182 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



to be done ; and the most of farm work is unlike the routine 

 work in shops and factories, in that it is varied, interesting 

 and healthful. In no other vocation can the child be so 

 trained to habits of industry and thrift without detriment to 

 his health, intelligence and self-respect. 



Then, too, all this education is in connection with a home, 

 and this lies at the very foundation of patriotism. A 

 farmer's love of home is a love for a spot of ground around 

 which cling tender associations, a locality as well as a family. 

 We can easily see why a ftirraer should love his home, and 

 why in a time of danger he should be ready and willing to 

 fight for it. The inhabitant of a city has an entirely differ- 

 ent conception of home. With him, home is a family, and 

 not a place also, for the family lives now in this street, 

 now in that ; and it is hard to have much sentimental 

 love in time of peace, or patriotism in time of war, fight- 

 ing for a rented house in a brick block, no matter how 

 elegant may be its appointments or how great its conven- 

 iences. 



More than one writer, both ancient and modern, has 

 alluded to the fact that the inhabitants of cities lack patriot- 

 ism ; and this is but natural, when we consider the instabil- 

 ity of a city home as a place of abode. Most of the business 

 of a city can be transferred to some other place and carried 

 on there ; the farmer's work is associated with a place, and 

 that place is at once the place of business and the home. 

 Hence, that patriotism belongs more especially to the 

 country and the farm than to the city, is but the natural re- 

 sult that comes from the different vocations of men, and 

 the different educational influences brought to bear on the 

 work. 



We have a class of writers now who speak as if it was a 

 matter for wonder that so many of our former statesmen and 

 poets were born on farms. But could it have been other- 

 wise? What would Whittier be without his farm birth and 

 farm education ? Thoreau was born on a farm ; his parents 

 soon moved into a village, but, it is said of him, as of Emer- 

 son, that he drove his mother's cows to pasture, and bare- 

 foot, too. Longfellow, Holmes, Bryant, Irving, Cooper, in 

 fact, all of our best-known writers, have either spent a part 



