The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-09-03

The farmer plods and plows his
weary way and leaves all the beauty
around, unnoticed and unmentioned.
Some wandering artist, discovering
and appropriating the country love-
illness transcribes the scene TO his
canvas, and carries the gem to dis
tant eyes for admiration. Men in
the city gladly pay gold for pictures
the farmer could daily, without
money and without price, place be-
fore his children, if he would only
stlook and live" If you want your
boy to hold down the farm, begin
early to open his mind to that which
the farm possesses, the color above
it, the landscape around it, the
wealth underneath. Don't wait till
he goes to study beauty as he finds
it in a brass frame behind some, sa-
loon counter, or hunts artistic merit
in a variety theatre. Tell your chill
dren when little toddlers at your
feet the names of the trees, the diff
ence between a burr oak, a black
jack, and post oak a cumulus cloud
and those called stratus. Bring to
his childish notice the different kinds
of soil and their uses, the wondrous
knowledge of the nest builders.
Open their little hearts to love for
the morning song of the hooking
bird, and the goodnight message of
the whippoorwill. Fill their open,
ing minds as a daily food with regard
for the beauty around them and
knowledge of the variety structure
about them. Don't talk SO much of
branding of yearlings, but o Of
botany, geology, bird life, why grass
is green and the babble Of the brook
is music. Read TO them the beauti-
full folk lore of Germany, the poeti-
cal traditions of the flora and fauna
of many nations, thus making the
trend of their thoughts toward the
sentimental beauty around them.
Tell them the story of the passion
flower growing wild on your fenOe
rows. Show them the absent Judas
and Thomas among the petals and
the GROSS in the center. Relate to
them the legend of the chrysanthe-
mum springing up on the morning
of Christ's birth, aud whisper of the
robin whose breast was stained red
by the blood on the thorn it pulled
from the crown piercing the brow of
the crucifed Savior.
If you are not wise in all this SEN
timentallo it will not degrade your
gray hairs TO become a student with
your children, and thus cultivate
the ideal and artistic in your Owl
soul. Impress continually upon their
minds that agriculture may be made
a beautiful science. Study the
chemistry of the soil, it's properties
and capacities, the wonders of re-
production, and the pathos of ami
NAL life. Let the boys and girls
learn that farming is a fine art, and
not a yoke to bind them to ceaseless
toll. Make them know that broad
acres are a patent of nobility and
that there is no man in the world
but feels more of a man for having a
bit of ground to call his own, and a
landscape none but God can remove
from him. The ideal and artistic is
being engrafted on many lines. The
world is daily acquiring a wondrous
admiration for beauty of physique,
manly strength of the muscle, ar
tistic development of form. The
under. sized man and the wasp-waist
woman are now objects of pity.
Baptise your children with belief in
the physical beauty of their bodies,
and demonstrate to them that never
was such a gymnasium built as
Dame Nature gives the country
child. Assure them that men and
women paw money and toll in hot,
stuffy rooms in the city for the ex
pansion of lung, the strengthening
of arm, the rounding of limb, the
beauty Of form which life on the
farm gives, free and unlimited.
The county superintendent of
Bell county says that in all his life
he never saw so many pretty girls
and fine, manly looking boys as he
has met during his visits this year to
the country schools It was not
work in the field that made the "emp.
tiness in the face" of the man with
the hoe it was not turning over the
soil and watching it as described in
''The Octopus" ''springing from
sleep palpitating with reproduction"
that "loosens down the brutal jaw -
it was not dropping seed in the
spring time that E'slanted back the