The Farm Home

By Mrs. A.J. Wilder, Rocky Ridge Farm

“One gains a lot by going out into the world, by traveling and living in different places,” Rose said to me one day, “but one loses a great deal, too. After all I’m not sure but the loss is greater than the gain.”

“Just how do you mean?’ I asked.

“I mean this,” said Rose. “The best anyone can get out of this world is happiness and contentment and people here in the country seem so happy and contented, so different from the restless people of the cities who are out in the rush of things.”

So after all there are compensations. Tho we do not have the advantages of travel, we stay at homes may acquire a culture of the heart which is almost impossible in the rush and roar of cities.

I think there are always compensations. The trouble is we do not recognize them. We usually are so busily longing for things we can’t have that we overlook what we have in their place that is even more worth while. Sometimes we realize our happiness only by comparison after we have lost it. It really appears to be true that,

To appreciate Heaven well

A man must have some 16 minutes of Hell.

Talking with another friend from the city gave me still more of an understanding of this difference between country and city.

“My friends in town always are going somewhere. They never are quiet a minute if they can help it,” he said. “Always they are looking for something to pass the time away quickly as tho they were afraid to be left by themselves. The other evening one of the fellows was all broken up because there was nothing doing. “There isn’t a thing on for tonight,” he said. “Not a thing!” He seemed to think it was something terrible that there was nothing special on hand for excitement and he couldn’t bear to think of spending a quiet evening at home.”

What an uncomfortable condition to be in—depending altogether on things outside of one’s self for happiness and a false happiness at that, for the true must come from within.

If we are such bad company that we can’t live with ourselves, something is seriously wrong and should be attended to, for sooner or later we shall have to face ourselves alone.

There seems to be a madness in the cities, a frenzy in the struggling crowds. A fiend writes me of New York, “I like it and I hate it. There’s something you’ve got to love, it’s so big—a people hurrying everywhere, all trying to live and be someone or something—and then when you see the poverty and hatefulness, the uselessness of it all, you wonder why people liver here at all. It does not seem possible that there are any peaceful farms on earth.”

And so, more than ever, I am thankful for the peacefulness and comparative isolation of country life. This is a happiness which we ought to realize and enjoy.

We who live in the quiet places have the opportunity to become acquainted with ourselves, to think our own thoughts and live our own lives in a way that is not possible for those who are keeping up with the crowd where there is always something “on for tonight,” and who have become so accustomed to crowds that they are dependent upon them for comfort.

In thine own cheerful spirit live,

Nor seek the calm that others give;

For thou, thyself, alone must stand

Not held upright by other’s hand.

Mrs. A.J. Wilder. "The Farm Home." Missouri Ruralist (November 20, 1919): 33.

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