LECTUEES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 409 



The ideal of life here and hereafter is pleasure. High it may be, or it may be 

 low; but it is still pleasure, enjoyment, happiness. Next below this but 

 accessory to it arc comfort, and a life free from harass and grind. Men seek 

 office, public station, fame, wealth, mental acquisition, because they think 

 there is greater happiness on what are called the upper steps of society than ou 

 theirs. And here is their great mistake. They forget that want keeps pace 

 with wealth ; that responsibility goes hand in hand with position ; that posts of 

 honor are always posts of danger ; that office means burdensome duty. If we 

 were only willing to see it, happiness is very evenly distributed. The day 

 laborer loves his wife and children just as well as the Lord Chancellor loves 

 his. Food is as sweet to the plowman as to the prince ; if one has the daintier 

 dish the other has the keener appetite. The sun, the air, the breeze, the rain, 

 the stars are for all alike. Sleep does not come at the bidding of power. 

 Health comes and abides with him who treats it best; and President Arthur and 

 •Queen Victoria might whistle themselves blind before they could coax away a 

 farmer's dog. If any one really wants a thing he must be willing to pay the 

 price for it. If farmers want to cure this itching of their boys for town life 

 they must deny themselves the luxury of whining, and grumbling, and moan- 

 ing, and driveling about the hardships to be endured on the farm. They 

 must brighten up and create in themselves first, and then in the boys, a genuine 

 love of the farm. Make farm life pleasant; show the boys that it is respect- 

 able; prove to them that it is profitable, and they won't leave the farm. The 

 boy who has a good team and good tools ; who can turn a perfect furrow and 

 draw a straight line across his corn ground ; get in his crops just at the right 

 time; have all crop and no weeds; raise a little more to the acre than his fel- 

 lows ; who can see the beauty as well as profit of fine stock ; of caring for, 

 properly sheltering, keeping in good condition and improving breeds, — this is 

 the boy who loves farming, and who will stick to it. The big-boned, big- 

 hearted, big-brained farmers of Michigan are able to hold their own and blow 

 their horns as loud as anybody. They are, without doubt, the best people in 

 the "world ; they love their country, their kindred, their neighbors, and their 

 homes ; but they have been so long content to let some one else blow their 

 horns, or they have blown so long into the big end of their ''tooters" that 

 their own praise of their calling seems always to come from the little end of 

 the horn. "He that bloweth not his own horn, for him shall no horn be 

 blown." 



The natural isolation of the farm-house m^kes a pleasant home-life indis- 

 pensable, and many a boy has been driven from the farm by having a "hard 

 time" at home. The heart of the father may be all right, and his intention, 

 sound, and yet he may invariably seem to the boys to have a nature so hard 

 that if you should bore into his back with a gimlet, sawdust would rattle out. 

 Of course blandness and geniality of manner is not always an indication of 

 good behavior or intention, and is not enough, without the right feeling at 

 heart. The old cow that has visited my garden nights for three summers, 

 eaten all the sweet corn, trampled down the peas, and reposed on lettuce and 

 asparagus beds, and then contentedly chewed her cud and whisked her tail at 

 me in the morning, is the blandest and most genial creature imaginable. The 

 mother may have a warm place in her heart for her boy, yet wear an air so icy 

 that he takes cold every time he looks at her. Fire is a good thing to have in 

 the house, but it should be in the stove cooking food, or warming rooms, and 

 not in a mother's temper, roasting the boys. "The old barn, — lofty hay- 

 mows piled to the roof, with its garnered treasures of fragrant, new-mown hay ; 



