastest corn husker and the fastest grain 
 binder in the neighborhood. Unfortun¬ 
 ately, he formed the habit of binding 
 sheaves loosely, and failed to acquire the 
 habit of getting all the silk and husks off 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS HABITS. 9I 
 
 the corn. The mice had a picnic in the 
 corn that he husked. A loose sheaf when 
 hauled in, or out at threshing time, was 
 instantly recognized as one of “Henry’s 
 sheaves.” I tried hard to correct this 
 habit in after years, but never succeeded. 
 I could bind tightly enough as long as I 
 kept thinking about it; but the moment I 
 began thinking about something else, and 
 that was about all the time, the sheaf 
 bound itself loose. 
 
 You will avoid a great deal of trouble 
 in after life if you will acquire the habit 
 of doing whatever you do, well. It takes 
 no longer to acquire the habit of doing it 
 right than wrong, and when a habit is once 
 formed, it stays formed; and the longer 
 you practice it, the more firmly the habit 
 becomes fixed. It is just as easy to curry 
 the horse well, when you get in the habit 
 of it, as it is to give him a “lick and a 
 promise.” It is just as easy to milk the 
 cow clean, and with neatness and dispatch, 
 as it is to milk her otherwise; and the 
 habit once formed of doing things right, 
 
92 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 will stay with you as a perpetual heritage 
 and blessing. The habit of doing things 
 right can be formed by the conscious do¬ 
 ing of them in the first place, and every 
 subsequent repetition of the act fixes and 
 confirms the habit until it becomes the 
 permanent habit of life. The man who 
 learns to do the work on the farm right, 
 will be very likely to do all his work right, 
 for the reason that it becomes second 
 nature. 
 
 I need not say to you that you are very 
 foolish if you acquire what are ordinarily 
 called “bad habits,” which are usually re¬ 
 garded as habits of doing wrong or use¬ 
 less things, and not the habit of doing 
 right and useful things in the wrong way. 
 A boy is foolish to acquire habits which 
 involve expense or injury to his health, or 
 waste his time and money. There are 
 weights enough to be borne in life with¬ 
 out taking on extra loads and binding 
 them to our backs by the silken, yet un 
 breakable, cords of habit. 
 
 Mental and moral habits are even more 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS HABITS. 
 
 93 
 
 important than physical. You will be 
 greatly helped in forming right moral 
 habits, and continuing therein, if your 
 father and mother have in your earliest 
 childhood thoroughly instructed you in 
 the first principles of right and wrong; 
 have taught you to do right because it is 
 eternally right, and taught you to avoid 
 doing wrong because it is everlastingly 
 wrong; and that while there may be pal¬ 
 liation of the guilt of wrong doing, there 
 can never, under any circumstances, be a 
 good excuse for it. If you are fortunate 
 enough to have this kind of early teach¬ 
 ing, and take to it, it will be comparatively 
 easy to form right mental habits. 
 
 You will be much more likely to adopt 
 these elementary principles of righteous¬ 
 ness if you have righteous blood behind 
 you, and unlikely if you have bad blood 
 coursing in your veins. For, though some 
 affect not to believe it, it is a truth as old 
 as Moses, and in fact, very much older, 
 that the iniquities of the fathers (and 
 mothers, too,) are visited upon the chil- 
 
94 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 dren to the third and fourth generation of 
 them that hate the Lord, and mercy 
 shown to a thousand generations of them 
 that love Him and keep His command¬ 
 ments. 
 
 Some good people do not like this text 
 because they do not understand it. It is 
 to me of great interest to know that in 
 three or four generations inherited evil 
 may be overcome by the right kind of 
 training, and that when overcome, a right¬ 
 eous character may be perpetuated under 
 the right kind of training for an indefinite 
 period. 
 
 You will readily understand, therefore, 
 that the formation of mental and moral 
 habits is about the most important thing 
 in your life. For example, you may form 
 the habit of seeing things clearly and dis¬ 
 tinctly, and stating them truthfully; or 
 you may form the habit of half seeing, 
 and stating them loosely. Do you know 
 that as a matter of fact there are compar¬ 
 atively few persons that can tell the truth, 
 that is, state things precisely as they are? 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS HABITS. 95 
 
 They are not conscious liars, not liars at 
 all in the obnoxious sense, but neverthe¬ 
 less we cannot depend upon what they 
 say, because we know they are not in the 
 habit of seeing things as they are, or of 
 stating in exact language what they do 
 see. There is no habit of more value to a 
 young man, whether on the farm or off 
 it, than to be able to discern truth, fact, 
 reality, and to state it as he sees it, with¬ 
 out exaggeration or being influenced by 
 his hopes, his fears, his dislikes, or his 
 prejudices. The farm boy has a better 
 chance to practice in this line than any 
 other class of boys. He should train him¬ 
 self to know by observation the weight 
 of the steer or calf, the size of the field, 
 the distance from one point to another, 
 the yield per acre of the crops grown, and 
 the color and form of every particular 
 animal on the farm. The shepherd, by 
 his close powers of observation, can tell 
 each particular sheep if there are five hun¬ 
 dred in the flock, and detect at a glance 
 over the flock which one is missing. The 
 
g6 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 farm boy can do the same if he but will. 
 
 Next to the habit of seeing things as 
 they are, is stating them, or telling the 
 truth, a habit that can be acquired only 
 by careful and long continued practice, 
 and which, when once acquired, will do 
 more to win the confidence of men than 
 almost any other one trait of character. 
 
 Still more important, if anything, is the 
 cultivation of the habit of right-doing. It 
 is almost as easy to do right as wrong, if 
 one but acquires the habit of it. Habits 
 of right-feeling precede habits of right 
 doing. The thoroughly good man does 
 right without thinking about it, or talking 
 about it, or taking any credit whatever 
 for it to himself, because he has formed 
 the habit of it. It becomes part of his 
 nature. It would hurt him to do anything 
 else, because it is the breaking up of the 
 habits of his life, a sort of rupture of the 
 fibers of his being. 
 
 If you will think a moment, you will 
 see that it would not be possible for this 
 worLd to run anyways smoothly in any 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS HABITS. 97 
 
 other way than by making men bundles of 
 habits, thus giving permanency to charac¬ 
 ter. You know that your father will be v 
 about the same sort of a man to-morrow, 
 next week, or next year, that he was yester¬ 
 day, or last week, or last year; that there 
 will be little or no change in his walk, in 
 his talking, in his modes of thinking, and 
 manner of meeting whatever problems 
 come up on the farm. He will be out of 
 humor with the same sort of things, and 
 be pleased with the same sort. He will 
 like the same sort of people he has liked 
 for years, and will dislike the same sort. 
 It will be the same with your mother, and 
 with all your neighbors. Business men, 
 politicians, preachers and teachers, all 
 who have to do with men, count on this 
 general permanency of character, the re¬ 
 sult of fixed habits, based on fixed princi¬ 
 ples. If it were otherwise, it would be 
 impossible to do business, or to get along 
 at all comfortably with each other; and 
 society, politics, church affairs, and every¬ 
 thing else would be in total confusion. 
 
98 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOV. 
 
 Getting acquainted with men is simply 
 taking stock of their habits, and we are 
 greatly surprised when some friend devel¬ 
 ops a trait of character which we never 
 saw before, because we had never become 
 acquainted with that particular habit in 
 the bundle. It is, therefore, of the utmost 
 importance that you form the right sort 
 habits, and do it when you can. The 
 older you become, the harder it will be to 
 form good habits and to break up bad 
 habits. 
 
 You are yet young. You can form 
 the habit of doing that which your own 
 conscience tells you is the right thing to 
 do; that for which there is no necessity 
 of making any excuse; that of which your 
 mother and father approve, and of which 
 your own sense of right approves, and of 
 which the Ruler of this world approves. 
 It is not as easy to do this as to do the 
 other thing, for there is more or less 
 weakness and inherent wickedness in the 
 best of men; but the constant doing of it 
 will so fix the habit that when you go out 
 
THE FARM BOY AND HIS HABITS. 
 
 99 
 
 to take your place in the world, you will 
 never seriously think of doing anything 
 else, nor will the world expect anything 
 else of you. It is in this way that men 
 become strong and form characters on 
 which the weak will lean for guidance 
 and direction. If you are in doubt about 
 the propriety of doing any thing, do not 
 do it. “He that doubteth is damned;” 
 that is, condemned, or reproved, by his 
 own sense of right or conscience. 
 
 You will see, my dear boy, that I have 
 not given you a lecture, nor preached a 
 sermon, but simply pointed out certain 
 facts that you should know. It is not a 
 question as to whether you will form 
 habits or not. Form habits you will; you 
 can not help that. It is simply a question 
 whether you will form right habits or 
 wrong ones; which means, whether you 
 will be a man that “will do to tie to,” or 
 not; whether, in short, this life, the only 
 one you have to live in this world, is to be 
 a success or failure. 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE FARM BOY FROM HOME. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 I do not wonder that you sometimes 
 become restless and want to get away 
 from the farm for a day or two. I, too, 
 felt that way. From the beginning of 
 spring wheat sowing to the end of corn 
 husking, is a long time for a boy to work 
 hard, day and night, with no vacation ex¬ 
 cept the Fourth of July. 
 
 Time flies after a man has passed fifty, 
 but it limps along very slowly with a boy 
 under twenty. Work on the farm, al¬ 
 though much easier than it was when I 
 was a boy, is not after all the very easiest 
 kind of work, and if continued right along 
 without interruption, becomes very mo¬ 
 notonous. The hours of work are long 
 in the summer, the nights short. We get 
 
THE FARM BOY FROM HOME. 
 
 tot 
 
 tired looking day after day, and month 
 after month at the same horizon, which 
 seems to close down on us and shut us in 
 all around, knowing all the while that 
 there is a great world beyond, throbbing 
 and palpitating with human hopes and 
 ambitions. We long to see something of 
 it and share in its abundant life. At least 
 I did. I know you do. 
 
 Valuable as is the drill of farm work in 
 forming habits of steady, persistent indus¬ 
 try, the boy needs once in a while to get 
 away from home, to see something of what 
 the papers tell about, and to measure him¬ 
 self with other boys, and be measured by 
 them. If a bright boy, he is apt, if kept 
 always at home, to become a conceited 
 fellow with vast conceptions of his abili¬ 
 ties in one direction or another, and, if he 
 is to be of any account in the world, needs 
 to have this conceit completely knocked 
 out of him. The farm boy who is first in 
 the common school is very likely to get 
 what, in common parlance, we expressive¬ 
 ly term “the big head,” and should have 
 
102 
 
 Letters to the farm boy. 
 
 a chance to meet some one who has for¬ 
 gotten more than he ever knew. The 
 neighborhood bully should be encouraged 
 to meet some one who will take the swag¬ 
 ger and insolence out of him with one 
 swift blow, coming like a clap of thunder 
 out of a clear sky. The boy who has 
 fallen into careless habits of speech or be¬ 
 havior should have a chance to see how 
 well bred boys conduct themselves, while 
 the modest and diffident boy should have 
 a chance to learn that an honest heart and 
 a clear head with country manners are 
 like gold—current the world over at full 
 weight, with or without polish. 
 
 The behavior of the farm boy away 
 from home furnishes an excellent means 
 of judging what sort of a boy he is, what 
 sort of folks his parents are, and in what 
 kind of a neighborhood he was brought 
 up, or at least, the kind of associates he 
 has. When I see a number of farm boys 
 going home from the state fair, or any 
 other public gathering, noisy, profane, 
 and evidently aiming to attract public 
 
THE FARM BOY FROM HOME. 
 
 103 
 
 attention, I am not surprised if I notice a 
 bottle of liquor circulating among them, 
 and I infer that they have seen but little 
 of the world, and that little not by any 
 means the best part of it. I expect, of 
 course, that when a farm boy goes away 
 from home he will be somewhat like 
 a colt that has been kept in the stable 
 and needs exercise. I expect him to have 
 a good time and to enjoy it; but I also 
 know that, now that he is off his guard, I 
 can form a good deal better judgment of 
 what he is, and what he is likely to be, 
 than if I met him on the farm, and under 
 his parents’ eye. I like the boy that likes 
 fun. I like it myself, and better in my 
 old days than when I was young; but 
 there is no real fun in any behavior that is 
 loud; that has neither wit nor humor in it, 
 but more or less of obscenity or profanity. 
 I like to see farm boys, when away from 
 home, take an interest in base ball and 
 football, and take part in these games, if 
 they are stout enough to do it without 
 danger. Such fun is natural, and as 
 
104 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 healthy as for colts to run, or for lambs 
 to play. A boy that is fair in games will 
 likely be fair in business; and conversely. 
 I have always suspected the genuineness 
 of the Christianity of a certain preacher 
 who once tried to cheat me in playing 
 croquet. The boy, who, when away from 
 home, wants to see the seamy side of the 
 city, or to “paint the town red/’ or to 
 have what he calls “a high old time,” 
 serves notice on all men that he has poor 
 stuff in him, and is likely to make a poor 
 
 use of it. 
 
 > 
 
 Other farm boys when away from home 
 reveal the fact that they are insufferably 
 vain and conceited, and need to be taken 
 down severely a peg or two. These are 
 not bad boys. They simply overestimate 
 their good looks, or their smartness, or, 
 perhaps, their father’s wealth or social 
 position. Living in the narrow circle of 
 the neighborhood, they get an enormous¬ 
 ly exaggerated idea of their own impor¬ 
 tance, and make themselves the laughing 
 stock of sensible people. If they have 
 
THE FARM BOY FROM HOME. »C >5 
 
 sense enough to see this and get down 
 from their pedestal, they will come out 
 all right; and it is often an excellent thing 
 for a boy to get away from home and be 
 laughed at and ridiculed, and made to feel 
 cheap and mean. The medicine is hard 
 to take, but it is good for you. You will 
 not get it unless you need it. The next 
 time you get away you will not dress nor 
 act so as to attract attention. You will 
 slip along quietly like the rest of us com¬ 
 mon folks, and will, as a result, get the 
 good will of the plain, common sense sort 
 of people who are really the only sort that 
 can be of any help to you. Let me give 
 you a hint: Whether away from home or 
 at home, dress and act so that you will 
 attract as little notice as possible. Leave 
 off that glaring necktie, and the hat that 
 is either too broad or too narrow in the 
 rim. Do not push yourself into public 
 notice, and do not hide away. Face the 
 world boldly and modestly, do not force 
 your own opinions upon people, and do 
 not hesitate to express them modestly, 
 
106 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 but firmly, when called upon, and the out¬ 
 side world will henceforth consider you a 
 boy of good sense, and the making of a 
 strong man. 
 
 A good many farm boys are entirely 
 too modest and diffident when away from 
 home, and particularly so if they are 
 thrown among noted men, or men and 
 women who have seen much of the world. 
 They then become painfully self-con¬ 
 scious. Their dress does not seem to fit 
 as they thought it did when they left 
 home, They lose their natural man¬ 
 ner and become stiff and awkward, es¬ 
 pecially when in the society of refined 
 and cultivated ladies. They are at a loss 
 as to what to do with their hands and feet. 
 This is a very painful experience. Do 
 not fret because you step high while other 
 men seem to glide along. You are accus¬ 
 tomed to walking over rough surfaces; 
 they over carpets. Do not feel badly be¬ 
 cause you speak loudly. You have to 
 speak loudly out of doors on the farm; 
 they speak to people in the house. The 
 
The farm boy from home. 107 
 
 sensible man understands all this and 
 thinks none the less of the boy for acting 
 naturally and farm like. 
 
