Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1882-09-01
Farmers' Vacations.

Vacations have become fashionable,
and perhaps it is well that they have.
We Americans are restless set of be-
ings, always planning to do little more
than we are able to do, driving and
rushing along, till all at once we find
ourselves used up. These annual vaca-
tions have tendency to offset the evils
resulting from too constant application
to business. But those who buy and
sell wheat, corn, wool, butter or fruits,
need the vacation no more than do those
who produce these indispensable articles
of food and clothing. The farmer may
find the winter the best season for tax
ing a long vacation, but he should GER
tainly plan to ease off little from the
severe labors of the field, after the hay
and grain harvest. Attending picnic,
going a-fishing, or riding off dozen
miles may be somewhat tiresome, es-
pecially when the roads are dusty, but
it brings change to the mind. A DIFF
ferent set of muscles are brought into
use, and new trains of thought are
started which greatly relieve the mo-
notony of the every day round of toll
The mind as well as the body gets weary
and needs rest, or change, which in it.
self is rest. Did every man and every
woman do their part towards maintain
ing themselves and contributing to the
necessary burdens of society, it would
not require ten hours nor even eight
hours per day to supply ones needs,
and there might be less demand for the
annual vacation. ...
So too if men were not ambitious to
accumulate far beyond their probable
needs, there would be less necessity for
periodical recuperation Perhaps farm
ers are not open to criticism in this di-
rection more than are men of many
other occupations and callings. There
are farmers, it is true, whose aim seems
to be to get possession of more land 50
as to "raise more corn to feed to more
hogs, to get more money with which to
| buy more land, for raising more corn,
to feed to more hogs"-whose very lives
are never ending round of toll and
| trouble, but farmers are not alone in
| this. 1t is the result of an ambition ia
do something more than is done by the
average worker. 1t comes too, partly
from the habit of doing, for say what
we will OF the curse of labor, there is a
real pleasure comes by work. that can
| be experienced in no other way. The
| difficulty seems to be to know just how
much to do, or when to stop.
There is one difficulty the farmer Ia
bors under which few men in other oc-
cupations experience, at least so it seems
to us. The merchants work is done al
his store, the mechanics at his shop,
and the hard thinking and hard study OF
the professional man, in his Office, and
when the labors OF the day are over and
they repair to their several homes, the
cares and perplexities connected with
their business, their work, are left be
hind. Life work and home life are kept
distinct. But it is very different, as 9
rule, on the farm. The farmers home
is his workshop, and too often the home
is buried in the shop. To the wife and
little ones it is shop or factory nearly
all the time, and for this reason the
farmer and the farmers family, above
all others, need the annual vacation. =
Ncw England Farmer.