Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1877-10-26
VIVA, the FSr~er,s Home Life should

what the Farmers Home Life should
BE.
From Col Robert Ingersolls speech to the Illinois
farmrs.l
Above ALL let every farmer treat his wife
and children with Kindness. Give them every
advantage for culture. They will grow about
YOU like flowers: they will fill your life with
Joy and perfume they will fill your home
with sunshine and your lives with happiness.
Seeto il that they have all the comforts and all
the conveniences of life that you can possibly
give them. Give them the advantage of
every Improvement as soon rs you can. Try
and make life perpetual delight Recollect
that cooking is one of the fine arts. II takes
far more sense to be an excellent cook than
tolerable lawyer. | am good cook myself.
and have no accomplishment of which / am
so proud The farmers should have good
things to cook and good things to cook with.
OF all people in our country you should have
the best Throw your miserable little stoves
out of the window. Get ranges, and have
them so built that your wife need not burn
her face of to get you breakfast. Do not
make her cook in a kitchen hot as an orthodox
perdition. II is Just as cheap TO have every
thng convenient II is just as easy to cook
well rs to cook any other way. There ought
to be Il law passed making it n crime, punish
ale with imprisonment in the penitentiary,
to fry beefsteak. Broil it it is Just as easy
and when broiled it is delicious. Fried beef
steak isn't fit for beast. Give your wives
and daughters the eonveniences. and III Il lit
tie while they will be most excellent cooks
Good cooking is one of the highest arts of civ
ihzation; and we are more indebted to this
art in developing real manhood than TO al
most any other. The man whose arteries are
filled with good rich blood made of good and
well-cooked food, has pluck. courage. endur-
ance and noble impulses. The man who in
vented Il good soup did more for his race than
the inventor of any system of theology. You
must remember that if you wish your wife to
cook well she must have the conveniences to
cook with In olden times there would be
eleven children in the family and only one
skillet and they generally depended upon
what few boards they could tear of the house
for kindling. See to it that there is plenty of
good wood. plenty of good coal. plenty of
good kindling and plenty 10 cook. There is
no reason why farmers should not have fresh
meat all the wear round. There is no sense
in stuffing yourself with salt meat every
morning and making u well of yourself for
the balance of the day and then wondering
why you don't enjoy good health. There Is
no sense in this. Every farmer should have
an ice-house Upon nearly every farm is
some little stream from which plenty of ice
could be obtained and an ice-house will fill
every summer with JOY. DIR. Draper, one of
the greatest men in the world. says that ice
water not only is healthy. but that it has done
away with many low forms of fever i'll the
great cities Every farmer should have ice
water and he can have it with an expense so
trihing that the very poorest could scarcely
feel it.
Make your homes pleasant Have your
homes warm and comfortable for the winter.
Do not build story and-a half house The
half story is an oven, in which during the
summer you will bake every night, and feel
in the morning ms though only the rind of
yourself was left. Decorate your rooms, even
if you do so with cheap engravings: they are
better than none. Have books have papers
read them. You have more leisure than the
dwellers i'll cities. Beautify your grounds
with plants with flowers. Have good gar
dens and recollect that everything of beauty
tends to your elevation. Every little morning
glory whose purple heart is thrilled with the
light of the morning sun tends to put a bios
som in your heart.
l can imagine no condition that carries with
it such a promise of JOY as the farmer i'll the
Autumn with his cellar full, with every prep
aration made for the winter, with the pros
pect of three months of comfort and rest,
three months of Preside and content. three
months of home and family, three months of
pure, solid comfort. Make your homes com
Portable. Do not huddle together III little
room around n red hot stove with every win
dow fastened down do not live in this pois-
oned air. and then when one of your children
dies. put piece in the paper commencing.
Whereas, il has pleased Providence to re-
move from our midst" Have plenty of all
and plenty of warmth. Let your children
sleep Do not drag them from their beds III
the darkness of the night. Treat them with
infinite kindness. There is no happiness in a
house not filed with love-where the man
hates the wife or the wife hates the husband
where children fear their parerts-whert
parents dislike their children. Every such
home is simply hell upon earth. There il
nothing in the cultivation of the soil to make
men Grabbed and unjust To look upon the
sunny slopes covered with daisies does not
tend to make men cruel Whoever abors for
the happiness of those he loves, elevates him
self, no matter whether he works in the shops,
or piows in the perfumed fields.
In conclusion let me say to farmers, do al
You can to make you business attractive. Dc
not go in debt for land that you cannot Guilt
vate Cultivate well, and do not waste. See
that your houses are warm in winter and cool
in summer. Plant trees and vines and flow
eri: benutify your homes. Occupy your leis-
ure in reading, in thinking IN improving
your minds. in devising ways and means to
make your business profitable. Have bath
rooms, ice houses, good gardens. Treat your
families with infinite kindness. Without love
there is no happiness in this world and il
you are not happy, You had better be dad.
lie friends with your neighbors build youi
houses near together cultivate sociability
come often together; maintain the best social
relations possible. MAKE your lives attractive,
aud your children will grow up in love with
the old field and the old home. Remember
that you are in partnership with all other la
bOr and be ready at all times to join hands
with all other laborers for the protection OF
honest industry A. for myself, ! envy the
man who hits lived upon the same broad acres
from his boyhOod. who has been familiar with
HE same scenes year after year, who nov
Iiv-s upon the same farm upon which he Wa
bora and occupies the home of his father.
can imagine no happier way to end ones life
thlu in the quiet of the country. far from the
demands of business. out of the mad race fol
place and money and power. In this way,
surrounded 10y pleasant fields and genia
friends, l hope 10 end my days. And this.
hop-, viii be the lot of all who hear my voice
today. hope You will end your lives in ths
country. in honses covered with vines and
clo'he with flowers. l hope that You. look.
ing upon fields OF corn and wheat, over which
r,in the sunshine and shadow, surrounded 10y
friends and crowned by honor, will pass away
from earth serenely as the autumn dies.