LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 415 



social recreation and amusement in the country. If the boy is a turbulent 

 population, he is also a gregarious being. His desire to see others and find in 

 company relief from life's perpetual grind, is a sign of health, and fortu- 

 nately is increasing witli each new generation. Our grandfathers had no time 

 for amusements, and if they ever took a holiday it was in eating or drinking 

 to excess, or in giving utterance to their bigoted piety. Forty or fifty years ago 

 — and now among people forty or fifty years behind the times — in the hard 

 teachings of the orthodox church to save your soul meant chiefly to deny your- 

 self in the matters of dancing, cards, the theatre, or any "carnal amuse- 

 ment." Mammon was not so much the god of evil passions, selfishness, 

 backbiting, and evil speaking as of pretty clothes, luxury, art, music, the 

 drama, novels, and t!ie thousand modes of relief which modern knowledge 

 and taste find for the mind from the eternal work of money getting. If the 

 theatre is not respectable, and dancing is a device of the devil, the boys' desire 

 for fun of some kind is thoroughly healthy and natural ; and if they do not 

 have lawful pleasures they will have unlawful ones. If they do not have 

 company, games, amusements, social amenities under their father's roof, with 

 such quiet surroundings as befit those bred to be gentlemen, they will have 

 them somewhere and somehow; and it may be among loafers and gamblers at 

 the nearest tavern, where the offense is rum and smells to heaven. If giving 

 the boys rooms of their own nicely fitted up, and letting them invite in their 

 friends once in a while and learn to be hospitable hosts to the extent of an 

 occasional feast costs something, remember no money is wasted which develops 

 in the right direction a boy's healthy character, helps to soften and humanize 

 him and makes dearer and more attractive to him his home and family. A 

 Southern writer says, "If farmers do not occupy the highest social position it 

 is their own fault. Those who possess all the knowledge needed on the farm 

 have Avithin themselves the elements necessary to make the society in which 

 they mingle more brilliant and desirable than any other class of people in the 

 world." There is no longer any need of undergoing the isolation and priva- 

 tions of frontier life. However poor one may be, there are plenty of chances 

 for his skill, strength, and enterprise in the older fields near the populous 

 market and within reach of the public library, lyceum, lecture, reading club, 

 grange, farmer's club, evening party, church social, and holiday festivity. 

 And in any farming community away from town two or three dozen young 

 people of congenial tastes, habits, and social belongings could easily meet at 

 cue another's houses one evening a week for several months in the year. A 

 little fund would provide them books, which read aloud in company and dis- 

 cussed would not only make a delightful entertainment but furnish topics for 

 conversation and food for thought between times. Other elements, music, 

 charades, recitations, parlor theatricals, stories, essays, and debates according 

 to the accomplishments and tastes of the different members of the company 

 might be introduced. And no sensible person will deny that such gatherings 

 of people of common pursuits, a general ground of communion, correspond- 

 ence of position, of education, of moral sentiment, of social sympathy, of 

 similar tastes and habits of thought would be far pleasanter and more profit- 

 able than the more stylish, common social gathering of the average village 

 where a snob, a toady, a swell, a rich man, a poor man, a grocer, a farrier, a 

 blacksmith, a soap-maker, a doctor of music and demented jjianos, a stage 

 driver, a dancing master, a landlord, a clerk, a fop, a fool, and a fiddler and 

 their wives or sweethearts come together to retail gossip and regale themselves 



