I MAINE STATE SOCIETY. gj 



or parlor, to retire to, in the hours of leisure, for reading, or thought- 

 ful, cheerful communion, or singing, or closing the day with devout 

 and fervent expressions of thankfulness to God for his countless 

 mercies and benedictions. There are no arrangements under this 

 roof, but such as imply, that the life of the house must be merely 

 drudgery and physical existence, and that none of the attainments, 

 or accomplishments, or refinements of education, would be appro- 

 priate here. And so the consequence is, that the boys and girls, 

 when they get a peep at the world abroad, leave their home, and 

 seek to better their condition among strangers, or in new spheres of 

 life and toil. This is the result with too many who begin this exis- 

 tence amid the scenes and the influences of the country. Some of 

 them, it is true, are successful in their new employments ; they be- 

 come wealthy in trade, or attain to posts of trust and independence in 

 the factory, or in the counting-room, or climb to power and affluence 

 in statesmanship, or to a commanding position in science and learning, 

 or to a point of eminence and usefulness, in the school, or the college, 

 or the church. But others fail. Many fail. Whatever the call- 

 ings they ghoose, the temptations of the world are too powerful for 

 them, or they lack wisdom, and cannot determine for what tasks 

 they are fitted, or are blind and cannot see the perils lying in their 

 way, and they reach an evil end. 



Now, this dark side of the picture which I have so hastily drawn, 

 suggests a need of reform in many of our rural homes. We are 

 cautioned by it, not to make, by narrow, rude and mean modes of 

 life, by a disregard of good taste, comfort, convenience and beauty, 

 by ignoring all those things which help to form a noble, a pleasant, 

 or a genial condition in domestic and social being, the removal of 

 our young people from the farms, a necessity. Let those, who, 

 because of their turn of thought, or taste, or natural, or acquired 

 fitness, choose to fill a place in other departments of life, leave their 

 country homes ; for they will leave them honorably, and they will 

 carry agreeable recollections of them, within their minds, Avherever 

 they go, and they will often return to them, to spend a few days in 

 repose and joy with loving and happy parents, and to catch new 

 vigor from the eternal freshness of the well-known and affectionately 

 remembered hills, and woods, and fields ; and when the evening of 

 life shall come, they will come back, perhaps, "for good, " — "for 



