FARM LIFE: ITS PRIVILEGES AND POSSIBILITIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8314, 22 July 1890, Page 3

FARM LIFE: ITS PRIVILEGES AND POSSIBILITIES.

[The following appeared in a first edition of the Herald on Saturday.] Some of the farmers' wives of America do nob seem to be far behind the " lords of creation in regard to intellectual powers. The curronfc number of the Breeders' Gazette (Chicago) contains an admirable paper on tho " Privileges and Possibilities of Farm Life," which was read by Mrs. H. C. Meredith, Cambridge city, Ind., before a farmers' institute at Indianapolis, and from which wo make the following quotation :—

The farmer has a rare opportunity for becoming a manufacturer—an ideal manufacturer, the very highest typo ol manufacturer. That nation is most prosperous and illustro ces tho best civilisation whose exports leave her shores in the ultimate form fitted for consumption. Docs not this maxim apply to the farm? Webster delines a. manufacturer as one who works raw materials into wares suitable for use. This is nstably the privilege of tho farmer. Professor Roberts says :—" History does not. furnish a single instance of a nation rising to any degree of civilisation whose food was composed of a few unconcentrated products." He cites the Indian as an illustration. "The Indian in his cold and cheerless wigwam is a being less cleanly and less companionable than the brutes of tho field ; he eats from a kettle, his food the putrid carcase and entrails of some wild animal, garnished, perhaps, with a few kernels of corn or bitter roots. He is the type of. man produced by too primitive food ; he. can originate, he can invent nothing.''' Nourished by such food, his nature Cud not develop the finer elements ; he was incapable of defending his home, of holding ii£f«inst the invader this grand country which was his natural heritage. Bub what of the man that has butter, milk, sugar, bread, luscious fruits? What effect) have these expensive, refined, and concentrated foods upon the man who consumes them ? This magnificent country that he lias conquered, and science, with all i the applied forces of Nature, bring an answer that is tho glory of our age. The elements that sustain all life lie in tho soil beneath our feet; they constitute "the raw material" of the farmer. The earthworm takes its food directly arid with an instinct so low that we have the proverb about " the early bird." On the other hand, the soil nourishes the grass; tho farmer selects and cultivates that grass until it buds, blossoms, and matures the seed tha£ we call grain ; that grain, already twice refined, is fed to the cow, her system assimilates it, and then we have the juicy steak which, when refined by another of Nature's forces, fire, will feed the brain that can harness the lightning and chain the vapour. Or the grain may, through the mammary glands, be transformed so as to become the perfect food, milk, and that may in turn pass under the magic power of man, and then, to quote again from Professor Roberts : " Lo ! he has enchained a golden grain of butter that has slipped down to him from tho gods on a sunbeam!" Better food makes better men. To improve the food of a nation is a worthy ambition and a noble vocation. To make such improvement is peculiarly the privilege of intelligent farmers in this latitude. This is a favoured latitude. Sir Charles Dilke says : " Selfgovernment, personal independence, and true manliness can exist only where the snow will lie on the ground. Cringing slavishness and imbecile submission follow the palm belt round the world." "Books are made where wheat grows; life acquainted with frost has more fibre, more nerve in it," says Myron Reed. Is ib nob a curious coincidence that the grasping intelligence thus indicated belongs to the latitude capable of the highest type of farming ? It lies within the province of the farmer to be an artist; lie may create that which realises an ideal, he may become the very highest .type cf artist. It has been well said that the farmer's business has to do with life ; he makei or brings about the conditions for its creation or development, now in the lower for.n of vegetation or again in the higher form ot animal nature. When we consider the farmer's wheat, we see one of the exquisite wonders of Nature ; wo behold a unique formation of stamen and pistil—a formation so unique and unvarying that since the first dawn of the creation it lias borne on its own nature that unique formation for ever guarding the purity of the precious grain. The wheat of to-day is the wheat of yesterday ; the wheat of Pharoah, the wheat of Adam, doubtless. But if we turn to the domestic animals, we discover the law of variation, by and through which is opened to man a grand domain for the exercise of intelligence. There we find him moulding into beauty and value the " red, white, and roan," the beautiful Jersey, or the thoroughbred. The thoroughbred of to-day is not the. horse of Pharoah. Think you that the thoroughbred has that graceful pose, satin coat, cluan bone, strong sinew, glorious courage, and docile temper by nature? No, he is man's work ! He is absolutely the realisation of an ideal, as absolutely the result of intelligent thought, inspired patience, and loving enthusiasm as is the tinted canvas of Millet, the music of Wagner, or the drama of Shakespere ! Are there not great possibilities of high privileges in the pursuits germane to farm life Whose heart has not been thrilled by Buchanan Read's story of Sheridan's ride to Winchester, twenty miles away"? Why was that ride a reality and not a mere poet's fancy ? Only because he rode "A steed Strong, black, and of a noble breed, Full of tire And full of bone, With all his line of fathers known.'

