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NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Oct. 



For the New England Fanner. 

 A PLEASANT HOME. 

 BY JUDGE FRENCH. 



While our friends and brothers are prospecting 

 on the "sacred soil" of Virginia, it seems perhaps 

 very dull to talk or read of anything but battles 

 and the chances of war ; but of what, do you 

 suppose, are the dreams, both sleeping and wak- 

 ing of the brave boys, who have left New Eng- 

 land homes to defend our rights, composed ? 

 What are the pictures, that oftenest pass before 

 the minds, either in memory or anticipation, of 

 the soldier who has left his boyhood's rural haunts, 

 as he paces back and forth on his dreary night- 

 watch, or whiles away the sultry day under a trop- 

 ical sky ? lie is always ready for the fight, but 

 days and weeks pass away, with no enemy in 

 eight, and scenes of blood and carnage have no 

 charms for his fancy. His mind is ever busy, 

 wandering back homeward. 



Home, whether with wife and children, or 

 Home at the paternal homestead — Home is where 

 the heart is. A New England home means much. 

 Within the past hour, we conversed with a sol- 

 dier from Middlesex county, just from the seat 

 of war in Virginia. "Many of our boys are 

 farmers," said he, "and we have been finding out 

 how they carry on their farms down there. Some 

 of them have not used any manure for a dozen 

 years, and everything is out of order. If we 

 Yankees had them, how soon we would make 

 splendid farms of them. They don't keep their 

 places neat, as we do ; they don't look much like 

 home" 



As things are going, it would not be strange if 

 many a New England soldier should, after the 

 war is over, return to Virginia, and there build 

 up his home, and with a vote and a musket ready 

 always to maintain the right, help to answer the 

 question, "How will this war end ?" 



A New Englander who thinks of home, when 

 far away, recalls, not the dull routine of labor on 

 its hard soil, not the hard struggle with nature 

 to invest from her a not very liberal subsistence, 

 but he thinks of the neatly painted house, with 

 tiees which his own or his father's hands have 

 planted, shading it from the summer's heat ; of 

 the broad street in the village, overhung with an- 

 cient, drooping elms, where the boys and girls 

 played in the evening ; of the "green" by the 

 school-house or church ; of the neighbor's house 

 a half mile away, where somebody waited for him 

 at twilight, with a loving smile, to walk in the 

 lane by the moonlight. Memory is very kind to 

 us, in thus keeping in the foreground of her pic- 

 tures the scenes most pleasing. 



But this is one of Nature's laws, that not the 

 length, but the intensity of the impression shall 



be the measure of its influence on the life. The 

 day may be passed in weary toil, and be mingled 

 with many others like it, in a sort of indistinct 

 background, while the mere glimpse of loved 

 ones, cojning out upon the green sward to wel- 

 come our return, with eyes that "mark our com- 

 ing, and look brighter when we come," may im- 

 print a sunlight picture on the heart, that will 

 never be effaced. A pleasant home is the secret 

 of many a boy's purity, and many a man's pros- 

 perity, yet how slight a circumstance may mar its 

 harmony. We knew a man once who had a fan- 

 cy for black snakes, and who amused himself by 

 keeping one at his door, but he soon found that 

 nobody would call on him. The snake was con- 

 fined and harmless, but the descendants of Moth- 

 er Eve have a horror of serpents, and instinctive- 

 ly avoid their haunts. Many a house has some 

 kind of a serpent in it, or at its door, and small 

 or great, nobody thinks of anything at that house 

 but the serpent. It may be a cross-grained, ill- 

 natured father, who frowns the life out of the 

 family, hushing every ringing laugh of childhood 

 at his approach, and ruining your appetite at ta- 

 ble with groans about hard times, or fierce polit- 

 ical ; declamation or it may be an over-worked, 

 fretful mother, whose nerves are strained up like 

 fiddle-strings sadly out of tune, who cannot help 

 scolding continually, though she does not know 

 it, and who "kicks the wee stool o'er the mickle," 

 as naturally as the lightning strikes, just to let 

 off the surplus electricity ; or again, it may be 

 but a little snake in the shape of a froward, con- 

 ceited, spoiled child, large or small, foolishly suf- 

 fered to run at large, and have its own disagreea- 

 ble way. 



Somebody says, with regard to dress, that you 

 should always have a central point, as an elegant 

 cravat or vest, or for a lady, a costly pin or brace- 

 let, with which all the rest should be made to 

 harmonize, so as to produce one agreeable im- 

 pression as a whole. Everybody knows how a 

 single gross blunder, even in the small matter of 

 dress, offends good taste, and how you strive in 

 vain to forget some mere awkwardness of man- 

 ner or expression in a person whom you really 

 esteem. 



To make home pleasant, small things must be 

 carefully attended to. A note or two of music 

 may have little importance apart from the rest, 

 but an omission of them from a tune may destroy 

 its harmony. Many homes in the country are 

 cheerless for the want of indulgence in simple 

 matters of taste. Men who can readily enough 

 find money for showy horses and carriages, and 

 observatories on their barns, often restrict their 

 wives and daughters, whose better taste M'ould 

 adorn their houses at trifling cost, with graceful 

 articles of furniture, or with well chosen engrav- 



