HINDRANCES AND HELPS 



farmer by accident, and competent (as you 

 see) to live in a grand way," there is little hope 

 that he will ever do anything to the credit of 

 farming interests, or contribute very largely 

 to the best charms of our rural landscape. The 

 attempt to better one's condition is always 

 praiseworthy; but it is only base and ignoble 

 to attempt to cover one's condition with an 

 idle smack of something larger. 



There will always be in every moderately 

 free country a great class of small landholders, 

 in whose hands will lie for the most part, the 

 control of our rural landscape, and the fashion- 

 ing of our wayside homes, and when they shall 

 take pride, as a body, in giving grace to these 

 homes, the country will have taken a long step 

 forward in the refinements of civilization. If 

 I have no coaches and horses, I can at least 

 hang a tracery of vine leaves along my porch, 

 so exquisitely delicate that no sculpture can 

 match it; if I have no conservatories with their 

 wonders, yet the sun and I together can build 

 up a little tangled coppice of blooming things 

 in my dooryard, of which every tiny floral 

 leaflet shall be a miracle. Nay, I may make 

 my home, however small it be, so complete in 

 its simplicity, so fitted to its offices, so gov- 

 erned by neatness, so embowered by wealth of 



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