Middletown transcript., 1883-03-16
CONTRAST BETWEEN COUNTRY
AND CITY LIFE.

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help, for the reason that the young mer
and young women who have to earn
their living seek their fortune in the
city, instead of the country, and the
farmers sons and daughters are equally
discontented at home, and flee off to
the city the moment there is a good
opportunity. The result is that ouI
cities are increasing in population i'll a
much more rapid ratio than the rural
districts, and the effect of this is nei-
ther salutary nor encouraging from the
moral standpoint. The great city, at
its best estate, is an unwholesome and
pestiferous blotch upon the body polite,
which tends to demoralize all who
breathe its heated atmosphere, and is
the nursery of vice, wickedness and
immortality of all sorts. 1t is to the
country, with its peaceful and happy
homes, and its slower methods, that
the patriot and the philanthrOpist look
for that conservative influence and that
benignant power which are to preserve
our free institutions and hand them
down unimpaired to future generations.
No President of the United States has
ever been selected from city-though
that is perhaps mere accident-but
certain it is that with all its superior
advantages the city does not breed the
best type of manhood and womanhood.
1t is the Unsuitable consumer of all the
best energies of modern life.
The home, in its best and most sacred
function, is built on a lower plane in
the city than it is in the country. In
the former people live more from hand
to mouth, are more nomadic, and have
fewer permanent attachments than in
the latter. Not one in a thousand of
the dwellers in a great city owns the
house in which he resides, or even
knows what it is to feel the independent
sense of ownership in the roof that
shelters him. Hence it is that the
children reared under such circum-
stances have a natural tendency to
vagabondish kind of life, which seldom
ends as well as could be wished.
Our rapid-developing civilization has
rendered the isolation Of farm life in
America more Objectionable than for
merly, because the contrast between
city and country is daily becoming more
apparent and striking. The city and
the large towns afford a far better op-
portunity for social intercourse than
the rural districts; they are filled with
places of amusement that cannot be
sustained away from the centers of
large aggregations of people, they con-
tain the best of everything that con-
tSibutes to the aesthetic taste of men
and women they have the public Ii
brary, the theatre, the opera, the ly-
ceur1, and they are the leaders in fash
ion, art and science. With all the
wickedness, folly and misery that are
inseperable from the great city, it
contains advantages and |
opportunities for personal enjoyment |
and intellectual culture which satisfy, |
to certain extent, a craving that is
the natural outgrowth of mans ad-
vancement.
The American farmers children will
continue to be diseontented at home,
and they will continue to run off to the
cities until some more efficient steps are
taken by parents to make their home
life more pleasant and enjoyable. The
Southern planter, in ante-beIlanl days
knew better how to provide entertain
ment for his household, and destroy
that isolation of which SO many Amer
lean farmers families in the North and
West complain. His house was gen.
orally filled with the latest and best
literary productions of all countries,
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pleasures that are to be derived from
social enjoyment. The door of the
family mansion was always wide open
to every agreeable visitor and even the
intelligent stranger was always certain
Of a cordial welcome. Games of all
kinds, parlor theatricals, tablaux, read
ngs, etc., broke up the monotony of
plantation life, and made it both plea
SAINT and profitable. The winter season
hat is now upon us, and which hangs
30 heavily upon the hands of people of
little resources in catering for the in
,ellectual tastes of others, is espec-
ally adapted to provide the ways and
means to make country living more en-
lurable. 1t should be especially de-
yoted to the welfare, pleasure and i'm
of the young people, into
whose hands the future welfare of this
,reat country is to be committed. d.
Chicago Journal.
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