Homo Life on the Farm. 



Miss Maggie S. Keeler, Grooms, N. Y. 



Thus far during our Institute we have been very pleasantly and 

 profitably entertained by discussing business methods, financial 

 questions of intense importance, and the science of farming as it 

 has been worked and studied with all the implements of intellectual 

 husbandry. 



But let us for a short time lay aside the mercenary problems 

 with which we have been wrestling and consider some of the deeper 

 things of life. While we esteem money one of. the choicest bless- 

 ings that can be entrusted to our care, yet it is not the fundamental 

 or essential factor of that rare gift — true happiness. 



We will most cheerfully yield to our city neighbor, all honor 

 and credit due for her halls of learning, her commercial suprem- 

 acy, and her social prestige. 



But the home life on the farm has its melody and mirth. The 

 poet says: " The woods, and winds, and waters sing to us." 



It has those loftier helps which only nature can impart, those 

 softer influences which speak to us through every flower and tree 

 and sparkling brook and forest bold. They scorn to say, " God is 

 in me." They tell us that a large per cent, of our eminent men 

 and women come from the farm. I sometimes wonder that the 

 ratio is not even greater, when we consider the environments of the 

 youth on the farm. " All nature is his heritage." 



Turn backward in your memories with me for two centuries or 

 more and w r e will look oyer the history of this proud land of ours. 

 The past is useful to us for the lessons it has taught. 



When our Pilgrim Fathers landed on the bleak New-England 

 shove they roared for themselves homes, sheltered by those rugged 

 hills, and brightened by freedom's skies. As wo search a little 

 farther and look inside their modest dwellings, there may be seen 

 the matron seated at the spinning wheel. And in the homes of the 

 early settlors of ISTew York, the Dutch, wo take a shy glance at the 

 maiden scrubbing her floors until they are of silvery whiteness; 

 burnishing the brass knocker in readiness for her favorite gallant. 

 The evenings were usually spent at home. The father silling by 



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