s very fact
is a bit of rural optimism. It applies not merely to farming but to
country life in general.

Our pioneer days certainly developed a sturdy race of men. They lived a
strenuous life with plenty of hardship, toil and danger, but it put iron
into the blood of their children and made wonderful physiques, clear
intellects, strong characters. This heroic training nurtured a remarkable
race of continent conquerors fitted for colossal tasks and undaunted by
difficulties. The rise of great commonwealths, developing rapidly now into
rich agricultural empires, has rewarded the pioneers' faith and sacrifice.

All are thankful that the rigor of those heroic days is gone with the
conquest of the wilderness. But few discern in the luxurious comfort of
hyper-civilized life a peculiar peril. Our fathers, with a fine scorn for
the weather, braved the wintry storms with a courage which brought its own
rewards in toughened fiber and lungs full of ozone. To-day in our
super-heated houses we defy the winter to do us any good. We have reduced
comfort to a fine art. Even heaven has lost its attractiveness to our
generation. Luxury has become a national habit if not a national vice.

Our food is not coarse enough to maintain good digestion. Our desk-ridden
thousands are losing the vigor that comes only from out-of-door life.
Exercise for most men has become a lost art; they smoke instead! What with
electric cars for the poor man and motor cars for the near rich, walking
is losing out fast with the city multitudes. Our base ball we take by
proxy, sitting on the bleachers; our recreation is done for us by
professional entertainers in theater, club and opera. In a score of ways
the creature comforts of a luxury loving age are surely enervating those
who yield to them. Our modern flats equipped with every conceivable
convenience to lure a man and a woman into losing the work habit and
reducing to the minimum the expenditure of energy, are doing their share
to take _effort_ out of life and to make us merely effete products of
civilization!

Modern city life, for the comfortably situated, is too luxurious to be
good for the body, the mind or the morals. It dulls the "fighting edge";
it kills ambition with complacency; it often takes the best incentives out
of life; it makes subtle assault upon early ideals and insidiously
undermines the moral standards. We are fast losing the zest for the
climbing life. We need the challenge of the dif