 Do you know that business men of all 
 sorts are constantly looking out for just 
 this sort of boys? They always suspect 
 the farm boy, who, when away from home, 
 tries to ape the manners of the town boy, 
 or who shows traces of foppery. In the 
 eyes of sensible men in the city, country 
 manners are always at a premium. You 
 may not know, but I do, that successful 
 men everywhere like well bred, modest 
 boys, and will always encourage and push 
 them to the front as far and as fast at it * 
 is safe. Most of them were farm boys 
 themselves, remember their own early 
 trials, and take genuine pleasure in giving 
 a helping hand to these young fellows 
 who come to the city to push their for¬ 
 tunes, or who push them on the farm. 
 
 I can point out middle-aged bankers 
 who will loan money to a boy, when, if 
 the father came, they would have no 
 money to lend. They see clear through 
 
108 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 country manners to the real stuff under¬ 
 neath, and take pleasure in helping the 
 farm boy with a clean life, resolute will, 
 and unstained honor. There is one man 
 now gone over to the other world, whose 
 memory I revere. He invited me with 
 other boys, to take tea and spend the 
 evening. His wife was city bred, stylish, 
 and vain. I was fresh from the farm, 
 awkward, and very plainly dressed. She 
 lectured me on my lack of taste in dress 
 and refinement in manner. He overheard 
 it, and said: “Henry, you will find it much 
 easier to put her advice in practice if you 
 stick closely to your studies, get the foun¬ 
 dation first, and be thorough in all your work. 
 Your dress and manners then will come 
 all right. Make yourself worth polishing, 
 and the polish will come as you rub up 
 against men.” 
 
 While self-conceit and self-assertion 
 should be repressed in the farm boy, he 
 should at the same time know the full 
 value of his powers and learn to rely on 
 them. Getting away from home and min- 
 
THE FARM BOY FROM HOME. 
 
 109 
 
 gling with the very best sort of people 
 will teach you how to take your measure. 
 Low bred fellows, physical and intellect¬ 
 ual bullies, and small souls who are con¬ 
 stantly in fear lest some one surpasses 
 them, will try to intimidate you by ridi¬ 
 culing, by browbeating or bulldozing you; 
 but when you strike a true man he will be 
 your friend. It will do you no good to 
 associate with snobs and upstarts. If you 
 get a good, honest, manly and intelligent 
 face on you, which you can get only by 
 being an honest, manly and thoughtful 
 farm boy, you do not need any certificate 
 of character or letter of recommendation 
 from anybody. You will find that the 
 very highest people in the whole land are 
 the most easily approached, and the most 
 ready and willing to help a modest, thor¬ 
 oughly upright and self-reliant farm boy. 
 I have the honor to be personally ac¬ 
 quainted with many of the great men of 
 the nation, and I find that the greater the 
 man, the easier it is to approach him. It 
 was much easier to reach General Grant 
 
IIO LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 during the war than the petty officers who 
 waited on him. President McKinley is a 
 much more approachable man than many 
 of the little popinjays who want to be 
 county officers, or to be elected to the leg- 
 lature. You would feel much easier in 
 talking with the members of his cabinet 
 than with many of the little snipes who 
 hold clerkships in the various departments. 
 
 Get away from home if you can, and 
 when away mix with the very best people 
 within your reach. Keep out of the noisy, 
 boisterous crowd. Let the prigs admire 
 their own excellencies. Do not hesitate 
 to mix with the best men much older than 
 yourself. You need never be afraid or ill 
 at ease with a really great man. If you 
 are of the right sort to begin with, they 
 will be glad to talk with you. If the best 
 men give you the cold shoulder, there 
 must be something wrong with you. What 
 is it? 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ABOUT THE HARDUP FAMILY. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 I fear I have given you more good ad¬ 
 vice in previous letters than you will take. 
 I suspect you have not read all of them 
 very carefully. You may have the idea 
 that it is natural and right for a boy to 
 have his fun, and perhaps sow a little wild 
 oats, and have a good time generally until 
 he is married, and then will be the time to 
 settle down. Your father and mother 
 have read these letters, and perhaps urged 
 you to read them carefully. They may, 
 indeed, have urged you a little more than 
 was prudent. I find nothing does a boy 
 good unless he relishes it; and unless you 
 have a taste for good advice, and take to 
 it naturally, it will, very likely, be wasted. 
 For this reason I propose hereafter to 
 
112 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 give you illustrations rather than advice, 
 and will tell you something about farm 
 boys who have failed, and failed for the 
 reason that they have not taken advice 
 similar to that which I have given you. 
 
 When a man has lived over sixty years, 
 and been a close observer of farm boys, 
 mingling with them for nearly fifty of 
 these years, he acquires a very large ac¬ 
 quaintance, and can group his acquain¬ 
 tances into a great many large classes. 
 I propose to tell you this time about 
 a very large and respectable class of farm 
 boys under the general name of Hardups. 
 
 The Hardups are a very old family, 
 their pedigree tracing back through the 
 revolutionary period, and quite a number 
 of them came over in the Mayflower. In 
 my trips abroad I find that they are a 
 large family on the other side, and in 
 looking up their pedigree, I have found 
 that they antedate the oldest names in the 
 English peerage, and in fact trace to that 
 period “of which the memory of man run¬ 
 neth not back to the contrary.” 
 
ABOUT THE HARDUP FAMILY. 11 3 
 
 A large number of them came West be¬ 
 fore and after I did. I have kept my eye 
 on a few, and have had many pleasant 
 and profitable talks with them. Many of 
 them are eminently respectable people, 
 and some of them are among my warmest 
 personal friends, of whom I may speak 
 freely, provided I don’t tell where they 
 live. 
 
 For example, there is my friend, Ben 
 Hardup, as good a fellow as ever lived, 
 true to his friends, open hearted, gener¬ 
 ous, loyal to his party, devoted to his 
 church, and true to his name, Hardup. I 
 knew his father before him, his brothers 
 and sisters, his cousins and his aunts, and 
 they were all of a piece—“the easy-going 
 Hardups,” we used to call them. They 
 were good livers. I shall never forget a 
 remark that Ben’s father made to me one 
 time at supper, when I asked him how it 
 was that he was able to live so much bet¬ 
 ter than many of his neighbors. He was 
 carving a fat tnrkey at the time, and he 
 stopped, looked at me with mock severity, 
 
U4 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 and said, “Henry, I want you to under¬ 
 stand that neither I nor any of my boys, 
 will ever die in debt to his stomach.” 
 That particular branch of the family, at 
 least, never did, wherever I have known 
 them. 
 
 I warned Ben when he came West not 
 to settle in the timber, as I have warned 
 you not to do certain things. He did the 
 precise thing which I warned him not to 
 do. I hope you will not follow his exam¬ 
 ple. It was a very natural mistake that 
 
 Ben made. He said to himself, as he told 
 
 > 
 
 me the other day when I spent a pleasant 
 evening with him, that the way he looked 
 at it was this; that the prairie lands of 
 this great state would never be settled up. 
 He told me that just as he left the East he 
 dreamed that, in moving West, when he 
 came to the top of a hill, the left back 
 wheel of his wagon came off, and that be¬ 
 fore him there lay a beautiful stream with 
 timber growing along its banks, a log 
 cabin and a fertile prairie for miles on 
 eaeh side. The dream was fulfilled when 
 
ABOUT THE HARDUP FAMILY. 11 5 
 
 he actually began his journey, and there 
 lay the landscape he had seen in his vis¬ 
 ion; and when he had repaired his wagon 
 he called on the owner of the cabin and 
 and bought that quarter. 
 
 He was one hundred and fifty miles 
 from a railroad. He said to himself: 
 “H ere is timber, shelter, good land and 
 pasture that would have made Jacob weep 
 
 _ V 
 
 if Esau had squatted on it. What more 
 do I want?” In less than five years from 
 that time the railroad came, and with it 
 settlers jumping over each other to enter 
 land, and he was shut up to his timber 
 land, which he has been grubbing out ev r 
 since. “I do not mind,” said he, “the hard 
 work it has cost me and my boys to pi - 
 pare fields, when, had I gone out a few 
 miles, I could have had much better 
 lands at government price, in which I 
 could have plowed the length and breadth 
 of a quarter without striking a stone or a 
 stump; but there are a lot of folks settled 
 along this timber, with some of whom I 
 do not care to have my boys and girls as- 
 
Il6 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 sociate, and I must get out of this as soon 
 as possible if I am to have a happy and 
 peaceful old age/’ 
 
 His brother Sam went out on the prairie 
 and Ben furnished him firewood free for 
 five years. He built a temporary house, 
 and prairie stable, broke up his land by 
 piecemeal, and finally got it all under cul¬ 
 tivation, and along early in the sixties had 
 the misfortune to have a great wheat crop 
 and sell it at a long price. This awak¬ 
 ened his dormant ambition. He thought 
 he must have more land, and bought an 
 adjacent quarter, giving a mortgage on 
 both. The next year the wheat crop 
 failed and the price went down. Bob 
 Cheatem, the son of a broker of the firm 
 of Ketchem & Cheatem, whose acquain¬ 
 tance Sam made in coming West, and who 
 had a large flock of diseased sheep on his 
 hands, taken in on a mortgage, called to 
 revive old acquaintance with him, and in¬ 
 cidentally persuaded him to go into sheep. 
 Sam knew nothing about sheep, but 
 yielded to Bob’s persuasive eloquence. 
 
ABOUT THE HARDUP FAMILY. 
 
 ii 7 
 
 which he describes as follows: “You see, 
 Sam, wool is worth a dollar a pound, and 
 every ewe will shear eight pounds each 
 year, and give you two good lambs. The 
 lambs are worth five dollars apiece, and 
 there is eighteen dollars for keeping one 
 sheep a year, and you can keep six of 
 them on an acre.” Sam bought the sheep 
 and millions of scab mites with them, and 
 foot rot to boot; and in less than a year 
 he sold all that remained of his flock for 
 a dollar a head, and was glad to get rid of 
 them at that. Bob had a second mort¬ 
 gage on the farm, and a chattel mortgage 
 on everything not exempt from execution. 
 Poor Sam has been working from that day 
 to this, year in and year out, to get rid of 
 that mortgage given for Bob’s sheep. 
 
 The trouble with Sam was that life had 
 been too easy with him in boyhood, and a 
 little prosperity made him dizzy, as it has 
 made many another man. He had never 
 really studied farming, and when misfor¬ 
 tune came, he grasped, like a drowning 
 man, at a straw, was easily the dupe of 
 
11 8 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 a designing scoundrel, and went into a 
 department of farming of which he had 
 no knowledge whatever. 
 
 I count his boys more fortunate than 
 he. They are experiencing misfortune 
 when they are young; but if they have 
 grit enough not to be disgusted with farm¬ 
 ing, and sense enough to look around and 
 see that other farmers prosper who follow 
 out the right lines, they may one day 
 make the name of Hardup a misnomer in 
 their case. 
 
 Their brother Jim was a fortunate fel¬ 
 low. He married a bright, snappy little 
 wife, with eyes that could blaze like coals 
 of fire, or make a fellow’s heart go pitty- 
 pat when she looked at him lovingly (I 
 used to see her home from singing school 
 occasionally), and she took Jim in hand, 
 and made him, as they say, “toe the mark.” 
 I knew she would do that. There was 
 no sleeping until after sunrise in that 
 house. Jim had to work and she managed, 
 and it is a joke in the neighborhood, that 
 when a man wants a little money, he is 
 
ABOUT THE HARDUP FAMILY - . IIQ 
 
 directed to go to Jim Hardup. Whatever 
 mistakes the rest made, Jim made none 
 when he married. Had he married one 
 of the clinging-ivy sort that say,“Not as I 
 will, but as you please,” Jim would have 
 been as hard up as any of the Hardups, 
 and his boys would have lacked the grit 
 and snap that make their name a misno¬ 
 mer and a standing joke. Ben’s boys and 
 Sam’s are renters; some of them hired 
 hands. Jim’s boys own their own farms. 
 Moral: If you are ever inclined to be easy¬ 
 going, do not be afraid to cultivate the 
 acquaintance of the girl that has more get- 
 up and snap than you have; it may be the 
 life of you, young man, and I think it will. 
 
 The Hardups, however, do not all live 
 in the country. I know plenty of them 
 in town. Some are chronically hard up 
 because they have made mistakes in the 
 past and cannot help it. I pity them, as 
 I do every man that has been unfortunate, 
 through his own fault or not. Some are 
 financially hard up for the time being, 
 because of sickness or other misfor- 
 
120 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 tunes. Some, because they have been too 
 honest, and scorned to take an advantage 
 that would have made them rich. Others, 
 because they have had too much faith in 
 human nature, and have been the victims 
 of scoundrels like Bob Cheatem, who live 
 by studying the weak points of their fel¬ 
 low-beings, winning their confidence and 
 robbing them under the forms of law. 
 Many a fine house stands on a corner lot 
 on a fashionable street in the city, built 
 with money which was never earned by 
 the owner, but stolen under forms of law 
 from the men who earned it; and these 
 men now, if properly named, would be 
 be called “Hardup.” 
 
 I shall never forget the look that came 
 on Sam Hardup’s face, when, in passing 
 through his county seat we came to Bob 
 Cheatem’s broker office, miscalled “bank,” 
 and saw his fine horses and carriage, with 
 the liveried coachman, standing by the 
 curbstone. He stopped and pointing with 
 quivering finger, said, “There is the scoun¬ 
 drel that has made me and mine poor. 
 
ABOUT THE HARDUP FAMILY. I 21 
 
 May ‘his wife be a widow, and his children 
 fatherless/ ” I was about to rebuke him 
 when it occurred to me that he was quot¬ 
 ing from one of David’s psalms. As we 
 passed on he said: “Henry, you will have 
 to excuse me this time, but nothing but 
 the so-called cursing psalms meet that 
 man’s case; and I think it was to describe 
 just such scoundrels as he that they were 
 written. He owned those scabby sheep, 
 and in pretending to give good advice to 
 a friend in trouble, made him poor for 
 life. ‘Let his iniquity return upon his 
 own head.’ ” 
 
 And I said, “Amen/* 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ABOUT THE RICHMAN FAMILY. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 I told you in my last letter about some 
 of the misfortunes that befell various typ¬ 
 ical members of the Hardup family. 
 Whether they are true to type or not, you 
 can very easily find out by observing vari¬ 
 ous members of that interesting family 
 within the range of even your limited 
 acquaintance. You may possibly be in¬ 
 terested in some mistakes that have been 
 made by various typical members of an¬ 
 other family equally ancient and honora¬ 
 ble—the Richmans. The Richmans are 
 not nearly so numerous as the Hardups. 
 For some reason there are comparatively 
 few of them. Abe Lincoln used to say 
 that he thought the Lord must like the 
 Hardups best, or he would not have made 
 
ABOUT THE RICHMAN FAMILY. 
 
 123 
 
 so many of them. For some reason the 
 Richmans have, usually, small families; 
 and the more exclusive and aristocratic 
 they become, the fewer children they 
 seem to have. 
 