It was pedigree, with all that that implies. Which shall we say was tho better brain— the one that bred the horse or the 0110 that celebrated the horse in song ? The gates of opportunity open wide to the educated farmer. Professor Marshall, in his great Birmingham address, said: "In the world's history there has been 0110 waste product so much more important than all others that it has a right to be called the waste product." He refers to " the higher abilities of many of the working classes the latent, the "undeveloped, the choked-up and wasted faculties for higher work that, for lack of opportunity, have come to nothing." Cannot lie 011 the farm make his own opportunity ? Is not " higher work" one of the privileges of farm life ? Wo plant, and sow, and reap. May we not also think ? There is a general impression that 011 the farm mental vigour is denied an outlet ; that it is choked up or wasted ; and is it not some such conviction as that impels our young people to seek the cityto seek the great currents of thought? What are we doing to make,boys and girls in love with the farm Are we forgetful of the graces and accomplishments of life? Are we devoted to the accumulation of property? It has been said so often that the soil holds all the real wealth of the world—so often said that the farmer feeds and clothes tho whole world that the idea of material property has become firmly lodged in our conceptions of farming. Too often the farmer himself has found "property" the keynote to the music in Nature. Tennyson makes his old north country farmer to say : —

" Doesn't thou 'car my 'orses* legs as they canter away ? Propputty, propputty, propputty — that's what I 'ears 'em say."

While money and profit are legitimate, worthy, ancl indispensable incentive??, is it well to be so absorbed in thoughts of accumulation as to be in danger of ignoring womanhood and manliness ? James Parton says: " If any young man were to ask me, 'Shall I become a farmer?' I would have to reply by asking him another question— ' Are you man enough Think of that recall how from a crude form of farming has been evolved agriculture as a profession, directed by intelligence and "Sustained by capital. And has it not been a grand —evolution truly, but involution as well? The mind of man has been involved in the work, the sweat of the brow has made obeisance to the travail of the brain. The farm of the future will demand more of the farmer; keener faculties and better trained ; incisive discrimination to hear and heed the suggestions of Nature to enlist her every energy in . his behalf. We hear too much talk of farming as if it were an exhausted industry, when really we have but the most vague and inadequate conceptions of its possibilities as a and an industry. Let us distinguish between the farmer and farming. Farming goes on for ever ; it goes on best when in harmony with the laws of Maturelaws that are fixed and unchangeable, laws that are obscure, perhaps; but surely patient investigation

and intelligent/ thought will ultimately bring them to the sunlight. Let us dignify our calling ; let us exalt our home on the farm by making it the abode of intelligence, refinement, and comfort; tho abode of peace. Let us make much of our farm and our farm life ; let us cherish its privileges ; let us realise its possibilities. The farmer alone, of all men, has a home. When wo read descriptions of the ideal southern home, is it nob the home on the plantation ? When we read of the typical few England home, is it not the farm home? When we read of tho hospitalities and good cheer of the western home, is it not the country home? Tho family, that great institution ordained by the Father, should find nowhere else such congenial conditions for its development. Dr. Hough, in his report on forestry, tells us that oak grown in free air weighs twice as much as that grown in dense shade. May not the boy grown in free air develop more of manliness than one dwarfed by the close crowding of other natures? It was the wife of a Jewish rabbi who, laying her hand upon the head of her black-eyed boy, exclaimed: " This is immortality !" That mother was willing to rest her claims to immortality upon what she made of her child. And must nob ho who achieves immortality by pen or picture give precedence to the mother that guides a child into true and noble living ? In conclusion, may I hope that you will find something suggestive in the two pictures that I am going to presentone the aspiration of boyhood, the other the regret of age :— An old farm-house, with pastures wide, ,Sweet with flowers on every side ; A restless boy, who looks from out The porch with woodbine twined about, Wishes a thought funned in his heart, " Oil, if 1 only could depart From this dull place the world to see, How happy, how happy I would be." Amid the city's ceaseless din A iij.'ui that round lie world lias been Who, 'mid the tumult and the throng, Is thinking, thinking all day long, "Oil, could I tread once more The tield-pa!h to the farm-house door, The old green meadows could I see, Ah me ! how happy I should he."