HOW FARMERS CAN BIPROVE. 69 



1. Farmers can vastly improve the appearance and comfort 

 of their homes. This is a thing which farmers not only can 

 do, but which they are bound to do by every high considera- 

 tion, physical, moral and religious. Neither the larnier nor 

 his family can ever be what he and they might be, and what 

 they are under obligations to be, with the kind of home and 

 home-surroundings in which many of our farmers, notwith- 

 standing all the great advances thus far made, find themselves 

 to-day. 



The farm-house should be snug and warm for winter, and 

 well arranged for ventilation at all seasons of the year ; and 

 it should in all cases be painted, not only as a matter of taste, 

 but of well-directed economy. The surroundings of the farm- 

 house and the other buildings should also be neat in all re- 

 spects. It is a curious and also a lamentable fact that there 

 is still a feeling, quite too common, that almost any kind of a 

 house, so far as appearances and style are concerned, and 

 almost any kind of surroundings, will do for a farmer. This 

 feelinsf is a wrong: one. It wrongs the farmer and it wronsfs 

 the community in which he lives. Not only should the house 

 be trim and neat, — mind, I do not say costly, — but if there is 

 any man anywhere that can afford a good lawn about the 

 house and all the other buildings, with proper and well-chosen 

 paths and roads for all necessary and desirable movements, 

 that man is the farmer. And that farmer who recognizes this 

 simple fact and who acts upon it, not only receives a present 

 and constant reward in the satisfaction which he daily feels in 

 looking upon such surroundings, but the additional money- 

 value of his farm will be many times greater than all the out- 

 lay he makes to secure the beautiful result. 



And last, but not least, by any means, farmers can add to 

 the comfort of their homes by more carefully preserving the 

 strength, health and beauty of their wives. He is a brute 

 that does not love to look upon a good and beautiful woman, 

 ^nd he is doubly a brute that is not benefited by the sight. 

 Naturally, our mothers, our sisters, our wives and daughters 

 are among the most beautiful women in the world. Why do 

 they not remain beautiful ? It is not because they grow older ; 

 for he is a dull observer and wanting a properly-cultivated 

 mind and heart who does not know that true beauty does not 



