Thomas Curtis Clarke

“ Whenever I contemplate the condition of the working classes–the deep and dark gulf that separates them from the knowledge and sympathies of their superiors in fortune, the utter ignorance in which we are of their feelings and wants, the little influence which we have over their conduct, and the little hold which we appear to have on their affections–I shrink with terror from the wild passions and dense ignorance that appear to be fermenting in that mass of physical force. ”

“ We live in a country of small farms; a country, in which men cultivate with their own hands, their own fee-simple acres; drawing not only their subsistence, but also their spirit of independence, and manly freedom from the ground they plough. They are at once its owners, its cultivators, and its defenders. And whatever else may be undervalued, or overlooked, let us never forget, that the cultivation of the earth is the most important labour of man. ”

“ When work is over, and everything in its place, the visiter is more welcome, the husband’s look is brighter, and an affectionate glow spreads itself through the circle.
The common law has acknowledged the principle, that every man’s house is his castle. It is true in more cases than one. Home is the citadel of all the virtues of the people. For by home we mean something more than one’s house: it is the family that makes the home. ”

“ Be a farmer, not a mere earth-scraper, lazily scratching up sufficient earth to destroy the face of the soil, and throw seed away, or you will always have to scratch hard for a living. But make your farm a source of pride, and it will surely become a source of profit. ”

“ Salary men generally spend all their salaries, and have but little to lay up for sickness or old age. A rich office-holder is generally a novelty, and a contented office-bolder is a greater novelty still.”
The Public welfare is no less endangered by this inordinate thirst for office, since experience has so frequently demonstrated the fact that measures of great national importance have been adopted or neglected solely with reference to their effects upon party. The paramount interests of the state or the country have been too often sacrificed in the unworthy scramble for office. ”

“ We laugh at the folly of the Chinese belles, who compress their feet until they are no longer fitted for walking; and at the African, who flatten their noses as an indispensable requisite of beauty; and yet our own females are equally ridiculous, and even more criminal, when they imagine that they improve the beauty of their chests and waists by distorting them from that form which nature has wisely imparted to them; and thus, by a perverted taste, entail disease and pain upon their daughters, or hurry them into an early grave. ”

“ The great comprehensive truths, written in letters of living light on every page of our history,–the language addressed by every past age of New England to all future ages, is this–Human happiness has no perfect security but freedom; freedom none but virtue; virtue none but knowledge; and neither freedom, virtue, nor knowledge, has any vigour, or immortal hope, except in the principles of the Christian faith, and in the sanctions of the Christian religion. ”

“ There is not a subject which absolutely admits of a greater improvement than the cultivation of the soil: vast improvements are in progress, and will yet be made to an almost infinite extent; the slumbering energies of the farmer are awakening up, and agriculture, the broad foundation of a nation’s prosperity, is unmantling some of the brightest features of her hidden glory! ”

“ The great business of our country is agriculture. Because it feeds us, and furnishes the materials for our clothing; it gives employment to five-sixths of our population; it is the primary source of individual and national wealth; it is the nursing mother of manufactures and commerce; it is essential to national independence. Agriculture is worthy the most liberal patronage of our governments, state and national; it ought to be enlightened by a better (and thorough) education of the agricultural class. Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, stand together ”

“ Some farmers may fail for want of sufficient capital, but more for want of sufficient knowledge. There is no class who place more entire reliance on their skill than farmers, yet no one who is acquainted with the general agriculture of the country, will assert that it has yet reached the perfection of which it is susceptible. The intent of cultivation is to obtain the greatest possible amount of produce from the soil; the farmer’s object being to raise it by such means as will afford him the largest profit with the least labour ”

“ I trust every thing to habit; habit, upon which, in all ages, the law-giver, as well as the school-master, has mainly placed his reliance; habit which makes every thine easy, and casts all difficulties upon the deviation from the wonted course. Make sobriety a habit, and intemperance will be hateful and hard; make prudence a habit, and reckless profligacy will be contrary to the nature of the child grown an adult. ”

“ The man who sets out in life to live by public office will surely die in poverty and neglect. I would not direct your aspirations to such objects. I would not light up in your hearts the low and disgraceful ambition of an office-hunter. The only independent man is he who depends upon himself. Rely upon the power and skill of your own hands ”

“ TEMPERANCE.
Being satisfied from observation and experience, as well as from medical testimony, that ardent spirits, as a drink, is not only needless but hurtful; and that the entire disuse of it would tend to promote the health, the virtue, and the happiness of the community: We hereby express our conviction, that should the citizens of the United States, and especially all young men, discountenance the use of it, they would not only promote their own personal benefit, but the good of our country and the world. ”

“ Alternate rest and activity, as well of the body as of the mind, are essential to the support of health. Long continued mental application, whether to study or the cares of business, wears out the system, and exhausts the powers of life even more rapidly than protracted manual labour.
Giving way to the passions.–Experience fully proves that nothing contributes more effectually to guard the system from disease, and to prolong lite, than a calm and contented state of mind. In cultivating a peaceful and virtuous disposition, a man not only insures his happiness but promotes his health also. ”

