owever, the agricultural college and its
influence are bound to play a large part. There is plenty of room on a
good farm of one hundred and sixty acres for the best thinking and the
most careful planning. Foresight and ingenuity of the rarest kinds are
demanded there.

We wish to enumerate, and discuss in brief, some of the important points
of vantage to be watched and carefully guarded, if farm life, which
means rural life, is to be pleasant and profitable. If rural life is to
retain its attractions and its people, it must be both of these. Let us,
in this chapter, investigate some things which, although apart from the
school and education in any technical sense, are truly educative, in the
best sense.

=Leveling Down.=--One thing that sometimes impresses the close observer
who is visiting in the country and in farm homes is that there exists in
some rural localities a kind of "leveling down" process. People become
accommodated to their rather quiet and unexciting surroundings. Their
houses and barns, in the way of repairs and improvements, are allowed
gradually to succumb to the tooth of time and the beating of the
elements. This process is so slow and insidious that those who live in
the midst of it scarcely notice the decay that is taking place. Hence it
continues to grow worse until the farm premises assume an unattractive
and dilapidated appearance. Weeds grow up around the buildings and along
the roads, so slowly, that they remain unnoticed and hence uncut--when
half an hour's work would suffice to destroy them all, to the benefit of
the farm and the improvement of its appearance.

In the country it is very easy, as we have said, to "level down." People
live in comparative isolation; imitation, comparison, and competition
enter but little into their thoughts and occupations. In the city it is
otherwise. People live in close proximity to each other, and one
enterprising person can start a neighborhood movement for the
improvement of lawns and houses. There is more conference, more
criticism and comparison, more imitation. In the city there is a kind of
compulsion to "level up."

When one moves from a large active center to a smaller one, the life
tendency is to accommodate one's self to his environment; while if one
moves from a small, quiet place to a larger and more active center, the
life tendency is to level up. It is, of course, fortunate for us that we
are able to accommodate ourselves to our environmen