OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES 



front him every day, without measuring their 

 relations. It appears in the end that Mr. Slo- 

 man pays out some four to five hundred dol- 

 lars a year for labor— in addition to his own 

 and that of his boy of fifteen. Reckoning this 

 at five to six hundred more, it would appear 

 that the needed labor upon a farm of fifty 

 acres under ordinary cultivation would be not 

 far from a thousand dollars. Meeting this, 

 and the taxes, and "putting by" some four or 

 five hundred from his returns, the country 

 proprietor thinks he is doing a very fair thing. 

 When a man of this stamp is confronted with 

 such statements as appear from sanguine 

 Western vineyardists, about a return of six 

 thousand dollars per acre for land in vines, 

 "prepared with the plow at a cost of twenty- 

 five dollars the acre," he simply puts a fresh 

 quid in his cheek, and indulges in remarks not 

 creditable to the veracity of the vineyardist. 

 I am inclined to think that the real truth 

 lies midway between the parties. Mr. Sloman, 

 with his old-fashioned habits, is not accom- 

 plishing the half that ought to be accomplished 

 with his fifty-acre farm; the not unfrequent 

 extraordinary representations of vineyard 

 product, on the other hand, I cannot but re- 

 gard as palpable exaggerations. I have not 



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