416 STATE BOARD OF AGEICULTURE. 



on stale jokes, frozen puddings, glucose jellies, musty almonds, mouldy raisins, 

 and sour oranges. 



The boys demand that the farm shall be more than a place to stay and rear 

 families in, in the strictest economy, starving the soul to add a few more 

 acres to what is not now properly cultivated. It must be a home, where con- 

 tentment, professional pride, and the spirit of progress meet ; a home speak- 

 ing of plenty and rich in attractions; the cosy parlor and library, with news- 

 papers, magazines, poetry, history, music, and pictures. While it must be a 

 busy home, it need not be all kitchen and dairy, all plow and hoe, all an end- 

 less routine of treadmill duties ; but a place where the farmer and his family 

 may find time every day to mingle with books and in conversation, growing 

 larger in judgment and finer in taste ; and where often the table may be the 

 gathering place of friends, where the domestic and social affections are 

 abundantly fed. 



When the farmer ceases to rail against his own occupation, and makes his 

 watchword improvement and the elevation of his calling ; when he knows that 

 a dollar's worth of pure pleasure is worth more than a dollar's worth of any- 

 thing else under the sun ; when he stops attempting more work than can 

 possibly be done, making his own and his family's life one of endless drudgery, 

 and sees that working is not living, and that living is present, not future ; when 

 he sees that scientific training is necessary to progress in agriculture, and that 

 brain work as well as hard work may be made to increase the income ; when 

 his life is so adjusted that the body is servant of the soul, and his home is the 

 abode of refinement and the center of a circle of multiplied associations ; when 

 he sees that, all things considered, his business is the surest and in the end the 

 most profitable of any occupation on earth, and that the chances of real 

 success are greater on the farm than anywhere else ; when sound, sagacious 

 men who, by study and practice, ''have pitted themselves for service on life's 

 battle field," keep alive by their intelligent, conciliatory but energetic devotion, 

 the farmers' alliance, clubs, or granges, and lend their intelligence and 

 influence to elevate and direct their neighborhood or township in the way of 

 usefulness; when among those to whom the welfare of the country is com- 

 mitted, there shall be a larger sprinkling of honest, intelligent, broad -visioned, 

 liberal-minded farmers, so that the boys on the farm may see public honors 

 in the line of their promotion as well as of the lawyers, when, with the scent 

 of the clover, the fields, and the free, pure air, is mingled the ease, the gen- 

 tility, the culture, refinement, and social amenities of the best town life, then 

 it will require no effort to keep the boys and girls on the farm. 



