214 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



of health are disobeyed and we find them tender and delicate. You may preach 

 and teach, but boys and girls will be boys and girls so long as time lasts. Let your 

 frosty frown fall on their natural desires and you nip the strength of will and body. 

 A certain amount of pleasure is the birth-right of a hearty child as much as a good 

 supply of "creature comforts," then let it be unstinted ; devote every leisure hour 

 to the cultivation of mind or muscle. 



Scarcely a month passes that we do not see articles on how to keep boys on the 

 farm, harping on the low wages and tedious work of town life. It is not the lighter 

 work so much as the various kinds of evening pleasure which draws them to the city. 



TO ERADICATE THIS INCREASING TENDENCY, 



the tap-root of its growth must be struck, by supplying the farm as far as practi- 

 cable with what they seek in town. Our city friends have the advantage of us so 

 far as amusements and intellectual treats are concerned, and unless there is a visi- 

 ble effort at compensation with frequent trips to the city, the wife as well as children 

 will rebel at the "heaps of work" and little pleasure. The masculine members of 

 the household have the advantage of the others as their frequent business calls, 

 serve to keep the confinement from galling. This is not a plea for feminine suprem- 

 acy, but equality, and we can't resist jogginjj your memories. 



To illustrate again, allow me to give you a true picture found in our own county. 

 Within a stone's throw of each other, live two men, each owning considerable land. 

 One of them recently said he made it a point never to hire a man who owned a 

 horse or buggy, or anything from which to derive pleasure; that he never allowed 

 them to indulge in games, and dictated as to how they should spend their Sundays. 

 As a i-esult, his whole farm is in a state of dilapidation, with fences down, gates 

 hanging by one hinge, buildings out of repair and a general air of destruction 

 about. The labor he secures is that of a mere machine. No sympathy or intelli- 

 gence guides the hands which help him. The other man employs men owning 

 horses and buggies, believing it an evidence of their own thrift ; he lets them off 

 early in the evening, supplies them with various kinds of amusements, and to-day 

 has 



ONE OF THE MODEL FARMS 



and residences of Montgomery county. He is prominent in social, business and 

 political circles, and his family do him credit. The other man we never knew ex- 

 isted until a short time ago. Scores of such examples might be given, and I can 

 not feel that I overestimate this great fault of the farmer. 



We hear of an aristocracy of letters, of wealth, of the middle classes, with the 

 farmer at the bottom, and unless you wide-awake men inaugurate a reform he is 

 likely to stay there. He has the strong body which can support a s^^oug mind, but 

 the latter demands nourishment outside of the ordinary education. And school 

 life is but the beginning ; there we get the outline which only years of experience 

 and study can fill and call the completed life. The somewhat isolated condition of 



