Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1855-05-09
MAKE FARM LIFE ATTRACTIVE.

We take the following extract from the
address of Rev. F. D. HUNTINGTON, publish
ed in the Working Farmer :"
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? Chiefly whatever explanation they
may put forward as having a handsomer
looI-chieAy because on the farm there is
supposed to be an inevitable doom to hard,
monotonous, wearing bodily toll, from day.
light to sundown, life through, with no room
for mental 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 sordd calculation with them. For,
in thinking of money, they think Of it Often
er 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, 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 elegance as we'll as
to cipher and parse, gets garments that are
finer and fit, and is not so exhausted Physi.
cally at nightall as to prefer sleep to any
company or book. He comes back into the
country, and lays out a beautiful estate,
sometimes with stateier animals, and selec-.
ter fruits, and tider fences and hedges, and
more blooming gardens on it, than his neigh
Dor, who has all the while been staying
there and making farming the business OF
his life. Now, it would be hard task in
persuasion to convince most young men that
these things are not good, not desirable, and
that the dollars which command them are
not of the nature of an advantage. con-
fess should be a bad subject for such per-
suasion myself Besides, these things are
all of the nature of pcture-work; the boy
cannot help seeing them; they work upon
him while he stops on his way from pasture
under the fragrant shrubbery, or peeps
through the pickets of the mellow peaches
and pears.
know perfectly how apt his sangulne
blood, and his ignorance Of the nety.odd
failures in city for every singl success, are
to put fallacy into his plans and cheat his
choice. But none the less is it true, what
he goes to the city for is a chance, though
but chance, for certain means of refine.
ment, lberality, and width in the whole style
of life, such as scarcely mere farmer about
in the old way of farming, has displayed.
Who ever knew confident and chvarous
youth to doubt he should be one Of the five
that succeed, though five hundred fail! And
moreover, many young men at that aspiring
period of life, before the charm and glorS
of early ideals have faded off, thirst honestly
for more stimulus to mental action, more
enlarging ministries to thought, than they
have found in rural places This they
dream of finding in the pressure OF crowds
and the sharp collisions of traffic. Perhaps
they dream decisions; but this is the feeling
Depend upon it, if you would hold your sons
and brothers back froI roaming away into
the perilous centres, you must steadily make
three attempts-to abate the task.work oi
farming, to raise maximum crops and profits.
and to surround your work with the exhila.
rations of intellectual progress. You must
elevate the whole spirit of your vocation,
for your vocations sake, till no other can
outstrip it in what most adorns and strength
ems civilized state.