The Union and eastern journal. [volume] (Biddeford [Me.]) 1854-1858, 1856-02-08
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? Chieay-whateyer explanation
they may put forward as having hand
some look-bccausc on the farm there il
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 sordid calculation with them.
For, in thinking ofmoney, they think Of
it oftener as a means, than an end. They
want it for what it brings. On the farm,
very frequently, are rooms without books,
walls without pictures, manners without
grace, clothes without fitness, and ground
without shaping or decoration. On the
contrary the city merchant buys a library
and works of art, sends his children to
schools where they learn to move with ele-
gance as well us to cipher and parse, gets
garments that are fnG and fit, and is not 10
exhausted physically at nishtfall as to pre-
fer sleep to any company of books. lie
comes back into the country and lays out q
beautiful estate, sometimes with statelier
animals, and selecter fruits, and tidy fences
and hedges, and more blooming gardens on
il 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 persuasion to convince most
young men that these things arc not good,
not desirable, and that the dollars which
command them are not Of the nature of an
advantage. l confess l should be bad sub
ject for such persuasion myself. Besides,
these things are all of the. nature of picture
work; the boy cannot help seeing them
they work upon him while he stops on his
way from pasture under the fragrant shrub
berry, or peeps through the pickets at the
mellow peaches and pears.
know well how apt his sanguinc blood,
and his ignorance of the ninety-odd failures
in city for every single success, are to put
fallacy into his plans and cheat his choice.
But none the less 1t is true, that he goes to
the city for chance, though but chance,
for certain means of refinement, liberality
and width in the whole style for life, such
as scarcely mere farmer about, in the old
way of farming, has displayed. Who ever
knew confident and chiyalrous youth to
doubt he should DO one of the five that sue
cccd, though five hundred fail' And mot
over many young men at that expiring -
riod of life, before the charm and glory oI
carly ideals have faded of, 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 presence OF crowns
and the sharp collisions of traffic. Perhaps
they dream Of delusions; but this is the
feeling. Depend upon it, ifyou would hold
your sons and brothers back from roaming
away into the perilous centres, you mus
steadily make three attempts-to abatc th'
task-work of farming, to raise maximum
crops and profits, and to surround your
work with the exhilarations Of intellectual
progress. You must elevate the whole spir
it of your vocation for your vocation's sake
till no other can outstrip it in what mos
adons civilized Stated. +. Hunting
ton.