Year: 1866

Have you made your home as pleasant,


The surrounding and the centre,


AS an earthly home should be?


I do not expect you to build magnif-
icent palace, On a commanding eminence,
and surround it with a grand garden,
with macadamized walks, and decorated
with foreign trees, flowers and shrub berry.
Such fixines and superfuities would on
" tend to isolation and lift you above the
"common walks of men" Nature made
you a social being, and [ want you to re-
main such The words grand, magnifi-
cent, palatial do not belong to the home
of the happiest, nor to the home of my
ideal 1t is the home of every day peo-
pie everywhere, and especially Of my own
county, that would see improved and
beautifed. was re-reminded Of this ne
eessity, a few days since, by short ex-
cursion among the farmers. Fifteen
years ago / spent a summer In Wiscon-
sin, and even then the rude cabins Of an
earlier dag had been replaced by neat,
tasty farmhouscs, well painted and we'll
fenced in and could but hold in con-
trast this old Shawnee settlement which
two hundred years ought to have worked
up irto a solid fact of solid beauty and
/ permapence. 4 short time previous TO
my visit West I made an excursion
through the Eastern States. THcre l
found o!d buildings but their age could
only be detected in their style, for they
were kept in such perfect repair that they
could mt decay or become dilapidated.-
So it is plain, in our case, the fault can
not be lain upon antiquity. But shall l
paiticularize what l saw among the Mon
roe farmers, and among those who live
in by places, who are not farmers but who
have places they call homes?


/ In the first place these "homes" are
stuck just as close to the public road as the
law will possibly allow, and the same PuJ-
lie spirit is exercised in the accommoda-
ton prepared-or aliowed-for the cows,
pigs, geese and chickens. Taken all TO-
gether this scene alwaySeniuds me of
Barnum's Happy Family, only the What
is-it should be a member also it would
make little more variety. liz the coun-
try, where land lays around loose-like
the milk the tipsy husband could Mt find
IN his cellar-and where it seldom COM
uands fifty thousand dollars "per lot IN
the market, one would suppose there
would be room to have things comiorta-
bly separated-families Of mankind and
families Of domestic animals, for public
highways and priyite right-ways. But
in nine cases out of ten there is no such
taste or Judgment to be found. About
ore-h half of all the living places-oiten
called "homes"-in this county are as
naked and as destitute Of taste and pleas
antness as are the tenement buses Of the
cheapest street of New York city! Full
,o,,e half are built just where they ought
not to ps and are fit for nothing but a
bonfire, whilst larger portion OF the rest
want dressing down from chimney TO Gel
lar and from fence to fence.


J You mascul:neg, fathers and husbands
you will please bear in mind this Lee
ture is to you. The outside arrangement
of a pleasant home devolves Gu you
The inside condition belongs to the other
sex. and / have often seen them MAKE
every effort to overcome the detormlty
YOU made on the outside by symmetry with
, in Your heart is about as much set on
vour pig.pen or stable as on your home
You care more about a good barnyard
than Won do about decent fence around
YOUR house. If your barn door gets out
of order you will fix it, as you can DC
that and look at your horses at the same
: time but you don't find time to repair q
door yard gate, or nail up the loose siding
YOU heard rattling the night before. In
short you take better care of your barn and


your stock than you do of the house and