Practical papers —attractive farming. 427 
ture; there certainly must be some element of success wanting in 
farmers, if, with all these helps, there cannot be more than two or 
three per cent, made on the capital invested. “ The fault is not in 
our store, but in ourselves.” Neither does it seem necessary that 
there should be so much of hardship and privation as we know 
there is in farm life. There should be some way that the comfort 
and independence which all agree in saying will come to the far¬ 
mer iu the end, should bring with it as it comes more of the pleas¬ 
ures and luxuries of life. That it does not, is an acknowledged 
fact; writers, speakers and editors, all deplore the want of intel¬ 
ligence, refinement and sociability among farmers, and the con¬ 
stant tendency among our young men to leave the farm and 
engage in other pursuits. When sons and daughters are approach¬ 
ing man and womanhood, and from their infancy have listened to 
repinings and complaints, and have shared in the hard work of 
the farm, and have had few of the pleasures and privileges of society, 
it is too late for parents to imagine how they can make farm¬ 
ing attractive to their children. It is the most natural result that 
they should shun an occupation which has not secured to them a 
pleasant home, with means for their education and a competency 
for industrious parents in their declining years. 
For the farmer and his family, there are other pleasures than the 
expenditure of money—there is the consciousness that the income 
is at the caprice of no employers, there is the pleasure of producing 
something for the comfort of mankind, and of adding beauty and 
excellence to a portion of the earth. Many do not see that it is 
much to be a stockholder in this beautiful earth, to own a part of 
it; lovely as it is, carpeted with the soft green grass, curtained 
with golden sunlight, furnished with splendid trees and fruitful 
vines and fragrant flowers, it is for the skillful hand of men to 
make it more lovely still, to bring from its rich depths all that is 
excellent for food or beautiful to behold. It is the one great fault 
of American farmers that they so ignore the presence of beauty in 
the arrangement and surrounding of their homes. They lail 
to learn that beauty and utility may be everywhere combined with 
pleasing and profitable results. A beautiful house is the admira¬ 
tion of all who behold it; a delight to its possessors. 
The farmer who commences the building of home and farm 
