That this fact is going to be widely recognized is shown by the variety of people who make up the goodly company of summer travelers. The minister leaves his sermons and his wife her missionary meetings and aid societies. The lawyer, under the excuse of land hunting, seems able to desert his clients for a time. The banker drops his business mask and talks eagerly and with enthusiasm of good fishing resorts. The leader of men meekly follows his golfskirted daughters and wife. The teacher loses her worried frown, the bookkeeper his stoop, and the newspaper man—well, the newspaper man is there, but he is one who can never lay aside his professional mantle! He carries with him his notebook and his politics.

But where is the farmer? The great producing agent, the man without whom these. other classes would cease to exist, the man whose work has given its value to the land which is viewed from the car windows is seldom found among the vacation pilgrims. Why is this? We know that a farmer's

life is as monotonous and wearying as any. There are certain short seasons when his work is extremely heavy and rushing. During haying, harvesting, stacking and threshing periods, in spite of the heat and stress, the farmer must work from daylight until dark without daring to lose a day or an hour. Weather conditions often demand night labor. This period lasts for something like two months. At the end no one on the farm can fail to be exhausted.

Farmers' wives and daughters bear heavy burdens of housework, and theirs are lives of comparative isolation. They would keenly appreciate periods of communion with the outside world. Why is it that farmers' families so rarely enjoy these advantages? The few who do change their lives now and then are usually the best farmers. They are the ones with the most progressive ideas and methods, the farmers who are most highly regarded in the community. But why are they so few?

Surely not because farmers cannot afford the expense of outing trips. I instance to

you an average farming section in Nebraska: Within a radius of two miles there are probably 10 or 12 men worth $4,000 to $25,000 each. Yet many of them live in the manner of city laborers earning $1 a day. They scorn vacations, as they scorn the pretty comforts and pleasures of their city relatives, who, perhaps, are worth much less. money-simple comforts and pleasures, which from ignorance as to the ease of obtaining them are regarded by the farmer as wild and foolish extravagances. I am inclined to believe that it is mainly this false idea touching the cost of the thing, which keeps many farmers from enjoying periods. of leisure and change.

But again, many a farmer gets into a rut of such long standing that its walls become almost like stone. He becomes obsessed by the fallacy of the ultimate long vacation, the hope of moving to town and living in ease after 20 or 30 years of farm life. Usually this is a mistaken policy. Every year our towns and cities witness the tragedy of town moving by farmers who occupy