without any assistance eight acres of fallow ground; I led the first plough-horse; I cultivated the same ground a second time; I labored in the fields by day, and at night I took care of the horses. But, in spite of all that, I felt no fatigue. Then I gathered in the wheat and hay with the help of my son and my son's wife.
147. You see the effect that this commandment can have. Thanks to it, the old man becomes young, the feeble strong, the idle industrious, the imbecile intelligent, the drunkard sober, and the poor rich. Could I have done all that, could I have so labored in the earth, if I did not know I was digging where you had hidden the commandment? If the poor knew their own strength, they would not submit to such outrages. Man would then deliver himself from the indigence and misery which strangle him.
148. If God sends an abundant harvest to the eight acres I have cultivated, I and my family will have more than enough to satisfy us. Know, also, O idle men, that I could support thirty men with the produce of my labor.
149. If you have an earnest desire to labor, and cannot for good reasons do so, you would be pardonable by God and man; but it is from idleness that you do not work; is it then possible to esteem you? Never, in any degree. Hitherto a superior seemed to me a high personage; but now he is in my eyes the lowest of men. I would like to get this notion out of my
