164 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



Everything about the place should be kept in order; old rubbish kept 

 cleared away, gates on their hinges, the palings and boards that come 

 off the yard-fence should be replaced at once, or if it is only a rail- 

 fence, every rail should be in its place. Unsightly old wagons, bug- 

 gies or machinery should be stored away out of sight or where they 

 will not mar the beauty of the home scene. The fire-wood pile or 

 coal pile should not be the first thing to attract the eye, and pens and 

 outhouses should be kept in the back-ground as much as possible. 

 All about the home there should be a pleasant air of neatness and 

 thrift, as if it had a caretaker. I know of two roads that run par- 

 allel for a distance of several miles. One through a wide, fertile val- 

 ley, the other ou the plateau just above. I drove up the valley road 

 one day not long since in company with a friend, a stranger, who, 

 after we had gone some distance, remarked: ''^Vhat a shiftless lot of 

 people must live in this valley," and no wonder. There were patches 

 plowed here and there, and I presume sowed in something, in beau- 

 tifully laying fields which should have been the finest of meadows, 

 but which were overgrown with briars and shrubs and weeds. The 

 houses had not been so bad originally, but with one exception, they 

 were all in bad repair. They were unpainted, many of the window 

 panes were broken, and the holes stuffed with old hats, old cushions 

 or ''any old thing" that was handier. Gates were down, palings off^ 

 and the dooryards littered with almost everything imaginable, while 

 so many old buggies, carts, wagons, etc., lined the road on either 

 side, in front, that one naturally thought of an ancient livery stable. 

 A dark fog of dilapidation which was oppressive to the traveler 

 seemed to have settled over the entire valley. 



We came to a cross-road and went over to the hill road. The con- 

 trast was most marked. The houses were but little better than in 

 the valley, but they were all nicely painted, and in excellent repair, 

 the yards and lawns were beautiful and attractive and the fields were 

 free from even weeds. One farmer as we drove along was throwing 

 some dock over into the road. He told us those were "the last of the 

 obnoxious weeds" on his sixty-acre farm and added, "I have had a 

 long, hard battle with them." This was evidently the spirit that 

 guided all the dwellers along that hill road, and over all seemed to 

 rest an atmosphere of happiness, contentment and peace. 



My friend turned to me and said, "Well, this is different. This is 

 the best part of the country I've seen since I've been here;" and 

 friends, we weren't a mile away from the Valley of Shiftlessness. 



Now it is not necessary for me to say here, as I would out in the 

 country at a regular farmers' institute, that if any of your homes 

 happen to be located in such a valley or even on Shiftler's Hill, see 

 to it that you begin at once to beautify it, and fix it up, and make it 

 as it were an oasis in the desert. Then possibly your neighbors 

 will catch your spirit, and follow your example, and very soon the 



