AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 



formed. Much has been done by the tele- 

 phone and the railroad to relieve it of its 

 terrible isolation, particularly the former. The 

 dead level of humdrum cares and the awful 

 monotony of the old way of life were sadly 

 devoid of stimulation, they led to irritabihty 

 and then to dissatisfaction and then to settled 

 moroseness, sometimes to mania. It was a 

 powerful figure, woman or man, who rose 

 above the monotony and grind and the insuf- 

 ficient equipment and the distasteful life and 

 maintained a cheerful outlook and a generous 

 grasp of joyful things. Under this new order 

 of things the farm life becomes one of the 

 most attractive in the whole range of human 

 activities. Refinement, culture, enough lux- 

 ury, but not too much, an occupation that 

 makes good health imperative, a steady incre- 

 ment in capital and a generous income, an 

 intimate touch with the outside world by rea- 

 son of the telephone, the trolley-car, the daily 

 newspaper, the free rural delivery — it is, in 

 many ways, an ideal hfe; it is small wonder 

 that the tremendous movement toward the 

 city is being here and there checked ; the 

 outflow has already begun. 



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