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find a place in the spare room or parlor. Oftentimes the rough edge 

 of temper is softened — the wrinkles of care are smoothed from the 

 broAv, and cheerfulness is restored by such appliances. There should 

 be nothing in the daily avocations of the farmer's wife and daughters 

 incompatible with harmony or a cultivated taste. 



As the circle of intelligence becomes thus enlarged, the sordid wish 

 for simple accumulation will yield to the far nobler desire of becoming 

 useful. The circumference and shining surface of the mighty dollar, 

 will be relatively lessened and eclipsed by the wider circle of humanity 

 and the more durable brightness of philanthropic kindness. 



And above and far beyond all, children will no longer be robbed 

 of their inestimable rights by the avaricious desire of parents to 

 add acres and farms to the homestead. Neither will they be longer 

 compelled to toil in ignorance and rags until all proper self-esteem is 

 crushed out, and they become conscious of inferiority to other youths. 

 The after life of all such is usually marked by stupidity or infamy. 



How long wUl American parents count dollars as an oflset for educa- 

 tion ? How long shall our children be dwarfed in intellect by parsimony, 

 or reared in ignorance by meanness ? I have heard a healthy, able 

 bodied man, the owner of 160 acres of land clear of incumbrance, 

 with comfortable buildings and fields improved, remark that he could 

 not afford to send his children to the district school I The very apology 

 furnished conclusive evidence that the cruel neglect had originated in a 

 narrow mind or a depraved heart. What ! shall we be told here in 

 Michigan; with our glorious school and university funds; with the 

 noble endowments of our Normal and Agricultural Colleges; with 

 academies and seminaries erected and sustained by private muniliconce, 

 and with provision by law for sustaining in every district a school at 

 least three months in each year, tuition free ! — shall we be told, I 

 repeat, that parents are still unable to educate their "children ? God for- 

 bid ! What father would not toil with bleeding fingers and aching 

 frame to polish the diamond of intellect in his child ? 



But it may be asked, what has all this to do with farming? I 

 answer, much every way, chiejly, because the precious deposit of our 

 national prosperity, honor and glory; the prevalence of intelligence and 

 social virtue; the maintenance of social order; the perpetuity of our 

 free institutions and the hopes of our race, are mainly in the keeping 



