No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 317 



iarmers are made. Take the luau aud make the best }"0u cau out of 

 bim, but much of your ellort will be expended in teaching him to 

 undo the mistakes he has been making; aud while it may help him 

 in the future yet will never make it possible for him to regain the op- 

 portunities he has lost. Begin now with the boy; start him right 

 and keep him right and his chances will be very much superior. 



Surround the boy with the best influences in the home and if he 

 does not love it, it will be because he is not capable. Give him as 

 good a room as you give his sister and one, if possible, that he can 

 call his own. Jiang as attractive pictures on the wall of his room 

 as you hang on the walls of her's. The boy loves the beautiful as 

 well as the girl does if his sensibilites are not thus rudely blunted 

 and trampled upon. Make his room attractive. Make it possible for 

 his table to be supplied with the best books and' magazines suited to 

 his age, and his ability to read intelligently, and he w'ill more often 

 learn to love to spend his evenings and spare moments there in self- 

 improvement and culture rather than in loafing for hours at a time in 

 places where the conversation and other influences are not always 

 such as would tend to elevate the boy either mentally, morally or 

 spiritually. 



''But,-' you say, "Farmer boys do not always care to read," True 

 enough, but this lack of interest or even dislike to reading could gen- 

 erally be overcome by a little care and thoughtfulness. 



Too many farm houses contain but little with which the boy can 

 spend his evenings wdth the greatest profit. Many are without good 

 papers and have no books, perhaps, except a few old musty ones that 

 have been handed down by preceding generations. Out of these 

 worn and faded relics of antiquity the average boy will not love to 

 read. But boys, as well as girls, will generally read what interests 

 them and if their appetite is not satisfied with that which is whole- 

 some they have no difficulty in supplying it with other kinds with 

 W'hich the markets are flooded to-day. 



I knew a farmer a few years ago in whose house there were, per- 

 haps, no books except a few school text-books and an unused bible, 

 and, I believe, no papers at all;yet he had a large family of boys and 

 girls. When talking on this subject of books and reading, he said: 

 "I want my boys to learn to read and w^hen they get older I will get 

 them a book." Two of them were about fourteen and sixteen years 

 of age, respectively, then. When the}^ get older he would get them 

 a book! Such book, when purchased, would as likely be a "History 

 of the Protestant Keformation" or a copy of "Baron Munchausen's 

 Adventures;" whatever the book agent prevailed on him to buy. The 

 first, the average boy would not read and the second were better lei 

 alone. 



