EDUCATION IN THE RURAL DISTRICTS. 



and earnestly, and with a profound fiiitli in the true nohility and dignity of the farmer's 

 calling. It must not be done by taking for social growth the finery and gloss of mere 

 city customs and observance''. It is an iuiproveuient that can never come from the 

 atmosphere of boarding schools and colleges as they are now constituted, for board- 

 ing schools and colleges pity the farmer's, ignorance, and despise him for it. It must, 

 on the contrary, come from an intelligent conviction of the honesty and dignity of 

 rural life ; a conviction that as agriculture embraces the sphere of God's most natu- 

 ral and beautiful operations, it is the best calculated, when rightly understood, to ele- 

 vate and engage man's faculties ; that, as it feeds and sustains the nation, it is the 

 basis of all material wealth ; and as it supports all other professions and callings, it is 

 intrinsically the parent and superior of them all. Let the American farmer's wife 

 never cease to teach her sons, that though other callings may be more lucrative, yet 

 there is none so true and so safe as that of the farmer, — let her teach her daughters 

 that, fascinating and bi-illiant as many other positions appear outwardly, there is none 

 with so much intrinsic satisfaction as the life of a really intelligent proprietor of the 

 soil, and above all, let her show by the spirit of intelligence, order, neatness, taste, 

 and that beauty of proprietij, which is the highest beauty in her home, that she really 

 knows, understands, and enjoys, her position as a wife and mother of a farmer's fami- 

 ly — let us have but a few earnest apostles of this kind, and the condition and prosper- 

 ity of the agricultural class, intellectually and socially, will brighten, as the day bright- 

 ens after the first few bars of golden light tinge the eastern horizon. 



We are glad to see and record such signs of daybreak — in the shape of a recog- 

 nition of the low social state which we deplore, and a cry for reform — which now and 

 then make themselves heard, here and there, in the country. Major Patrick — 

 a gentleman whom we have not the pleasure of knowing, though we most cordially 

 shake hands with him mentally, has delivered an address before the Jefferson coun- 

 ty Agricultural Society, in the state of New- York, in which he has touched with no 

 ordinary skill, upon this very topic. The two pictures which follow are as faithful as 

 those of a Dutch master, and we hang them up here, conspicuously, in our columns, 

 as being more worthy of study by our farmer's families, than any pictures that the Art 

 Union will distribute this year, among all those that will be scattered from Maine to 

 Missouri 



"An industrious pair, some twenty or thirty years ago, commenced the world with strong 

 hands, stout hearts, robust health, and steady habits. By the blessing of Heaven their in- 

 dustry has been rewarded with plenty, and their labors have been crowned with success. 

 The dense forest has given place to stately orchards of fruits, and fertile fields, and waving 

 meadows, and verdant pastures, covered with evidences of worldly prosperity. The log 

 cabin is gone, and in its stead a ftiir white house, two stories, and a wing with kitchen in 

 the rear, flanked by barns, and cribs, and granaries, and dairy houses. 



But take a nearer view. Ila! what means this mighty crop of unmown thistles border- 

 ing the road. For what market is that still mightier crop of pigweed, dock and nettles 

 destined, that fills up the space they call the "garden?" And look at those wide, un- 

 thickets of elm, and sumac, and briers, and choke-cherr}^, that mark the lines of 

 evcrv fence! 



