AND WHERE TO FIND ONE. 339 



but in his own house. If I could, I should be glad to live 

 in the house that my ancestors had lived in from the days 

 of the flood. That cannot be ; for in ascending the line of 

 ancestry I find the people but not the houses, and it is 

 more than suspected that some of them never owned one ! 

 My father s house ! It is like a picture rubbed out. The 

 frame and canvas are there, but strangers have possessed 

 it. The room where I was born, where my mother rocked 

 my cradle and sang as angels do where she died, where 

 all my boyish frolics began and life spread out its golden 

 dream they are all overlaid by other histories. We 

 planted pleasant things in the old house, but the Assyrians 

 came in and settled down upon them.&quot; 



But some one has said that nine-tenths of our 

 farmers find farming unprofitable that is, paying 

 but a very small percentage on the capital invested 

 in land, stock, tools, &c. On this subject the editor 

 of the Country Gentleman has crowded a mass of 

 interesting information into a nutshell, much of 

 which I reproduce as appropriate to the discussion. 

 He says that hundreds of farmers who own from a 

 hundred and fifty to three hundred acres of good 

 land, tolerably well stocked, find themselves barely 

 able to prove that they are as well off to-day as 

 they were a year ago ; and many declare that the 

 laborer, who has nothing but his hands to get a liv 

 ing, lays up more money in a year than they with 

 all their broad acres and flocks of cattle and sheep. 

 If this be true, and doubtless it is so in many in 

 stances, a farm managed as a large share of our 

 farms are managed, would be a clog to a young 

 man with a small family, who is endeavoring to 



