The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1871-01-10

And give with full assurance best,
All weary ones year Of rest.
January /, 1871.
The Ambition of fCOuntry.BOys.
This is precisely like the ambition Of other
boys, aud is the salt with which this
earth is saltej Without it the world
would be waste, and all men would be
barbarians. 1t is simply an irrepressible
desire, natural to all enterprising human
beings, for an improvement of ones con-
dition--the tastes and habits of thought
of the individual determining what i'm
provement consists in. BY judiciously
moulding this ambition, we can best reg
ulate its effect and to mould it is easy,
while to repress it would be impossible.
As we suggested in recent article, the
misguided efforts Of the agricultural press
have been directed to the repression rath-
er than to the moulding. The extent of
their influence is marked by the very
general lack of material improvement in
the appearance and management of our
farms. In the unending discussion about
the calamtous desire Of our boys to leave
their old homes, we are very much in
clned to take the boys part, and we ap-
plaud the energy and ambition Of every
one of them who is discontented with the
life he sees his father leading-we speak,
of course, of those boys whose homes and
home prospects are made unattractive by
their fathers lack of intelligence and
enterprise. Any boy who is willing to
grow up with only the hope of making a
plain living, by working like slave from
morning until night, by pinchng his ex-
penditures at every point, and by trndg.
ing along in the old beaten track, his wits
never reaching far beyond the township.
line, is made of the same stuff with the
dullest laborer, and his proper sphere Of
action is between the thills of wheel
barrow on railroad embankment. The
best chance for the Improvement of our
agriculture would be either to get then
out Of it, or else to reduce them to the
nominal as well as the actual condition Of
day-laborers.
The effect of our literature and Of the
example Of most of our successful mer
has been to make our boys believe thai
the only chances for successful life lie
in those fields where the most snowy sue
cesses have been achieved. The country
boy does not see the great battle that il
being fought in the professions, and il
commerce and manufactures, nor does he
know how thickly the field is strcwn will
the dead and wounded. His attention il
fixed on the few who have come out o
the fight covered with glory and honor
and filled with riches and Importance
Viewed in its narrower aspect, the wors
influence to which farmers boy is sub
iected is that Of successful man who
when boy on the farm, read througl
the History of England while he was fill
ing manure carts for an Irishman to hau
to the field, and who has since made hi
fortune in the city for the boy does no
see that the great element Of this man
success lay in his own charater muc
more than in his circumstances, and h
cancies that if he were placed in the sam
! circumstances, he could achieve the sam
. results. The mans life is lesson to tn
: boy only so far as it gives him falls
|; hope of success-and it is, therefore,
lesson he had better have never learned
1t is safe to start out with the prop
osition that all boys who are really wort
anything are discontented with their 10
no matter what it is, and, at very earl
age, fix their ambition on some real {
s fancied improvement of it-usually fal
Is cied. From this time forth, the harne
= begins to chafe and they ar never sati
fed until they have cut the traces an
made their way to the new fields. 1t
/, a desire not for change, but for improv
e ment and educated as they have beel
!. misled as they are by every influence thi
st appeals all to their intelligence, their on
. notion of improvement is to have mo
- money and more prominence before Il
# world, and less or less distasteful labo
,e One hundred Of those who leave home
seek this end may achieve it-not MOI
.. The other ninety-nnie range anywher
- from conductors on horse cars to seedy o
clerks. But it is only the hundred
man whose light shines back to his nati'
hills, and gilds the fancics of the success
y ors of his own boyhood life. 1t is US
s. less for us to urge them not to follow
IL fancy so illumined they have taken thu
/, Ie bent, and if their young hearts have Il
g. resolution that the hearts Of stout al
$ hopeful boys ought to have, they a
booked for town by the first opportunlt
Our only course is to throw in GRO
light-less brilliant, but of a steadier a
warmer glow. We must sympathize wi
!. the boys in their wholesome and laudal
n. discomfort, and-taking the first hold
i'll their imaginations-show them that
ge best chance for them to make mon
(surely and safely, if not enormous
and to gain influential and proud posiiio
:. which is better even than money to
young ambition, is in taking hold of
~ old farm and making it TO blossom i
, the rose. They will 90 through any amo'
of working and waiting, if only they {
- be made TO believe that in the end ii
= can realize this drcam-and realize
. they will, in proportion to their abil
= and their merit. Let us make farm
the occupation pa, excellence of educa
q genilemen-for it is educated gentleu
e that our boys want to become, and 4
= we want them to becomc--and We 81
= then have their healthy ambition as
&c best ally in working for their and
p country's good.