amily should live,--where beauty should appeal to the eye,
where genuine comfort of appointments should invite to repose, where
books should be gathered, where neatness and propriety of dress should
be observed, and where labor may be forgotten. The life led here
should be labor's exceeding great reward. A family living like
this--and there are families that live thus--will ennoble and beautify
all their surroundings. There will be trees at their door, and
flowers in their garden, and pleasant and graceful architectural ideas
in their dwelling. Human life will stand in the foreground of such a
home,--human life, crowned with its dignities and graces,--while
animal life will be removed among the shadows, and the gross material
utilities, tastefully disguised, will be made to retire into an
unoffending and harmonious perspective.

But we have alluded to other causes than labor as in some measure
responsible for the unattractiveness of the farmer's life, and
affecting adversely the farming interest. These touch the matter at
various points, and are charged with greater or less importance. We
know of no one cause more responsible for whatever there may be of
physical degeneracy among the farming population than the treatment of
its child-bearing women; and this, after all, is but a result of
entire devotion to the tyrannical idea of labor. If there be one
office or character higher than all others, it is the office or
character of mother. Surely, the bringing into existence of so
marvellous a thing as a human being, and the training of that being
until it assumes a recognized relation to God and human society, is a
sacred office, and one which does not yield in dignity and importance
to any other under heaven. For a woman who faithfully fulfils this
office, who submits without murmuring to all its pains, who patiently
performs its duties, and who exhausts her life in a ceaseless overflow
of love upon those whom God has given her, no words can express a true
man's veneration. She claims the homage of our hearts, the service of
our hands, the devotion of our lives.

Yet what is the position of the mother in the New England farmer's
home? The farmer is careful of every animal he possesses. The
farm-yard and the stall are replenished with young, by creatures for
months dismissed from labor, or handled with intelligent care while
carrying their burden; because the farmer knows that only in this way
can he secure improvement, a