Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1899-03-15

other sacred things.
The best time To teach child is
when he wants to know. There is a
time in the ehilds life when he is mind
hungry. Can you not recollect it in
your own life? 1t is just as much our
duty to provide good mind food for
them, as it is that we make them
healthy and strong, but, my friends,
we cannot do this if all the tools we
have to work with are the country
newspaper and the almanac Neither
can it be done with half dozen costly
subscription books. For these half
dozen let us buy fifty or more. The
novelist will show us human nature;
the historian will recall the past for us;
the scientist will study and experiment
for us; the traveller will go from pole to
equator, and they will all wait upon
our humor, and come and sit with us
when we invite them. In this age OF
good, cheap books there is no need of a
farmers child being mind hungry, and
going unsatisfied for want of them.
Buy few at time, but keep buying.
Whether they are farmers or join the
army that moves cityward, this train
ing will be in the right direction. 1t
will tend to make them gentle in ma
ture as well as manly and womanly.
This movement of our young men to
the city is to certain extent unavoid-
able. 1t is the natural restlc ssness OF
youth. 1t is not desirable that all our
boys should be farmers, or that all our
girls should become farmers wives.
But it is desirable that they shall not
leave us because our homes are bare, or
our,lives are dull. 1t is desirable that
the one who by chance or choice is a
farmer, shall not regard himself as the
unlucky one of the family. And yet
yon will not deny that they sometimes
do. Why should not the farmer have
as much comfort and as many c0nven-
fences in his house as townsman of
equal means? Why should farmers
who are well to do, allow professional
men, merchants, and even clerks, to
pre-empt furnaces, bath rooms, hot and
cold water apparatus, cisterns, and such
luxuries or necessities-just as you
choose to look at them? Do YOU know
of any farmer who has worried along
the best part of his life without these
things and more too, and then moved
to town, and on the income of one
third of his farm felt able to afford all
of them? Why could he not afford
them on the farm? Simply because he
did not. 4,
Imay truly say that we are an enter
prising set of farmers. We always buy
the latest made machines, and some of
us are so enterprising that we do not
half wear out our old machines before
we buy new ones, Why should we
not be as careful to fix up our wife's
workshop as our own? Let us make
our homes, as nearly as possible, subur.
ban-keeping all the advantages of the
country, and adding as many of the
conveniences of the city as lies in our
power. 1 believe if more farmers
would make home building and home
adOrnment an aim in life, we would be
more contented as class. We should
not be in hurry to move to town.
We should be less envious of persons
who make great show in estimating
ones position. 1t makes great differ
ence to ones feelings as to which way
he looks. 1t sometimes pays to look
backwards. / believe that every man
owes it to himself to be above his bust
ness in the sense of saying to it"You
keep your place, / am greater than
you" How successful is that man
who has farmed SO well that you can
not touch HIM anywhere, but farming
oozes from him. recognize the power
and convenience of wealth; but if in
acquiring it we lose either health, hon.
or or happiness, it comes too dear. Let
us be good to ourselves and to those
committed to our care. Let us live
this life well, remembering that when
the Great Equalizer, death, comes to
us, of all the things that we have &C.
cumulated, there is but one that we
can keep, and that is the character we
have built around the personality
which this body incloses.