Practical papers—Attractive farming. 425 
better aims, but they have not the patience to work and wait; the/ 
are tolerably successful, but are never quite contented. They 
have some misgivings about the calling, it does not give much in¬ 
fluence, or they are constantly thinking they might get a living 
easier some other way, or in some other place, and yet they perse¬ 
vere, sometimes for years, contending with countless difficulties, 
and just as the dawn of a better day was approaching, have sold 
out and moved to a milder clime, or where the soil was more fer¬ 
tile, or less obstructions to the plow or some other fancied advan¬ 
tage, only to find in middle life, perhaps in old age, that they had 
made the mistake of a lifetime. 
In no calling is a change of location so injurious as that of 
farming. Many of the improvements on a farm will last a life¬ 
time, some of them much longer, and when these are lost, there 
is a voluntary surrender of all these advantages with a certain 
knowledge that there must be labor and privation to secure them 
again, besides the spirit of discontent which has preceded a change 
of place, and the dissatisfaction which is most sure to come after, 
has infused itself through the whole household. The children 
feel this, if possible, more than the parents, just at the time when 
they should be receiving the benefits that should come from 
farming ; they must share in a second edition of hardships, and 
before these can be removed, they have gone out from their home 
without the example of successful parents, and with the fixed 
determination to seek in seme other pursuit the pleasures they 
failed to find in their farm life. 
There is much to be learned from the example of the veteran 
farmers of an eastern state, some of whom are now occupying 
farms on which their ancestors lived nearly two hundred years ago. 
Among most farmers, particularly here in the west, there is a 
time which has been very significantly called “ getting started,” 
a time when the profits of the farm must be small; the improve¬ 
ments needed are many; the growing family has many wants and 
as one has said, the farmer needs the faith and hope of the Chris¬ 
tian to aid him in his work. It is just at this period that farming 
has fewest attractions, that the most and the very best, must be 
made of the situation or there will be no success. If life is what 
we make it—surely farm life is all in the making, if there is any 
