It is a sad error to suppose that a rustic is akin to a fool; and a citizen’s real worth may be measured by his manner of speaking of the country people. That a significant difference obtains can scarcely be denied, but it is not one that altogether exalts the dweller in town and degrades the farmer. Will any one pretend to say that the latter is less intelligent or refined? The simple fact is, the two classes are differently educated: the townsman largely by books, the farmer to a great extent by his surroundings; the former comes by his facts through hearsay, the latter by observation. In other words, the citizen tends to artificiality, the farmer to naturalness. The one is educated, the other acquires knowledge. Dead, weigh their brains, and which may claim the greater number of ounces? And here let me say, in passing, that not all knowledge worth possessing has yet got into books. Is it not true that the brightest features of current literature treat of the world outside a city’s limits? What, indeed, would modern novels be without something besides brick and mortar for a background? Will the reader become enthusiastic over a story the scenes of which shift only from Brown’s parlor to Jones’s and back again? The thrifty farmer may see nothing that attracts in the ball-room, and fail to follow the thread of the story, or be charmed by the airs of an opera; but has he not a compensation therefor in the Gothic arches of his woodland, beneath which tragedy and comedy are daily enacted? And what of the songs at sunrise, when the thrush, the grosbeak, and a host of warblers greet him at the outset of his daily toil? Town and country are interdependent; but, considered calmly and in all its bearings, does not the former ask more of the latter, than _vice versa_? Has not the influx of rural vigor an incalculable value? Does it not prevent, in fact, the very destruction of the city, by checking the downward course that artificiality necessarily takes? But, as the heading of this article indicates, I do not propose to enter into any controversy as to the relative merits of city or country life, but simply to state why I prefer the latter. And may all those to whom my reasons seem insufficient flock to the towns and become, what our country certainly needs, good citizens.