' fak:meks' institutes. 2G5 



it, the sunshiny kitchen with its hare, white floor and walls, and nodding roses 

 at the window, is far more attractive than the darkened parlor with its stiff- 

 backed chairs and sofa, ranged in awful state, its carpet and curtains which 

 the sun must never see, for fear it might fade the one and rot the other. After 

 all you may do to it, 'twill be the most unfriendly room in the house, tlie one 

 where you never care to sit and rest or read, and where the echoes linger, as if 

 not used to gleeful voices. We can have rooms different from this, wonderfully 

 pleasant, without the expense of rich furniture or even being really handsome 

 in themselves, so much is done by good taste. If we can not have the ideal 

 greenhouse, with rare and beautiful plants, there are queenly roses Avill bloom 

 even when uncared for, delicate lilies rivaling the choicest hot-house beauty in 

 fragrance, snowy chrysanthemums that will stay until Christmas time if only 

 given shelter, and the morning glories will toss their lovely tinted bells at your 

 window, summer after summer, self-sown, if only given a seed-bed, and some- 

 thing iu summer time round which to twine themselves. "We are too prone to 

 strive after effect. Here is a misguided mortal, who, laboring under the 

 impression that he is adding to the beauty of the surroundings, will fell every 

 forest tree, and fill a yard with dwarf evergreens, while you feel as if one whose 

 sense of the beautiful is so distorted, mifjht be guilty of abusing his own grand- 

 mother. Not every man can be a prince among farmers, with help at his nod, 

 nor can he dispense hospitality as he would like, but he can be a systematic, 

 thorough farmer; can keep good stock with a little care; can have fruits and 

 flow^ers and grand old trees, and tasteful grounds ; can make his land so pro- 

 ductive that it will yield double what it now does, and iu all this he is a public 

 benefactor even while benefiting himself, and is neariug the ideal farmer and 

 farm every year. Remember what Emerson says on hospitality: "^I pray 

 you not to cumber yourself and me to get a rich dinner for this man or woman, 

 or a bed, made ready at too great a cost. These things if they are curious in 

 they can for a dollar get at any village. But let this stranger in your looks, in 

 your accent and behavior, read your heart and earnestness, your thought and 

 Avill, w^hich he cannot buy at any price. By all means let the board be spread, 

 the bed prepared, but let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in these things." 

 Such an ideal of being hospitable lies within the poorest man's power. It is 

 simple and beautiful, and without it all else would be sham. 



Our ideal in dress is all of elegance and costliness, yet an intelligent face will 

 make the simplest garment seem becoming, and one often sees a common print 

 W'orn with more grace, and look far more tasteful, than the richest silks and 

 rarest laces, so hard is it to cover what is coarse and imcultivated, even when 

 Ave have all outward elegancies to help toward our ideal of beauty and refine- 

 ment. The schools, the books, the culture, are within the reach of every 

 farmer's son and daughter, to help toward that ideal, and if the time comes 

 when costly dress can be afforded, it will only make the intelligent face more 

 beautiful, the refinement a little more distinct, but can never take their place. 

 AVhen we come to see the ideal is not far off, that with patient endeavor we make 

 it in part at least real, when we feel, as we say, that the mission of bread- 

 giver is one of the noblest as well as necessary, when we magnify our calling 

 till a man is proud to be called a farmer, when w^e find an intelligent and culti- 

 vated people throughout the country side, and all this can be and is being done, 

 then indeed will the ideal farmer and farm become a fact. How much more 

 fitting that a man when he is grown old should spend his last days where his 

 life-work has been done, and there is something far more beautiful ni the 



34 



