The Eaton Democrat. (Eaton, Ohio) 1875-1903, 1878-08-29
P FOR h R
Culture and Humori in Western EARN

Culture and HumOr in Western Farm
Life.-From an illustrated paper by
Maurice Thompson, in Sc1fbner for Sep
TENDER, we quoted the following: Quite
often, in the course of my rambles, have
found Western farm-houses furnished
If exquisite taste from libraryt 10 kitchen.
Chairs, tables, carpets, curtains and pic
lures, In many of u country homes,
have been chosen with a correctness of
judgment rarely evinced by a large class
of most excellent city folks. In the
matter of books, a farmer of the better
class generally selects with great care
and with a view to solid mental food.
But a taste for light fiction, poetry,
music and painting is net wanting. 1t is
surprising, indeed, to find how generally
the works of the leading British and
American poets and novelists are read
among the rural classes of the West. The
younger American poets are as well
known, by their writings, West as East.
Even Hawthorne, whom to read and ap-
preciate is high evidence Of literary
taste and intelligence, has found very
many of his sincerest admirers inside the
homes of the " Hoosier" and the Buck
eye." Not long since, while sojourning
for a fortnight or SO on the shore Of one
of our Western lakes, l had the pleasure
If spending several evenings at a farm
house where, as a member of the family
for the time, I was allowed to hear one of
George Eliot's novels read aloud by the
farmers daughter. Everywhere in the
West the leading literary journals, both
weekly and monthly, are subscribed for
by farmers, for the pleasure and instruc-
ton of their families, while many of
them take a daily paper. But, despite
all that can be said to the contrary, the
genus rusticus, which has by some one been
rendered into English and made to mean
"rusty cuss," still largely asserts itself
in u rural regions,-a genus of the
copperas breeches, ginger-cake-loving
ilk, to whom we owe the racy, soil-favored
smack of original humor, peculiar to the
Ohio and Mississippi River valleys.
Farm life in the West seems to have de-
veloped broad, comico-humorous waysof
speech, and it cannot be denied that
much of this humor, coarse though it is,
possesses the inimitable charm of out
right home manufacture. Through GER
tain of our Western journals, the world
has of late caught very distinct glimpses
of it. But 1 am sure that the best West
ern humor has never yet been reduced
to type. 1t is scattered about in rural
neighborhoods, and most of it is finally
lost by being carelessly thrown aside as
:" old" Most of what has been given to
the world, in books and monthly maya
zines, as Western humor, has been first
put through a refining process of doubt
full doctorfng, by which something more
than a mere modicum of the home flavor
has been allowed to exhale. 1t may be
enunciated as a rule that the more ignor-
ant class of Western farmers discovers a
far quicker and finer sense of humor
than does the somewhat educated and
refined class. So soon as a smattering
of books and newspapers gets into a clod,
the sharp salt of the earth seems to go
out, and there comes self-conscious-
ness and a straining after unnatural
effects.