376 STATE BOAKD OF AGKICULTURE. 



An important consideration in connection with the honseliold is the house, — 

 the material structure or building in which the family live. There are many 

 comfortable, convenient, and even elegant houses in our State, especially in the 

 older and more improved portions of it. Yet the number of such houses is 

 small as compared with those that are inelegant, inconvenient, and uncomforta- 

 ble. This is not always from lack of the means necessary to provide what is 

 better, but not unfrequently from the fact that the tight-iisted occupant is 

 unwilling to make any investment that does not yield an annual return of ten 

 per cent. 



It is a fact that I presume will not be disputed by any, that country houses 

 are generally less convenient and comfortable, and do not exhibit as much 

 refinement of taste as the houses that are occupied by a similar class of people 

 in our towns and villages. I think it will be at once apparent that this dispar- 

 ity ought not to exist, and in fact cannot exist without entailing the most dis- 

 astrous consequences. Tlie country home should of all others be the most 

 attractive. The isolation of country life as compared with life in the city makes 

 the attractions of home a more absolute necessity, dou])ly enhances their blessing 

 and causes the want of tliem where they are lacking to be more keenly felt. In 

 the city many of the long evenings are spent at the concert, the lecture and the 

 opera, but in the country they are usually spent at home. The business man 

 of the city may talk over the haps or mishaps of the day to his evening associates 

 at the club, but if the new horse has shown a disposition to balk, or attempted 

 to run away, if the cow has kicked over the milk pail, or an unruly buck has 

 upset both milk and milker in the yard, the farmer tells it to his wife as they 

 sit by the cosy evening fire. 



One of the evils much complained of in our time, and one for Avhich a remedy 

 must be found or the days of our national prosperity will soon be numbered, 

 is that so many of our youth born and brought up in the country rapidly develop 

 a distaste for rural life and agricultural pursuits, and without casting even a 

 lingering look behind them, leave tlie old home and the paternal acres to seek a 

 new home, new associations, and new occupations in the city. There is a con- 

 stant and disastrous drain from the farming population of its brightest intelli- 

 gence, its most stirring enterprise, its noblest and most aspiring natures — of all 

 those elements which are necessary to elevate the standard of agricultural labor 

 and make it what it should be. I have neither the time nor the disposition to 

 go into statistics bearing on this mattter, yet it is a fact that in some of the 

 older States thousands of acres once tilled are lapsing into forest, and all over 

 the country farming lands for a number of years past have either deteriorated 

 or made no advance in value as compared with the improvements put upon 

 them, except such portions as may be situated in the vicinity of cities and large 

 towns. 



There may be a number of causes for this drain from agricultural pursuits, 

 but prominent among them we believe to be the harsh contrast between actual 

 farm life and life in the city, a contrast which would entirely disappear, or turn 

 in favor of rural life, if farmers' homes were all that they should be. 



I know of farmers whose farms are paid for and have been for years, whose 

 income from their farm has enabled them to buy adjoining land, improved 

 stock and implements of husbandry, and to put money out at interest, and yet 

 living in houses almost destitute of comfort or convenience — with no visible 

 touch of refinement within or around them ; no ornamentation surrounding the 

 dwelling, except perhaps a variety of farm implements strewn around bleaching 



