No. 7, DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 703 



imd attraetious, but there is some beauty and attraction in farm life 

 which every happy and cheerful spirit can discover. The man, who 

 is farming because he feels that he loves the work, and must do it 

 or die, is to-day the man the world looks up to and envies. To-day 

 the farmer is king of the world and farming is taking its place 

 with the best callings of the world. 



The country or the farm is not to be mocked at, not to be regarded 

 with contempt, as is the case with many of our city people and 

 society youths and maidens. The time has come when city people 

 no longer talk about farmers as "hayseeds," but, in turn they take 

 oif their hats to him when they meet him on the street; they stop him 

 and talk to him because they know he is sound on most matters up- 

 permost at the present time. You go to the city and search care- 

 fully through the annals of the biography of the leaders in business 

 and society, and you will find, with the exceptionally few cases, 

 that at one time of their career they have been on the farm or in 

 the country. And should their opinions be asked, they would in- 

 variably say that the country or farm is the heritage of pleasure or 

 brain power. 



The pleasures of the farm are varied and have been pictured to us 

 in graphic colors by the literary journalists. Poets have sung of the 

 wavy grain; the golden tints of the sunset. 



James Whitcomb Riley, in his ballad "When the frost is on the 

 pumpkin and the fodder in the shock," says, that the farm presents 

 a picture that " no painter has the colering to mock." John Green- 

 leaf Whittier's delight in nature is the genuine passion of a man 

 born and bred in the country, who has not only a visiting acquain- 

 tance with the landscape, but stand on terms of life-long friendship 

 with the hill stream, rock and tree. In his descriptions he often 

 catches glimpses of rural scenery. Shakespeare, also in his forest 

 scene, finds "tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons 

 in stones and good in everything." 



Youth often gets tired of the routine work of the farm and longs 

 for the attractions and excitement of the city. But they must re- 

 member that life in the city is not the public holiday it seems to one 

 from the country who occasionally visits the city. 



Country people, it is true rise early and work hard, but the pic- 

 nics attended in summer and the sleigh rides that enliven them in 

 winter, give them social recreation and change, and there is always 

 the keenest enjoyment for those who know how to read Mother 

 Nature's book. If we stop and think of how some of our city friends 

 are spending every working day in mills and factories with the cease- 

 less clatter of hundreds of machines around them, or like some who 

 are standing behind counters day after day, or occupying a seat 

 behind the desk of some dingy office, counting and figuring, week in 

 and out, with no thought of vacation, and then think of us in the 

 country, that get up early in the cool of the morning to milk and do 

 the greater part of the chores before the hottest part of the day and 

 when the hard work is over sit down under some shade tree and revel 

 in the jojs, of nature. 



How much pleasure it would give our city cousins to only for a 

 short time exchange places with us. What a great pleasure to a 

 farmer when his hard davs work is over that he can lie down to a 



