Fox Hunting in New England 57 



The sons and daughters of these country gentlemen have left 

 the farm for the factory, so that this most noble race of men 

 who were indigenous to the soil has been lost to the country, 

 state and nation, swallowed up, ground to pieces or altered 

 beyond recognition. 



It is to be hoped that ultimately the government at Wash- 

 ington will give to agriculture the same fostering care and 

 protection that are devoted to manufacturing industries. Who- 

 ever attempts to write the history of America in the near 

 future, will surely say that this profligate land policy has been 

 one of the most unstatesman-like acts committed against the 

 American people. 



There is now and then a descendant of this good old stock 

 scattered about New England and the Eastern States, who 

 is living in the country part, if not all, of the year. While this 

 class may have inherited the taste for country life, they are 

 usually depending upon a factory or business in town to sup- 

 port the land. Nearly every one born of agricultural parents, 

 whose memory goes backward to the fifties will know just the 

 kind of a man the writer is about to describe in Uncle Abner. 

 Or as our favourite poet Williams would say: 



'^Tll give you a gentleman, a man, and a friend, 



A nailer to handle the horn, 



A man one is always prepared to defend. 



Whose friendship is strong and endures to the end, 



A truer sportsman never was horn." 



Although the writer was so unfortunate as to have been 

 born in a city, his bringing up in the fifties was in a community 

 of Uncle Abner's. The writer's joy in finding such a man as 

 late as '98 is left to the reader's imagination. 



Like fox hunting in the Southern States, the charm in New 

 England centres more in the men who hunt than in the fox. 



