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Show City And Country Life SINCE the improvements that have been made in agriculture during the past few years, since the Increased interest that has been awakened in It through agricultural schools, public lectures and a deeper study of the science of cultivating the soil has increased the dignity of the occupation of the farm; it is good to read, as we often do nowadays, of the return of men to the farm, for it is the only place to raise men naturally, and have their better natures expand ex-pand naturally. If we trace the lives of men who want the only tax. the tax on land; giving no man a title to it but only a lease for a longer or shorter time, the men who believe that under modern society, the rich are unjustly rich and that the poor have not had a square deal, or the men who assume that all governments are unjust un-just and corrupt, and should be torn down, you will almost certainly find that such a man was not a farmer's son; that he never in his childhood child-hood had his heart opened around a little or big tract of land where all that he loved among the human race or domestic animals was centered. Many a boy between sixteen and twenty-one years of age has broken away from the farm, has denounced its unceasing round of toll and its meager rewards, and declared that the place to H make anything either in money, reputation or the H, refinements of life, is where men are and money H and business are. But such an one can never get H away from his early life on the farm, or from the Hj impressions that become fixed convictions while H he was there. H He may malce a fortune in the city, have a H ' fine home, if ill, have doctors and trained nurses B at his call; he may become a power among his H fellowmen; he may give great entertainments and f be surrounded by music and books and beauty, B and mingle with those who have dainty apparel M and all the comforts and luxuries; but, after a M while, he will drop upon the fact that there is not H much heart in it all. He will remember that m when a boy if in the winter he got to the stable M first all the horses whinnied good morning to him; M that the old dog may have been one whose pedi- m gree was nothing to be proud of, but he was an H honest dog who would have died for him; ho will H remember that often when his mother had K worked hard all day, and at night some one had HI told her that a neighboring woman was ill and H that the village physician had gone away for ft three days and the children of the woman did not Hk know. what to do; how his mother had told the H elder children to look out for the little ones, H that she was going to a neighbor who was in H trouble, and might be absent all night; and then H ho will realize that there are things which doc- H tors and trained nurses cannot do; that is cement H the friendship of a neighborhood until the ties H are binding forever. He will realize, too, that H it was there on the farm that the thought first H came to him how blessed a country this is, where H no friction of the laws interfere with any man H doing any legitimate thing, which makes it pos- H sible for the poor man to have a home of his H own, with the vine climbing over the roof, with H the fruit growing on the trees which he planted; H where love of home expanded into love of coun- H try until he realized that it was a country good H enough to die for if necessary. And the girls in B the old schoolhouse, all had simple dresses and H strong shoes, none of them used powder on their H faces, for was not the glow of glorious youth on H their cheeks? Then the city in thought becomes fl almost a burden to him, if he is rich enough he fl goes back and buys his old home; the careful M neighbors say he gave too much for it, and do m not know that he bought with it the old memor- B ies which are priceless. |