 They are a very old family. We read 
 in Bible times of one, Solomon Richman. 
 If he had not had plenty of money, I sup¬ 
 pose he would have gone by the name of 
 “Sol.” He knew a lot more than any 
 man of the family that I ever heard of. 
 He was regarded as the wisest man of 
 that day; and yet in his old days, in look¬ 
 ing back over his past, he seemed to put 
 very little store on his money, saying in 
 effect, that the piling up of money was 
 vanity and vexation of spirit, for the rea¬ 
 son that no man could tell whether his 
 boy would be a wise man or a fool, or 
 words to that effect; that the man who 
 gave himself up solely to piling up money 
 never knew who was going to spend it, 
 and that the very best thing a boy or man 
 could do, was to fear God and keep his 
 commandments. In this opinion I con- 
 
124 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 cur. He did a great many foolish things, 
 but, taking all in all, I regard him as the 
 smartest specimem of the Richman family 
 I ever heard of, and I advise you to read 
 his book on the conduct of life, which 
 is generally known by the name of “Prov¬ 
 erbs.’’ 
 
 I was reading only last night of a mem¬ 
 ber of the family who died a few days ago 
 in England. He began life poor, was the 
 son of a coal miner, and had scarcely 
 enough to live on the first years of his life. 
 He went to school at night, lost his father 
 in early youth, but became one of -the 
 greatest men England ever produced, 
 dying at the ripe old age of ninety-two, 
 and as cheerful in his last days as a boy 
 of twenty. 
 
 While this family numbers some of the 
 very best people the world has ever 
 known, it numbers a lot of very great 
 scoundrels. There seems to be something 
 wrong with the breed. They are not like 
 the Hardups, an even lot; and it is some¬ 
 what notorious that their boys seldom 
 
ABOUT THE RICHMAN FAMILY. 1 2b 
 
 turn out as well as those of the Hardups, 
 and their girls are very liable to make 
 poor matches. I suppose this is why they 
 are such an uneven lot. 
 
 One of my earliest friends was Colonel 
 Alexander Richman. He was a farmer, 
 and got his title, not by service in the 
 army, but as colonel of the militia. He 
 was a very good farmer, indeed, one of 
 best I have ever known, and being a 
 good business man as well as farmer, 
 reading the agricultural papers of that 
 day very closely, watching the markets, 
 and keeping his credit away above par, 
 he made a lot of money. He branched 
 out into matters outside the farm, and for 
 many years made money hand over fist 
 without oppressing anybody, or taking a 
 mean advantage. His word was as good 
 as a government bond. When his boys 
 got hold of the business, backed as they 
 were by their father’s unlimited credit, it 
 spread out, so to speak, all over creation, 
 with the result that in a few years the en¬ 
 tire credit of the family was no greater 
 
126 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 than that of the poorest Hardup in the 
 neighborhood, and their cash not much 
 greater in amount. 
 
 I knew his brother John well. He was 
 a well-to-do farmer, had two hundred 
 acres of land of the best, with the finest 
 improvements, a fine brick house, large 
 and commodious barns, a great orchard, 
 every field fenced hog tight, and every 
 thing else to match. He had an only son 
 named Robert. His mother died when 
 he was a baby, and he was brought up by 
 two maiden aunts, in whose eyes nothing 
 was too good for Robert. He slept late 
 in the morning, had an elegant pony to 
 ride, fine clothes, and all that. None of 
 the neighbors’ girls were good enough for 
 him, and he married a lady of reputed 
 wealth a long way from home, who knew 
 nothing of farm life, and he had to keep 
 two girls to wait on her. When the new 
 wife came the aunts paid dearly for their 
 indulgence of Robert, and left, calling 
 him an ungrateful wretch. In a few years 
 a young Hardup, who was getting on in 
 
ABOUT THE RICHMAN FAMILY. 
 
 127 
 
 the world, took in by sheriff’s deed the 
 last forty of Robert’s magnificent inheri¬ 
 tance. Robert moved to town, and died 
 a wreck. 
 
 A distant relative of this same family 
 moved West. His mother, so the tradi¬ 
 tion among the old folks goes, had a fancy 
 for odd names, and she called him Gray- 
 bel. He was known among the boys as 
 “Grabe.” and rather well liked. He had 
 none of the aristocratic airs that charac¬ 
 terized the other members of the family. 
 In fact, he became quite popular in school. 
 His father was one of the best of the con¬ 
 nection, and, in trying to uphold their 
 credit with his own, failed, and young 
 Graybel moved West, starting in the world 
 poor. He worked late and early, never 
 went in debt, lived poorly, and married a 
 thoroughly good, quiet sort of a wife, of 
 whom he, as well as his children, subse¬ 
 quently made a slave. When he got a 
 little money ahead through working, 
 scraping and saving, he loaned it to his 
 neighbors at anywhere from two to five 
 
128 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 per cent, a month, a thing not unusual in 
 those early days, and took cut-throat 
 chattel mortgages, iron-bound, copper- 
 bottomed, and warranted to hold anything 
 except a man’s life in his body. As his 
 wealth increased he loaned to his neigh¬ 
 bors who owned real estate, but were a 
 little behind-hand, on the same sort of 
 ironclad mortgages, making all payments 
 due and payable on default of the principal 
 or interest of the first payment, and fore¬ 
 closed on the first opportunity. He be¬ 
 came wealthy rapidly. The love of money 
 took complete possession of his entire be¬ 
 ing. The demon of avarice took an iron¬ 
 clad mortgage on the entire family, except 
 his patient and long-suffering wife, who 
 was charitable to the extent to which she 
 could carry on her benefactions in secret 
 —a limited extent in that family. 
 
 Father and sons worked together with 
 one mind and purpose, drove hard bar¬ 
 gains, bought stock, land and grain at the 
 very lowest prices which their owners 
 were compelled by their hard necessities 
 
ABOUT THE RICHMAN FAMILY. 
 
 129 
 
 to accept, prying constantly into the busi¬ 
 ness of their neighbors to see how soon, 
 and to what extent, they could put on the 
 screws. On week days they wore the 
 coarsest clothes, and it was often re¬ 
 marked on the quiet that but one of the 
 boys was ever seen at church at a time, 
 the old man never, and that the same suit 
 of clothes seemed to fit all the men of 
 that family. Finally the wife and mother 
 died from sheer overwork and exposure. 
 Her last remark was: “I am so tired—so 
 t-i-r-e-d.” 
 
 In less than a year a second wife ap¬ 
 peared on the scene, but she did not lin¬ 
 ger long. She was smart, ambitious, fairly 
 well educated, liked to dress in good taste 
 but not extravagantly, had a temper of 
 her own, and a tongue that could cut like 
 a razor without even raising the tone of 
 her voice. Long before this happened 
 the neighbors had changed the name of 
 Graybel to Grab All. There was some 
 quiet talk in the neighborhood when Grab 
 All Richman had his hair dyed, put down 
 
130 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 new carpets, got a good suit of clothes, 
 and a fine new buggy; but before the hair 
 dye had disappeared, and long before the 
 carpets or buggy were worn out, there was 
 a first-class sensation in the circuit court 
 in the shape of a divorce suit, in which 
 Grab All Richman was defendant and his 
 wife plaintiff, and a decree for alimony 
 which required the sale of two good farms 
 to satisfy. This broke the old man’s 
 heart, and he died in the winter. Before 
 the grass grew in the spring on the sod 
 which covered his grave, the sons were at 
 swords’ points over the division of the 
 estate, and there was a public washing of 
 soiled linen that disgusted the entire 
 neighborhood. 
 
 You will not live many years, nor be¬ 
 come acquainted in very many neighbor¬ 
 hoods until you find families and individ¬ 
 uals that approximate to this type of the 
 Richman family, though I hope you will 
 not meet any which this description en¬ 
 tirely fits. I draw the picture that you 
 may learn how to shape your life so that 
 
ABOUT THE RICHMAN FAMILY. I 3 1 
 
 its ending will not have the faintest like¬ 
 ness to that which I have drawn. 
 
 The Richmans, however, do not all live 
 in the country. Very few of them, in fact, 
 do, the atmosphere of the city being much 
 more congenial to their aristocratic tastes, 
 and city conditions much more favorable 
 to the gratification of the chief ambition 
 of most of them, that of making money, 
 or rather of transferring money from the 
 pockets of other people to their own. I 
 was walking along one of the fashionable 
 streets of one of the largest American 
 cities recently, with my friend, Silas Rich- 
 man, who, by the way, is a bit of a philos¬ 
 opher. He called my attention to a num¬ 
 ber of his relatives and connections who 
 were driving along in the fasnionable 
 boulevard with their fine teams driven by 
 liveried coachmen, and said: “Please note 
 the lines of care and anxiety written on 
 the faces of those men, and contrast them 
 with the happy-go-lucky air of the people 
 who are walking on this street I have 
 studied this matter closely for a number 
 
132 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 of years, and have always found that the 
 fellows who bear heavy burdens ride in 
 that style, while the men with light hearts, 
 happy countenances, and free from care, 
 and who have real enjoyment in life, walk. 
 I used to train in that crowd. I made in 
 twenty years over three-quarters of a mil¬ 
 lion dollars. I have lost $725,000 of it, 
 and my health besides, and I am just be¬ 
 ginning to realize what a consummate fool 
 I was, and what consummate fools are 
 those relations of mine. In 1893 I had 
 $830,000. good value. I knew I did not 
 need any more, but I took the foolish 
 notion into my head that I must be able 
 to truthfully call myself a millionaire. I 
 made large investments and involved my¬ 
 self in debt in order to make that other 
 $170,000 at one bold, Napoleonic stroke. 
 I had paid insurance for twenty-five years, 
 and never lost a cent; but just at the 
 wrong time one building took fire on which 
 I had foolishly allowed the insurance to 
 lapse two weeks before, and it swept away 
 $130,000. In a month another came and 
 
ABOUT THE R1CHMAN FAMILY. 
 
 133 
 
 swept away $64,000 more. This shook my 
 credit, and I was obliged to sell property 
 at a sacrifice. I had built a residence 
 costing me $90,000; spent $21,000 in fur¬ 
 nishing it; had fine teams and carriages, 
 and was starting out in great style. When 
 one piece of misfortune after another 
 came, I began to realize my folly, and 
 figured that I could board myself and 
 family in comfort for the taxes and inter¬ 
 est I was paying on my establishment. I 
 want to say to you now, that the last year, 
 when I have been living sensibly as a 
 common sort of a man, has been the hap¬ 
 piest year of my life. 
 
 “I was no greater fool than the rest of 
 them are yet. Look, for instance, at my 
 cousin George. He was reputed worth 
 $40,000,000. He died suddenly last week, 
 a comparatively young man. When he is 
 “cut up," that is, his estate is divided, it 
 will probably be found to be less than 
 $10,000,000. His sons are drunkards, and 
 unless he has cut them off, which I sus¬ 
 pect he has, with a life annuity, his prop¬ 
 erty will go to the dogs. 
 
134 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 “His brother Charles is reputed worth 
 twenty millions, and is probably worth 
 eight; has been once in the penitentiary, 
 and twice bankrupt. Each of these men 
 has incidentally rendered great service to 
 the public while getting rich, but they are 
 hated and despised because of their ava¬ 
 rice and greed. Charles told me, only last 
 night, that if he was as bad a man as peo¬ 
 ple thought he was, he would drown him¬ 
 self before morning. The fact is that 
 fate, perhaps you would call it Providence, 
 makes out of their avarice, greed and am¬ 
 bition, whips and goads to compel the 
 Richmans to carry out great enterprises 
 of which the public receives the benefit, 
 and for which they get the curses. As 
 for me, I am gathering up what is left of 
 the wreck of my fortune, the result of my 
 foolish ambition, and I propose to take 
 what comfort I can in this world while I 
 am left in it, and regain my health if I 
 can.” 
 
 I would not have you believe that all 
 the Richmans are of the types that I have 
 
ABOUT THE RICHMAN FAMILY. 
 
 135 
 
 sketched. Many members of this family 
 are among the best people that I have 
 ever known. The trouble with them is 
 that they do not run evenly, and have not 
 a clear, well-defined moral type. If they 
 were all good men this world would be a 
 great deal better world than it is. 
 
 I like to see men make money, and 
 plenty of it, honestly. I like to see farm¬ 
 ers, merchants, and all sorts and condi¬ 
 tions of men, who follow honest callings 
 and use honest means, get on in the world. 
 Capital is essential to the proper couduct 
 of the world’s business, and is one of the 
 best friends the poor man has when han¬ 
 dled by honest men. I hope you will be 
 a rich man some day, even if your name 
 is not Richman; but I could not wish you 
 a worse fate than will befall you if you 
 set before yourself money, profit, wealth, 
 as the end to be desired above all other 
 things, and at the expense of honor, man¬ 
 liness and character. 
 
 When this passion for getting money in 
 any way possible, but getting it, takes 
 
I36 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 hold of a boy or man, it is sure death by 
 strangulation to every noble purpose, and 
 every instinct, even, that distinguishes 
 man from the swine he feeds. It renders 
 him false to his associates—true friends 
 he can have none—cruel to his family and 
 to his hired hand. He must of necessity 
 be a harsh and cruel husband; a father 
 whom his sons and daughters may fear, 
 but can never love as children should love 
 their parents. Those whom he has 
 wronged, hate him; those who know him 
 best, necessarily despise him; and his 
 memory, like that of the wicked, shall rot. 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE HARDMAN FAMILY. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 When I was a farm boy we had in our 
 neighborhood a representative of the 
 Hardman family. I supposed in my inno¬ 
 cence that this was about all of that fam¬ 
 ily or class there were in existence; but I 
 have since learned, and so will you, that 
 they are a large family, very widely scat¬ 
 tered all over the world, and quite ancient, 
 if not quite honorable. Even as a boy I 
 noticed that one of the peculiarities of this 
 family was that no one really liked them, 
 or even pretended to like them, unless he 
 had something to gain by it, or fear from 
 them, if he failed to pretend to like them. 
 
 I could never discover that old Jakie 
 (no one never called him Mister) Hard¬ 
 man, had a true friend. I could never 
 
I 38 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 discern that his boys had any affection for 
 him, and, judging from the way his daugh¬ 
 ters ran away with worthless scamps, I 
 took it that fear and not love, ruled in 
 that home. 
 
 After I left home and met with other 
 members of the Hardman tribe, I discov¬ 
 ered several other peculiarities. One was 
 in their choice of lines of business or pro¬ 
 fession. I never knew one of them to be¬ 
 come a doctor, preacher, or professor in a 
 college, and seldom one a school teacher, 
 and he for not more than one or two terms. 
 I have known a few of them to become 
 lawyers, but always in connection with 
 some other line of business, such as note¬ 
 shaving, or real estate. I never knew as 
 much as one of them to be an editor, but 
 one or two were business managers of 
 newspapers—for a time. I never knew 
 one of them to be a candidate for con¬ 
 gress, or the state legislature. I have 
 known a number that were members of 
 city councils, and quite a number who 
 were assessors in the city, but never one 
 in the country, 
 
THE HARDMAN FAMILY. 
 
 139 
 
 Another peculiar feature of the Hard¬ 
 mans is that they do not generally believe 
 in any education beyond the “three R’s,” 
 readin/ Sitin’ and ’rithmetic. I have 
 known, among the hundreds that I have 
 met, a few that were fairly good farmers, 
 none that were fairly up-to-date; but as a 
 rule they got rich and made more money 
 than the up-to-date farmers, not, however, 
 by farming, but by trading, and by loan¬ 
 ing money at the very highest rate of in¬ 
 terest, and on cut-throat mortgages. 
 
