50 THE GROUNDSWELL. 



sought the city, where, in their disdain of daily toil, they 

 have gone down, step by step, until they have reached the 

 lowest depths of degradation, and sometimes even of crime. 

 Our penitentiaries are filled with just such backsliders from 

 the ranks of honest industry, who once were good and true, 

 and actuated by high moral principle. 



Is there no remedy ? Yes ! Make home attractive. Cease 

 the tomfoolery of shutting up from year s end to year s end 

 the best room of the house, never to be opened save on state 

 occasions, and then striking a chill to the innermost 

 soul with its uncomfortable grandeur. Use the parlor as a 

 gathering place where all may meet in social converse for 

 mutual improvement. Furnish the room well and plainly, 

 wasting no money on gorgeous furniture, easily ruined and 

 a pleasure only to the eye. Educate the youth of the coun 

 try to a taste for a literature that shall improve the mind. 

 Fill the book-shelves with works pertaining to every-day 

 life, interspersed with standard novels and poetry, written ir? 

 the pure style of such writers as our own Irving and Bryant. 

 Let us do this, and then assuredly shall be laid the broad 

 and solid basis of an education that will make the genera 

 tion next to come better and purer than that of to-day. 



