1907.] FUTURE OF SMALL NEW ENGLAND TOWNS. 281 



hay crop is at least a half larger, butter and milk have more 

 than doubled, while all farm products have increased from fif- 

 teen and one-half to twenty-eight millions. 



Formerly, the fanner from wayback felt as the boy, who, 

 on being told that if he kept on so, he could not go to heaven, 

 replied, " Well, I've been to the circus twice and to Uncle 

 Tom's Cabin once. I can't expect to go everywhere ! " The 

 modern farmer can be more " on the go." The good roads 

 improvement has come to stay ; the extension of the trolley is 

 working a revolution in the country no less than in the city, 

 while lighting and power lines are following in their track. 

 Already few houses in Connecticut are beyond walking dis- 

 tance of a telephone, while rural free delivery is a growing 

 blessing and will inevitably be joined with the benefit of the 

 parcels-post. All this means the relief of isolation, the growth 

 of neighborliness, the bringing near of markets, schools and 

 churches. 



And if, nevertheless, some areas do find their way back to 

 a state of nature, what then? If the deer increase, as is the 

 fact, here and there ; if it be possible for a party to go to a 

 lonely spot, as one of them recently told me, and kill four 

 rattlesnakes each year; is the country going to the dogs be- 

 cause it is going to the snakes ? There are some high uses for 

 wild land, aside from agriculture. On the top of the moun- 

 tains of Salisbury are thousands of acres of wilderness, Adi- 

 rondack in their ruggedness. It afifords a noble retreat for 

 my friend and next door neighbor, the Hon. Donald T. War- 

 ner, whose generous and hospitable " Lotus Lodge " welcomes 

 scores of guests each season long. , 



Some people prefer to be near to Nature's heart. When 

 Williarn Travers Jerome came into Salisbury for a home, he 

 scorned our lake fronts and highway farms ; he took the axe, 

 with which he had broken into Canfield's faro bank, and 

 blazed away to a knoll, adjoining a swamp, " far from the 

 maddening crowd," and there he builded his house upon a 

 rock. He can't grow anything there, but wu could not dis- 

 lodge him from his Salisbury position any more than Tam- 

 many could dislodge him from his Manhattan position. The 

 truth is, that men of means will more and more seek owner- 

 ship among the mountain fastnesses and stony water courses 

 of Connecticut. 



