CITIZENS RETIRING TO THE COUNTRY. 



We tliink so : and as we are daily brought into contact with precisely this class 

 of citizens, seeking for and building country places, we should be glad to be able to 

 offer some useful hints to those who are not too wise to find them of value. 



Perhaps the foundation of all the miscalculations that arise, as to expenditure in 

 forming a country residence, is, that citizens are in the habit of thinking everything 

 in the country cheap. Land in the town is sold by the foot, in the country by the 

 acre. The price of a good house in town is, perhaps, three times the cost of one of 

 the best farms in the country. The town buys everything : the country raises every- 

 thing. To live on your own estate, be it one acre or a thousand, to have your own 

 milk, butter and eggs, to raise your own chickens and gather your own strawberries, 

 with nature to keep the account instead of your grocer and market woman, that is 

 something like a rational life ; and more than rational, it must be cheap. So argues 

 the citizen about retiring, not only to enjoy his otivm cum dignitate, but to make a 

 thousand dollars of his income, produce him more of the comforts of life than two 

 thousand did before. 



Well ; he goes into the country. He buys a farm, (run down with poor tenants 

 and bad tillage.) He builds a new house, with his own ignorance instead of architect 

 and master builder, and is cheated roundly by those who take advantage of this mas- 

 terly ignorance in the matter of bricks and mortar ; or he repairs an old house at the 

 full cost of a new one, and has an unsatisfactory dwelling forever afterwards. He under- 

 takes high farming, and knowing nothing of the practical economy of husbandry, 

 every bushel of corn that he raises costs him the price of a bushel and a half in the 

 market. Used in town to a neat and orderly condition of his premises, he is disgusted 

 with old tottering fences, half drained fields and worn-out pastures, and employs all the 

 laboring force of the neighborhood to put his grounds in good order. 



Now there is no objection to all this for its own sake. On the contrary good 

 buildings, good fences, and rich pasture fields are what especially delight us in the 

 country. What then is the reason that, as the country place gets to wear a smil- 

 ing aspect, its citizen owner begins to look serious and unhappy ! Why is it that 

 country life does not satisfy and content him ? Ts the country, which all poets and 

 philosophers have celebrated as the Arcadia of this world, — is the country treacherous ? 

 Is nature a cheat, and do seed-time and harvest conspire against the peace of mind 

 of the retired citizen? 



Alas ! It is a matter of money. Everything seems to be a matter of money now- 

 a-days. The country life of the old world, of the poets and romancers, is cheap. The 

 country life of our republic is dear. It is for the good of the many that labor should 

 be high, and it is high labor that makes country life heavy and oppressive to such 

 men — only because it shows a balance, increasing year after year, on the wrong side 

 of the ledger. Here is the source of all the trouble and dissatisfaction in what may 

 be called the country life of gentlemen amateurs, or citizens, in this country — " it 

 don't pay.'' Land is cheap, nature is beautiful, the country is healthy, and all these 

 conspire to draw our well-to-do citizen into the country. But labor is dear, experience 

 is dearer, and a series of experiments in unprofitable crops the dearest of all ; and our 



