chiefly in charge of the
good housewife, and her daughters, and the younger boys, show out the
domestic feeling and benevolence of character in the family, not to be
mistaken. It is a sign of enjoyment, of domestic contentment, and of
mental cultivation, even, that will lead to something higher, and more
valuable in after life; and it is in such light that it becomes an
absolute _duty_ of the farmer who seeks the improvement and education of
his children, to provide them with all these little objects, to engage
their leisure hours and promote their happiness. How different a home
like this from one--which is, really, not a home--where no attention is
paid to such minor attractions; where a few starveling things, by way of
geese, perhaps, picked half a dozen times a year, to within an inch of
their lives, mope about the dirty premises, making their nightly
sittings in the door yard, if the house has one; a stray turkey, or two,
running, from fear of the untutored dogs, into the nearest wood, in the
spring, to make their rude nests, and bring out half a clutch of young,
and creeping about the fields through the summer with a chicken or two,
which the foxes, or other vermin, have spared, and then dogged down in
the winter, to provide a half got-up Christmas-dinner; and the hens
about the open buildings all the year, committing their nuisances in
every possible way! There need be no surer indication than this, of the
utter hopelessness of progress for good, in such a family.

A WORD ABOUT DOGS.

We always loved a dog; and it almost broke our little heart, when but a
trudging schoolboy, in our first jacket-and-trowsers, our kind mother
made us take back the young puppy that had hardly got its eyes open,
which we one day brought home, to be kept until it was fit to be taken
from its natural nurse. We are now among the boys, John, Tom, and Harry;
and intend to give them the benefit of our own experience in this line,
as well as to say a few words to the elder brothers,--and fathers,
even,--if they do not turn up their noses in contempt of our
instruction, on a subject so much beneath their notice.

We say that we love dogs: not _all_ dogs, however. But we love some
dogs--of the right breeds. There is probably no other civilized country
so dog-ridden as this, both in

"Mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
And curs of _low_ degree."

Goldsmith, kind man that he was, must have been a capital judge of dogs,
like ma