188 FROM A NEW ENGLAND HILLSIDE. 



to exist, but with which we are apparently 

 powerless to deal. 



Up on the slope atUnderledge the ground 

 is not now as moist as we should like it to 

 be, though the weather is absolutely perfect. 

 Some of us are very poor, and none of us 

 feel very rich ; but we get something to eat 

 almost every day, and if we do not have a 

 good thick juicy beefsteak at each meal, we 

 remember having read of persons who had 

 made a fair repast upon shoe leather. We 

 look about us, and we see labouring men of 

 moderate calibre, who have never had more 

 than a labouring man s modest wages, who 

 have married and brought up families, 

 and who, withal, have established and own 

 comfortable homes in which they live under 

 their own vines and cherry trees. They get 

 their dollar and a half a day when they can 

 earn it, and when they cannot earn it they 

 dig in the garden, or tend the baby, and 

 hope for the time when they can. 



Most of us receive a daily newspaper, or if 

 we do not take one ourselves, we borrow our 

 neighbour s, or we hear what the paper con 

 tains when we go down to the post-office. 

 And nowadays the paper contains the most 

 remarkable tales. It appears that millions 

 of dollars worth of property has been burned 



