我看到同乡的年轻人不幸地继承了农场、屋舍、谷仓、牲口和农具，这些东西得来容易，想摆脱可就难了。他们还不如出生在开阔的牧场，接受母狼的喂养1，有望用一双明眸看清自己是在怎样的田地耕种劳作。是谁把他们变作了土地的奴隶？既然人生在世已是苦累，为何他们还要有这难辞的百亩之田？为何他们方一降生就要开始自掘死后安身之所？他们本应去过人的生活，把如此种种抛诸脑后，尽己所能向前进发。我曾见过多少不朽的灵魂不堪重负，近乎难以呼吸，他们在人生之路上缓行，推挪着七十五尺乘四十尺大的谷仓、奥吉亚斯的牛圈2也未曾清扫，还有那百亩授地：农田、草场、牧场和林场！未得承继的人们，不需在无谓的负担中挣扎，就足以安养自己一方血肉之躯。
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man’s life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot! The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.