No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 361 



EVENINGS IN THE COUNTRY UOME. 



BY MISS BERTHA A. KEAKNS, Thompsontown, Juniata County. Pa. 



America is pre-eminently the land of universal education, the land 

 where the son of the humblest citizen has a chance to win his way to 

 an equal footing with the favored son of fortune. This is not so in 

 all parts of the world, for we know that in some countries only the 

 nobility have freedom to rank and the poor are classed in lower 

 castes and kept as servants. There are many classes of people in. 

 our country, but our laws give equal rights to all. The farmers are 

 the class we represent and we know they have played an important 

 part in the formation of our government. 



This time of the year the country seems dull to many. But nature 

 is doing her work and now beneath the beautiful robe of snow lies 

 countless germs of life only waiting for the awakening of springtime. 



How to spend the long winter evenings in the rural home, is an 

 interesting problem to the young and old of many country homes. 



Years ago, when this country was thinly settled, and cities were 

 unknown, people were contented to sit by the fireside and tell of the 

 day's sport in the forest. But the great rush of fashion, customs, 

 amusements, etc., has revolutionized the homes of our land. The 

 country home is for the most part shut out from all those means of 

 instruction and entertainment to which the inmates of the city home 

 have access. There are no lecture courses or musical concerts in the 

 country to amuse and entertain the young. The occasional lecture 

 or the concert, or cantata at the church, or perhaps the country 

 spelling school or the debating society at the cross roads school 

 house may now and then claim the attention of the young men and 

 women of our country homes, hungry for entertainment and thirsty 

 for knowledge. But these do not solve the problem of the profitable 

 way of spending the long winter evenings in the rural home. Our 

 fathers and mothers tell us how secluded were the average country 

 homes forty or fifty years ago, and in many respects they are secluded 

 still. 



The great truth is that now as then the country home for most 

 part must find the solution of this diflflcult problem from within and 

 not from without. The home is the heart of real life. The school 

 boy is a cadet in the military academy. His conflicts are in the far 

 future. His fields of strife are in the imagination. But his father 

 and mother are in the heat and battle of home life. The home dis- 

 cipline determines the destiny of our land. 

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