The Bright Side of Farm Life. 155 



to do the work that my country pupils of the same age and in- 

 telligence had accomplished in six. I was wonderfully discour- 

 aged and sought the reasons that I might remove them; but found 

 them almost wholly beyond my reach. In too many cases the 

 town child enters school in the morning tired and listless, because 

 he was out the evening before, on the street or in the stores or 

 pool rooms. He cannot put his mind to his work because it is 

 full of the gossip, profanity and vulgar stories of his evening as- 

 sociates. The mind that is filled with the rubbish of the cigar 

 shop can not hold the pearls of knowledge. On the other hand, 

 the country boy enters the school room as fresh and brisk as 

 the pure country air he'd been breathing all the morning. He 

 goes at his work with a will, because his months of school are 

 so few that he is hungry for his lessons. There is just as much 

 difference between teaching the child who is hungry for lessons 

 and teaching one who is kept at them all the time, as there is 

 between feeding a child who is hungry and feeding one who is 

 eating all the time. There is just as much difference in the as- 

 similation, too. The child who takes his lessons with a relish will 

 appropriate them and use them with vigor; while the one who is 

 crammed, finds his learning only a burden. I believe this one 

 great reason why so large a majority of our eminently successful 

 men in all callings are country boys " grown tall ". 



For a family home there is no place like the farm. Surely 

 this one thing should go far to lighten any clouds which hang 

 over the life of the farmer and his wife. Our children, the best 

 gifts God sends us have a better, purer, pleasanter home on the 

 farm than we could give them anywhere else. I do not mean 

 that the poorest farm home is better than the best city home. 

 I mean that if you compare your home with the home of a man 

 of your own wealth and ability in the city, the farm home is far 

 ahead every time; and there are some advantages which the 

 poorest may enjoy in the country that no amount of wealth can 

 buy in the city. The room of the farm is no small factor in the 

 problem of a home. When we moved to Franklinville, my littU 

 four-year-old boy preceded me to our house, and when he met 



