The Florida Agriculturist

Making Country Homes Attractive.

We urge the careful study of an article which we find in the Southern Planter.

There are too many homes where the surroundings are not what they should be. A little time and trouble will make a great difference in the looks of a home. Home ought to be the most pleasant place in the world to the children, a place that they are sorry to leave and glad of any excuse for returning.

While sitting around the fireside these long winter evenings, we farmers have much time for thought and reflection. And as I sit thus musing, my thoughts turn to that all important subject to the farmer, how to keep the young people on the farm and make them satisfied with their surroundings. So I have jotted down a few of my thoughts, hoping that they may strike the key note of the situation and may stimulate some brother farmer to greater efforts in this direction.

It is a lamentable fact that our boys from the country crowd to the large cities in search of employment, at wages that hardly pay their expenses, rather than stay on the farm. There must be a cause for this; do we, as fathers and farmers, do all we can to remedy this state of things?

Did you ever take a drive into the country, in any state you may name in this grand country of ours, and stop at the house for a drink of water?

You could not see the house till you got quite to it, on account of the weeds and briars in the yards and fence corners; and as you walked to the house, you had to wade through an immense chip yard, in imminent danger of getting enough fleas to keep you busy for a week to come.

You notice several panes of glass out of the windows (for ventilation, of course), and as you step to the door to knock, you are in danger of falling through the porch floor where there is a board rotted away.

It is just dinner time, and as all country people are hospitable, you are invited to sit down and eat. You accept. While it is mid-summer and orchards are loaded with fruit and the gardens are full of good things, you did not have any at the meal, which is composed of salt meat, bread, and probably potatoes, and some wild fruit the children have gathered in the woods.

As you pass into the front room you notice two mottoes, given to these people when they were married by some kind old aunt who had more time than money, and entertained fond hopes that this home would be a model one. One of these mottoes reads, "Home, Sweet Home." and the other one is, "God Bless Our Home."

Could He bless such a home without performing a miracle?

Some one says, "But, you have overdrawn the average country home."

I am glad to say I have, although I have been in just such homes.

Are we doing all in our power to make our homes attractive, and to interest our children in their rural homes? If not, let us begin now to do so. A man does not have to be rich to have a beautiful home. Clean up the fence corners and yards. Paint the house, inside and out. Let the boys try their hand at it; they cannot learn younger.

Fix the girls some flower beds; interest them in the chickens and bees. What boy does not hail with delight any improvement in the live stock of the farm, whether it be a horse or a new cow or pig, or even some thoroughbred chickens? It inspires new energy in taking care of them. A boy is not