8 THE LURE OF THE LAND 



not help thinking, " How many suckers will bite at this 

 bait ! " As a rule, the most unhappy man you meet 

 is the so-called suburbanite. When you can see him 

 through the bundles he carries to and fro, you do not 

 always detect the countenance of the happy. The sub- 

 urbanite's family expects to live as people live in the 

 city. There must be servants to do the work, prepare 

 the food and sweep the floors, and the best of the city 

 market must be brought. No wonder the man who 

 goes back and forth to his business soon finds life a 

 burden ! 



While I agree that it is better for the individual to 

 have a country home, accessible by trolley or otherwise, 

 and still to do business in the city, his lot is not the 

 one which I am to portray. The man I have in view 

 is the one who not only goes to the country but, after in- 

 vesting his little hoard of a lifetime, expects to make 

 his living for the rest of his life from the farm on 

 which he is settled. My observation is that it is rare 

 for a man who has devoted his more active life to other 

 pursuits in the city, to become a successful farmer; I 

 mean by that to live from the products of his farm. 

 Thus at the very outset I may say to those who are suf- 

 fering from the disease which I call ruralitis, that the 

 expected living which is to come from a farm is to a 

 large extent visionary. 



At the same time I would be sorry to see this love 

 of rural life less regnant than it is. Theoretically, my 

 idea of humanity would be a scattered population, all 

 of the productive industries taken out of the cities and 

 placed in the country to which they properly belong, 

 and the city left only as a place of exchange. Mean- 

 while, let us make the best of things as they are. The 

 suburban life should be encouraged because it has some 



