1882.] THE HOMES OP OUR FARMERS. 227 



Two facts are here to be noticed at the outset. Many persons, 

 reared on the farms of New England, follow business calhngs in 

 the cities and villages, becoming merchants, manufacturers, clerks, 

 agents, or adventurers in chimerical schemes, who, when failing 

 in health or business, retui-n to the old homestead, and as a 

 dernier resort, resume farming. But long since estranged from 

 this calling, with no interest or ambition in it, driven to it by 

 stern necessity, depressed in spirits, bankrupt at once in purse and 

 hope — is it strange that their health and even reason should give 

 way? 



The second fact bearing on this subject is the error of many 

 lunatic asylums in taking down the calling or profession of the 

 patients. The class just named are counted as farmers, though 

 they really broke down in other pursuits which occupied most of 

 their lives, and though the final failure was delayed or alleviated 

 by the very calling, which in the hospital record has the credit of 

 being the procuring cause. 



The "hired men" are often confounded with the land ownerr 

 and real farmers. Many day laborers — those occupied with oda 

 jobs of all sorts, but more in farm work than any other one, are 

 often classed as farmers on the hospital list. The friends of the 

 patient naturally name the most reputable of his various kinds of 

 labor, though he may have been a jack at all trades. 



Says Dr. Earle, Superintendent of the Lunatic Hospital at 

 Northampton: ''Out of 1,074 admissions, 126 are set down as 

 farmers. But in these are included, not proprietors or land owners 

 alone, but the mere laboring agriculturalists as well. The number 

 under this head is the largest of any in the table. Let no one 

 hastily infer that, of all classes, farmei's are the most subject to 

 mental disorders. Nothing could be more erroneous. In the four 

 counties from which this hospital chiefly derives its inmates, agri- 

 culturalists are overwhelmingly more numerous than any other 

 section of the population as classed by occupation. So far as mere 

 employment is concerned, as a generative cause of insanity, the 

 farmer unquestionably is less liable to that disorder than perhaps 

 any other person. He is in a sphere more nearly natural than the 

 artisans, the mechanics, and the professional men of a civilization 

 abounding with artificial conditions and influences." 



The eminent New York physician cited above, who so confi- 

 dently affirms that farmers are short-lived, says in regard to Eng- 

 land: '' In passing through a lunatic asylum, the visitor is surprised 



