The weekly Lancaster gazette. (Lancaster, Ohio) 1852-1855, 1854-12-28
Make Farm Life 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 anywhere? Chiefly, whatever
explanation they may putforward as hay
ing handsomer look-chehy because on
the farm there is supposed to be an inevi
table doom to hard, monotonous, wearing
bodily toll, from day light till sundown life
through, with no room for mental eXpan-
sion, or generous tastes, or social recrea-
tom and secondly. because, after all this
labor, the farmer makes too little money
Nor will my faith in young mems natures
suffer me 10 believe this is always a sordid
calculation with them. For, in thinking
of money, they think of il of.ener as
means than an end. They want it for
what it brings. On the farm, very fire.
-quently, are rooms without books, walls
without pictures, manners without grace,
clothes without fitness, grounds without
shape 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 elegance as well
rs to cipher and parse, gets garments that
are finer and fit, and is not SO exhausted
physically at nightfall, as to prefer sleep to
any company or book. He comes back
into the country and lays out beautiful
estate, sometimes with statelior animals,
and selecter fruits, and tidier 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
n hard task in persuasion to convince most
young men that there things are not good
not desirable, and that the dollars which
command them are not of the nature of an
advantage. | confess | should be bad
subject for such persuasion myself. Be.
sides these things are all Of the nature o.
picture work; the boy cannot help seeing
them; they work upon him while he stot,
on his way from pasture under the fra
grant shrubbery, or peeps through tn,
pickets at the mellow peaches and pears.
,sl | know perfectly how apt his sanguin,
blood, and his ignorance Of the ninety ode
failures in city for every sin 10 success
are to put a fallacy into his plans and chea
his choice. But none the less is it true
what he goes to the city for chanc,
though buta chance, for certain means ,
refinement, liberality, and width in I'll
whole style Of life, such MS scarcely mel
farmer about, in the old way of larminy
has displayed Who ever knew conl
dent and chivalrous youth to doubt |
should be one of the FIVE that succeC
though five hundred fail? And, moreoye
many young men at that aspiring period
life, before the charm and glory of car
ideas have faded off, thirst honestly f
more stimulus to mental action, more
larging ministries TO thought, than tn,
have found in rural places. This lh,
dream Of fndingin the pressure of crow
and the sharp collisions Of traffic. Perha
they dream delusions; but this is the fe,
ing, Depend upon it, il you would ho
your sons and brothers back from roamiI
away into the perilous centers, you mt
steadily make three attempts--to abate t
tasswork Of farming, to raise maximu
crops and profits, and to surround yo
work with exhilarations ofintellectual pr
gress. Youmust elevate the whole spi
Of you vocation, for your vocaiion's sal
ill no other can outs!rip in what most
dorns and strengthens civilized state.
ddd,ess Qf' Rev. H. d. Huntington, BET;
NORFOLK, Mass, Agriculturai Socicty, 1874
sftfe" --------------------------
When we record our angry feeling
let il be on the snow, that the first beam
sunshine may obliterate them forever.