FARMER'S HOME, PAST AND FUTURE. 217 



being understood. Look after the instructions in your 

 schools, and see that they leave out arithmetical puzzles in 

 which most arithmetics abound, geography that nobody 

 cares any thing about, or that will be changed in ten years, 

 and grammar before the child is old enough to posoibly 

 understand what he is studying : in other words, save your 

 children, if possible, from the terrific waste of labor too 

 common in schools, and see to it that they know what will 

 be a delight to them in field and house, and what will fit 

 them to be useful citizens. Here stop with school education, 

 unless your children, of their own free will, wish to go 

 farther : in other words, send your children to school, and fit 

 them to be citizens, but never send them to college. If they 

 go there, let them go of their own choice ; because they 

 ought not to be allowed to go till they are old enough to 

 choose for themselves. Sending a son to college is, in 

 general, about the poorest thing a father can do for his son. 

 The majority of those sent to college would be much better 

 off at home in some honest employment. It would be better 

 for them mentally and morally, and better for the world. 



I might thus go on almost indefinitely filling out the 

 programme of duties and grand possibilities of farmers' 

 homes ; but time admonishes me that I must stop somewhere, 

 and an outline picture is often the best. 



My desire has been to make such suggestions as shall lead 

 the farmer's family to feel that theirs is the favoi'ed lot 

 among men, and to encourage such life on the farm as shall 

 tend to keep the children there. Enough of them will be 

 drawn off by peculiar tastes (and especially by that false 

 glare of business life), that look so grand in the distance, and 

 by the peculiar honors of professional life. But it is a great 

 gain, if in all their strife in the market, office, or legislative 

 hall, they can have ever with them the sweet influences of 

 an early life on the farm, and be drawn to it again as they 

 find the emptiness of the prizes of money and honor which 

 come even to the most successful in citv life. 



I believe the farmer's liome will continue to improve, and 

 that the farmer's home of the future will be a place of 

 honest labor, of generous culture, — the best place in wliich 

 to begin life, a good place to spend it, and the best place for 

 it to come to a close. The only entailment of property we 



