FARM AND CITY LIFE.

"The city merchant has his house in town,
But a country-seat near Banstead Down;
From one he dates his foreign letters,
Sends out his goods, and duns his debtors;
In the other, during hours of leisure,
He smokes his pipe and takes his pleasure."

E say to the reader, whether young man or young lady, or middle-aged man without a family, go where you are sure you can do the best, be it in city, in town, or in the country; but be very sure that you will better yourself materially, before leaving a good, comfortable place in the country to go to the city. The chances are ten to one that before a year passes over your head, you will wish yourself back again in the old place. If a man has plenty of money to spend or to invest in business, he can get along in a city very nicely while his money lasts; but the moment that is gone, he might as well be in a prison, or in a desert, as in a city. As financial and business matters go in times of depression, the city is the last place on earth for a poor man with a family, or even for a single person, unless they know just what they are to do before they go there, and

unless they are pretty certain they will succeed in their new work before beginning it.

Το go to a city with a vague idea or hope of getting into some kind of profitable business, or falling in with some grand chance to make money, is the greatest folly imaginable. Such chances rarely occur to begin with, and when found, a thousand men on the ground, waiting and watching, stand ready to seize upon it before the opportunity is an hour old. As a rule, there is no greater slave on earth than the average city clerk, bookkeeper, apprentice, or workman of any kind. Late and early hours, steady application, conformity to strict rules, and a constant liability to discharge for the smallest offences, are a permanent quantity in the life of every working man or working woman in the city. Nor is it much better for the capitalist, if he be not well posted in all the games of sharpers and confidence men and rascals of every kind, and if he be not very sharp and keen himself; for his money will be cheated out of him, or he will lose it in unlucky speculation, before he is aware of it. The history of all kinds of business or of speculative ventures in any city would not offer any encourage. ment to a man of means to try his hand in such uncertain enterprises; for where one succeeds, a dozen or twenty fail.

To be sure, there is more to be seen and heard in a city than in the country, there is also much more life and bustle, noise and clatter. The shop windows display elegant goods of every description, but there is little satisfaction to sensible minds in seeing and wanting, and not being able to purchase. Again, there is always a higher and more aristocratic class of people

living in cities, generally speaking, than in small places, but poor people, or people below a certain social level, cannot associate with them, so their superior elegance does one no good unless he or she is within the ring.

If a man commences life in a small place with limited opportunities for expansion, fairly and honestly outgrows his straitened quarters, and, like Alexander the Great, sighs for more worlds to conquer, in such a case, if he takes pains beforehand to inquire thoroughly into the difficulties likely to be encountered in a new situation, and if he feels competent to grapple with them and conquer them, let him. come to a city and try his hand in a new and larger sphere. But other things being equal, if a man is doing well, and is comfortably situated in the country, he had by all means better let well enough alone, than venture out on an unknown and untried city sea, where financial and moral shipwrecks abound on every hand, and where possible disasters multiply and thicken in about an equal ratio with the increase of population. Time was, when young business men could go into cities and do well, but that time has gone by and will probably never return, for the simple reason that the cities are overcrowded already, and . there is no prospect of their population growing less.

Beware, then, of that foolish fascination which the idea of living in the city is liable to exercise over every young heart and mind. There is a class of people who had rather die by inches in a city than live well in the country, but such people are so shallow and weak-minded that it makes but little difference

where they live or die. They are simply human moths fluttering round the great city candle. With proper care and effort, a country life can be made just as enjoyable as a life in the city, and much more healthy and profitable.

BOOKS.

or

How can it be done? By filling the farmhouses with books. Establish central reading rooms, neighborhood clubs. Encourage the social meetings of the young. Have concerts, lectures, amateur dramatic associations. Establish a bright, active

social life, that shall give some significance to labor. Above all, build, as far as possible, in villages. It is better to go a mile to one's daily labor than to place one's self a mile away from a neighbor. The isolation of American farm-life is the great curse of that life. The towns of Hadley, Northfield, Hatfield and Deerfield, on the Connecticut River, to this day remain villages of agriculturists. Europe, for many centuries, was cultivated by people who lived in villages. And this is the way in which all farmers should live. Settle in colonies, instead of singly, whenever feasible or possible.

CONCENTRATION OF MIND AND

POWER.

"Men make resolves, and pass into decrees
The motions of the mind."

HE man who attempts to know or do everything, will succeed in really knowing or accomplishing but very little. Sidney Smith said: "Very often the modern precept of education is, Be ignorant of nothing. But my advice is, have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, that you may avoid the calamity of being ignorant of all things."

It is generally thought that when a man is said to be dissipated in his habits, he must be a drinking man, a gambler, or licentious, or all three; but dissipation is of two kinds-coarse and refined. A man can dissipate or scatter all of his mental energies and physical power, by indulging in too many respectable diversions, as easily as in habits of a viler nature. Property and its cares make some men dissipated; too many friends make others. The exactions of "society," the balls, parties, receptions, and various entertainments constantly being given and attended by the beau monde, constitute a most wasting species of dissipa