I am not talking of the homes of farmers who, lately arrived, and possessed of limited means, have located on quarter-sections of raw prairie, and are devoting all of their energies to the work of producing crops. The patient heroism, the true nobility that has been illustrated in the daily lives of thousands of Kansas farmers and Kansas farmers’ wives—men and women who, coming here with hardly a dollar, live in rude dug-outs or cabins, in cruel isolation and bitter poverty, toiling, saving, and enduring patiently the most trying privations, in order that they may at last own a farm and a home—this sort of Kansas heroism, so common and yet so splendid, may justly challenge the applause and admiration of the world. I am speaking of and criticising, not this class of farmers, but the farmer who, having secured a good farm and a fair competency, goes on living his old life of monotonous drudgery, and compels the faithful wife, who has been the companion of his toils and his struggles, to live it with him. Of what benefit is money, if it does not purchase some of the comforts of life? Of what value are expanding acres and luxuriant crops, if they do not bring in their train the delights of a pleasant and cheerful home? I know farmers in this State—men abundantly able to build comfortable homes, and to surround them with all that makes life opulent and happy—who seem content to exist amid the meanest and most squalid surroundings. The charm and glory of a beautiful land is all about them, but it touches no responsive chord in their hearts. Their houses are not homes—they are simply places in which to eat and sleep. Summer suns and winter winds blaze and beat upon them. No overhanging trees throw around them the refreshing coolness of their shade. No verdure of grass or perfume of flowers encircles them. No birds make the air about them vocal with music. There they stand, lonely and desolate, avoided by every sweet and beautiful thing in nature; and even the fresh breath of the morning and the gentle breeze of twilight come to them tainted and impure. Every burden and trial of human life must be multiplied and intensified by such dreary surroundings. Yet I know, and all of you probably know, farmers’ homes like unto this I have described. There is, as I have said, no excuse for the farmer who, after a residence of four or five years in Kansas, continues to live amid such surroundings. He may not be able to build a fine house, but he can at least plant a few trees around his home, and let the rich grass and the lovely flowers of our prairies grow and blossom about his door-yard. All these beautiful things can be had, by every son and daughter of Kansas, without wealth to buy them; and with them will come the music of singing birds, and shelter against sun and wind, and comfort, rest, and a larger and broader view of the beauty of life and the bounty of God.