138 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



be to say, that while you secure all the needed conveniences 

 and appliances for comfort, from patent wringer to hot water 

 at command, by arguments you can best use (and which the 

 master had best listen to with docility), you set your faces 

 against such flimsy finery of all sorts as will bear no honest, 

 every-day handling. All material furnishing should have 

 such simplicity and strength as will invite use and ensure 

 comfort. Showy upholstery trappings are the poorest things 

 in the world to make a house really livable and cheery and 

 inviting. 



Do not burden and chill a homestead with too starched a 

 law of order. If, in the living-room, the goodman wants his 

 desk, humor him; if the cat wants a lounge, humor her; if 

 some fussy, but kindly, Aunt Tabitha wants her rocking- 

 chair, do not say nay to this. Do not lay down any dreary 

 and unflinching law of proprieties. Do not stickle for abso- 

 lute agreement of parts ; let there be motley, if you like it, 

 or can put it to good, honest, every-day enjoyment. An old 

 settle, well-cushioned, if you like ; a home-wrought rug, if you 

 choose ; a grandfather's elbow-chair ; an open cupboard in the 

 corner, or in the wainscot, for the display of your best china. 

 Many of these things happen just now to be a fashion of the 

 city, so that, in thus decorating a homestead, you will be "in 

 the style," — a miserable argument, I grant, and not w T orth 

 considering for a moment, except real service and conven- 

 ience sustain their use. 



Give flowers a chance to wanton in the window. Remem- 

 ber that, in your woods, you have ferns and mosses, easily 

 accessible, which are a passion with those who can hardly 

 secure them in the town. Let vines, too, toss on either hand 

 and embower your winter's look-out. These things will cost 

 only the lightest of care, and they will be needful, with many 

 other simple decorative features, for your daughter's delight. 

 You cannot send her to such schools as we have now, — 

 schools whose studies enlarge and refine every faculty, — 

 without somewhat more to feed her new-born appetites, and 

 the new ranges of an imaginative and inquiring mind, than 

 the old bareness of room and wall and window. 



There may be something in the furnishing to stamp it as a 

 farmer's homestead. If you have some rare specimens of 



