14 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



farmer's department ; shade-trees, green lawns, flowers, and 

 good fences around the house, will excite admiration, while 

 the owner and his family will all be more happy, and have 

 more pride and true self-respect for their position than if 

 the place had been left bleak and barren, without shrub or 

 flower. 



The farmer's wife — the mistress of the home — often has 

 burdens greater than she can bear. She frequently works 

 fifteen or sixteen hours a day, having scarcely any time for 

 improvement or recreation. But if a woman marry she 

 becomes an active partner with her husband, her share of the 

 business falls most conveniently in the domestic labor of the 

 household. We do not expect, nor do we want to see women 

 doing the drudgery of the out-door work of the farm, as I 

 have seen them do in many parts of Europe ; but an hour or 

 two once or twice a week, spent by the housewife in the open 

 air, making the door-yard look tidy, and in the cultivation of 

 flowers and small fruits, is time profitably spent. Home is 

 thus made attractive to all the members of the household, and 

 emulation is kindled in the hearts of neighbors and friends. 

 It is a matter of fact, that, in many instances, while the farmer 

 himself and his good- wife are struggling from year to year 

 to make money and improve the farm, their sons and daugh- 

 ters are constantly learning to dislike the occupation and all 

 connected with it. They paint to themselves, in imagination, 

 the less laborious, more agreeable, and profitable occupations, 

 and the more cheerful homes, and they long for the day to 

 come when they can enjoy more leisure and more privileges, 

 than they now have on the farm. We see young men pushing 

 everywhere into trade, into mechanical pursuits, into insig- 

 nificant clerkships, and salaried positions of every sort, that 

 will take them into towns and cities. How are we to keep 

 the young men on the farm ? One way is for the farmer to 

 have a greater respect himself for the business in which he is 

 engaged. Another is to make home attractive to them. 

 Why not give them a direct interest in the products of the 

 farm? It will be an incentive for them to work better, save 

 more, and plan as though it was to be a permanent arrange- 

 ment. Do not ask your sons to wait until you are dead 

 before they can own anything. " Waiting for dead men's 



