2 3 8 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



city cousin read his morning paper over his coffee 

 and felt that he alone was " in the world." This 

 would not have been so bad if the country dweller, 

 beside isolation, had not felt that he was " out of 

 the world." 



In this way steam had incidentally the effect of so 

 depressing country life that the farmer became Old 

 Hayseed. Farms were sold at half cost and hun- 

 dreds of fairly good New England homesteads were 

 deserted entirely. Some of the New England States 

 published annually a list of deserted homes given 

 up because there was no sale for them and the owners 

 were tired of the hard life lived on them. They had 

 gone West to more fertile soil, yet in Kansas in 1890 

 they fed wheat to their hogs and corn brought so low 

 a price that it was burned for fuel. Nearly seventy 

 per cent of the increase of population was rushing 

 into city life and there congestion grew sickening. 



These old arts of the country home went to stay 

 most of them. It will not pay us now to try to 

 restore them. The spinning wheel cannot be re- 

 called so long as a single machine, driven by steam, 

 can do the work of ten thousand of them. When 

 some English folk thought to do this, they could not 

 find a single wheel in all Lancashire. We keep them 

 now only as interesting relics of arts that are lost. 

 We can buy soap much cheaper than we can make 

 it, and candles remain only in ecclesiastical lingerie. 



I am not sure that it is worth the while to put 



