136 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



sunniest, the largest, and the cheerfulest of the whole house. 

 Parlor means talking place ; and if you must have a starched 

 talk with your parson, a room ten by twelve is big enough for 

 that ; and if you must have a private gossip with a gossipping 

 neighbor, a room even smaller is big enough for that. Bet- 

 ter, by all odds, that your living-room were such as to entice 

 all comers, whether parson or gossip, and that they should 

 delight in its largeness and homely cheer. Kept rooms, 

 curtained and fine, and hung with photographs, and smelling 

 of the varnish of new furniture you never use, are dreadful 

 places. In the country, and everywhere else, they smack of 

 funerals, or of Dorcas societies, or of that starched ceremony 

 which is one of the worst country importations from the town. 

 Above all things, a good, honest farm homestead should have 

 the air of being " lived in " all over. 



The farmer, from the necessities of the case, must be very 

 much at home. Whatever social growth or ripeness he may 

 come to, must be found there. Husband and wife are very 

 much thrown together. The resources in the town for "even- 

 inffs out," are not at his command. If the butter will not 

 come, or if he has forgotten to put that glass in the kitchen 

 window, he will be very likely to hear of it ! So, too, — for 

 almost everything has two sides, — if the heifer has kicked, or 

 if he has bought a spavined horse for a sound one, the mis- 

 tress will find that out, — and the humor bred of it. There are 

 no such lightning-conductors in the country as one encoun- 

 ters at street-corners in town — good, stolid fellows of the 

 opposite party — upon whom you can vent your spleen . Every- 

 thing comes home in the countrv. It is amazing how much a 

 contented wife and family — contented by reason of the cheery 

 surroundings — will take the gustiness out of a man, and stim- 

 ulate his better endeavors ; and it is not at all surprising how 

 much a discontented, querulous temper, that is bred of a 

 meagre, ill-ordered, dingy homestead, will keep a man's spleen 

 at fever-heat, and take all the bloom from his enjoyment of 

 life, — no matter what may be his successes out of doors. 



I think a good word may be said for the farmer's larder, in 

 connection with the homestead. All nationalities, in their 

 growth away from barbarism, leave no more striking evidences 

 of advance, than in their modes of eating, and variety and 



