276 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



for every one of us can we ever realize the hope of poets and 

 philosophers in all ages, of making the whole world a garden. 



But for our swifter communication of ideas and the new hopes 

 growing out of the new conditions, American civilizations must 

 hem themselves in walled cities, as so many older civilizations 

 have done before, and wear themselves out — with the vigor of 

 human races and the fertility of soils — by fighting, like the cats 

 of Kilkenny, as so many purse-proud cities have done before. 



Our modern doctrine of "the greatest good for the greatest 

 number " is a fraud, anyhow, and made to become, in the hands 

 of oppressive managers, the most damnable tyranny over the 

 scattered and defenceless few. It is the essence of the rankest 

 cannibalism, which eats the helpless outright. It was that doc- 

 trine, in the washed hands of legality and an organized mob, 

 which crucified Jesus. He tried to teach lis the eternal regard of 

 goodness for the falling sparrow, and the least of our fellows. 



Some may think it absurd that I should propose a new lay-out 

 for abandoned farms — grown up to brash and stuffed with rocks, 

 like plums in a pudding — in fields, gardens, and orchards, while 

 we are getting almost everything we need to eat so convenient 

 and without trouble — except to pay for the goods — from an en- 

 chanting distance by railway. While fat land without a bush or 

 stone can be had only two or three thousand miles off for the 

 asking. 



It looks reasonable — don't it — that every smart railway town in 

 the east should jump its land values a thousand miles away over 

 all the intervening country nearer the ring of its preferred streets, 

 and the circle of its sewer-polluted air and water ? 



The idea may seem perfectly ridiculous to a trader or speculator 

 inside the last railway combination, that we should try making 

 attractive small farms and pleasant homes in any of the recent 

 wildernesses of Connecticut. The deserted Yankee farm-house 

 that we see may look and actually be more uninviting than the 

 new and sweet western dug-out that we don't see. Besides, onr 

 land is often so very poor that we have to scrape our dishes and 

 lay by our scraps for the pigs and chickens, or dig our malaria- 

 making material into the soil to get a crop. The plumbers may 

 earn their money, Mr. Chairman, but they cannot bring us salva- 

 tion from that trouble. The science of the farmer's sons who build 

 our cities and villages seems little better, as yet, than the instinct of 



