FARMEKS' BOYS. 311 



are here, and are taking lessons of me wliicli will be repeated to future genera- 

 tions." If boys grow up to be noble-hearted, pure-minded men, it is from 

 homes made plea.saut and happy by such mothers and sisters that they spring. 

 That homely old saying, "Just as the twig is bent the tree 's inclined," 

 has no truer application than in regard to the treatment young boys receive 

 from their sisters, especially boys reared in the isolation of farm life. In towns 

 and villages they are less dependent on home associations, and, in a measure, 

 less influenced by them ; but on large farms, particularly in our western States, 

 where neighbors are far apart, there is no other resource, no other nursery or 

 school for the cultivation of social and domestic virtues. As the boys find the 

 women of their own households, so will they be very likely to judge of woman- 

 kind at large. These lessons begin very early in life, too. 



A man who is now living, a man of years, a man of the -froTld, remembers 

 thoughts he had on this subject when but a mere cLild, and says the memory 

 of the scene connected with them can never be blotted from his mind while life 

 lasts. His mother was busy in the kitchen and could not have him there ; he 

 had no brother; his sisters, older tban himself, would not let him join their 

 plays, and he went out and stood alone to think, ankle deep in snow on the 

 farm-house doorstep. The great cheerless yard before him was a broad, blank 

 sheet of snow; every rail on the fence was white, great drifted heaps were lying- 

 in the fence corners, the old tree at the north end of the barn had all its arms 

 full of snow, and the barn itself, and the straw stack with its peaked top, and 

 the patient cattle standing so still in the yard, all looked like so many icebergs 

 frozen fast in the midst of a frozen sea. The long rows of corn set up in shocks 

 in the field below the barn, with their tasselled heads and their snowy blankets 

 but half covering their dusky forms, seemed like troops of savages suddenly 

 checked in their march, and now standing in sullen silence with their backs to 

 the storm. Dismal and dreary enough everything looked to the little boy. His 

 father had gone down to the thick woods to chop, and now aad then came up 

 a ringing echo of his axe that sounded like music in the cold purple ears of his 

 son. He could not go to his father for the depth of snow that lay between 

 them ; his mother had driven him out of her way, she was a notable house- 

 keeper ; he heard the cheerful voices and merry laughter of his sisters who had 

 called him cruel names and sent him from them because he was a boy ; and he 

 stood, with the snowflakes melting into his tears, wondering how God. would 

 punish women and girls who were so wicked to little boys. 



"Girls," he says, "who treat their brothers as I was habitually treated, 

 crush out the teuderest, the noblest, and most kindly feelings of our nature ; 

 feelings that seldom spring up again in after life, but are too often superseded 

 by a harsh and sullen temper, and a selfishness equal to that which blighted 

 their first pure and generous emotions." 



Little sisters, therefore, have much to do in forming the characters and tem- 

 pering the dispositions of their brothers. When a boy has no playmates of his 

 own sex, girls should conform their amusements in a measure to his boyish 

 tastes ; be patient with his awkwardness, and encourage all gentle and amiable 

 feelings, that he may outgrow the harsher qualities of his nature. Thus he may 

 be made an obliging, affectionate boy, and an unselfish, noble, and pure-minded 

 man, who will respect and honor woman for his sisters' sake. 



" Take care of the minutes, and the hours will take care of themselves" is 

 another good and true saying applicable to this subject : take care of the boys, 

 and the men will take care of themselves. 



Most boys, especially those belonging to farmers, are rough, awkward, un- 

 gainly material to begin with ; but look at the block of marble before it is 

 chipped and polished to the perfect statue ; or at the ore as it comes rough and 

 shapeless from the earth, and grows through refining arts and proper mouldings 

 to the precious coin that controls the commerce of the world ; or the implements 



