THE FARMER'S MAGAZiNE. 



529 



and obscure, contributors to the welfare of the human 

 race." 



We may sing of "the good time coming"; but it 

 will not come, depend upon it, till employers have 

 thoroughly appreciated the privileges of their posi- 

 tion, and have determined to show in their daily 

 lives that they are teachers of the true — missionaries 

 of the worthy and the good, and pioneers of that pro- 

 gress which is ever onwards and upwards; till they can 

 demand sobriety from their servants, honesty from the 

 husbandmen and handicraftsmen, prudence and purity 

 from all under them, and demand it with the firmness which 

 only a conviction can give them, that they themselves 

 are prepared to show in their life and calling that they 

 are sober, honest, pure, prudent, good, and true ; that 

 they can demand this, not in the inherent weakness of 

 hypocrisy, but in the power of integrity and the 

 strength of honesty. As the constant dropping of water 

 wears away a stone, so will the persistent efforts of a good 

 example shown by employers at all times and on all 

 occasions — in the farm steading as well as in the 

 house, beside the plough as beside the altar, in the fields 

 as at the school or in the church, in the evidences of 

 principles which " distil as the dew upon the gentle 

 herb," as in the precepts which fall as " the latter rain" 

 — ultimately exercise a beneficial influence on the em- 

 ployed, and wear out of them and rub from them the 

 seeds of moral disease, and the stain of evil practices, 

 till soundness of principle in them shall beget strength 

 of mind, the pollution of life give way to its purity, and 

 the darkness of understanding be lighted by the beams 

 from the sun of righteousness, and beautified by the 

 benignity of its smile. Then shall the employers and 

 the employed be a band of brothers, fellow-workers in 

 the field of this world's toil, soldiers in a good fight, led 

 by one mind, influenced by one motive ; whose war shall 

 be with the elements, whose fields shall be glistening 

 with the smiling corn, or green with the glorious labours 

 of the husbandmen — a band of brothers, not the less 

 united and true to their country because true to each 

 other and to themselves, should the time ever come 

 when the tumults of war and the shouts of invaders be 

 heard ; when they shall be called alike by duty and by 

 patriotism to lay down the sickle and seize the sword, 

 and fighting for their hearths and homes, bravely and 

 truly win the peace which shall secure to them the op- 

 portunity of gaining triumphs better far than all the 

 glittering gew-gaws of war — the Grand Crosses of In- 

 dustry, which though they may bronze with the dews 

 of heaven, and be soiled with the hands of toil, shall 

 have no red rust of human gore to stain them, but be 

 crowned with the laurels of peace, ever fresh and ever 

 fair, and blessed with the blessings of plenty. 



In our last paper we stated it as our belief that no 

 scholastic education — taking this term in its generally 

 received signification — will be at all powerful in effecting 

 the elevation of the social condition of the agricultural 

 labourer, till it is preceded by, or at least accompanied 



with, the " education of example" and the " education 

 of the hearth and home" — the first having its rise with 

 the employer, and the second with the employed. As 

 regards the duties of tlie first, in carrying out the educa- 

 tion of example, we have in the paper above alluded to 

 gone somewhat fully into ; it remains therefore for us to 

 point out briefly the way in which the employed can 

 carry out the education of the hearth and home. 



We would, however, at the outset, have the reader to 

 note that the machinery, by which this hearth-education 

 is to be carried out, is not, nay, cannot in the nature of 

 things be expected to be provided by the employed. 

 Before hearth education can be begun, and home 

 influence be exerted, it is essential that the home be 

 provided and the comfort of the hearth secured. And 

 here steps in the sanitary reformer, to do his offices and 

 to explain the importance of his principles of action. 

 What these are, and how best to be carried out into 

 practice, we have endeavoured to show in the series of 

 papers on Agricultural Education, which we contri- 

 buted some time ago to this Journal, and to which in 

 the last of the present series of papers reference was 

 made. The importance of having a home, the arrange- 

 ments of which shall not of necessity present that 

 which will render nugatory all the lessons of worth and 

 of purity which may be given by its hearth, is surely 

 obvious to all. To our own remarks on this point, in 

 the articles above alluded to, we add the following as 

 supplementary, and as perhaps more suggestive and 

 apposite, from the pen of a writer to whom the world 

 is indebted for many fine thoughts and noble impulses : 

 " Nor can we be surprised at the little fruit as yet seen 

 to arise from the best of our school teaching, when we 

 reflect on the evil influences which prevail in many of 

 the homes, and when we know how all but impossible 

 it is for the children to practise there those lessons of 

 order, decency, and decorum which they learn at school. 

 We see herein how much it behoves us to harmonize our 

 plans for benefiting our neighbours, and to how little 

 purpose we should spend our strength even in the best 

 of education, if we acquiesce in the ascendancy 

 of beer and gin, and if we are content to 

 make little progress in that most important of all 

 material reforms, which under the term " sanitary" 

 includes at once the healthful and decent, and 

 implies that every dwelling throughout the land should 

 be meet for a Christian's home. * * * Where 

 families are crowded together to excess, and much more 

 where lodgers of all ages — men, women, and children- 

 are tenants of the same apartment, privacy is out of the 

 question, and decent self-respect is all but impossible. 

 Where habits of decency are so hard to be put in practice, 

 what can be expected but that profligacy shall abound ? 

 If it be impossible to have the home cleanly and sweet, 

 how is it likely to prove attractive in competition with 

 the tap-room close at hand ? That which depresses 

 health is apt to make the temper irritable; and where no 

 one has a place, ever so small, to himself, the trials of 



