86 ILLINOIS STATE DAIRYMEN’S ASSOCIATION. 
these alone can it be perpetuated. Men representing these 
have laid the ground work of this republic, and all parents 
should feel the responsibility of so training their children as 
to take up, and carry forward, the work thus begun. Ihe 
future of this country rests with them, and it is fortunate 
lor us that the farm far surpasses the city in its facilities for 
training them to habits of industry and morality. The 
boys on our farms are not surrounded by saloons and 
gambling dens—they can walk forth, and breath God’s free 
air without inhaling moral poison at every turn. The very 
air of the country not only invigorates the body, but lifts 
the mind and heart to God, the Creator, provided man will 
look about him, and allow nature to have its course. Ask 
the philanthropic men of our large cities, why, at such an 
outlay of time and money, they send the poor children out 
by carloads into the country for one day only each year ? 
They tell you, that one day among the farmers leaves its 
impress on these children, physically and morally, the 
whole year. Blessed then, are they whose home, that type 
of heaven, is here. I can testify from personal experience 
that the memories of the farm and home where I was 
reared grow dearer and more vivid as I grow older—they 
must be as much deeper and broader than those that cluster 
around a city home, as the one is broader than the other. 
The home, barns, orchard, garden, woods, brook, hill and 
hollow, all pass before ones mind, and carry them back to 
childhood with its pleasures, and wholesome, (though some¬ 
times irksome) toil We see that all the men to whom 
reference has been made, were hard-working farm boys, and 
in most cases it would not be more detrimental to bring up 
children without education, than without work. Habits of 
industry are a great safe-guard against temptation, and the 
farm furnishes employment for the boys, whereas in a city 
home it is difficult to find enough for them to do, to keep 
them out of the hands of him who employs the idle. 
Couple this fact with the absence of places of vice into 
which young men may be lured, and we see the great ad¬ 
vantage the farm possesses in training children. 
The disadvantages are rapidly vanishing in that farmers 
are becoming able to place in their homes, books, paintings, 
music, and many other attractions, which are refining and 
elevating in their tendencies, and the effects of which are 