 Perhaps the best way to give you an in¬ 
 sight into the Hardman character is to tell 
 you the story of Tom Hardman. He was 
 not a bad boy, as I remember him, and 
 had the sympathy of most of us, because 
 we knew he had a hard time of it at home. 
 He was worked hard; driven like a slave, 
 in fact, from the time school closed in 
 March, until the beginning of the winter 
 term in December. He was, however, 
 naturally bright, and picked up knowl¬ 
 edge quite readily. He was a sharp trader 
 even then, and the boy who swapped 
 
140 
 
 LETTERS to the farm boy. 
 
 knives or caps with Tom Hardman always 
 got the worst of it. The worst thing I 
 knew about him in those days, was his 
 disposition to knuckle to the big boys 
 when he ought to have resented their in¬ 
 sults, and his tyranny over the small boys 
 who had no big brothers to take their 
 part, two things, which, in my observation, 
 always go together in boy and man. He 
 ran away from home at the age of fifteen, 
 and x^er I had made the acquaintance of 
 larrc* numbers of the Hardman family, I 
 war* all the more anxious to learn Tom's 
 history. 
 
 On my last trip abroad I noticed on the 
 passenger list the name of Thomas Hard¬ 
 man, Esq., and was glad to learn, on intro¬ 
 ducing myself, that he was none other 
 than my old schoolmate. An ocean 
 steamer furnishes one of the best oppor¬ 
 tunities to study human nature and find 
 out what men really think on all important 
 subjects. Passengers are completely cut 
 off from the outside world for a week or 
 ten days. There are no letters, telegrams, 
 
THE HARDMAN FAMILY. I 4 I 
 
 no press of business, nothing whatever to 
 do but to be seasick, eat, sleep, look out 
 for whales and icebergs, and tell stories to 
 kill time. There is more or less of an ele¬ 
 ment of danger to all, which draws people 
 close together and makes them willing to 
 reveal their true character. Neither Tom 
 nor I were seasick, and after we had 
 traced out the history of each of the old 
 boys and girls in detail, we began to un¬ 
 fold our own experiences. He was not 
 free to talk about himself at first. I felt 
 my way gradually by talking about mat¬ 
 ters of current history, such as the proba¬ 
 ble working of the “Wilson bill” then go¬ 
 ing into effect; then on partisan politics, 
 literature, manufactures, and finally on 
 agriculture. I told him of my own hopes 
 and ambitions in the line of newspaper 
 work; that my aim was to develop the 
 agriculture of the nation, and especially 
 of the West; to aid in developing a class 
 of farmers mightier than Caesar's legions, 
 more invincible than Cromwell's Iron¬ 
 sides, the stay of the country m war, its 
 
142 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 balance wheel in peace when other classes 
 lose their heads; and that I wished so to 
 live and work that when I was dead and 
 gone my name would be remembered by 
 thousands as a man who had left the world 
 better than he found it. 
 
 He finally said to me on the last day of 
 the voyage: “Henry, you have been a 
 fool all your days. You had it in you to 
 make money and plenty of it; but you 
 have chosen instead to run on a fool’s 
 errand by trying to help other people. I 
 have heard of your doings from time to 
 time. I know more about you than you 
 think, and what I say to your face I have 
 said dozens of times behind your back. 
 You are a fool. I have no doubt you 
 have helped many, or at least you think 
 you have. You have also loaned money 
 on poor security, and you have been too 
 chicken-hearted to put the screws down 
 hard and realize on what security you 
 had. You have let women cry you out of 
 forcing collections, and they have laughed 
 at you behind your back. What do these 
 
THE HARDMAN FAMILY. 
 
 M3 
 
 people care for you or yours? You have 
 helped men into place and power, and 
 they have kicked you; you have given 
 scoundrels your confidence, and they have 
 betrayed it, and slandered and abused you 
 in order to make themselves believe that 
 they owed you nothing. 
 
 “I have done nothing of the kind. You 
 and I are as wide apart as the poles. You 
 believe in a God; I do not. You believe 
 there is a future; I do not. You believe 
 there is a right and wrong; I do not. You 
 believe there is such a thing as sin; I do 
 not. If there is a sin, it is that of perpet¬ 
 uating the race in such a cursed world as 
 this. You started out to look after other 
 people and to teach them how to fit them¬ 
 selves for another world; I started out to 
 look after number one, which means me, 
 myself, and I have done it. 
 
 “I ran away from home, as you know. 
 Why I did it you know. My father never 
 loved me, and I never loved him. There 
 was no love between my father and 
 mother, brothers and sisters. Love of 
 
144 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 every kind is a fool's dream; modesty is 
 hypocrisy; humility, cowardice. I hired 
 out to a farmer out West at $200 a year 
 and board. I drew enough to live on, 
 never over $50 a year, and often much 
 less, and I took his note at ten per cent, 
 per annum for the rest, and then loaned 
 him the interest. I did this for ten years. 
 The tenth year he had hard luck. His 
 crops failed, his hogs died of cholera, and 
 his cows aborted. Times were hard, 
 neither the banks nor loan companies were 
 advancing money, and I foreclosed and 
 took the farm subject to a mortgage of 
 $ 2,000 which cut out the homestead rights 
 and his wife’s dower. I farmed and he 
 hired out. 
 
 “My credit was now established. I 
 could borrow when, and as much as, I 
 wanted to. I quit work, rented the farm 
 for cash rent with an ironclad lease, and 
 collected every cent, although it took all 
 the fool fellow had and left the judgment 
 still unsatisfied, which made him my slave 
 for a year or two more. I looked out for 
 
THE HARDMAN FAMILY. 
 
 MS 
 
 lame ducks and took them in, and made 
 money hand over fist. 
 
 “I soon got tired of skinning grangers. 
 They squeal when they are skinned, and 
 so do the neighbors. They have a lot of 
 old fogy notions in the country. They 
 think the Ten Commandments are bind¬ 
 ing, and that Christ talked business in his 
 Sermon on the Mount. At thirty-five I 
 was worth $20,000. I shook the dust of 
 the country from my feet and came to the 
 city. I came in on the Wabash. The 
 train was detained by wrecks—a freight 
 wreck in front, one behind, and one on a 
 branch line, and we had to wait half a day. 
 I fell in with the master mechanic of the 
 shops in the city, and we got to talking 
 about Jay Gould’s management of his rail¬ 
 roads. He told me that Gould managed 
 to borrow, or get proxies for enough of 
 stock to elect him president, and he then 
 in various ways decreased the revenues 
 by large salaries, by improvements, by 
 diverting traffic to other roads, until he 
 run the stock away down, and bought in 
 
146 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 as much as possible. Shrewd men were 
 afraid to own stock in anything that Jay 
 Gould controlled, and he took advantage 
 of his own rascality. When he got a large 
 amount of it in, he began building up the 
 road by reversing his methods, and sold 
 out to suckers. He thus milked the pub¬ 
 lic into his own bucket. I said to myself, 
 Why cannot I do this on a small scale? 
 The first thing I did was to find a corpora¬ 
 tion lawyer after my own heart, and agree 
 to give him a slice on the sly. He was 
 well acquainted in the city, and we looked 
 out for prosperous corporations and found 
 one who would sell enough stock to give 
 me a controlling interest by voting with 
 one faction or the other. We then made 
 our deal for directors with the side that 
 was the more easily deceived. When we 
 got control we put up salaries, wiped out 
 the surplus, made no dividends, and ren¬ 
 dered the stock worthless to the minority. 
 If suits were brought my legal friend, 
 whom I employed to tell me, not what the 
 law was, but how I could evade it, de- 
 
THE HARDMAN FAMILY. 
 
 147 
 
 murred, delayed, postponed and worried 
 the other side until they sold me their 
 stock for a song. I soon found that I 
 could swipe in a hundred dollars in the 
 the city quicker than I could ten in the 
 country. The best thing of all is that city 
 men do not squeal. Their code of ethics 
 is the commercial, not the moral. Their 
 motto is ‘dog eat dog,’ and hence in the 
 city dogs are respectable. If a man at¬ 
 tends a fashionable church, and is good 
 pay, he can do about as he pleases. If 
 the preacher has old fogy notions, and 
 talks about old-fashioned morality, he 
 soon gets a sore throat, or his wife needs 
 a change of climate. It is not so in the 
 country. The stupid granger looked on 
 my proffered donations as ‘the price of a 
 dog,’ or ‘the hire of a prostitute,’ quoted 
 Scripture, and said Tom Hardman was 
 trying to buy his way into heaven with 
 the wages of unrighteousness. The city 
 is the place for me. There is ten dollars 
 to be had by looting corporations, to one 
 by skinning grangers.” 
 
143 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 “Do you mean to tell me,” said I, “that 
 there is no relief in a corporation for 
 minority stockholders? I myself am a 
 minority stockholder in a newspaper cor¬ 
 poration, and there is trouble ahead with 
 the majority.” 
 
 “None, whatever, unless you can prove 
 the most glaring fraud. The majority can 
 defraud all they please if they have the 
 right kind of a lawyer. He can file mo¬ 
 tions for more explicit statements; can 
 move to strike out part of the pleadings, 
 or divide, and thus secure delay; he can 
 then demur, postpone, appeal, ask for new 
 trials, and prolong litigation for ten years, 
 until the property is entirely eaten up in 
 salaries and expenses. The danger of be¬ 
 ing caught in fraud in a corporation never 
 troubles me. I never give it a moment’s 
 thought.” 
 
 I looked at him in amazement and re¬ 
 plied: “Tom, this is the first time we have 
 met for forty years. It will, in all proba¬ 
 bility, be the last. I will not put in words 
 what I think of you and your methods. 
 
THE HARDMAN FAMILY. 
 
 149 
 
 They are not new. They are as old as the 
 Egyptian bondage. They are the methods 
 of scoundrels in all ages. They have 
 ruined, not men merely, but nations and 
 civilizations. The Prophet Micah de¬ 
 scribed just such scoundrels as you when 
 he wrote: 
 
 ‘Woo to them that devise iniquity,—and work evil upon 
 their beds: 
 
 When the morning is light, they practice it, 
 
 Because it is in the power of their hand. 
 
 And they covet fields, and take them by violence; 
 
 And houses, and take them away: 
 
 So they oppress a man and his house,—even a man and his 
 heritage.’ 
 
 “He described you to a dot when he 
 said: 
 
 ‘Who hate the good, and love the evil; 
 
 Who pluck off their skin from off them,—and their flesh 
 from off their bones; 
 
 Who also eat the flesh of my people,—and flay their skin 
 from off them; 
 
 And they break their bones,—and chop them in pieces, as 
 for the pot.’ 
 
 “It is men like you that are corrupting 
 the very foundations of public morality, 
 and fast bringing about the same condi¬ 
 tion of things which the prophet de¬ 
 scribed when he said: 
 
150 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 ‘The princes ********** 
 
 * * * abhor judgment, and pervert all equity. 
 
 They build up Zion with blood,—and Jerusalem with in¬ 
 iquity. 
 
 The heads there .-j judge for reward,—and the priests there¬ 
 of teach for Hire, 
 
 And the prophets thereof divine for money 
 
 “You are a typical Hardman, not only 
 in name and nature, but altogether the 
 meanest, lowest, and most dangerous that 
 I have ever met; and notwithstanding all 
 your disbelief in a future or a God, or the 
 worth of this present life, if this ship were 
 to strike a rock and begin to sink, you 
 would be the first man to push the women 
 and children out of the life boat in order 
 to save your worthless carcass/' 
 
 You will, my dear boy, in the future 
 meet with many of this family. You will 
 not find many as totally destitute of all 
 human feeling and sense of honor as this 
 one. I wish, however, to put you on your 
 guard against the whole tribe, for when a 
 man hardens himself against right, and 
 uses his full power to oppress, whether 
 his motive be the love of money, or the 
 love of power, it is only a question of 
 
THE HARDMAN FAMILY. I 5 I 
 
 time, opportunity and ability when he will 
 fill out the full measure of the iniquity of 
 Tom Hardman. It is only a question of 
 time when the man who abandons the 
 moral code which has made this nation 
 great, and gives himself over to the teach¬ 
 ings of commercial morality, current to 
 some extent in the country, and more 
 largely in the city, will become a moral 
 wreck, deserving of the scorn and con¬ 
 tempt of all men who love their country 
 or their race. 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 “commercial morality.” 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 In my last letter I quoted Tom Hard¬ 
 man as believing in what he called “com¬ 
 mercial morality.” This may possibly be 
 a new term to you and need explanation. 
 You have probably assumed that there is 
 but one kind of morality, that which is 
 taught in the Sabbath-school and from 
 the pulpit, is based on the teachings of 
 Moses and the prophets, and finds its best 
 statement and application in the Sermon 
 on the Mount. Before you have any very 
 large experience in the world, you will 
 discover that there is another morality, 
 practiced but not preached, that pervades 
 very largely the business of the nations, 
 of our own nation, and particularly of the 
 large cities, to no little extent of the coun_ 
 
“commercial morality/’ 153 
 
 try, and, to some extent, of your own par¬ 
 ticular neighborhood. No pulpit pro¬ 
 claims it, no Sabbath-school teacher men¬ 
 tions it, no newspaper advocates it, no 
 individual avows it until he has reached a 
 point when he feels it safe to defy public 
 opinion. With this exception, the only 
 men who are the avowed believers in this 
 commercial morality are common thieves, 
 confidence men, gamblers in common 
 gambling houses, gamblers on the boards 
 of trade, and such other professions as are 
 under the ban of public opinion. The 
 most common hypocrisy practiced in 
 these modern days is that of professing 
 to believe in Christian morality, and yc v 
 in business practicing commercial morali¬ 
 ty, and making atonement or compensa¬ 
 tion by liberal contributions, obtained by 
 practice of the opposite, in support of the 
 teachers of Christian morality. 
 
 To make this plain, let me say that 
 Christianity assumes that there is a possi¬ 
 ble right and wrong in every business 
 transaction; that the moral law governs 
 
154 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 there, as elsewhere; that there can be no 
 separation of business from morals, and 
 that a fair and just trade is as pleasing to 
 the Almighty as a church contribution, a 
 prayer, or a sermon. If the Bible does 
 not teach this in its every page, directly 
 or indirectly, I confess I have never been 
 able to understand its meaning. Com¬ 
 mercial morality, on the other hand, 
 assumes that business is one thing, benev¬ 
 olence another; or, to put it in the tersest 
 possible terms, business is business; by 
 which bad men mean that business has no 
 connection whatever with morals or relig¬ 
 ion. Good men frequently use the term 
 with an entirely different meaning, name¬ 
 ly, that business should be conducted on 
 well established business principles. Now, 
 the truth is, that while business should be 
 conducted on the principles which human 
 experience for ages has proved to be cor¬ 
 rect, none the less will a business conduct¬ 
 ed on these principles prove to be one of 
 the highest forms of benevolence, in that 
 it will encourage thrift, self-control, integ- 
 
“commercial morality." 155 
 
 rity, and furnish reliable and steady em¬ 
 ployment to the thousands that are not 
 capable of conducting, on their own ac¬ 
 count, large business enterprises. While 
 business is not religion, nevertheless it 
 furnishes the best possible sphere for the 
 practice of the basic principles of all re¬ 
 ligion, taught in every pulpit in Chris¬ 
 tian lands. If we divorce business from 
 religion, we cut the very foundation from 
 under all the civilization that the world 
 has yet achieved that is worth retaining. 
 
