In the first place it is not fair to compare country life as a whole with the best city conditions. This is often done. The observer usually has education, culture, leisure, the experience of travel, more or less wealth; his acquaintance is mostly with people of like attainments. When he fails to find a rural environment that corresponds in some degree to his own and that of his friends, he is quick to conclude that the country has nothing to offer him, that only the city ministers to the higher wants of man. He forgets that he is one of a thousand in the city, and does not represent average city life. He fails to compare the average country conditions with the average city conditions, manifestly the only fair basis for comparison. Or he may err still more grievously. He may set opposite each other the worst country conditions and the better city conditions. He ought in all justice to balance country slum with city slum; and certainly so if he insists on trying to find palaces, great libraries, eloquent preachers, theaters, and rapid transit in each rural community. City life goes to extremes; country life, while varied, is more even. In the country there is little of large wealth, luxury, and ease; little also of extreme poverty, reeking crime, unutterable filth, moral sewage. Farmers are essentially a middle class and no comparison is fair that does not keep this fact ever in mind. We sometimes hear the expression, "Country life is so barren--that to me is its most discouraging aspect." Much country life is truly barren; but much more of it is so only relatively and not essentially. We must admit that civilization is at least partially veneer; polish does wonders for the appearance of folks as well as of furniture. But while the beauty of "heart of oak" is enhanced by its "finish," its utility is not destroyed by a failure to polish it. Now, much of the so-called barrenness of country life is the oak minus the polish. We come to regard polish as essential; it is largely relative. And not only may we apply the wrong standard to the situation, but our eyes may deceive us. To the uninitiated a clod of dry earth is the most unpromising of objects--it is cousin to the stone, and the type of barrenness. But to the elect it is pregnant with the possibilities of seed-time and harvest, of a full fruitage, of abundance and content for man and beast. And there is many a farm home, plain to an extreme, devoid of the veneer, a home that to the man of the town seems lacking in all the things that season life, but a home which virtue, intelligence, thrift, and courage transform into a garden of roses and a type of heaven. I do not justify neglect of the finer material things of life, nor plead for drab and homespun as passports to the courts of excellence; but I insist that the plainness, simple living, absence of luxury, lack of polish that may be met with in the country, do not necessarily accompany a