1883.] HINTS TOWARD SMALL FARMING. 277 



the master fowls upon the roost, who perch as high as they can 

 get above their fellows. 



We who live in the country are bound by the desire of mutual 

 safety to study the devices and fashions of city hfe. 



The relations between city and country are as intimate as those 

 of. the Siamese twins. It is an unsound head which draws all the 

 blood from the extremities, and small farmers need to watch the 

 centers of their political body to' prevent what the doctors call 

 '• fatty degeneration of the heart." 



In spite of precautions to the contrary, city drainage joins the 

 inside of each house to every vile and wasteful deposit within cor- 

 poration hmits. This is danger enough, but later contrivances, 

 ingeniously calculated to ease the purse as well as the mind, fur- 

 nish upward pipe vents, so that the air surrounding each house 

 must be contaminated with the gaseous emanations and the living 

 germs of disease engendered by acres of festering sewer-filth. 



This sequestration of fertility to diseased conditions is the law 

 of every railway town on the continent, and I need scarcely say 

 that it tends rather to the production of sewer-rats than of Intel- 

 ligent small farmers. There is small comfort in finding that farm 

 drainage is no better. 



yes ! — I know how the idea of any thoughtful, frugal, ener- 

 getic, and finally profitable agricultural industry in the east must 

 seem utterly foolish in some "practical" minds compared with the 

 slaughter and destruction of western fertility by railway. One 

 might as well discourse the joys of matrimony and family life to 

 a drunken army during the sack of a city. 



1 don't expect to say anything that will check ovtr western ex- 

 ploits much. Eastern harlotry demands the defloration of the 

 virgin west. But I do hope to remind some few faithful ones that 

 depleting agriculture must come to an end soon, and that it is high 

 time we in the east began to do something better close by home. 

 While we are enjoying the surplus fresh meat immediately after 

 butchering, we ought to smoke some, dry some, and salt some, or 

 swap a quarter or a junk here and there with a frugal neighbor, 

 against the day when fresh meat is not so plenty. 



Our population doubles every twenty-five years. At that rate 

 of increase we shall number eight hundred millions at the end of 

 our second century of national life. 



At one of your local fairs here, I remember seeing the finest 