“ This disease is, doubtless truly, considered more than in former years. There are reasons for this.
Half a century ago, people lived on common, simple, healthful food and drink, and were healthy. In those days the dress of men and women was plain, and suited to the climate in which they lived, and to the various seasons of the year. At this time, how different! The fashions of the pleasure-seekers of Europe are brought to this country, and females of all classes endeavour to imitate them, until Consumption follows, and death ends the short race. ”

“ No where else is so large a portion of the community engaged in farming; no where else are the cultivators of the earth more independent or so powerful. One would think that in Europe the great business of life was to put each other to death; for so large a proportion of men are drawn from the walks of productive industry and trained to no other occupation except to shoot foreigners always, and their own countrymen occasionally; while here, the whole energy of all the nation is directed with intense force upon peaceful labour. ”

“ Besides lime and other enriching substances, the cost of the mere animal manures applied to the soil of England, amounts to three hundred millions of dollars; being more than the value of the whole of its foreign commerce. Yet the grateful soil yields back with interest all that is thus lavished upon it. And so it would do here, if we would only trust the earth with any portion of our capital. But this we rarely do. A farmer who has made any money spends it not in his business, but in some other occupation. ”

“ Where ought he to be, but by his own warm fireside, rewarding his wife for the solitary labours and vexations of the day, and receiving on his own part those cheap but invaluable pleasures, which are as much above the delirium and ribaldry of the bar-room, as the light of day is above the glimmer of a dipped-candle? ”

“ When the hair becomes thin and irregular, or its beauty is otherwise impaired, we know nothing better calculated to restore its proper growth than cutting it short.
In children, keeping the hair short is a circumstance of no little importance, and should not, from any light consideration, be neglected. Their health is prejudiced by a contrary practice. Nothing is more common than to see a luxuriant head of hair accompanied in children by paleness of complexion, weak eyes, and frequent complaints of headache. ”

“ More than one million and a half of persons have signed the pledge of total abstinence, and as many more are practising upon the principle without signing. Thousands of merchants, grocers, and inn keepers, have discontinued the sale of ardent spirits; many distilleries have put out their fires; and everywhere the spirit of freedom from a degrading vice has been aroused. Light and love have awakened every effort, and they will accomplish the object. This object is distinctly announced to be the total disuse of intoxicating drink in the United States and throughout the world. ”

“ The medicine which to-day would be proper, by a change in the disease, may to-morrow be the reverse;–and, in short, so many objections will occur to any reflecting mind against the indiscriminate use of remedies, that the greatest caution should be exercised, lest in tampering with disease you destroy health. There is so much adulteration in drugs, so many quack nostrums, pills and impositions, that in all cases of doubt and difficulty, the safer rule is to trust the advice of an intelligent physician. ”

“ I answer, all that is odious, all that is dangerous in the distinctions which the free acquisition and the lawful enjoyment of property must always create, will soon vanish, and all classes be united in the enduring bonds of sympathy and gratitude, when the rich (I include all who have the leisure or means to bestow) shall understand and feel that it is their paramount duly to improve the physical and elevate the moral condition of their fellow-beings, or, to express nearly the whole in one word–to educate the poor. ”

“ To physical education belong the proper training and strengthening of all the powers of the body, and the avoidance of every thing calculated to injure its structure.
The first and most striking error in physical education, is the unnecessary confinement to which the child is subjected. No one that has observed a child, between the ages of three and six, can doubt that nature requires that he should be almost constantly in motion during his waking hours. ”

“ When will those who are chosen to make laws for us, when will men who profess Christianity, learn and practise something of the Christian spirit, against which every feature of this law is at open war? Capital punishment is a blot upon our institutions, and a disgrace to any civilized community. ”

“ Let a farmer examine the extent and depth to which the roots of grain, in a loose and favourable soil, will spread, and he will cease to wonder at the failure of a crop where the subsoil has never been stirred by the plough. ”

“ The man who heedlessly finds fault on every occasion, only lays the foundation for his own sorrow, for he takes away an important motive which actuates the wife to faithfulness and pains-taking; and she must be more than a common woman, who, in the face of repeated fault-finding, can find a heart long to exert herself, only to receive again the same reward. ”

“ It has filled the jails, prisons, and penitentiaries of the United States with criminals, who have sacrificed character, society, and friends, for strong drink.
It has involved a waste of properly to the amount of many millions of dollars.
It has burdened the country with a tax of millions of dollars for the support of its paupers.
It has palsied the industry, corrupted the morals, and degraded the character of Americans; proving itself more injurious to our country than war, or famine, or pestilence. ”

“ Independently of the injury which the health of individuals suffers from a neglect of strict personal and domestic cleanliness, the contamination of the air, from the decomposition of filth accumulated in and about a dwelling, has not unfrequently communicated disease to whole families and neighbourhoods. Repeatedly white-washing the wall of a house, and scrubbing the floors, is not merely, therefore, a source of tasteful comfort, but a direct means of preserving health. ”

“ Ship loads of bones have been carried from this country to Europe to be crushed and used as bone-dust in fertilizing their soils; and we have been compelled to purchase, at exorbitant prices, of those nations, the wheat and other grain, that this same manure would have produced at home, and at the same time have lost to our farms the fertility it would have imparted. ”