In time, courtship leads to marriage generally does. This event, in the famil the cap-sheaf of all others. For its sake, household willingly consents to be tur topsy-turvy. Or, if it is resolved to be secret as possible with the affair, it is won ful what a sight of pains is taken to brui about. These little secrets are the best kno of all sorts of news. Any goose could gu in a minute that preparations for a weddi were going on.

And a Country Wedding- let me tell yo my dear friend-is something to wish to liv to be present at. No make-believe about it but a hearty affair, to which, when you go, yo wish with untold regrets that you could hav stayed a good while longer. It is not so much the event itself, as it is the ceremonial adjuncts in the way of fun and frolic, that makes the time pass so lightly; all the imaginary delights of Mahomet's paradise pale before the substantial pleasures of a wedding at the old homestead. There is a vast deal of kissing done at this particular time, as if some contagion had broken out just as soon as the minister had so solemnly tied the knot and taken his fee. And many a timid and bashful pair, naturally shy about exchanging expressions of mutual pref

rence, suddenly spruce up their courage on oming to take parts in this scene, and someow "pop the question" right there on the pot, without pausing to think what hurt them. Then the newly married couple think about settling down" for themselves; if they conlude not to "go out West" the first year, the usband either settles on the old home-place under his father, or else buys or hires a farm by himself, and at once enters on his work as readily as a duckling takes to water. This side of the picture of beginning life, as some of the farmers' girls begin it, is both poetic and refreshing. It has such a flavor of good sense, too. These are the girls who become the mothers of our MEN; - the men who build

our steamships and lay our railways, — who are to raise the character of their own calling, — on whom our cities make regular drafts for the brain, and bone, and sinew by which they are sustained and strengthened, — and who carry close in their hearts and hands the hopes. of the coming years.

Blessed are the men who can say their mothers were country girls. They at least are inheritors of health, — and, in these days, that is something. They have heard something in their youth, if they have not themselves seen

it, about grass, and dew, and trees, and sunrise and sunset; and these are objects

enter a great deal farther into the heart human nature than worldly people, with p souls, are apt to suppose.

INCE the farmers of the country give it substance and character to-day, we may expect their sons to make up the warp and voof of the community that is to flourish after ve sleep in the dust.

In the city, boys are nothing like what boys ised to be, say five-and-twenty years ago. They begin about where their fathers left off. But, back in the country, it is not exactly so. There the boys start nearly as their fathers in many cases, as their grandfathers started before them. They enjoy a few more privileges in a very general way, to be sure; but still they are forced to split the toughest sort of knots for their early living, and accustom themselves to hardships and privations which to city youth would be absolutely unendur

able.

A farmer's son is a young fellow who carries his fortune in his hand. He inherits nothing, -if he be the one to leave the paternal roof,

eve

Dis

- and feels, therefore, that he has thing to make, and nothing to lose. plined by the hard knocks to which he has be forced to submit, and toughened by the co stant exposure to all sorts of luck about hi with his purpose fixed steadily in his heart, pushes along in life, and comes out someho no one can seem to tell how-just whe nobody ever thought he would, and far ahea of the point which richer men's sons reach be hind him.

The farmer's boy has a hard time of it from the beginning. As soon as he is big enough to be trusted out-doors alone, they send him on errands to the neighbors, set him running after the cows, make him carry the milk and the haymakers' luncheon, and practise all manner of ingenious expedients to keep him out of mischief between the house and the barn. He is an article of no particular, but of very general use. In the house and out of the house, he never fails to come in play.

If there is any churning to be done, straightway a long towel is rigged about his neck, and he dashes away at the old-fashioned churn as if he were in pursuit of his living in good earnest. If the cattle have got into the corn, he takes the old house-dog and sets out pell-mell