1883.] HINTS TOWARD SMALL FARMING, 265 



from Paris," of the latest arrangement in fig-leaves by mail; so 

 what was the use of running a garden ? Any young couple of 

 these days — no matter how bred or educated — would have been 

 as discontented in such a paradise as we are in our own surround- 

 ings. 



Hereabouts we may take a hint, if we please, for the location 

 of our new gardens. Production drags unless consumers are 

 handy for every crop. We need not dig so far west and south. 

 The newest as well as the oldest inspiration and gospel for small 

 farmers teaches them to bait consumption close by home. That 

 old paradise was too isolated, and while the country is strung now 

 with wires, like spider-webs, from station to station, in railway 

 lines, rural postal service and communication between Connecticut 

 farms and the consumers of farm produce in Connecticut are 

 relatively slower, compared with the new facilities, than they were 

 one hundred years ago. Small merchants may be interested to 

 know that our young women can trade through the mail with 

 New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, to better advantage than in 

 the village store, unless the latter can handle local farm goods. 



Except as a warning I should say that our aged teachers were 

 wrong, and that we have no occasion to cry for that old spilled 

 milk. But the fact is, while it is easy, in these days of rapid 

 transit, to quit the garden or farm in our youth and strength, and 

 we are continually doing that to-day, it is not so easy keeping 

 away. Wherever we go we find the everlasting ground, with its 

 everlasting questions of right and wrong for the farm and garden 

 staring us in the face. We may fly the farm nest and flap our 

 wings gaily for awhile, but we can't fly the globe — we fall nearer 

 and nearer to it and finally touch the earth again, dust to dust, at 

 last. 



Pray heaven that we light on our feet and do not strike too 

 hard ; that we do not alight in such a frigid wilderness as our 

 Puritan forefathers did, — with the soil they had in its virgin 

 wealth, reduced to a desert — and that some remnant of fitness 

 may remain in our minds and muscles for the wholesome and 

 strengthening occupations of the farm. 



Some of my friends mourn for the good old times, when our 

 young ones couldn't fly so far, when all they could do was to go 

 up or down the road a piece, and build, and tend sheep, or poultry, 

 and be happy and rich by their own simple industries. Don't 