 The danger to the farm boy is, that he 
 may adopt the maxims which I have quot¬ 
 ed above in their bad sense, instead of in 
 their true and proper sense; and it is only 
 a question of time, opportunity and cir¬ 
 cumstances, when, if he should do so, he 
 will develop a character of which Tom 
 Hardman is an extreme, but by no means 
 an uncommon, type. The foundation of 
 all dishonest business is in buying a thing 
 for less than it is worth. Every thorough¬ 
 ly honest trade gives a full equivalent for 
 the value received. I wish you to get this 
 
I56 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 idea clearly in mind. Honest dealing con¬ 
 sists in buying things for what they are 
 worth, as determined by the supply and 
 demand; dishonest dealing consists in 
 getting in some way the advantage, and 
 buying for less than they are worth. 
 Every trade on its face purports to be the 
 exchange of goods, or goods for money, 
 as of equal value, or as a full equivalent. 
 You say: How is it possible for men to 
 make money, or profit by trading, if in 
 every honest deal a full equivalent is 
 given? The answer is easy and can best 
 be given by way of illustration. Your 
 father raises corn. He grows more than 
 the family, or the stock on the farm, can 
 consume, or than he desires to keep for 
 an advanced price. He sells this corn at 
 its market value on the date of sale as de¬ 
 termined by the supply and demand in 
 great markets. He can not use or keep 
 it to advantage. He therefore sells it to 
 the man who has use use for it, either to 
 feed to his stock, or to ship to a distant mar¬ 
 ket at carload rates, which are always less 
 
“commercial morality.” 157 
 
 than rates on part of a carload. While a full 
 equivalent is rendered, your father is the 
 gainer, because he has disposed of some¬ 
 thing for which he had no present use. 
 The money that he receives for it is of 
 more value to him than the corn, while 
 the corn is of more value to the buyer 
 than the money; hence, both profit by this 
 strictly honest trade. 
 
 Your father grows live stock as a means 
 of disposing to better advantage the 
 products of his farm. When it is finished 
 he can not use it to advantage. It has 
 gained all that it can profitably. He 
 ships it to the nearest stock market 
 and sells it to the packer. Your father 
 can use the money to much better ad¬ 
 vantage than he could the live stock; 
 the packer can use the live stock to much 
 much better advantage than he could the 
 money; hence, each profits by the trans¬ 
 action, for each has disposed of an article 
 for which he has no present use,—your 
 father, the live stock; the packer, the 
 money. 
 
I58 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 Your father wishes to buy live stock to 
 consume his grain, but does not have the 
 money; the banker has. He gives his 
 note for six months at six or eight per 
 cent, interest, figuring that after paying 
 the interest, and paying himself market 
 price for the corn, and a reasonable price 
 for the grass that it will take to fatten the 
 stock, he will have more left than will pay 
 the interest on the note. The banker has 
 more money than he needs and he loans 
 it for the interest it will bring. The banker 
 puts the money to work for him in the 
 way of bringing in interest; your father 
 puts the money to work in condensing his 
 crops for market; hence, each is a gainer 
 by the transaction, and neither would en¬ 
 ter into it unless he had reason to believe 
 he would be the gainer. Each has ren¬ 
 dered to the other a full equivalent, and 
 by reason of their different circumstances 
 and conditions, each makes a profit. The 
 same law applies in all kinds of legitimate 
 business. A full equivalent is rendered 
 in every case with the prospect of possi- 
 
“COMMERCIAL MORALITY.” I 59 
 
 ble and probable profit to both parties in 
 the transaction. All such transactions 
 are in accordance with Christian morality. 
 
 Men who are guided by commercial 
 morality act from entirely different meth¬ 
 ods. The idea of getting either something 
 for nothing, or much for little, is the pre¬ 
 vailing motive with them. For example, 
 the manufacturers of any line of goods 
 form a trust. They close up factories, 
 dismiss labor, limit production, and ad¬ 
 vance the price, the object being to secure 
 from every consumer something more 
 than the article is really worth, or for 
 which it can be produced. They think 
 they can do it, and proceed to do it with¬ 
 out the slightest regard to the rights of 
 labor, or to the real cost of production, 
 and on the theory, which is the essence of 
 savagery and barbarism, that might makes 
 right. The robber barons of the Middle 
 Ages who occupied commanding positions 
 on the great highways of travel, levied 
 blackmail on all comers and goers be¬ 
 cause they could. Their legitimate sue- 
 
160 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 cessoi> are the robber trusts of the nine¬ 
 teenth- century, who take a few cents from 
 this man, and a few dollars from that, 
 simply because they can, or think they 
 can. This is commercial morality. 
 
 The railroads have a large amount of 
 what is known as watered stock; that is, 
 certificates of stock issued without the 
 value of the face of the stock being ex¬ 
 pended in constructing the road. In other 
 words, it was issued without consideration. 
 In order to secure dividends on this 
 watered stock, they have been forming 
 combinations for the last twenty or thirty 
 years, agreeing to advance and maintain 
 rates and compel the public to pay the 
 increase. The only justification made for 
 this is that they can. We find, when we 
 get down to the very truth, that the basis 
 of all modern rate-making, is “what the 
 traffic will bear;” that is, what the public 
 can be forced to pay. This is commercial 
 morality,—the morality of the robber 
 baron of the Middle Ages, the morality 
 of the thief and the robber. I can; there- 
 
“commercial morality." 161 
 
 fore, I will. Or, as Rob Roy puts it: 
 Let him take who will, and keep who 
 
 CAN. 
 
 Corporations of all kinds take kindly to 
 commercial morality. A corporation is 
 an artificial person. It is made up of 
 stockholders who own shares, and it ex¬ 
 empts the shareholder from any personal 
 liability beyond the value of his shares. 
 Its life is limited to the years prescribed 
 in the charter by the law, but provides for 
 a renewal indefinitely, and a majority vote 
 of the shareholders governs. It is thus 
 endowed with practical immortality. 
 Death, that cuts short the robberies of the 
 individual, spares the corporation. It has 
 no soul to be saved, or to be lost, and 
 hence is very likely to ignore all moral 
 precepts, all idea of responsibility to a 
 higher Power, and very gradually develops 
 among men who have much to do with 
 corporations, what is known as a “corpor¬ 
 ate conscience"—a conscience that has no 
 regard for moral law, and but little regard 
 for human law. For it is a curious fact 
 
1 62 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 that a man who repudiates moral obliga¬ 
 tions has little respect for legal obliga¬ 
 tions. The more experienced he becomes 
 the less respect he has, owing to the fact 
 that he finds out how easy it is to evade 
 legal penalties by methods which I have 
 in a previous letter described. Many men, 
 in fact, have two consciences,—a corpor¬ 
 ate conscience, and an individual. As 
 members of a corporation, they will do 
 things, apparently with a clear conscience, 
 which they would absolutely scorn to do 
 in the transaction of their private business. 
 In the one case commercial morality, or 
 the morality of the thief and the robber, 
 governs; in their private business Chris¬ 
 tian morality governs until the greater im¬ 
 mediate gain to be made by corporation 
 methods blunts the Christian conscience, 
 and they become business hypocrites, pro¬ 
 fessing one thing, and practicing the op¬ 
 posite. Hence, in large cities business is 
 becoming largely “dog eat dog,” the men 
 in one line of business waiting patiently 
 until sharpness of competition results in 
 
“commercial morality.” 163 
 
 the failure of a competitor, and then they 
 all pounce on the crippled man and de¬ 
 vour his substance, much as a pack of 
 wolves stop in their chase to devour one 
 that has been shot by the pursued. 
 
 I was sitting, one evening, on deck of a 
 steamer on the Pacific, as the cooks were 
 clearing off the tables and throwing the 
 scraps out of the porthole into the ocean. 
 Dozens of white gulls were following in 
 the wake of the ship, and dropping down 
 and devouring the bucketfuls of scraps as 
 they were thrown out on the waves. One 
 large, gray gull, of an entirely different 
 species, followed along leisurely, and just 
 as the white gulls began to devour the 
 coveted morsels, dropped down amongst 
 them and scooped everything into his 
 capacious crop. He kept this up for an 
 hour, and I marveled at that bird’s capaci¬ 
 ty, and said to myself: “There is a type 
 of business life; that scoundrel waits until 
 the gulls have located the food and had a 
 taste, when he swoops down and takes in 
 the bulk of it.” By sheer force of power 
 
164 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 he was the robber of the sea, and a fine 
 illustration of a class of men who are gov¬ 
 erned only by commercial morality. 
 
 Nor is the country exempt from the 
 operations of men guided only by com¬ 
 mercial morality. The horse jockey is, 
 perhaps, the best type,—a type, however, 
 so well known by honest men, that he is 
 never trusted by farmers. They never 
 believe what a horse jockey tells them. 
 They, perhaps, have never stated the rea¬ 
 son to themselves, but it is because he is 
 guided by commercial morality. They 
 do not believe him even when he is not 
 trading horses. They are right in this, 
 for a man who learns to deceive in one 
 line, will soon learn to deceive in all. A 
 more respectable type, but more danger¬ 
 ous, is the broker who calls himself a ban¬ 
 ker and extorts usury, anywhere from one 
 to five per cent, a month, because he can, 
 When I hear farmers say that such a bro¬ 
 ker, or so-called banker, is not “in busi¬ 
 ness for his health,” I know exactly what 
 they mean. 
 
“commercial morality/’ 165 
 
 A still more dangerous type is that of 
 the respectable farmer who practices the 
 broker's methods. He has money to lend, 
 not to the best farmers, but to the worst, 
 whenever their hard necessities compel 
 them to pay extortionate interest. This 
 scoundrel often creates necessities by urg¬ 
 ing men to borrow, when he knows that 
 borrowing must lead to loss, extending 
 credit to an unreasonable limit, and when 
 he finds the borrower in a tight place by 
 reason of crop failures, or other misfor¬ 
 tunes, puts on the screws and demands im¬ 
 mediate payment; and in default, fore¬ 
 closes, bankrupting the borrower. An¬ 
 other example is that of the landlord who 
 uses all the power given him by a land¬ 
 lord's lien, either to bankrupt the renter 
 completely, or to hold a judgment over 
 him in such a way as to make him his 
 slave for years to come, and all because 
 the law gives him the power, which he 
 mistakes for the right. 
 
 I have thus far spoken of men who 
 practice commercial morality with a set 
 
166 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 purpose for gain. I would not do justice 
 to a large class of business men, were I to 
 fail to state that many of them are com¬ 
 pelled, in a manner, to practice commer¬ 
 cial morality, or go out of business. Let 
 me illustrate: A large store in the city, 
 for example, that repudiates Moses and 
 the Sermon on the Mount, and believes 
 thoroughly, in a bad sense, that “business 
 is business,” offers for sale, at a low price, 
 goods that have been dishonestly made 
 by contract, possibly in sweat shops, or in 
 factories where shoddy displaces hon¬ 
 est material, and where workmanship is 
 cheap and poor. This class of stores sets 
 the pace which honest men must follow, 
 or go out of business, at least until com¬ 
 mercial morality is so far educated out of 
 buyers that they lose their mania for buy¬ 
 ing bargains. Until this is done, the dis¬ 
 honest element in business will set the 
 pace which honest men must follow, or 
 quit. These dishonest dealers compete 
 with each other in the race of securing 
 cheaper and more worthless goods, by 
 
“commercial morality.” 167 
 
 cheapening material, lowering the price 
 of labor, forcing honest, but poor, laborers 
 into pauperism, and honest and skilled 
 laborers to accept the wages of the un¬ 
 skilled, thus degrading labor, demoraliz¬ 
 ing business, debauching the public mor¬ 
 als, and transforming us into a nation of 
 adulterators, money - grabbers, bargain- 
 seekers, and all that, until the problem of 
 how to be an honest merchant, and prac¬ 
 tice the Sermon on the Mount on week 
 days while professing it on Sabbath, is 
 one of the most difficult problems of 
 human experience. I seldom hear a lady 
 boasting of how cheap she bought a dress 
 or bonnet, without thinking of the poorly 
 paid woman who made that bonnet. Laz¬ 
 arus must work cheap, beg, or starve, in 
 order that Dives may fare sumptuously 
 every day. The trouble is that the mania 
 for cheapness, the craze for the bargain 
 counter, pervades the city and country 
 alike; and when we come to the last anal¬ 
 ysis, it is closely related to the gambler’s 
 mania of getting something for nothing. 
 
1 68 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 I did not intend to moralize in this way, 
 but it is better that you should understand 
 before entering on active work some of 
 the difficulties and perplexities with which 
 the business man must grapple if he in¬ 
 tends to be a thoroughly honest man. 
 
 It is a very healthy sign that in nearly 
 all country communities men who follow 
 these practices are more or less under the 
 ban of public opinion, an opinion not al¬ 
 ways expressed, but felt. One of the high¬ 
 est compliments that farming communities 
 pay to themselves, is the high honor in 
 which they hold farmers and business men 
 of all classes who do business on princi¬ 
 ples of the highest honor. When a man 
 sends a carload of hogs or cattle, to the 
 dealer at the station in the full confidence 
 that whether the market of the day before 
 be up or down, he will get the full value 
 without a previous contract, he pays him 
 about as high honor as one man can well 
 pay another, and we have noticed that 
 dealers who treat farmers in this spirit are 
 almost uniformly men who make money. 
 
“commercial morality.” 169 
 
 In all dealings of man with man, the con¬ 
 fidence of the customer is the most valua¬ 
 ble asset of the dealer. It is something 
 that cannot be taxed, or destroyed by fire, 
 or by flood; cannot be measured by dol¬ 
 lars, but is gradually coined into dollars 
 as we transform the rain, the sunshine, the 
 electric currents, and the fertility of the 
 soil into crops. There can be no confi¬ 
 dence, whatever, reposed in the man or 
 corporation that is guided only by com¬ 
 mercial morality. It is death to manhood, 
 death to legitimate business, death to 
 every noble feeling and aspiration, and 
 were it generally practiced, or even near¬ 
 ly so, it would be death to the civilization 
 of the nineteenth century. It is under the 
 condemnation of every law of God; it is 
 under the ban of all good men; it is civil¬ 
 ized savagery and business barbarism; at 
 least, so believes your 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE BRODHEAD FAMILY. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 When I was your age, although I had 
 been very well instructed in the doctrine 
 of “total depravity” as a theological prop¬ 
 osition, I did not believe that such men 
 as Bob Cheatem and Tom Hardman had 
 any real existence in country places. I 
 thought they belonged to the city. 1 
 thought the doctrine of “total depravity” 
 as a theological proposition, had to be 
 modified in a great many ways to make it 
 conform to the facts of existence. I had 
 never heard of “commercial morality,” but 
 a great deal of the morality taught from 
 the pulpit and in the home. I was taught 
 that while, as an abstract principle, men 
 were totally depraved, and sinned as soon 
 as they were born, if not before, or at 
 
THE BRODHEAD FAMILY. ijl 
 
 least, as soon as they were able, neverthe¬ 
 less, it was but just and fair that men 
 should prove themselves bad before I had 
 a right to treat them as bad men. It has 
 cost me a good deal of money and grief 
 to learn that I was mistaken in some 
 things, and to discover that, even amidst 
 country surroundings, among farmers and 
 farm boys, types of the characters I have 
 mentioned were possible and actual. I 
 have painted these pictures for you be¬ 
 cause I have undertaken to furnish you 
 sketches from life that you may recognize 
 as correct, or at least approximately so, 
 in your own county, in any county, in any 
 state, and in any land. You ought to 
 know something of the world of men with 
 whom you must soon deal, and “fore¬ 
 warned is forearmed.” If I were to stop 
 painting these pictures now, I would give 
 you an entirely wrong conception of 
 human nature. The good people, not 
 wholly good, but people who are trying to 
 live right lives and deal on honor, as in 
 the sight of God, with their fellow-men, 
 
172 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 outnumber vastly those who are parasites 
 on society; not merely parasites, but foes 
 to all that is good, and who are, by their 
 crooked methods, sapping the very foun¬ 
 dations of our civilization. 
 
