OUR HOMES. 105 



without money or price. No home can be made more 

 pleasant than the farmer's. Notwithstanding all that, there 

 are many wasting their lives in fretfulness and discontent 

 because their lines are not cast in pleasanter places. The 

 ownership of a home is something which neither the Irish 

 peasant nor the German laborer has any conception of 

 The desire to own a home is distinctly an American char- 

 acteristic. The country home can and should be made 

 pleasant and attractive, and it is the duty of the farmer to 

 study his home as well as the soil and embrace every op- 

 portunity to improve and beautify it. 



There are no words that can describe the influence the 

 W'ife and mother exerts upon the home, and the home con- 

 tains no member that can soothe and relieve the pain and 

 sorrow like her gentle hand. Yet with all her kindness and 

 tender sympathy, she is too often left alone, tired and 

 weary, and sometimes in sorrow, amid her perplexing cares, 

 which are often more trying and harder to endure than the 

 cares of the husband. Then why should they not be in 

 possession of our secrets as well as our joys and sorrows? 

 It is not always what we give, but what we share, that 

 afibrds us happiness and sweetens home. 



There are men and boys among the feirmers, who, when 

 their day's work is done and their evening meal taken, start 

 immediately for the hotel or the country store, where they 

 are free to converse upon any topic of the day exce])t home. 

 Most men are obliged to provide for their families and many 

 have to obtain food and necessary articles for the home at 

 the close of the day's work. It is hardly necessary, how- 

 ever, to spend every evening away from home. When the 

 father and the boys are willing to pass their unemployed 

 evenings at their own firesides, the home will be greatly 

 improved. Our homes are what we make them. They 

 should be more than stopping places. They should be the 

 abodes of contentment and happiness. Some travellers 

 have said that America is the country in which there is less 

 happiness and less enjoyment than in any other in the 

 world. Certainly we have not cultivated the art of enjoy- 

 ing ourselves as we should. We are always in a hurry. It 

 is work, work, — toil, toil, — from early morn to dewy eve, 



