The Belmont chronicle, and farmers, mechanics and manufacturers advocate. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1848-1855, 1854-04-14
MAKE FARM Lire ATTRACTIVE.

Why do your young men run, as by some
universal instinct, from the farm, where they
were born, to the city, where they so often
learn to wish they had not been born any
where! Chiefy-whatever explanation they
may put forward as having a handsomer look
chiefly because on the farm there is suppo-
sed to bs an inevitable doom to hard, monot-
onous, wearing bodily toll, from daylight to
sundown, life through, with no room for men,
tai expansion, or generous tastes, or social
recreation; and, secondly, because, after all
this labor, the farmer makes too little money.
Nor will my faith in young mems natures
suffer me to believe this is always q sordid
calculation with them. For, in thinking of
money, they think Of it oftener as means
than an end. They want it for what it
brings. On the farm, very frequently, are
rooms withou. books, walls without pictures,
manners without grace, cloths without fitness,
and grounds without shaping or decoration.
On the contrary, the city merchant buys .
library and works Of art, sends his children to
schools where they learn to move with eie-
gance as we'll es to- cipher and parse, gets
garments that are fine and fit, and is not so
exhausted physically at nightfall as to prefer
sleep to- any conpany or book. He comes
back into the country, and lays out beautiful
estate, sometimes with statel;er animals, and
selected fruits, and tid;er fences and hedges,
and more blooming gardens on it, than his
neighbor, who has all the while been staying
there and making farming the business Of his
life. Now, it would be a hard task in psrsua-
sion to convince most young men that these
things are not good, not desirable, and that
the dollars which command .hem are not Of
the nature Of an advantage. l confess I
should be bad subject for such persuasion
myself. Besides, these things are all of the
nature Of picture-work; the boy cannot holp
seeing them; they work upon him while he
stops on his way from pasture under the frag
nant shrubbery, or peeps through the pickets
at the mellow peaches and pears.
know perfectly how apt bis sanguine
blood and his ignorance Of the nnety-odd
fsilur es in city for every single success,
are to put falacy into his plans and cheat
his choice. But none the less 10 it true, what
hs goes to the city for il chance, though
but chance, for certain means Of refinement,
liberalty, and width in the whole style of
lie, sucn as scarcely mere idrIner dpout, III
the old way offarming, has displayed. Who
ever knew confident and chivalrous youth
to doubt he should be one Of the FIVE that sue
coed, though five hundred fail! And, more
over, many young meu at that aspiring ps.-
rod of life, before the charm and glory Of
early ideals have faded off, thirst honestly for
more stimulus to mental action, more enlar-
ging ministries to thought, than they have
found in rural places. This they dream Of
finding in the pressure of crowds and tho
sharp collisions of traffic. Perhaps they
dream delusions; but this is the feeling. De-
pend upon it, if you would help your sons and
brothers back from roaming away into the
psrilous centres, you must steadily make
three attempts-to abate ths taskwork .of far
ming, to raise maximum crops and profits,
and to surround your work witk the exhilera-
tions of intellectual progress. You must els-
vate the whole spirit of your voca:ion. for
your vocation's sake, till no other can out
strip it in what most adorns and strengthens
a civilized state.--Address Of Rev. F. D. Hun
TIseroN, before Norfolk (Mass.) Agricultural
Society, 1853.