Buchanan County bulletin. [volume] (Independence, Iowa) 1869-1891, 1872-07-05
Farm Lifea School of Manhood

Farm Life School OF Manhood.
The whole tendency of farm life is
to develop the body BEAUTIFULLY
and symmetrically. The child is not
pent up in the narrow back yard 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 ont 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 playfulness
which performs SO important an
office in our early training.
And this leads us to speak of the
influence of farm life upon home vir-
tues. No occupation can be more
favorable to the cultivation of those
qualities which arc the charm of the
domestic circle. The farmer is
much more at home than is possible
with any other men. How many
there arc in our cities who only see
their families at evening or on a
Sabbath. They live for their bust
ness, and this, from its location,
takes them from home early and
late. How many from this same
cause forsake housekeeping and
huddle into boarding houses 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 home!
With the best arrangements wealth
can command in the city, it is well
nigh impossible to keep children
under the influence 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 perplexi-
ties harass the man of business in
the city-his capital often invested
in protitlcss enterprise, exposed to
the dcprcdations of dishonest men,
betrayed, cheated and ruined by
knaves and bankrupts. From the
very character of his business, he
has to trust far more ofhis available
means to the integrity of his fellows
than the cultivator. His debts are
often scattered over wide extent
OF territory, and collections are not
only expensive, but exceedingly un-
certain. But his commercial credit
depends upon this uncertainty, and
he is often compelled to fall back
upon nothing, ruined man.
Ninety-fve failures in a hundred
among most business men in the
city tell a sad tale Of the pcrplexity
and sorrow, the corroding cares and
anguish OF mercantile life. How
can q father goaded with these
anxieties from the beginning to the
end of the year do justice with his
children even if his business allows
him to be with them part Of the
time? He is not in frame ofmind
to superintend their education and
to perform fathers office.
The farm preserves the family in
its integrity. The home has in it
that charming 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 CLOVIS
in every heart.-The parents have
been drawn together not by the
sordid motives of wealth or the
ambitious desire of social display,
but for the qualities seen in each
other. The glory of the firesidc to
the husband is that the wife is there
and to the wife that he is there who
is head of the woman and the band
in that home circle. Here they
gather at morning and evening and
at noon.-Their board is almost
always surrounded with the same
circle, and here they spend their
long winter evenings together
OIiO Farmer.