284 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



SO many as fifty years ago. The discontent arises more from 

 hearing the stories than the reality, and the stories are a libel on 

 the farmer, which I intend to prove before I am through. The 

 average farmer boy sows more wild oats than tame ones. Young 

 America has got to splash, and every few days a good horse must 

 be hitched before a new buggy with a new whip and a twenty-five 

 cent cigar, and long before night they start off for the village, 

 driving by eveiy one on the road, and nothing to do when they 

 get there. They do not get up in the morning until breakfast is 

 ready, then stalk aromid through the day, playing with guns, 

 watches, and revolvers, to say nothing of the money they use up; 

 and they have to be indulged in all these, but it is far from work- 

 ing from daylight until dark eight months in the year. Soon the 

 city cousins come and their head is filled with the sights and scenes 

 of the city ; then they begin to be tired of farm-life, and want 

 their liberty. Everything they do drags, but indulgence goes on. 

 And here let me say, that indulgent parents (generally mothers) 

 have spoiled more boys than rum ever did. After having all they 

 want at home, they go to the city; indulgence goes on; they eat 

 and drink everything that money will buy ; they get unsteady and 

 lose their places, lounge about saloons, get into bad company ; but 

 the end is not yet. But it would have been a thousand times better 

 if they had been compelled to stay upon the farm and worked 

 from daylight until dark. I have heard farmers say that they 

 about as lief bury a boy as to let him go to the city. I do not say 

 that there are no good boys, for there are many that are true as 

 a needle to the pole — always where they should be. I have in my 

 mind now a good farmer, his wife, a son and a daughter; they all 

 love the farm. The son went to New York with his mother, and 

 he was so sick of it that he could hardly stay over night — wanted 

 to go back in the morning. That boy never complains of long 

 days' work; he loves them, I have sat at their table and it seemed 

 to me that if there was anything on earth that could make a family 

 happy it was those four sitting around that table. I had rather 

 have the mark that that son and daughter will make than the mark 

 that many will make going to the city. There are other farmers' 

 daughters that are an exception. I heard a young lady of twenty 

 years exclaim, "No, I will not go to the city to live; I love the 

 farm, its labors, its cares, its duties; I love to hear the birds sing; 

 I love to see the lowing herd as they wend their way to the milk- 

 yard toward night." In the town that I live in, a good old Deacon 