 I shall not be able to find time to tell 
 you of the scores and scores of nobler 
 types of farm boys who are now making 
 this nation great,—the Brodheads, the 
 Goodmans, the Wisemans, the Faithfuls, 
 and dozens of other similar types that are 
 well worth sketching. When I come to 
 study the better class of farmers, and 
 the business men of the great cities who 
 have grown up on the farm, whose lives 
 have been fashioned on farm models, the 
 number of pictures that rise before me is 
 so great that it embarrasses me to make 
 the selection, and I find it impossible to 
 find time or space to describe them all. 
 They are not all perfect—none of them 
 are. 1 hold it true that there is not “a 
 just man upon earththat is, an absolute¬ 
 ly just man, “that doeth good ,, always and 
 everywhere, and “sinneth not,” nor makes 
 
THE BRODHEAD FAMILY. 
 
 T 73 
 
 a mistake. I would do wrong if I were to 
 describe such. The beauty and power of 
 the Scriptures rest largely upon the fact 
 that they describe actual men and not per¬ 
 fect saints. I always take delight in read¬ 
 ing that story of Moses when he, grown 
 up in the court, the companion of princes, 
 got mad and killed the Egyptian who was 
 imposingon one of his poor and oppressed 
 brethren. It was not right for Moses to do 
 that, and he had to leave the country for 
 forty years for doing it; but I do like to 
 see a man’s blood boil at the sight of 
 wrong, even if he does make a mistake in 
 his methods. If I were judge, these men 
 would get off easily. I have always felt 
 more kindly to Abraham after reading that 
 fib he told Pharoah about his good-look¬ 
 ing wife. It was mean in him to do it, 
 and dangerous as well; but otherwise 
 Abraham would have been such a perfect 
 character that you and I would not think 
 of trying to imitate him. The story of 
 Jacob’s sharp practice with Laban in divid¬ 
 ing up the stock, where it was diamond 
 
174 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 cut diamond, the sin of David, and the 
 foolishness of Solomon the Wise, all show 
 that the Bible paints men as they are, and 
 not as. they should be; and in my feeble 
 way I am trying to do the same thing for 
 you. There is no man that I have ever 
 seen that I would like to hold up to you 
 as a perfect model. We are all but abridg¬ 
 ments of a perfect humanity, and the very 
 strength of character in one right line 
 seems almost of necessity to involve a 
 corresponding weakness in some other 
 line. 
 
 Of all the types of men I have met, I 
 know few that are more deserving of 
 your imitation than the Brodheads, al¬ 
 though some others are equally worthy. 
 Perhaps I take more kindly to these than 
 most others, for the reason that Squire 
 Brodhead was one of my earliest advisors, 
 notwithstanding the disparity in our years. 
 He was my friend and my father’s friend. 
 No true man can hold in anything else 
 than very great reverence, the man who 
 has been both his friend, and his father’s 
 
THE BRODHEAD FAMILY. 
 
 175 
 
 friend. A friendship that will last through 
 two generations is of the right sort, and 
 must be based on real merit. Nothing 
 short of genuine worth will bear that 
 sort of strain. I call him “Squire,” 
 which he was not legally, but in fact. He 
 was never a justice of the peace. He ob¬ 
 tained his title because, when compara¬ 
 tively a young man, he was noted for 
 being able to tell his neighbors, whenever 
 any difficulty occurred between them, 
 what was the right thing to do, and the 
 right time to do it. He was one of those 
 men whose breadth and clearness of view 
 enables them to get at the real rights of 
 things, and he had the wisdom to know 
 what to say and when to say it. He, there¬ 
 fore, became by common consent a sort 
 of arbitrator of difficulties, and general 
 advisor, and they dubbed him “The 
 Squire.” I have heard that they tried to 
 elect him once, and did elect him against 
 his consent, but he refused to qualify, by 
 saying that he had a poor opinion of law 
 and of lawyers; did not believe, in fact, 
 
I 76 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 that honest men had anything to do with 
 law, that they lived above it; and quoted 
 the Scripture: “The law was not made for 
 the righteous man, but for the lawless and 
 disobedient.” He once told me that two 
 of his neighbors quarreled and employed 
 able lawyers, and that he happened to 
 know that one of the lawyers had said to 
 the other: “We have two fat geese to be 
 picked, and we are foolish if we do not 
 get a fine crop of feathers every term of 
 court” He told the litigants this fact, 
 settled their difficulties for them, and 
 made up his mind, as he afterwards told 
 me, that there should be no litigation 
 among his neighbors if he could possibly 
 help it; and therefore he was “The Squire” 
 until the day of his death. 
 
 He was a first-class farmer,—one of the 
 best I have ever known. He was not a 
 particularly hard worker. He used to tell 
 me, in fact, that if a man did not work 
 with his brains it was not much matter 
 whether he worked with his hands or not. 
 He seemed to make money easily, and the 
 
THE BRODHEAD FAMILY. 
 
 177 
 
 neighbors counted him lucky. I once 
 asked him the secret of his success, and 
 he said there was no secret about it; that 
 when everybody wanted to buy, he sold; 
 and when the neighbors wanted to sell, he 
 bought: and that it was always safe to buy 
 as much as you had money to pay for 
 when it was offered at less than the cost 
 of production. When the neighbors quit 
 breeding horses because of the construc¬ 
 tion of the Pennsylvania railroad, thinking 
 there would be no further market forthem, 
 he began growing colts, giving it as his 
 judgment that the development of the 
 country, as the result of steam carriage, 
 would increase the demand for horses far 
 beyond anything that had ever been 
 known before. He was the first in our 
 neighborhood to introduce tile drainage, 
 among the first to grow clover, to use the 
 drill, the mowing machine, the horse rake 
 and the reaper. 
 
 He was a man of very decided opinions 
 on any subject on which he would give an 
 opinion at all, and one of the most admir- 
 
1/8 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 able traits of his character was that he had 
 the most profound respect for the exactly 
 opposite opinions held by his neighbors. 
 His cousin James, living on the adjoining 
 farm, was a man of the same mold of 
 character. Both were true Brodheads, 
 differing widely on many subjects, espec¬ 
 ially on politics and religion; and yet be¬ 
 tween the two there was never the slight¬ 
 est misunderstanding, or even the suspen¬ 
 sion of the most intimate personal rela¬ 
 tions. The Squire was a Presbyterian of 
 the most pronounced type; James was, 
 on all doctrinal points, a good Methodist. 
 The Squire was a Whig, believed in a pro¬ 
 tective tariff and public improvements, 
 and spelled the word “nation/’ with a big 
 N; James was a Democrat—other Whigs 
 called him a “Locofoco,” the Squire never, 
 —believed in free trade, as little govern¬ 
 ment as possible, was jealous of the en¬ 
 croachments of the national government, 
 spelled both “state” and “nation” with cap¬ 
 itals. James always put up a tall hickory 
 pole as soon as the campaign opened; the 
 
THE BRODHEAD FAMILY. 
 
 179 
 
 Squire allowed his boys to put up a Whig 
 pole as tall, but no taller. The anti-slavery 
 feeling was rising, and the Squire kept a 
 station on the “underground railway.” 
 One of his boys was conductor, and many 
 a slave fleeing from bondage, who in some 
 mysterious way had found a hiding place 
 in an obscure corner of his barn, was spir¬ 
 ited away to Canada. James believed— 
 and in this differed from nearly all his 
 Methodist brethren, to their great grief 
 and shame—in the rights of the slave-hol¬ 
 der as determined by the Dred Scott de¬ 
 cision; but he did not allow himself to 
 know, nor his boys, that when the Squire’s 
 barn or cellar were likely to be searched, 
 there was a similar place in his barn, pro¬ 
 vided without his knowledge, where a 
 fugitive might find safety, and often did. 
 Had he known it, he would have told the 
 sheriff, if asked; but he made it a point 
 never to know. 
 
 Many a long winter evening have I been 
 an eager listener to the arguments of these 
 men on Divine Sovereignty and free will, 
 
i8o 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 on election and reprobation, on tariff and 
 and free trade, or whatever subject might 
 come up. I have always admired the dig¬ 
 nity and courtesy which these old men 
 showed to each other in their discussions, 
 the one never speaking until the other 
 was through; and I have since observed 
 that gentlemen of the highest breeding 
 and most perfect manners, wherever I 
 have found them, do the same. The 
 Squire used to close up his argument on 
 tariff something in this way: 
 
 “What is the use, James, of importing a 
 single ton of iron? Don’t you see that in 
 importing it from abroad we are import¬ 
 ing the ore, the coal, the labor, and the 
 food that it costs to support the laborer 
 and his teams, when we have all these raw 
 materials lying around us cheaper than 
 any place in the world?” 
 
 And James would answer, “Don’t you 
 know, Squire, that every fall you have to 
 come to me for watermelons and sweet 
 potatoes grown on my sandy bottom, be¬ 
 cause I can grow them cheaper and better 
 
THE BRODHEAD FAMILY. l8l 
 
 than you can on your heavy soil? Why 
 not have trade as free between nations as 
 between states, and allow every man to 
 buy where he can buy the cheapest, and 
 sell where he can sell the dearest?” 
 
 And they would shake hands, wish 
 each other good night, and in less than a 
 week have another set-to and go over the 
 same, or similar, ground again. 
 
 Many years afterwards, when I was a 
 man grown, I met the old Squire, then 
 bent with age, and we talked over the past. 
 He told me of the death of James, and his 
 great grief and loneliness, spoke of the old 
 discussions, and pointing to the hub of an 
 old wagon wheel, with the spokes partly 
 broken off, the felley and tire gone, he 
 said: “You see those ants on that hub. 
 They may be discussing questions similar 
 to those James and I used to discuss. 
 Those two little fellows may be arguing 
 whether the spokes starting in opposite 
 directions can ever meet, concluding in 
 their wisdom that it is impossible, and the 
 alder, larger, and wiser ant may be telling 
 
182 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 them that they know nothing at all; that 
 he has traveled farther, and can assure 
 them that were this wheel complete, there 
 would be a felley that would bind all the 
 spokes together, and an iron tire around 
 it that would hold them fast; and that 
 seeming contradictions may all be har¬ 
 monized in the larger field of perfect 
 knowledge. I have no doubt James un¬ 
 derstands it now, and that I will soon.” 
 
 I have dwelt long upon the Squire and 
 the Brodhead family. I want you to know 
 them. You will find this type more or 
 less clearly defined in every township and 
 county. In fact, I have found it wherever 
 I have lived or traveled, and if it were not 
 for that type of men, this country, and all 
 countries, would be in a bad way. You 
 will not always find them as lovely in 
 character as my old friend, the Squire. 
 The fact is, his grandmother was a Good¬ 
 man, and there was a fine blending of 
 these two types in both him and his cousin 
 James. Away back in Bible times, as 
 far back as the period of the Judges, they 
 
THE BRODHEAD FAMILY. I 83 
 
 arc described as men “having understand¬ 
 ing of the signs of the times to know 
 what Israel ought to do.” They are the 
 men who do not lose 'he r heads in time 
 of danger to state or nation; who take 
 broad views of public, as well as private, 
 business, and who, to use a homely ex¬ 
 pression, “sense things up about right.” 
 
 They are not always religious people. 
 I wish they were. The difference between 
 them and the Goodmans is that the Brod- 
 heads think things out. The Goodmans 
 feel their way to conclusions, “walk by 
 faith,” as it were, while the Brodheads 
 walk more or less “by sight.” A man 
 learns to lean on his strongest faculties. 
 If gifted with unusually clear perceptions 
 and the faculty of clear thinking, he learns 
 to depend on his own judgment, his rea¬ 
 soning powers; whereas if he cannot see 
 his way clear, he falls back on his intui¬ 
 tions of right and wrong. The most per¬ 
 fect types of the family see clearly enough, 
 however, that nothing that is morally 
 wrong can be intellectually right; that it 
 
1 84 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 never pays in the long run to be dishonest 
 or unfair; that there are laws not of man’s 
 enacting, that remorselessly grind out ret¬ 
 ribution to all sorts of evil doers, and 
 bring, in time, their just reward to the 
 well doer. 
 
 The Brodheads are not all rich, by any 
 means. Few of them, indeed, are very 
 rich. You will frequently find them hand¬ 
 ling great enterprises for other people, 
 themselves only in moderate circum¬ 
 stances. It is very seldom, indeed, that 
 you will find them poor, or even in limit¬ 
 ed circumstances, and never, except when 
 some misfortune has happened them 
 which no foresight could avoid. They do 
 not take kindly to what is known as prac¬ 
 tical politics; that is, to office getting and 
 holding. When a Brodhead and a Feath- 
 erhead compete for the first time for nom¬ 
 ination in any party, the Featherhead has 
 the better chance of winning, because he 
 will do things a Brodhead will not do, and 
 can be used by designing men, which a 
 Brodhead cannot. When you get a Brod- 
 
THE BRODHEAD FAMILY. 
 
 185 
 
 head into the legislature or congress, how¬ 
 ever, and he has a chance to make a rec¬ 
 ord, and the people get to know him, he 
 is likely to become a statesman and stay 
 in office as long as he likes. 
 
 The Brodheads are not always popular. 
 They are often supposed to be aristocratic 
 and exclusive, for the simple reason that 
 they will not allow themselves to be “hail- 
 fellow-well-met” with everybody. They 
 try to keep themselves out of the dirt, 
 that is all, and I like that feature of their 
 character. They are often blunt in speech 
 and abrupt in manner. That is a fault. 
 They are sometimes blamed for not be¬ 
 ing sufficiently enthusiastic in a good 
 cause, with being deficient in holy zeal in 
 revival times, and political zeal during 
 heated campaigns. There may be ground 
 for criticism, but I have always noticed 
 that when a real crisis comes in church or 
 state, the men who criticise them for lack 
 of zeal, go to them for counsel. 
 
 You see, I am not sketching perfection 
 in character. I could not do it if I would. 
 
