No. 4.] COUNTRY LIFE. 115 



pay vso as to enable a man to support a family, send his 

 children to college and give his wife a seal-skin coat, is a 

 problem not yet fully solved. I shall not, however, take 

 time to discuss farming or farmers. Yet, I start in with 

 the very important conviction that the farms in the interior 

 of Massachusetts can be made to pay, and in many cases 

 they are made to pay. The only reason why any farmer on 

 the hills of Massachusetts fails to make a profit upon his 

 farm is because he does not adapt himself to the conditions 

 of the farm and to the demands of the people at this time. 

 I was out in Indiana a little while ago, and was again 

 introduced to a man whom I met there several years ago. 

 He had been farming there. He was a Massachusetts man. 

 That gentleman went to Indiana and undertook to carry on 

 a farm, but could make nothing at it. Wheat was selling; 

 at seventy cents a bushel. Corn would not pay. Hogs 

 would not pay. He concluded he was not fitted to be a 

 farmer. He said he could not make the farm pay because 

 of the close competition in all the staples raised on the 

 prairies of the west. He went to Boston on a visit and 

 there in Quincy market he saw what the farmers of Massa- 

 chusetts ought long ago to have seen, — little cans of pre- 

 served gooseberries selling for sixty cents a pint. Sixty 

 cents a pint ! Said he, "That is all I get for a bushel of 

 wheat. There must be somethino; wrong: about the goose- 

 berries or about me ! " The marketman assured him that 

 there was nothing wrong about the gooseberries. He said 

 to his wife, "Let's get back to Indiana as quickly as we 

 can. Gooseberries grow wild on our farm. We have been 

 grubbing them out. Let's permit them to grow." He 

 went back to his farm in Indiana, planted not another grain 

 of corn, raised no more hogs or wheat, but allowed the 

 gooseberries to grow and cultivated them. Then he put 

 in raspberries and strawberries and the small fruits, and 

 to-day that man is the richest taxpayer in the whole State 

 of Indiana. He raises no wheat, rye or corn. He has 

 raised something native to the soil and cultivated it, and 

 he sold his preserved gooseberries at seventy-five cents a 

 pint. He canned them in the field within five minutes of 

 the time they were picked. In the canned condition they 



