particular moment to our argument, because it is
composed of people who are only one, two, or three removes from a
rural origin. The city comes from the country; the street is
replenished by the farm; but the city children, going back to the
farm, show that a new element has been introduced into their
blood. The angles are rounded; the face is brighter; the movements are
more graceful; there is in every way a finer development.

There is probably no better exponent of the farmer's life than the
farmer's home. We propose to present the portrait of such a home, and,
while we offer it as a just outline of the farmer's home generally, in
districts removed from large social centres, we gladly acknowledge the
existence of a great multitude of happy exceptions. But the sketch:--A
square, brown house; a chimney coming out of the middle of a roof; not
a tree nearer than the orchard, and not a flower at the door. At one
end projects a kitchen; from the kitchen projects a wood-shed and
wagon-cover, occupied at night by hens; beyond the wood-shed, a
hog-pen, fragrant and musical. Proceeding no farther in this
direction, we look directly across the road, to where the barn stands,
like the hull of a great black ship-of-the-line, with its port-holes
opened threateningly upon the fort opposite, out of one of which a
horse has thrust his head for the possible purpose of examining the
strength of the works. An old ox-sled is turned up against the wall
close by, where it will have the privilege of rotting. This whole
establishment was contrived with a single eye to utility. The barn
was built in such a manner that its deposits might be convenient to
the road which divides the farm, while the sty was made an attachment
of the house for convenience in feeding its occupants.

We enter the house at the back door, and find the family at dinner in
the kitchen. A kettle of soap-grease is stewing upon the stove, and
the fumes of this, mingled with those that were generated by boiling
the cabbage which we see upon the table, and by perspiring men in
shirt-sleeves, and by boots that have forgotten or do not care where
they have been, make the air anything but agreeable to those who are
not accustomed to it. This is the place where the family live. They
cook everything here for themselves and their hogs. They eat every
meal here. They sit here every evening, and here they receive their
friends. The women in this kitchen toil incessantly, from the