time
they rise in the morning until they go to bed at night. Here man and
woman, sons and daughters, live, in the belief that work is the great
thing, that efficiency in work is the crowning excellence of manhood
and womanhood, and willingly go so far into essential self-debasement,
sometimes, as to contemn beauty and those who love it, and to glory
above all things in brute strength and brute endurance.

Here we are ready to state the point and the lesson of our
discussion:--The real reason for the deterioration of agriculture in
New England is to be found in the fact, that the farmer's life and the
farmer's home, generally, are unloved and unlovable things, and in the
multitude of causes which have tended to make them so. Let the son of
such a home as we have pictured get a taste of a better life than
this, or, through sensibilities which he did not inherit, apprehend a
worthier style of existence, and what inducements, save those which
necessity imposes, can retain him there? He hates the farm, and will
flee from it at the first opportunity. If the New England farmer's
life were a loved and lovable thing, the New England boys could hardly
be driven from the New England hills. They would not only find a way
to live here, but they would make farming profitable. They would honor
the employment to which they are bred, and would leave it, save in
exceptional instances, for no other. It is not strange that the
country grows thin and the city plethoric. It is not strange that
mercantile and mechanical employments are thronged by young men,
running all risks for success, when the alternative is a life in which
they find no meaning, and no inspiring and ennobling influence.

The popular ideal of the farmer's life and home, to which we have
alluded, we believe to be what God intended. That life contemplates
the institution and maintenance of personal and social habits, and the
cultivation of tastes and faculties, separate from, and above, labor.
Every farm-house should be a residence of men and women, boys and
girls, who, appreciating something of the meaning and end of life,
rise from every period of labor into an atmosphere of intellectual and
social activity, or into some form of refined family enjoyment. It is
impossible to do this while surrounded with all the associations of
labor. If there is a room in every farmer's house where the work of
the family is done, there should be a room in every farmer's house
where the f