236 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



peace, refinement, and attraction which God designed a home should possess. 

 The truth is we must talk more, think more, work more, and act more in 

 reference to the question relating to home on the farm. The training and 

 improving of the physical, intellectual, social, and moral powers and senti- 

 ments of the youth of our country require something more than the school- 

 house, academy, college, and univerhity. 



The young mind should receive judicious training in the field, in the garden, 

 in the barn, in the parlor, in the kitchen ; in a word, around the hearthstone, 

 on the farm. Whatever intellectual attainments the son may have acquired, 

 he is unfit to go forth into society if he has not had thrown around him the 

 genial and purifying influences of parents, sisters, brothers, and the man- 

 saving influence of the family government. The nation must always look for 

 virtue, wisdom, and strength to the education that controls and shapes the 

 home policy of the family circle. There can be no love of country where 

 there is no love of home. Patriotism, true and genuine, the only kind worthy 

 of a name, derives its mighty strength from fountains that gush out around 

 the hearthstone, and those who forget to cherish the household interests, will 

 soon learn to look with indifference upon the interests of their common 

 country. 



Then ornament your homes with intelligence, goodness, and loveliness. 

 Surround them with lawns, trees, and flowers; it costs but very little, none 

 are too poor to have these lovely surroundings. A home so furnished will not 

 willingly be abandoned, and will be left, when the inevitable time for parting 

 comes, with regret, and with an unquenchable desire to return and renew old 

 and pleasing associations, and where such a love of the beautiful prevails, it is 

 it is likely to pervade all the business of the farm ; fence corners will be 

 cleared of noxious weeds, dead trees and leafless branches will not cumber the 

 orchard, barn yards will not reek with filth, barns and sheds will not exhibit 

 great gaps through which the wintry winds, with keen tooth, may bite the 

 shivering stock, but general love of order will show itself in thrift and com- 

 fort. On such a farm, at least, there will be no question but that farming 

 pays, besides being a place of love and happiness. I deny that the tiller of 

 the soil is by nature intellectually inferior to any other class of men ; they are 

 just as capable of becoming acquainted with the sciences, which pertain to 

 agriculture, and more susceptible of natural influences than their more sturdy 

 neighbors. 



So take courage, my farmer friends, and organize for the defense of your 

 interests, fill your libraries with useful books, and agricultural papers. Study 

 them during the long winter evenings, and at other times, though you have to 

 take two or three hours from your business, you will be the better and wiser 

 for it. You are then not only fitted for the dignity of the farm, but you are 

 capable of filling any position in the gift of the people. Educate your girls, 

 bring them up to habits of industry, give them a reasonable time for rest and 

 recreation, remembering that on them depends the welfare of our country, for 

 they are to be its future mothers. Horseback riding is one of the finest rec- 

 reations for girls in the world ; it strengthens and invigorates the physical, it 

 exhilarates and tones the mental. Croquet, archery, lawn-tennis, and all 

 harmless out-door games should be furnished for them. Nothing will do them 

 more good than out-of-door exercise during the summer months, and in the 

 winter in-door games, together with healthy literature should pass the long 

 winter evenings away. Let boys whose parents are poor, or who have no 

 parents at all, remember that recognition and success does not depend on 