186 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 It does not exist on earth. I do not set 
 the Brodheads before you as perfect 
 models, for they are not. You will, how¬ 
 ever, make a serious mistake if you dc not 
 study them thoroughly, and get into close, 
 personal touch with them whenever you 
 can. They are among the easiest of all 
 men to approach. They know the right 
 sort of a farm boy on sight and take to 
 him at once, It is otherwise with the 
 Featherheads and their near relatives, the 
 Lightheads. Keep away from men of 
 these types. You can do them no good, 
 nor can they you. The Brodheads can 
 and will. Your future will depend large¬ 
 ly on the kind of men with whom you 
 associate. Personally, I owe the Brod¬ 
 heads more than I can tell you. Their 
 advice has not always been what I ex¬ 
 pected, and they often with me used great 
 plainness of speech which sometimes hurt; 
 but when I have slighted their counsels I 
 have generally had occasion to regret it. 
 I predict that your experience will not 
 differ very greatly from that of your 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 TYPES OF COMMON PEOPLE. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 When I was your age I used to think 
 that the people most talked about favor¬ 
 ably in the papers, and out of them, were 
 those best worth knowing. The preacher, 
 the doctor, the judge, (my mother was 
 always suspicious of lawyers) the mem¬ 
 bers of congress, were all great men in my 
 estimation. I was disposed to look upon 
 the very rich man with something of awe. 
 You may, perhaps, have the same notions. 
 As I grew older in years and experience 
 I changed my opinions somewhat. So 
 will you. I found that the men best 
 worth knowing, the men I could depend 
 upon to stand by me in everything that 
 seemed to them right and just, were not 
 the smartest men, nor the richest, nor those 
 
1 88 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 the newspapers talked about, but the 
 plain, common people, of whom there is 
 usually very little public record beyond 
 the fact that they were born, married, and 
 in time died, leaving more or less of an 
 estate, honestly gathered, to be divided 
 among their wives and children. They 
 do not, it is true, seem to make very much 
 stir in the world, but if they were taken 
 out of it, there would not be much left 
 that is worth preserving, and the end of 
 all things might about as well come at 
 once. We could get along reasonably 
 well with less than half the doctors, with 
 one-fourth the lawyers, and we might even 
 spare a few of the preachers. We could 
 very well spare about nine out of ten of 
 our small politicians, and might get along, 
 in a pinch, without the millionaires; but 
 we could not get along without the com¬ 
 mon people who rent from others, or own 
 their forties, eighties, quarter sections, or 
 their modest homes in the cities; whose 
 daily toil sweetens their bread, who live 
 honest lives, train their families to habits 
 
TYPES OF COMMON PEOPLE. 189 
 
 of thrift and economy, and who form the 
 sound and honest core of their church, 
 their political party, and, in short, make 
 this nation, and all nations, great. 
 
 The sooner you know these people and 
 get in close touch with them, the better 
 for you. They are the real source of 
 what we call “common sense,” which, out¬ 
 side of Holy Writ, is the safest guide in 
 all the affairs of life. If you are ever to 
 retain permanently any position of trust 
 and power that you may secure, and thus 
 become a man of wide and commanding 
 influence, you can do it only by being 
 worthy of the abiding confidence of the 
 plain, common people. You have heard, 
 perhaps, of the advice President Lincoln 
 gave to Governor Oglesby, as follows: 
 “Stand by the common people, Richard; 
 keep close to the common people.” The 
 deserved confidence which the common 
 people had in Abraham Lincoln was the 
 secret of his great power; and his ability 
 to retain that confidence in the most try¬ 
 ing times this nation ever saw, is the most 
 
I 9 O LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 convincing evidence of his supreme great¬ 
 ness of soul. * It was the faith of the com¬ 
 mon people in Horace Greeley that made 
 him the tribune of the people, and that 
 gave the Tribune the regal power it wield¬ 
 ed in those days, so full of peril to the re¬ 
 public. The common people will hear any 
 man gladly who can at once teach the 
 truth and live it. 
 
 There are many families, or types, of the 
 common people, but when you come to 
 study them closely, and learn the secrets 
 of their lives, there are a few traits that 
 stand out prominently and are common 
 to almost every type. You will discover 
 that they are honest, not merely in their 
 private affairs, but in their convictions on 
 matters of public concern as well,—hon¬ 
 est, not because it pays to be honest, (for 
 this is not honesty at all, but merely en¬ 
 lightened selfishness), but because hones¬ 
 ty is right, and was for ages before Moses 
 voiced the principles of honesty in the 
 Ten Commandments. They are truthful, 
 not because truth has a high commercial 
 
TYPES OF COMMON PEOPLE. 1 9 1 
 
 value—which it certainly has—but be¬ 
 cause untruthfulness is eternally wrong 
 and utterly evil. The common people, as 
 a rule, resent wrong and injustice, despise 
 the despot, and loathe the liar. They be¬ 
 lieve in their church, in the principles of 
 their party, in plain speaking, right-doing, 
 in good, honest men, and in honest work 
 well done. I do not mean to say they are 
 perfect, for perfection does not exist in 
 this world, nor that they cannot be de¬ 
 ceived or misled for the time by designing 
 men, nor that they always recognize their 
 best friends at first sight; but that at heart 
 they mean right, and aim to stand for all 
 that is best and purest in our civilization. 
 I had rather plead a just cause before the 
 plain, common people, than before any 
 court in Christendom, however learned. 
 
 I wish you to know these common peo¬ 
 ple, not merely because they have been 
 good to me all my life, and have always 
 stood by me in time of trouble, but be¬ 
 cause they are in themselves better worth 
 your study than any other class, or all 
 
192 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 other classes put together. Take, for ex¬ 
 ample, my old friend, Hodge Plowman. I 
 do not know whether “Hodge” was the 
 name his mother gave him or not. I sus¬ 
 pect that he was called “Hodge” for the 
 same reason that we called his Irish neigh¬ 
 bor “Pat,” and his Scotch neighbor 
 “Sandy.” He was an Englishman, a farm 
 laborer in his native country, and never 
 seemed to know exactly how to handle 
 his h’s. If he did not know where to put 
 his h’s every time, he did know how to 
 handle the plow, and no man in the neigh¬ 
 borhood could draw a straighter furrow, 
 nor one more uniform in depth and width. 
 He used to say to me that a bad man 
 could not do good plowing; that it was 
 not bad luck that was the matter with the 
 crops, but crooked furrows of uneven 
 depth and width; and since I have looked 
 into the science of the matter, I believe 
 Hodge was at least partly right. No man 
 could build a stack, whether grain, hay, 
 straw, or even corn fodder, that could 
 equal Hodge Plowman’s. I used to tell 
 
TYPES OF COMMON PEOPLE. 
 
 193 
 
 him it was a waste of time to stack with 
 such care and precision, and he would say: 
 “What is time given us for but to do 
 things right? I could not sleep of nights 
 if my work was not well done.” 
 
 These may seem to you small matters, 
 but I have always found that he that is 
 “faithful in the least, is faithful also in 
 much; and he that is unjust in the least, 
 is unjust also in much;” and that it is al¬ 
 ways well to know, admire, imitate, and 
 win the confidence of the man who does 
 everything as if the Lord had His eye on 
 him all the time. You will not often find 
 that sort of men very far wrong on any of 
 the great questions of life. 
 
 I would like you to know my Scandin¬ 
 avian friend, Ole Oleson. You will find 
 men of his type in almost every township 
 in the West. For your benefit I have 
 coaxed him to tell me the story of his life. 
 When he and his young wife, in coming 
 to this country, reached the last station 
 on the railroad, he had but ten cents left 
 and a hundred miles to travel to the home 
 
*94 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 of the only man he knew in all this broad 
 land. They invested that ten cents in 
 bread, and started out on foot. They got 
 there some way, as resolute folks gen¬ 
 erally do, hired out, and in time had 
 money enough to enter a quarter section 
 of government land. They built a sod 
 house, in due time earned enough to buy 
 household furniture and a cow, and had 
 to wait until the cow brought them two 
 steer calves, and until they were old 
 enough to work, before Ole could have a 
 a team of his own. It was eight long 
 years before he could walk behind a plow 
 drawn by a team of his own horses. To¬ 
 day he has nearly three hundred acres of 
 land all his own, no mortgage, well im¬ 
 proved, has a good lot in town, hard by 
 the church of his choice—the Lutheran— 
 where he expects to build a comfortable 
 home in case he should ever want to leave 
 the farm, has educated two sons for the 
 professions, has a third for a partner on 
 the farm, is a magistrate, has been county 
 supervisor, and is a man whose friendship 
 
TYPES OF COMMON PEOPLE. 
 
 195 
 
 and influence, political and otherwise, is 
 well worth having. There are plenty of 
 men of this type everywhere, and they are 
 well worth your knowing. I had rather 
 have the confidence of a man of this sort, 
 than that of hundreds who make their 
 living by looking after soft snaps; by tak¬ 
 ing mean advantage of others in their mis¬ 
 fortunes, or, to use their own phrase, “liv¬ 
 ing by their wits.” 
 
 You should know my friend, Sandy 
 McGregor, or some of his kin folks, whom 
 you will run across before you are much 
 older. Sandy was a shepherd lad when 
 he left Scotland, and brought with him a 
 genuine love for oatmeal porridge, and a 
 good understanding of the Shorter Cate¬ 
 chism, which two taken together, I have 
 always observed, make a well balanced 
 ration when you are feeding for brains, 
 muscle and morals. Sandy was poor, but 
 none the less hopeful and happy for all 
 that. He was used to it. He went to 
 work at the first job that offered, which 
 was tending bricklayers, won the confi- 
 
I96 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 dence of the boss of the job, who speedily 
 offered him something better than the 
 hod; kept right on until he got money 
 enough ahead to buy a team and farming 
 outfit. He rented land and finally fas¬ 
 tened on an eighty of good land, wrought 
 hard and saved, until he had it paid for. 
 I have often observed that the Sandy 
 McGregor know good land when they 
 see it, and it is not worthwhile to look for 
 them in a country naturally poor. You 
 would do well to know the Sandy Mc¬ 
 Gregors pretty thoroughly. They are 
 good troops when you need help, but I 
 would advise you not to argue with them 
 on any, and especially a religious, subject 
 on which you are not thoroughly posted. 
 They are apt to be a bit blunt in speech, 
 and may even take delight in setting your 
 sins in order before you; but they like you 
 none the less for all that. They will sel¬ 
 dom tell you how much they think of you. 
 In fact, I have heard that they never tell 
 that even to their wives and children. If 
 I had the making of the Sandy McGregors 
 
TYPES OF COMMON PEOPLE. 
 
 197 
 
 I would put a little more sweetening in 
 them, and plane off some of the rough 
 edges; but then, we have to take people 
 as we find them, and we can well excuse 
 a little plain speaking if behind it all there 
 is a heart as tender as a woman’s, and a 
 profound reverence for the Supreme Be¬ 
 ing, whom alone Sandy recognizes as Lord 
 of his conscience. 
 
 Then, there is my old friend, Hans 
 Schmidt. You should “stand in” with him 
 and his kin folks, which you can do 
 best by practicing his virtues, and by deal¬ 
 ing with him on honor. You can dicker, 
 if you like, with Sandy McGregor, for he 
 rather likes the keen encounter of wits in 
 fixing prices. He knows what he is going 
 to take before hand, and you know what 
 you will give, and there is some amuse¬ 
 ment after all in dickering; but you had 
 better make but one price in your deaiing 
 with Hans. Hans is a hard worker, pa¬ 
 tient, tireless, economical, a man of deep 
 affections, and delights as much as any 
 man I ever knew in his home life. He is 
 
I98 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 a good liver when he can afford it, and 
 knows how to live economically when he 
 must. When you once get his confidence 
 he is your steadfast friend; but woe be to 
 you if you forfeit that confidence by any 
 sort of trickery or deception, either in 
 word or deed. 
 
 Nor would I have you forget Patrick 
 Maloney, and his ilk. His great-great¬ 
 grandfather and mine used to enjoy crack¬ 
 ing each other’s skulls on Fair days, and 
 at other times, over politics and religion. 
 Pat’s ancestor thought mine was a robber, 
 and a heretic; and my ancestor thought 
 Pat’s was a “bloodthirsty Papist,” who 
 would burn him at the stake, if he could, 
 and so they had it out with each other 
 whenever they had a chance, and from 
 what I can learn, they seldom lacked, or 
 neglected to improve, an opportunity. 
 Mr. Maloney and I often talk these 
 matters over, and we understand each 
 other, and give each other credit for sin¬ 
 cerity and good intentions, even if we do 
 not always agree. He honestly thinks my 
 
TYPES OF COMMON PEOPLE. 
 
 199 
 
 religion is too much of a head religion, 
 and I am sometimes inclined to think he 
 is about half right. I think, on the other 
 hand, that he is inclined to take too much 
 for granted, and relies too much on out¬ 
 ward forms. But we are both good- 
 humored about it, and talk much less 
 about that than some other things on 
 which we are entirely agreed. For exam¬ 
 ple, we are both agreed in our hatred of 
 oppression and tyranny of every kind; 
 we believe in honest dealing and fair play; 
 we both applaud when Sandy McGregor 
 sings his favorite song, “A man’s a man for 
 a’ that, and a’ that,” and I assure you that 
 you will find no better friends in the world 
 than the Patrick Maloneys, if you stand 
 firmly for the rights of the common peo¬ 
 ple, and your own. 
 
 There is another large class of our 
 native common people whom you should 
 know intimately and thoroughly. You 
 will not only lose much by not knowing 
 them, but their history will furnish you 
 material for a lifetime of study. I mean 
 
200 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 that very large combination of several 
 types whose ancestors from time to time 
 sought in the wilds of the then new coun¬ 
 try refuge, not from grinding poverty, but 
 from oppression in various forms; who 
 sought in the republic, not worldly gain, 
 but religious freedom. In their various 
 original types they were the Puritans, 
 whose ancestors fought with Cromwell 
 and gave England civil liberty; the Hugue¬ 
 nots, of France, of whom Milton sang, 
 “Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints;” 
 the devout Protestants, of the Netherlands; 
 the Scotch and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, 
 who for ages had never been so happy as 
 when fighting for a good cause, and who 
 blazed the way in the forests north and 
 south, and brought with them the log col¬ 
 lege, as well as the church and school- 
 house; and the Quakers, the men who 
 were wont to listen to the monitions of 
 the inward voice, and were as thoroughly 
 men of peace as the last named were men 
 of war. One hundred and fifty years and 
 more of the enjoyment of civil and relig- 
 
TYPES OF COMMON PEOPLE. 
 
 201 
 
 ious liberty have welded all these and 
 other kindred types into a native, or pecu¬ 
 liarly American type, the molding and 
 dominating type among the native com¬ 
 mon people, and which seems by an irre- 
 sistable power to take hold of and assimil¬ 
 ate Hodge, Ole, Sandy, Pat, Hans, and 
 whoever else may come, to digest, so to 
 speak, every type that seeks, for any rea¬ 
 son, to share the blessings which Provi¬ 
 dence has showered on this broad land, 
 absorbing their virtues and casting off 
 their vices. Especially is this type the 
 controlling, dominating force in the rural 
 districts where the common, everyday 
 virtues grow and thrive better than in the 
 glare and noise of the more public life of 
 the great cities. 
 
 It is the homes of these common people, 
 native and foreign, that have ever been 
 the nurseries of the men who have made 
 this nation great, and guided it through 
 all its perils, and all the more easily be¬ 
 cause the great leaders that have been 
 brought up in these homes have kept 
 
202 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 themselves in close touch and entire sym¬ 
 pathy with the men who make upthe“town 
 meeting/’ as the New Englanders would 
 say, or, as we say in the West, the town¬ 
 ship primary. 
 
 So long as you stay on the farm you 
 will find it all important to your happiness 
 and success to have the confidence of all 
 that is best in country life. If you go into 
 business or the professions, you will find 
 that confidence a tower of strength, and if 
 you ever enter upon a public career, you 
 will sooner or later be undone without it. 
 You may fool the common people once 
 or twice; you may sell their confidence 
 to their foes, but you cannot fool them 
 always; and whenever they find you out, 
 as they will, you are undone forever, and 
 may look upon their verdict as a fore¬ 
 taste of the retribution which a just and 
 righteous God inflicts sooner or later on 
 those of whom it is said: “Their foot shall 
 slide in due time.” 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
CHAPTER XVIIL 
 
 THE GOOD MAN. 
 
