y. People write about the pleasures of solitude, but they
are found only in books. He who lives long alone becomes insane. A
hermit is a madman. Without friends and wife and child, there is nothing
left worth living for. The unsocial are the enemies of joy. They are
filled with egotism and envy, with vanity and hatred. People who live
much alone become narrow and suspicious. They are apt to be the property
of one idea. They begin to think there is no use in anything. They look
upon the happiness of others as a kind of folly. They hate joyous folks,
because, way down in their hearts, they envy them.

In our country, farm-life is too lonely. The farms are large, and
neighbors are too far apart. In these days, when the roads are filled
with "tramps," the wives and children need protection. When the farmer
leaves home and goes to some distant field to work, a shadow of fear is
upon his heart all day, and a like shadow rests upon all at home.

In the early settlement of our country the pioneer was forced to take
his family, his axe, his dog and his gun, and go into the far wild
forest and build his cabin miles and miles from any neighbor. He saw the
smoke from his hearth go up alone in all the wide and lonely sky.

But this necessity has passed away, and now, instead of living so far
apart upon the lonely farms, you should live in villages. With the
improved machinery which you have--with your generous soil--with
your markets and means of transportation, you can now afford to live
together.

It is not necessary in this age of the world for the farmer to rise in
the middle of the night and begin his work. This getting up so early in
the morning is a relic of barbarism. It has made hundreds and thousands
of young men curse the business. There is no need of getting up at three
or four o'clock in the winter morning. The farmer who persists in doing
it and persists in dragging his wife and children from their beds ought
to be visited by a missionary. It is time enough to rise after the sun
has set the example. For what purpose do you get up? To feed the cattle?
Why not feed them more the night before? It is a waste of life. In the
old times they used to get up about three o'clock in the morning, and go
to work long before the sun had risen with "healing upon his wings," and
as a just punishment they all had the ague; and they ought to have it
now. The man who cannot get a living upon Illinois soil without rising
before dayligh