No. 4.] COUNTRY LIFE. 121 



where every breath serves as a disinfectant, and brings 

 viijor and life to the blood and calmness to the nerves and 

 activity to the brain. Where will you find any air so bright 

 and sweet as the air in the country towns in Massachusetts ? 

 Will you who live on the hills go to the city for a week ? 

 You will be so' stifled that you cannot think clearly, you 

 cannot eat comfortably, and you will have the dyspepsia 

 and you will then begin to think that " all the country 

 towns are going to the bad ! " 



Food makes men. It is vastly important what we eat, 

 and the country towns of Massachusetts raise the most 

 nutritious and healthy food raised on earth. Experience 

 has shown that. You wives, didn't you ever hear your 

 husbands tell about their mothers' cooking? 



A scientific illustration shows the importance of good 

 food. I think it was Professor Virchow of Berlin who took 

 two kittens as an experiment in 1878. He fed them on dif- 

 ferent foods, and after feeding them for many weeks he 

 approached one kitten and put out his hand to stroke it. It 

 stuck up its back, spit and scratched. He went to the other 

 one, kept in the same room ; it stuck up its tail and rubbed 

 against his finger with all the sweetness of domestic joy. 

 They belonged to the same litter, were brought up in the 

 same place, but they had been fed on diflerent food. I have 

 often said I can understand now why some men swear and 

 some women scratch ! You cannot make great men on mis- 

 erable food. The kind of food to make imbeciles you get 

 at the restaurants, at the stations, at many of our hotels, 

 and in some of our fashionable homes, where, instead of 

 having good food, the really good cook plays the piano, 

 while a person Avho knows nothing at all about the chemis- 

 try of cooking is in the kitchen. Such food will not make 

 great men. In the country, the wives and the daughters go 

 directly into the kitchens and come directly in contact with 

 the food, and know how to prepare the food which will make 

 you happy and strong, building up muscle, brain and con- 

 science together. 



The water of the hill towns is clear and bright, like 

 diamonds. It cometh from the fountains of the earth, with 

 all the pressure of God upon it. It is filtered through God's 



