H. K. OLIVER'S ADDRESS. 579 



Nor shall your dwelling only, feel the good eflfects of the 

 improvement in education and taste, for which I have pleaded. 

 Everything around you shall be bettered. That rickety old 

 barn, which the winds of heaven, and the rains and the snows 

 have desolated and rendered unfit to pretend to house the 

 shivering cattle that deserve a better fate, shall no longer dis- 

 grace you its owner, and the groiind it stands on. You will 

 supply the beasts that faithfully serve you, with comfortable 

 quarters, remembering that the more thoroughly you secure 

 them from the cold of winter, the less food they will require. 

 " For it is well known, that the extra supply of heat needed 

 by animals in cold weather if not supplied by warm housing, 

 must be supplied by an extra consumption of food, and yet 

 this extra food adds nothing to the flesh or strength of the 

 animals." — Doivning-^s " Country Houses.^^ 



Cleanliness will also characterize its interior, and you will 

 be sure that all the manure shall be thrown into its appropriate 

 place, and none of it be allowed to accumulate and stick upon 

 the flanks of your oxen and cows, injuring their health, and 

 insuring to yourself the reputation of being a nasty sloven. 



Thatuncared for piggery, that slough of despond, that stew 

 of stercoraceous stench, that Serbonian bog of fathomless filth 

 and miasmatic putrescence, in which your bedaubed swine 

 struggle and wallow ; and that unsightly quagmire of needless 

 Hastiness, in which an unsympathizing slovenliness compels 

 the "lowing sweet-breathed kine" to slump, and wives and 

 daughters to wade, ankle-deep, as they toil to reach the 

 " milky-way," — these shall both disappear, to give place to 

 accommodations which, combining neatness with utility, shall 

 be at once agreeable to the eyes, and just as profitable to you, 

 if not more so, as laboratories and store-houses of your indis- 

 pensable compost. This same spirit of improvement will 

 exhibit itself all over your farm. You will have better stock, 

 better trees, better fruits, better grains and vegetables, better 

 fields, and fences, and walls, — better people about you, better 

 neighbors, and yourself and household be better themselves 

 and betterers of the whole community. 



