est in the affairs of the outside world. A
village, such as is here pictured, could afford its weekly or
semi-monthly public lecture, furnishing a means for instruction and
entertainment, and for frequent gatherings. The church, too, would
probably be conducted in a more satisfactory way than is usual in the
country; and the conditions would be the best suited for fostering that
interest in the collateral branches of the church, the Bible-class, the
Sunday school, and the Dorcas society, by which the women of the
community get, aside from the other good that they receive and do,
advantages of a character somewhat corresponding to those which men get
from their clubs.

I should hope further, as an outgrowth from the community of living, for
a modest village library and reading-room. Indeed, if I could have my
own way, I should not confine the attraction and entertainment of the
village to strictly "moral" appliances. It would probably be wiser to
recognize the fact that young men find an attraction in amusements which
our sterner ancestors regarded as dangerous; and I would not eschew
billiards, nor even, "by rigorous enactment," the milder vice of social
tobacco. Better have a little _harmless_ wickedness near home and under
the eye of parents than to encounter the risk that boys, after a certain
age, would seek a pretext for more uncontrolled indulgences in the
neighboring town.

One might go on through the long range of incidental arguments--such as
lighted streets, well-kept sidewalks, winter snow-ploughs, and good
drainage, and a wholesome pride in a tidy, cosey village, until even the
most close-fisted of all our class would confess that the extra cost
would bring full value in return, and until he would recognize the fact
that the attractions of such a home as the village would make possible
would be likely to insure his being succeeded in his wholesome trade by
the brightest and best of his sons,--a result that would surely be worth
more than all it would cost.

But my purpose has been only to suggest a scheme which seems to me
entirely, even though remotely, practicable, and in which I hope for the
sympathy and help of the country-bound farmers' wives and daughters,--a
scheme which promises what seems the easiest, if not the only, relief
for the dulness and desolation of living which make American farming
loathsome to so many who ought to glory in its pursuit, but who now are
only bound to it by commanding ne