The anti-monopolist. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1874-1878, 1875-12-02
BEAUTlFYlNC THE HOME.
Extracts from an Address at the 10th An
nuaI Fair of the Fillmore and Mower
County, Agricultural Society,
at Spring Va!leyby
Henry A. Castle.

There are two widely different and
equally incorrect ideas of farm life. The
one is the romantic or artistic ideal, which
finds its expression in poetry, romance,
and landscape painting. This picture
is made upof q dim but delicious vista,
wherein rosy clouds and dewy yerdure;
majestic oaks, smooth lawns, gothic cot
tages, silvery lakes, rustic fences. messy
well sweeds. and dense masses of fray-
mens blossoms. comb ne to form splen.
did rural panorama; where lovely maid
ems always simply but neatly appareled,
carrying yielets in their hands and wear
ing roses in their hair. wander joyously
all the day long. c.asping hands with the
proud and stately young men whose only
occupation is to whisper words of love.
The other picture is that OF bleak and
dreary waste, where crooked trees and
knotty stumps, and wrinkled boulders
struggle for precedence with scraggy
growth of weeds and bushes around q
tumbled down house and rootlcss stable.
while demoralized hen-roosts, delapidat-
ed pigsties, emasculated smoke houses,
and truncated bce-hives stand out in ster-
escopic rotundisy without single CLEAN
of brightness to break the sadden-
ing array of deformities.
In medic verttast The average Amer
lean agricultural home, even on the west.
ern frontier, IS place of comfort and
thrift, ii not OF elegance and beauty.
And shall disclalm al the outset any in
tention of asserting that comfort and
thrift should be sacrificed to elegance
and beauty. The farm itselfis but man.
uiacturing establishment, where by a
process Mere complex, more elaborate,
| more laborious and more wonderful than
any yet conceiv d mans supremest gen.
us In the narrow enterprise which we
call our great industrial activities, the
| very primary elements OF nature,-the
| air, the sunshine, the dew-drop, the
rain-drop, and the soil with its thousand
commlngled ingredients, all distilled in
the mysterious alembic of nature, and
endowed by her viviiyipg power with a
spirit OF life and growth which no art OF
man can ever family initiate. evolve pro-
| ducts.on which the smaller artisans can
begin to exert their skill, where the farm
er, the great artisan. has finished his
work The farm then, being no more
nor less than workshop or mandatory
must be conducted like those on the sound
business principles, which years of phil
| osophlc investigation and practical ex-
perience have coditied into rules of po-
litical economy, applicable to all the d.
+, verstied interests and industries OF man
These principles forbid that beauty be
sought without utility, or before utility,
but permit it to be joined with or encour-
aged after utility.
| Beauty is not necessarily expensive.
or extravagant-on the contrary it may
| be both inexpensive, or economical 1t
may moreover. when judiciously cult
waited. be made q most profitable invest
ment, as shall hope to show. The laws
of business prescribe, substantially, that
the Instrument is most economical, which
is most perfectly adapted to its destined
use. Now the use of a house. is to turn
ish shelter and convenient place of la
Dor for its inmates,-and for these uses
no special adjournment is necessary But
| the use of home. is to elevate. educate
and refine those who dwell therein. and
tasteful adornments that lie within its
owners means. is worthily bestowed
upon it. The general offspring Of our
ruling passions we behold. The school.
the church. the railroad, telegraph, post
office, bank. insurance company,-tne
harvest of economical inventions, are
the fruit of the equality and the bound
less liberty of the lucrative calllngs
The diffusion of their blessings carries
with it the higher culture of the multi
US from the fate of the civilizations o.
old. which were in some respects higher
than ours. In the palmY days of Athens
and the golden of Rome, art belonged
to the king and the priest There were
paintings and statues and temples pro.
duced, and possessed and appreciated by
the favored few, but the great mass OF
men knew nothing of them. except as