Leave it for something more congenial to their feelings and tastes

Leave it for something more congenial to their feelings and tastes

One half of the farmer's boys, who, discontented at home, leave it for something more congenial to their feelings and tastes, do so simply because of the excessive dullness, and want of interest in objects to attract them there, and keep them contented. Boys, in America at least, are apt to be smart. So their parents think, at all events; and too smart they prove, to stay at home, and follow the beaten track of their fathers, as their continual migration from the paternal roof too plainly testifies. This, in many cases, is the fault of the parents themselves, because they neglect those little objects of interest to which the minds and tastes of their sons are inclined, and for want of which they imagine more attractive objects abroad, although in the search they often fail in finding them. We are a progressive people. Our children are not always content to be what their fathers are; and parents must yield a little to "the spirit of the age" in which they live. And boys pay too, as they go along, if properly treated. They should be made companions, not servants. Many a joyous, hearty spirit, who, when properly encouraged, comes out a whole man at one-and-twenty, if kept in curb, and harnessed down by a hard parent, leaves the homestead, with a curse and a kick, determined, whether in weal or in woe, never to return. Under a different course of treatment, he would have fixed his home either at his birthplace, or in its immediate vicinity, and in a life of frugality, usefulness, and comparative ease, blessed his parents, his neighborhood, and possibly the world, with a useful example - all, perhaps, grown out of his youthful indulgence in the possession of a rabbit-warren, or some like trifling matter.

Fonte: Rural Architecture. Farm Houses.