9 



LECTUKES AND ESSAYS BEAD AT INSTITUTES. 34=1 



independence which has always been so marked a characteristic of the Ameri- 

 can people. 



THE FARMER'S HOME. 



BY.F. C. SNYDER. 

 [Read at Greenvine Institute.] 



What mingled associations of happiness and sorrow, blight and growth, are 

 bound up in the word home. How definitely we can point back to childhood's 

 hours, and trace the windings of the pathway of life that has led to present 

 success or failure, — a pathway we are permitted to travel but once. All along 

 the way are its bright scenes and its dark. The bright are as sunshine, casting 

 its quickening and life-giving rays down life's rugged pathway to its very close. 

 The dark are but chilling shadows ever remembered with regret. From within 

 the sacred precincts of home have been gleaned the many precepts and lessons 

 that have moulded our minds and character; fitting each, either for work in 

 the cause of advancing or that of retarding the highest, noblest interests of 

 manhood. What importance then centers in that place of all places, — the 

 home. 



While we are so earnestly discussing the various merits of different breeds of 

 live stock, the best modes of raising crops, and studying perfection in various 

 farm operations, may it not be of profit to consider the question of the 

 farmer's home? 



Let us put the direct question, and ask what that home is? Is it a tumble- 

 down, rickety, weather beaten shanty, whose very surroundings betoken shif t- 

 lessness, disease, mental and moral debasement? Again, is it a huge building 

 reared within ten or fifteen feet of the road, its blank, glaring windows staring 

 down on the passer by, with not a flower, shrub, or tree about, to cheer the 

 lonely aspect? A place bespeaking physical toil from early morn to late 

 evening, year in and year out, with but few or no hours devoted to mental 

 and moral culture? 



In short, is it a place calculated to produce and foster the many noble 

 graces and qualities of mind and character that constitute the highest concep- 

 tion of true manhood and womanhood? We fear it is not always the place we 

 can point to and say with pride and pleasure, — I love it, it furnishes food for 

 the soul, for the intellect ! Else why do the boys find their way to the cities 

 in search of enjoyment, only to be plunged into sin, and often becoming its 

 victims, why do the girls sigh for escape from farm life, and why the good 

 farmer and his wife denominated rusty, simple-minded, slow paced beings? 



Farmers, it is in our homes we must look for the richest product of the f arm ! 

 It is the eminent philosopher. Sir Wm. Hamilton, who says: "There is 

 nothing great in the world but man, and nothing great in man but mind. ' 

 The history of ages but proves the assertion. If we wish to share in the 

 offices of the government; drive fraud, dishonesty, and injustice from the 

 land ; rid society of the blasting sting of sin ; hunt out the hot-houses of 

 iniquity, and scatter its occupants to the winds, it must be through the culti- 

 vation of the mind. Every hour reveals the emphatic need of strong, active, 



