240 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



tan privileges to those whose homes had been hid 

 in the most remote corners and in the back woods. 

 The day had dawned for evening up. 



Isolation was completely banished and when the 

 rural telephone strung our homes on wires that talk 

 and a little home under the elms expanded to take 

 in the whole land at once, we knew that a new sort 

 of age had begun. Now I may call up Boston be- 

 fore breakfast; or, in the afternoon, I may visit my 

 friend in Chicago, without travel or cost almost. 

 This is the first chapter and it means that we are 

 privileged to partake with the city and to share in 

 everything that constitutes modern civic life. The 

 trolley carries us to the market town every half 

 hour and once a day the carrier brings the news from 

 Mongolia, Calcutta, New York, London, and Wash- 

 ington. We know what Congress is doing as soon 

 as our city cousins. The telephone has brought us 

 quite close to legislation and the farmer has a potent 

 say at every capital. 



But this is by no means all, for the country home 

 has much that the city has not and never can have. 

 It not only has its brooks and its groves and its fresh 

 brewed air, but it has a lot of new industries that 

 wonderfully well fill the place of those we lost half a 

 hundred years ago. The McCormick reaper began 

 a change in the way of tools and the exploitation 

 of energy. It lifted up the man with the sickle 

 and cradle and bade him ride. The age of horse 

 power tools was followed by electric power tools, 



