FA.RM NEIGHBORHOODS. 179 



advantages of the city with all the beauty and freshness 

 of the country, we can, in either situation, combine a 

 little of the good in. both. 



It is characteristic of some farmers to jeer more or less 

 at cities and city-life, and to regard city-people with a 

 sort of derisive compassion. Visitors from cities to the 

 country Till grow familiar with such expressions as this : 

 " So you've concluded to come out where you can live for 

 a while !" Now if farm-people did but know it, it is an 

 undeniable fact that, as farm-life now is, it is in these 

 same derided cities that one often lives most and lives 

 best, providing one is not crushed within the narrow 

 groove of poverty. While farmers shrug their shoulders 

 at cities, let them remember that cities are drawing their 

 sons and daughters away from them ! that culture, so- 

 ciety, and the pleasant clash and sparkle of immense 

 business activities, often make lonesome, monotonous 

 farm-work very distasteful in comparison. 



And whose fault is it that farm-work is lonesome and 

 monotonous ? Certainly not the fault of the children 

 born to it. Nor can the trouble be attributed to Dame 

 Nature, who has given such lavish materials for beautiful 

 homes. If farmers want to fortify their lofty position in 

 regard to real " living," and if they want to keep their 

 children near them, they must make an effort to lighten 

 the lonesomeness and the monotony, and to create homes 

 from which the children will not glide away as they grow 

 older. 



Let them try, among other things, the NEIGHBORHOOD 

 cure. Half a dozen families, settled in neat houses within 

 "calling" distance of each other, with spacious fruit and 

 flower-gardens, snug barns and granaries, and a single 

 wide street adorned with shade trees and neat walks, 

 would form a community richly productive of good. And 

 what a charming contrast it would be to the same number 

 of houses strung lonesomely a mile or more apart ! 



