Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Women and Men

[197]

XXXIX. children on a farm.

No doubt the primary and essential use of barns is for children to play in; and we might go still farther and say that one chief use of farms is as out-door nurseries and school-rooms for the same little people. The farm in question must of course be one where the air is good, the drainage sufficient, and, above all, the farmer good-natured. He must be generous about his barn, not particular about his hay-loft, tolerant as to hen-roosts and raspberry-bushes, but secluded and reserved as to the disposal of pitchforks and hay-cutters. The farmer's wife also needs to be of a very magnanimous nature, not merely as to large appetites and soiled feet-for these, it is to be presumed, she has always with her --but as to the armfuls of fragrant rubbish that the children bring in with them from the fields and forget to clear away again, or the tree-frogs which are placed under tumblers for a time and then accidentally let loose in the parlor. If caterpillars' nests are unacceptable in the apple-trees, they are still less welcome in the sitting-room; and after the