No. 4.] COUNTRY ROADS. 243 



as well as the highest art, for the country to make itself 

 attractive to the town, in all gentle, graceful and natural 

 ways. What is not forest should be garden and park. Not 

 a single item of farm thrift hinders. Trees, shrubs and 

 vines come by chance along many country roadsides, which 

 may be more beautiful than anything we can plant there, if 

 we clip obvious weeds, and show nooks and bays of green- 

 sward among the low groups and towers of foliage. 



City people spend millions, yearly, to get a rest from the 

 din of their own devices. Would not some part of the 

 labor we spend in glutting far-away city markets over poor 

 highways, be better expended in making rural roads and 

 roadsides so lovely as to bring the best citizens to our 

 doors? It may be a slow but it will be a sure speculation, 

 if we go the right way to work. We need first to settle 

 ourselves comfortably. Road making is but a subordinate 

 branch of gardening, and we may make gardens of our 

 roadsides. 



The Chairman. Secretary Sessions has a letter which he 

 thinks is appropriate at this time, if you will give your 

 attention. 



Tolland, Mass., Dec. 1, 1891. 

 To the State Board of Agriculture. 



Gentlemen: — I should be very much pleased to attend your 

 meetings this week if I could. I feel very much interested in 

 the subject of country roads. We are eighteen miles from rail- 

 road, over very heavy hills and mountains. Our roads could be 

 very much improved if we had the money to do it. We are thinly 

 settled, have a large piece of road to every man, to be kept in the 

 best repair we are able. We can barely make them passable, with- 

 out making any improvements on them. Our hills are steep 

 grade. Many of them need the location changed, others can be 

 improved by grading. One particular place I will name, in the 

 town of Granville, on our mail route. After climbing up a 

 hard mountain, over one-half mile, we then have to rise one hun- 

 dred feet higher, over a very heavy grade of rocky, ledgy road, to 

 fall down another steep grade. This might all be saved by a 

 short change in the location, and one hundred feet of rise and fall. 

 There are many places on our roads similar to this that greatly 

 need work done. Our mountain towns are poor, our population 

 decreasing, and our taxes are two mills on the dollar. We are not 



