U STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



The Society thou listened to a carefully prepared address by Henry G. Rey- 

 nolds, of Grand Traverse county, on 



THE ISOLATION OF OUR COUNTRY HOMES. 



My subject, owing to a slight error, has been somewhat incorrectly announced. 

 The one to which I ask your attention is a most practical one, and concerns 

 deeply those of us, especially the ladies, whose lives are passed upon the farm. 

 It is "The Isolation of our Country Home9." 



One of the saddest features of European peasant life as seen by the American 

 traveller to-day, is the cramped and squalid character of their homes, whether 

 in city or in country. The parallel of our rural life is unknown on the conti- 

 nent except in cases of the very wealthy ; all of the middle and lower classes of 

 country folks being huddled together in crowded little villages, often of not 

 more than one or two hundred inhabitants, and yet as compactly built as 

 though in the heart of a large city. The main street is generally from ten to 

 thirty feet wide, or perhaps I should more correctly say, narrow, uniformly paved 

 with cobble stone, and rarely with any pretense of a sidewalk, the houses be- 

 ing built flush with the line of the street. There is chance for neither tree nor 

 shrub, nor can the smiling welcome of a bright front yard greet us witli its 

 pleasant color. No wonder is it that the people throng the beer gardens? 

 Within the houses the human and brute members of the family occupy adjoin- 

 ing rooms, and are thus literally next door neighbors. The distinction between 

 street and alley is not recognized, and the former has to serve all the purposes 

 of the latter, so that at the door of an apartment occupied by one of these ex- 

 tremely domestic animals it is not at all uncommon to see a pile of manure 

 blocking the side of the street and draining into the gutter. A Chicago gentle- 

 man while recently stumbling through the narrow street of a picturesque little 

 Swiss village, made the remark that if he should permit the alley in rear of his 

 lot at home to become as blocked up, uneven and filthy as was that street, it 

 would be complained of as a public nuisance. 



In viewing one of these dreary little abodes of crowded humanity, and reflect- 

 ing that to most of its inhabitants this and a few neighboring towns of similar 

 character constitute their whole known world, their entire sphere of life, the 

 whole range of mental vision, their widest field for thought and action, and 

 that here they must live and strire day after day till life wears out, the unbid- 

 den thought forces itself upon us : To what use or purpose is this great mass of 

 human life ! 



Their daily routine must be as eventless as was Mark Twain's when in early 

 boyhood ho undertook the responsibility of a diary, but could find nothing of 

 greater moment to record than the regular announcement, "Got up, washed, 

 went to bed," although I fear the central fact of his narrative would have to 

 be omitted by the more truthful ones of these villages. 



In seeking the cause of this strange city-like crowding in even the most 

 remote country places, my first thought was that land was too valuable merely 

 from its productive power to be wasted in giving men space to stretch them- 

 selves. But I think that the true cause is to be found back in the feudal ages, 

 when a village meant but the collected retainers of some lord of the soil, who 

 would naturally desire to herd them as compactly as may be; or, still earlier, 

 we may perhaps find the cause in the custom of putting around each town a 

 defensive wall which, by thus limiting the area for buildings, would make 



