Wyandot County Republican. [volume] (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) 1869-1903, 1872-06-27
Farm Life---A School of Manhood.

THE whole tendency of farm life is to
develop the body healthy and systemat-
ically. The child is not pent up in the
narrow backyard of city dwelling, nor
turned into the thronged and filthy street
to pursue his sports. His eyes open first
upon green fields and fragrant meadows,
and his first football out of doors is upon
the matted grass beneath the shadowy
trees of his rural home. He drinks in
health from every breeze, and all the
scenes around him call forth that play
fulness which performs so important an
Office in our early training.
And this leads us to speak of the inf1u-
ence of farm life upon home virtues. No
occupation caH be more favorable to the
cultivation of those qualities which are
the charm of the domestic circle. The
farmer is much more at home than is pos
sible with any other men. How many
there are in our cities who only see their
families at evening or on a Sabbath.
They live for their business, and this,
from it's location, takes them from home
early and late. How many from this
same cause forsake housekeeping and
huddle into boarding-house and hotels,
where the charm and beauty of the family
as God constituted it are entirely lost, and
children fall under thousand influences
that would never reach them at homel
With the best arrangements wealth can
command in the city, it is well nigh i'm
possible to keep children under the influ-
ence of their parents, SO that they shall
have distinct family character and bear
the moral as they do the physical image
of their progenitors.
Parental influence is dissipated amid
the varied social influences to which they
are subjected from their earliest days.
Then what perplexities harrass the man
of business in the city-his capital often
invested in profitless enterprise, exposed
to the depredations of dishonest men, be-
trayed, cheated and ruined by knaves and
bankrupts. From the very character of
his business, he has to trust far more of
his available means to heintegrity of his
fellows than the cultivator. His debts
are often scattered over a wide extent of
territory, and collections are not only ex-
pensive, but exceedingly uncertain. But
his commercial credit depends upon this
uncertainty, and he is often compelled to
fall back upon nothing, a ruined man.
| Ninety-fiv failures in hundred among
most business men in the city tell q sad
tale of the perplexity and sorrow, the cor
roding cares and anguish of mercantile
life. How can a father goaded with
these anxieties from the beginning to the
end of the year do justice with his chill
dren, even if his business allows him to be
with them part of the time? He is not
in frame of mind to superintend their
education and to perform a fathers
office.
The farm preserves the family in its in.
tegrity. The home has in it that charm.
ing word, and that more charming thing
the fireside, around which parents and
children gather and where the bright and
cheerful blaze upon the hearth is but a
true type of the flame of love that glows
in every heart. The parents have been
drawn together, not by the sordid motives
of wealth or the ambitious desire of so
cial display, but for the qualities seen in
each other. The glory of the fireslde to