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if there be a mortgage on the farm that is reason enough for be- 

 waihng. For as the word imphes it is a pledge unto death, a-ud 

 often it is the means of death to not only farmers, but many- 

 other classes of the community. 



But this " down in the mouth " talk and action in 

 the matter will not help a bad state of things in the 

 least. To be perpetually thinking of one idea, and run- 

 ning on one'track, is just the thing which upsets the mental bal- 

 ance. One kind of food eaten all the while will give awful dys- 

 pepsia to anybody. And a perpetually blue feeliug about our con- 

 dition, be it correct or not, will give mental aches that no bodily 

 pain can even equal. If the mortgage is a hard one, and if crops 

 have failed, and cattle have died off fearfully, and taxes are in- 

 sufferably high, the thinking of it, the continual talking about it, 

 and the fear that something dreadful will come, will not in the 

 least relieve you. Old Dr. Beecher played his fiddle more than 

 ■usual when pestilence was ravaging his parish. Abraham Lincoln 

 told funny stories when the whole American nation in doubt and 

 despair sat down upon him. And if you easily will carry your 

 hard and heavy heart burdens, you must look away from your- 

 self, and not all the while think of how badly off you are. Most 

 of our towns have libraries. Send your children to them and keep 

 your names always full. When trouble and the common cares 

 weigh heavily read a cock and bull story, get the book that will 

 tell the biggest lie, and then get mad that the writer should try to 

 fool his readers in such a way. Read a love story, absorb it as if 

 it was good and true. Read what travellei's and adventurers are 

 doing in all parts of the world'. And again, take much oftener a 

 day for recreation. Hitch up the horses and take the family at 

 see something that don't grow on your farm — a museum, plant 

 house, circus, cheap show, manufactory, or do anything 

 which will get you out of your home ruts of labor, if you will 

 keep yourselves from the terrible incubus of melancholy and in- 

 sanity. 



When you tried this day of recreation the last time didn't 

 the work go on easier and faster after it ? Depend on it, an oc 

 casional rational holiday — not a drunk, an all-night dance or a 

 fight — is one of the best safeguards to mental and social health. 



