Campbell's 1902 Soil Culture Manual. 



103 



to add to your home collection; for books are cheap, and are the best 

 friends and companions that we can have. They are especially more val- 

 uable and beloved by you in your farm homes where you have leisure in the 

 long winter evenings and in rainy weather, and at odds and ends of hours 

 between your labors, to hold refreshing communion with them. 



One night spent in the great city at the time of your annual visit 

 will be enough. The "chink, chunk, and whiz" of the street cars, and the 

 blowing of what will seem a million whistles, and the dashing oaths and 

 grim yells and groans of the wide open nocturnal metropolitan life, and the 

 fierce glare all night long of the electric light into your little seven by nine, 

 two dollar per diem city bedroom, where you can sleep "nary a wink," will 

 quench for a time your thirst for the fatiguicg jars of the great city, and 

 you will return home in a splendid spirit to enjoy your free, healthful, nat- 

 ural, and independent life on the farm. 



Any young man can average to make a larger annual income in a 

 period of five years on a farm than he can earn in the better grade of sal- 

 aried positions in the city. The portion of that income which he can save 

 in the country for a bank account or for investment, is more than twice 

 the amount he could lay by if he lived in the city. 



The temptations to the young in the city to waste earnings at places of 

 amusement and in the purchase of many things that are of no useful purpose, 

 and the constant menace there of the most powerful of the devil's allies, 

 the saloon — which holds its jaws of death open night and day to swallow 

 you up, and the immoralities, and other dangers there, should extinguish 

 within you every desire to move from the country to the city. We say 

 to the young men and yoang women who live on the farms of our bountiful 

 west, write "excelsior" on your escutcheons, and look up with love and ad- 

 miration to the noblest vocation given to man on this earth, agriculture, 

 and resolve that you will cling to it and follow it through life. "Husband- 

 man," "yeoman," the sole and exclusive qualifiication of a Roman citizen, 

 and the mark of greatest distinction for any man in that time of su- 

 perb civilization and learning, when the proud "Mistress of the World" by 

 her Caesars declared that husbandry alone qualified a Roman to exercise 

 the franchise of citizenship. 



Our appeal to you is to resolve to continue to be farmers. Buy land 

 and improve it and increase your fortune by its enhanced value which is 

 sure to come. 



Educate yourselves in the knowledge and art of creating ideal farm 

 homes. Bring to your use the improved and labor saving tools and uten- 

 sils that have rendered it so much easier to perform the labor on the farm. 

 Buy good books as your means will permit to give your wife and children 

 the advantages of reading and culture. Give time and interest to the country 

 social life which contributes so much to the enjoyment of all members of 

 the neighborhood; above all, cultivate in the rural community where 



