Here we are ready to state the point and the lesson of our discussion:—­The real reason for the deterioration of agriculture in New England is to be found in the fact, that the farmer’s life and the farmer’s home, generally, are unloved and unlovable things, and in the multitude of causes which have tended to make them so.  Let the son of such a home as we have pictured get a taste of a better life than this, or, through sensibilities which he did not inherit, apprehend a worthier style of existence, and what inducements, save those which necessity imposes, can retain him there?  He hates the farm, and will flee from it at the first opportunity.  If the New England farmer’s life were a loved and lovable thing, the New England boys could hardly be driven from the New England hills.  They would not only find a way to live here, but they would make farming profitable.  They would honor the employment to which they are bred, and would leave it, save in exceptional instances, for no other.  It is not strange that the country grows thin and the city plethoric.  It is not strange that mercantile and mechanical employments are thronged by young men, running all risks for success, when the alternative is a life in which they find no meaning, and no inspiring and ennobling influence.

The popular ideal of the farmer’s life and home, to which we have alluded, we believe to be what God intended.  That life contemplates the institution and maintenance of personal and social habits, and the cultivation of tastes and faculties, separate from, and above, labor.  Every farm-house should be a residence of men and women, boys and girls, who, appreciating something of the meaning and end of life, rise from every period of labor into an atmosphere of intellectual and social activity, or into some form of refined family enjoyment.  It is impossible to do this while surrounded with all the associations of labor.  If there is a room in every farmer’s house where the work of the family is done, there should be a room in every farmer’s house where the family should live,—­where beauty should appeal to the eye, where genuine comfort of appointments should invite to repose, where books should be gathered, where neatness and propriety of dress should be observed, and where labor may be forgotten.  The life led here should be labor’s exceeding great reward.  A family living like this—­and there are families that live thus—­will ennoble and beautify all their surroundings.  There will be trees at their door, and flowers in their garden, and pleasant and graceful architectural ideas in their dwelling.  Human life will stand in the foreground of such a home,—­human life, crowned with its dignities and graces,—­while animal life will be removed among the shadows, and the gross material utilities, tastefully disguised, will be made to retire into an unoffending and harmonious perspective.