This is God's management for destroying routine within the law of stated revolution, and for bringing the mind constantly into contact with fresh influences. The soul, encased by a wall of adamantine circumstances, and driven around a track of unvarying duties, shrivels, or gets diseased. But these circumstances need not imprison the farmer, nor these duties become the polished pavement of his cell. He has his life among the most beautiful scenes of Nature and the most interesting facts of Science. Chemistry, geology, botany, meteorology, entomology, and a dozen other related or constituent sciences,--what is intelligent farming but a series of experiments, involving, first and last, all of these? What is a farm but a laboratory where the most important and interesting scientific problems are solved? The moment that any field of labor becomes intelligently experimental, that moment routine ceases, and that field becomes attractive. The most repulsive things under heaven become attractive, on being invested with a scientific interest. All, therefore, that a farmer has to do, to break up the traditional routine of his method and his labor, is to become a scientific farmer. He will then have an interest in his labor and its results above their bare utilities. Labor that does not engage the mind has no dignity; else the ox and the ass are kings in the world, and we are but younger brothers in the royal family. So we say to every farmer,--If you would make your calling attractive to yourself and your boys, seek that knowledge which will break up routine, and make your calling, to yourself and to them, an intelligent pursuit.