6 THE LURE OF THE LAND 



a wreck has been the result of taking the family to the 

 country, and afterwards having part or all of it become 

 thoroughly dissatisfied. There are so many rough re- 

 alities in a life of this kind that it takes the poetry out 

 of the visions of joy, peace, contentment and success, 

 that arise in the minds of many. 



There are thousands of people to-day, however, to 

 whom the question is one of immense importance. The 

 longer a man thinks about it, the more infatuated he 

 becomes with the idea. He must, therefore, lay aside 

 prejudice and desire, and look at the matter in the full 

 light of practicality. The landscape is apt to lose its 

 beauty after a few hours in the harvest field, and the 

 forest is valued only for its shade after ten hours' plow- 

 ing in the hot sun. The problems which are to be con- 

 sidered are many, and only a few can be presented in 

 this work. As one who knew all about farm life as a 

 boy and has had a pretty large experience with it as a 

 man, and who has returned to it in the late afternoon of 

 his life, I may perhaps be able, from my experience, to 

 say a few things that will be helpful. 



My object is not to keep farmers' sons and daughters 

 at home, so much as it is to keep fathers and mothers 

 who have no business in the country from going there. 

 Better by far to stay in the city, where the environment 

 is known and where the niche into which you are thrust 

 is more or less adapted to hold you, than to come to 

 grief through a mistaken idea of what is necessary to 

 successful farming. 



The difficulty of the problem is increased by reason 

 of the artificial life of the present time. Every day 

 the urban population seems to grow larger and the rural 

 population to diminish. It is a rare thing for an in- 

 telligent and ambitious farmer's boy to become a farmer, 



