134 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



It is amazing that so few people seem to imtlerstanci how 

 life in the country on a farm ought to be and may be ten 

 times more interesting, satisfying, and beautiful than it can 

 be where men are crowded closely together. 



There is not a home convenience, comfort, or luxury at- 

 tainable in any town or city, whose full equivalent may not 

 be had in farmhouses of similar degree ; and there are oppor- 

 tunities, benefits, unspeakable glories I call them, in the 

 country, that towns only see in their dreams. 



To demonstrate this point I should have to go back to the 

 Pilgrims, drag in our forefathers, dig up "Worcester County, 

 bring down Lenox, Stockbridge, and Williamstown, exalt 

 co-operation, denounce selfish, narrow-minded citizens, con- 

 vict highAvay surve3'ors, condemn the selectmen and county 

 commissioners, and hang the " practical " architects and 

 builders. 



This would be too much, — too much for one evening. 

 Yet many things ought to be done simultaneously ; for the 

 threads that make up the fabi'ic of human society are so 

 intertwined, that drawing one of them before the others are 

 drawn serves to make the whole rougher than before. 



Still we must each work in our own haimess ; and, leaving 

 this general discussion, we will take up certain definite lines, 

 which, if rightly drawn, may help to bring about the good 

 time whose coming we all wish to hasten. 



Farmhouses and barns in their architectural study must 

 be separated into two classes, — those already built, those 

 which are to be built, — the old and the new ; the former 

 being, perhaps, the more important, certainly the more 

 numerous. 



The average New-England farmer clings to the delusion 

 that it is impossible to make two farms of one by short 

 division. It does not occur to him, if, happily, he has two 

 sons, that he may assign the old house to one of them, build 

 a new one for the other, and when he dies divide his acres 

 equally between the two. 



He has found it hard to get a living from the whole farm : 

 how, then, shall his sons support themselves and their ex- 

 travagant, artistic wives from half of it? As a rule, the 

 sons prefer to support themselves and their artistic wives in 

 some other way, and will accept neither the old house nor 

 the new. 