 My Dear Boy: 
 
 In examining a piece of machinery 
 which you have never before seen, neither 
 have read nor heard of, the first question 
 that arises in your mind is: what is it good 
 for? What was the object of the inventor 
 in designing it, and the builder in making 
 it? The question will sooner or later 
 arise in your mind, if it has not already, 
 as to what this world is good for. What 
 was the final and ultimate object of the 
 Creator, to use the language of the Scrip¬ 
 tures, in founding it upon the floods, in 
 stretching over it the firmament, in water¬ 
 ing it with showers, in storing it w r ith fuel 
 and minerals, in planting it with grains 
 and fruits and weeds, healthful and poi¬ 
 sonous, in stocking it with beasts and 
 
204 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 birds, helpful and hurtful, in giving it 
 every variety of climate and scenery, and 
 every combination of soil, from total bar¬ 
 renness to the most lavish fertility, and 
 in constantly guiding it and controlling it 
 through all the ages? 
 
 We know of but one answer that can 
 be rightly made, namely, this world was 
 made, and is now governed for the pro¬ 
 duction of the good man—the man whose 
 ideas of justice, mercy, and of truth are a 
 more or less distinct reflection of Him who 
 is Justice, Mercy and Truth; whose ten¬ 
 derness, thoughtfulness, and compassion 
 are a reflection, however dim, of the ten¬ 
 derness, thoughtfulness and compassion 
 of Almighty God. If this be not the ob¬ 
 ject in view in the creation and govern¬ 
 ment of this world, then it seems to me to 
 be a horrible mistake and a pitiable fail¬ 
 ure. If this be the object, then you will 
 be co-worker and helper with the Power 
 that is above and behind all things, if it be 
 the supreme aim of your life to be a good 
 man, to form a character that will be a re- 
 
THIS GOOD MAN. 
 
 205 
 
 flection of the Character which guides and 
 controls all things below, and to do this 
 right thing, and avoid that wrong, not for 
 appearance sake, nor for profit, nor for 
 even an example to others, but because of 
 its bearing on the formation of your own 
 character. 
 
 A good man, like all other things es¬ 
 teemed good, has many counterfeits. I 
 would not have you become in the slight¬ 
 est degree, the goody-goody man, the man 
 who is so weak in intellect, or deficient in 
 force of character, so lacking in manliness 
 that he is in no man’s way, who in one 
 way or other constantly parades his imag¬ 
 ined goodness and demands your admira¬ 
 tion. The sun needs no placard announc¬ 
 ing, “This is the sun.” The man who finds 
 it necessary to tell you that he is a good 
 man, will need constant watching. He 
 knows that he is not to be trusted, and in 
 professing superior goodness, when his 
 goodness is not called in question, he is 
 simply aiming to smother the suspicion, 
 constantly arising in his own mind, that he 
 is at heart a rogue. 
 
206 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 I would have you constantly on your 
 guard against that hoary old hypocrite 
 who has made an idol of some creed or 
 confession, and stands ready to denounce 
 all who do not believe in it as beyond the 
 possibility of redemption, whose goodness 
 consists in bewailing the sins of others, 
 and who, if occupying a position' in a 
 church or society, is ready to pounce with 
 almost savage delight on some young man 
 or woman who has sinned or gone wrong, 
 as though he himself were sinless. When 
 a lot of these gray-haired scoundrels 
 brought a real sinner before the only ab¬ 
 solutely good man that ever lived, and 
 asked his judgment, he gave it to them as 
 follows: “Let him that is without sin 
 among you, cast the first stone,” stoning 
 to death being the legal penalty. With¬ 
 out a word they went out from his pres¬ 
 ence, “beginning at the eldest,” observing 
 even in their defeat and confusion all the 
 forms of ecclesiastical etiquette. The 
 church suffers more to-day from this form 
 of bastard goodness than from all the 
 cavils and scoffs of the infidel. 
 
THE GOOD MAN. 
 
 207 
 
 I have spent some time in sketching for 
 your use various types of good men whom 
 it has been my good fortune to know per¬ 
 sonally and intimately in the last fifty 
 years; some in the lowliest walks of life, 
 men and women who in straitened cir¬ 
 cumstances, and even in extreme poverty, 
 were enabled by a power not of this world, 
 to maintain their honor and integrity un¬ 
 spotted, and walk by a clear light, which 
 came from neither sun, moon nor stars, 
 and which I can liken only to the uncloud¬ 
 ed light of the Divine Countenance. Oth¬ 
 ers were well-to-do farmers, living testi¬ 
 monies in favor of all things good, right, 
 and pure, who did not need to say that 
 there was not a stain on a dollar they 
 owned. The whole neighborhood knew 
 that. Others still, who, amid the glare of 
 wealth, and the greedy scramble for gain, 
 were living witnesses of the truth of the 
 old saying, “Godliness is profitable in all 
 things, having the promise of the life that 
 now is, and that which is to come.” Still 
 others, amid all the strife and contention 
 
208 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 of political life, have been able to die 
 poor men in order that the common peo¬ 
 ple of this land might have just, wise laws, 
 faithfully administered. Of these last I 
 think it may be said at the last day, “These 
 have come up out of great tribulation,” 
 for I verily believe that the severest test 
 of character in these modern times has 
 been made when a public man successful¬ 
 ly overcomes the temptation to enrich 
 himself in the public service by treachery 
 to the common people while eating their 
 bread. 
 
 Twill not show you these sketches I 
 have made because they all seem to me 
 far short of even my own ideal of a good 
 man, and I cannot find it in my heart to 
 point out to you why and wherein they 
 failed, as they each have in some respect. 
 Rather would I point out to you the only 
 perfect Life that has ever been lived on 
 this planet, and ask you to take your ideal 
 from that, and reverence every man in the 
 proportion that he has realized in his life 
 that perfect ideal. If I were to define the 
 
THE GOOD MAN. 
 
 209 
 
 good man in words, I would say that he is 
 the man who sincerely believes in a just, 
 and therefore merciful, God, and who 
 does his best every day of his life, whether 
 in a high position, or a low, to do His will. 
 I base goodness on right convictions, and 
 I do not know of any other source of right 
 convictions than faith in the Supreme Ruler 
 of this world. There is a superficial good¬ 
 ness, not consciously simulated, that is a 
 matter of habit, of good surroundings and 
 associations, of environment, so to speak, 
 which readily passes for the genuine until 
 it is severely tried, and then it usually fails 
 utterly. I have ever found in my life that 
 the man who has no genuine convictions 
 anchored in something outside of this 
 world, will not do to “tie to.” When tried 
 he will be “like a broken tooth or a foot 
 out of joint.” It is the men who believe 
 in the eternal verities who have secured 
 for themselves and for us the rights and 
 liberties we enjoy as a people, and who 
 were ready to die, and many of whom did 
 die, that we might enjoy them. 
 
210 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 If I were to define the good man still 
 further, I .would say he lives constantly 
 under oath. His word is his oath because 
 always spoken under the conviction, more 
 or less conscious, “Thou God seest me.” 
 His words are spoken and acts done as if 
 in the presence of the Supreme Ruler, and 
 hence his farm, his home, his place of 
 business, are as sacred as the communion 
 table. You will discover as you grow 
 older and more experienced, that one of 
 the best evidences of human goodness is 
 the manifestation of pity for, and charita¬ 
 ble judgment of, the man or woman, and 
 especially of the young man or woman, 
 who has unintentionally and without fore¬ 
 thought, gone wrong. It s said of the 
 one sinless Being that he could have com¬ 
 passion o the ignorant and those that 
 are out of the way: “Who can be touched 
 with the feeling of our infirmities, and was 
 tempted in all points like as we are, and 
 yet without sin.” 
 
 The man who is glad to find sin , 
 others, thereby confesses his own sinful- 
 
THE GOOD MAN. 
 
 211 
 
 ness. The man who is swift to condemn, 
 and especially without hearing both sides, 
 plainly shows his lack of real goodness. 
 Every man who is striving to walk in the 
 paths of uprightness, will have genuine 
 pity for those who have striven and failed. 
 Every man who knows the dangers that 
 lurk in the path of the young man or wo¬ 
 man, who knows how easy it is to sin with¬ 
 out intending it, who knows something of 
 the power of inherited evil, and who has 
 seen a little of the inexpressible cruelty 
 and heartlessness of what Burns calls the 
 “unco’ guid,” or the overmuch good, man, 
 will, if he be a good man and true, cover 
 up the fault, and try to lift the fallen. 
 
 A young peasant girl, barefoot, and 
 plainly but neatly dressed, was once 
 brought before a Scotch session for the 
 sin of joining in a simple country dance. 
 The elders dealt out to the poor child the 
 terrors of the law, until she burst into 
 tears, when the old preacher, who had 
 been a country lad himself, said: “Jennie, 
 were ye thinking o’ anything wrang when 
 
212 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 ye danced?” “Indeed, I was not.” “Then, 
 Jennie, my child, aye dance.” 
 
 If I were to give you an infallible sign 
 of a good man, I would say that he is the 
 man, who, while holding himself rigidly 
 to the highest standard of living, yet deals 
 with the greatest leniency with those who 
 have sinned. He draws sharp and clear 
 the distinction between the wrong and 
 the wrongdoer. Instead of trying to 
 crush those who have fallen in the strife, 
 he aims to place their feet in the right 
 path, saying in the words of the Master, 
 “Go, and sin no more.” 
 
 Do not think I am preaching you a ser¬ 
 mon, for I am not. I have written you 
 much in these letters regarding the con¬ 
 duct of your life on its secular, or worldly, 
 side. I wish you to succeed in every 
 praiseworthy and right thing; to make 
 money on the farm, or off it, if you pre¬ 
 fer that; to have you honored by your 
 fellow-men; but above all, I would like 
 you to be a good man, not merely for 
 your own sake, but because the world 
 
THE GOOD MAN. 
 
 213 
 
 needs good men much more than it needs 
 either rich men or great men. I would 
 like you to be a good man in the truest 
 sense of the word; a man who is not only 
 on the right side of all public questions, 
 but right in all his dealings, in his influ¬ 
 ence at home, and away from home, for 
 the reason that the final, perfect and com¬ 
 plete harvest which this world yields to the 
 hand of its Maker, is a crop of good men 
 and women. I would like you to be one 
 of the sheaves, and not a weed to be de¬ 
 stroyed. 
 
 I think most farm boys sincerely desire 
 to be good men. The trouble is that they 
 do not know just how to go about it. 
 How do you learn to plow if not by plow¬ 
 ing? You may read about plowing for 
 months, you may watch other men plow, 
 but you will never learn to plow except 
 by plowing. The man who made the 
 plow may tell you all about the construc¬ 
 tion of it, and how to mend it when out ot 
 repair. That will a great help provid¬ 
 ed you plow; otherwise not. He who has 
 
214 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 made you has told you what you must do 
 to be a good man. You will find it in the 
 one book of all others which we call the 
 Bible, or the Book; but you will never 
 understand a precept of that Book rightly 
 except by the doing of it. You can do it 
 best right at home, by showing respect 
 and obedience to your father and mother, 
 kindness to your brothers and sisters, by 
 doing good, conscientious work on the 
 farm, and standing for right things among 
 the boys. You can set yourself to think¬ 
 ing and doing those things, the doing of 
 which forms the right character. You 
 will not go far on these lines until you 
 feel the need of that Elder Brother who 
 is revealed to you, and to me, as the ideal 
 Man, which is God manifest in the flesh, 
 who, as the Divine Man, has made atone¬ 
 ment, once for all, for your sin and mine, 
 and you will find in Him a never-failing 
 Helper. You cannot commit your all to 
 Him and enlist in His service too soon. 
 
 You will get help from unexpected 
 sources when you need it; seldom before 
 
THE GOOD MAN. 
 
 215 
 
 you need it. I believe it to be everlast¬ 
 ingly true that “the steps of a good man 
 are ordered by the Lord, and he delight- 
 eth in his way.” By this I understand 
 that not only do the laws of this world 
 work, in the end, for righteousness in a 
 general way, but that there is an Overrul¬ 
 ing Providence that shapes and marks 
 out the path of one who is sincerely aim¬ 
 ing and striving to be a good man, and 
 guides his steps therein. I believe with 
 David, that “Though he [the good man] 
 fall, he will not be cast down utterly, be¬ 
 cause the Lord upholds him mightily with 
 His right hand.” I believe the Father in 
 his wise providence, deals with good men 
 more severely, if they do wrong, than he 
 does with evil men, and that because he 
 loves them better; that bad men will be 
 allowed to prosper for a time in certain 
 courses where good men would fail; just 
 as a father would punish his son for doing 
 things which he would no more than re¬ 
 buke in the son of a neighbor. We often 
 see this principle illustrated, even in mod- 
 
210 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 ern politics. A good man who has done 
 wrong and made a mistake is left at home; 
 and a scoundrel who has done the same 
 thing, and others ten times worse, is given 
 office in his stead. It is strange, but it is 
 not all wrong, Good men who go wrong 
 deserve punishment. The Lord will at¬ 
 tend to the scoundrels when he gets ready. 
 No man, however, will ever go far wrong 
 if he takes counsel with his conscience, 
 and uses that Word which “is a lamp unto 
 his feet and a light unto his path.” If you 
 are in doubt as to whether a thing is right, 
 don’t do it. 
 
 Instead of being a hindrance to you in 
 business, as you may at first suppose, and 
 and as many would have you suppose, the 
 character which I have urged you to form 
 will help you in the most wonderful way. 
 There is not now, nor has there ever been, 
 enough of boys who live and work on 
 this high plane and follow these exalt¬ 
 ed ideals to supply the demand. Almost 
 every great enterprise of any kind is con¬ 
 stantly on the lookout for this type of 
 
THE GOOD MAN. 
 
 217 
 
 character, and for the all-sufficient reason 
 that great undertakings can be safely en¬ 
 trusted to no other. I have seen conspic¬ 
 uous ability and untiring energy fail utter¬ 
 ly when not accompanied by that high 
 moral character, that unbending integrity, 
 characteristic of the good man, as I have 
 described him. All great enterprises and 
 undertakings depend for their success on 
 the faith or confidence of the public in 
 the men who control them. Unless these 
 men have those traits of character that 
 will win and retain confidence, failure, in 
 time, is inevitable. There is nothing, 
 therefore, in the end that pays such high 
 dividends, even in this life, as old-fash¬ 
 ioned righteousness, or uprighteousness, 
 which is a peculiar characteristic of the 
 good man. 
 
 I desire, above all things else, that you 
 be a good man. The good man is of the 
 seed royal of the universe, the golden har¬ 
 vest, the ripened fruitage of creation. 
 For him the deep foundations of the world 
 were laid. For him the ages have been 
 
218 
 
 LETTERS TO THE FARM BOY. 
 
 preparing. For his redemption “the Word 
 was made flesh and dwelt among us/' and 
 the cross erected on Calvary. For his 
 perfection is all the work, the toil, the 
 pain and suffering among men, and when, 
 chastened by experience, and ripened by 
 the wisdom which years only can give, he 
 enters the house prepared for him. And 
 for which he has been prepared, its doors 
 will spring open of their own accord, and 
 he will be welcomed by all that is good, 
 beautiful and true in the universe of God. 
 
 Uncle Henry. 
 
 the END, 
 

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 075978277