Opportunities for Young Farmkrs. 617 



forms but a nioioty of tho labor upon his farm he once 

 did ; sees, year by year, his soil diminishing in fertility, his 

 fences and buildings going to gradual but certain decay, 

 and is at last compelled, though against his will, to sell his 

 farm and, pei-haps, a line stock, to which he had become 

 greatly attached, and buy a small place in the village, near 

 to the post office and meeting-house, and there spend the 

 remainder of his days, which, in many instances, we notice, 

 are shortened and greatly impaired in usefulness, because 

 of this prematurely breaking up of his life-associations and 

 occupation. 



This, to me, is a source of regret and cause for alarm. 

 Of regret, for the picture is a sad one, as I venture the 

 assertion that in ninety-nine cases of every one hundred 

 where young men leave the farm to seek the good they 

 would possess and enjoy, sooner or later they will candidly 

 admit that the same goal might have been reached, both 

 in honors and in wealth, through patient continuance in 

 well doing at the home of their boyhood. 



The fiery ordeals through which the few have to pass 

 to attain the heinrhts they aim to reach in wealth and 

 honor, and the perpetual wear and strain upon nerve 

 and fiber are fearful, brinirinn: often in their train a broken 

 constitution and an u'.iha^^py closing of a wearisome life. 



This, with the premature suspension of active life in the 

 case of the father, and a gradual rusting out of his once, 

 perhaps, brilliant faculties, makes the picture a source of 

 regi'ct to the beholder. It is cause for alarm, for by 

 Buch means, more, perhaps, than we realize, is the cause 

 of agriculture kept iu the background, both as an art 



