FARMER'S HOME, PAST AND FUTURE. 207 



As a sample of fruit-raising also, take the old-fashioned 

 orchard. I can remember two large orchards on my own 

 farm ; and a few of the old trees still remain as reminders of 

 the generations that are gone. Not one tree in ten yielded 

 fruit that could be eaten with comfort. They were all seed- 

 lings. No one knew when they were set, what they would 

 bear, except that they would bear apples. There was not a 

 grafted apple-tree on the place. Here and there a tree pro- 

 duced apples that could be gathered for family use ; but nine- 

 tenths of them were sour, l)itter crabs, that would indeed 

 yield cider to curse its maker. I think the cellar I now own 

 has many a year had more than fifty barrels stored in it ; and 

 I have never heard that any of it did any good, except the 

 small part that changed to vinegar. Some of it was sold 

 for money, it was true ; but it was poor stuff to sell, in any 

 point of view. 



The meat of the farm was salt-pork and salt-beef. Cabbage 

 was about the only vegetable that figured largely in the 

 farmer's bill of fare. Pork and potatoes were the basis of 

 the winter living. Fortunately for the children, milk was a 

 cheap article, generally abundant, and so they had enough of 

 it ; and, as all the best joart of milk for children remains after it 

 is skimmed, they could not be cheated out of what was really 

 the best thing for them to eat. The cows, even the poor 

 natives I have described, have been the salvation of the 

 farmer's household in giving to the children the life-giving 

 nourishment which ignorance or avarice might otherwise 

 have denied to them. 



There were mistaken notions in regard to eating, clothing, 

 sleeping, and working. The farmer's children, in general, 

 were over-worked and under-fed ; that is, if you consider the 

 real value of food. They were too luuch exposed to cold 

 and wet, and too often deprived of the proper amount of 

 sleep. Life was made hard and unpleasant, and injurious to 

 the best development of mind and body, from a mistaken 

 notion that it was a good thing for children to learn to 

 "rough it," — to become tough by hard labor, and exposure 

 to cold and wet. 



There were marked exceptions to the picture as I have 

 drrfwn it, but they were few. Farm-life for those who owned 

 the farms, and for the children raised upon them, was in gen- 



