from the country to the city. It has disastrous results on the farmer himself, dry- 

 ing up the fountains of his enjoyment, and generating a spirit of melancholy and 

 absolute insanity. It is a significant fact with regard to our insane asylums that 

 among the occupations furnishing the patients, farming stands at the head of the 

 list. The proportion of suicides among farmers is also large. I trust they have 

 got over the tendency now, but I remember that in my boyhood they had a disa- 

 greeable habit of hanging themselves for fear of coming to want. And strange 

 to say, it was always* well-to-do farmers who were disposed tlius to shuffle off the 

 coil of life by the use of a coil of rope. What can be the caiise of such strange 

 facts as these but the unsatisfactory nature of the farmer's intellectual and social 

 life ? for mental monotony and barrenness tend quite as strongly as mental ex- 

 citement to unbalance the mind. 



THE POSSIBILITY OF IMPBOVEMENT. 



Now are these features of which I have spoken, a necessity in the life of the 

 farmer ? May it not without the sacrifice of anything else that is reaUy worth 

 keeping, take on more of the graces ? Is it not possible to break through these 

 limitations, stern as they are, and to secure for the farmer an intellectual and so 

 cial life in some degree commensurate with his other advantages ? It doubtless 

 is possible, for it has been done. It surely does not become the farmers of South- 

 ern Berkshire to despair of the possibility of higher intellectual life on the farm 

 with the "Apple Blossoms" of poetry descending upon them so thickly from the 

 summit of Mount Washington. Is it not a fact worthy our study, this blending 

 of the finest potatoes with the finest poetry in the products of ' 'Sky Farm ?" Nor 

 is the instance altogether exceptional. Scattered here and there through the land 

 we may find many a farmer's household marked by a similarly genial intellectual 

 life. There is great encouragemei?t, also, in the general i^rogress made of late 

 years, and now making. I have not intended in the sombre picture that I have 

 drawn by any means to ignore the fact of improvement. Indeed, in coming back 

 recently to some contact with agricultural life after twenty -five years of almost en- 

 tire separation from it, I have been greatly impressed with the progress made in 

 that interval. A parishioner of mine is in Holland for the third time within two 

 years for the purchase of Holstein cattle for himself and neighbors. Twenty-five 

 years ago a blooded cow or bull was as rare a sight almost as a Bengal tiger or an 

 Australian kangaroo. In the discussions of the Lee Farmers' Club, which I oc- 

 casionally attend, I have thought sometimes I should have to interpose my minis- 

 terial authority to keep the peace between the advocates of Ayrshires or Holsteins 

 on one side, and of Durhams or Jerseys on the other, so fierce has been the war 

 of words. And so with the use of machinery and the ameUoration of the farm la- 

 bors that comes in consequence, I think I am not mistaken too in my impression 

 of a decided improvement in the general life of the farm, both in doors and out 

 since the time when, as a boy, it was my task to pick stones and mow bushes on 

 one of the roughest farms of Eastern Hampshire. The possibility of improve- 

 ment in the farmer's character, notwithstanding his limitations, must then be ad- 

 mitted. But that much remains to be done, that agricultural life is still much too 

 far behind the general wave of progress seems to me equally evident. It remains 

 to point out some of the means to be employed to bring the social and intellectual 

 life of the farmer more nearly to the level of that of other professions. 



RECOGNITION OF THE NEED. 



The first thing needed, of coui'se, is a clearer recognition by the farming class 



