HINDRANCES AND HELPS. 283 



^Esthetics of the Business. 



WHAT is needed, perhaps more than all else, in 

 our agricultural regions, is such intelligible, 

 hnitable, and economic demonstrations of the laws 

 of good taste, as shall provoke emulation, and redeem 

 the small farmer unwittingly, it may be from his 

 slovenly barbarities and his grossness of life. Here 

 is verge, surely, for a man's cultivation, for his apti- 

 tude, and for those graces which shall fix his attach- 

 ment while they plead their lessons of appeal. 



It seems hardly necessary to urge a necessity for 

 this direction of effort. There is certainly no race 

 of country-livers in the world, who, with equal, or 

 even a kindred intelligence, are so destitute of all 

 sense of the graces of life and home, as the small 

 New England farmers. 



A certain stark neatness, confined mostly to kitch- 

 ens, pantries, and such portions of the door-yard as 

 are under the eye of the goodwife, mostly limits their 

 efforts in this direction. It may be that a staring 

 coat of white paint upon the house completes the iiv- 

 vestiture of charms ; while, at every hand, heaps of 

 rubbish cumbering the public road and piles of 

 straggling wood, dissipate any illusion which a well- 

 scrubbed interior, or the fresh paint, may have 

 created. 



