22 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1886. 



of a Continent still young and virgin ; the vigor of a popula- 

 tion exempt from a merciless tribute to that ravening devil — the 

 modern Standing Army,* — nor less — tlie sanguine enterprise 

 which is permitted to engage, without let or hindrance, in crazy 

 speculation or plodding industry. The sum of our savings — not 

 the volume of our laws — must be the precise measure of our 

 actual individual and public thrift. 



* Paternal government! Protection to home industry! (when industry is 

 graciously vouchsafed a home!) the cant of greed and the lust for power ; 

 sworn allies in an alliance offensive and defensive throughout the ages; where 

 are not their traces visible in the degeneration of man — the degradation of 

 woman ? The wealth acquired through the partiality of legislation must be 

 guarded and secured by the superior lawlessness of force- That force exacts 

 the flrst-born for its merciless service, unlike the Egyptian plague, sentencing 

 its conscripts to a hri?if/ death. But production must go on: — else, where- 

 from the taxes ! And in default of the musket-bearer who so available to hew 

 wood and draw water as the child-bearer? Such, hitherto, has been the mo- 

 notonous round on the treadmill of human existence. Shall the grist of 

 Ambition and Avarice be man, — forever? e. w. l. 



"PLEASURE TRAVEL IN GERMANY. 



What Went Ye out for to See? 



A country ' shaken with the wind' it seemed to me in every sense, actua 

 and metaphorical. Such fields of waving grain, such uninterrupted evidence 

 of the hand of labor, such long stretched-out arms of despotic power, I 

 never expected to see in any land. It grew painful. There was not a square 

 inch left to nature ; my eyes actually hungered for a way-side lane that looked 

 as if it was let alone. There is mile after mile of forest, but as one passes, 

 he sees that it consists of trees planted with mathematical precision. Among 

 hills almost as wild naturally as the Adirondacks, every few hundred feet is 

 the small white stone marking the tax collector. Wherever the smallest 

 yield conld be gathered out of the roughest land, there were the marks of 

 labor — scooped-out places, and high up mountain ridges, where some mineral 

 had been found; breaches through other ridges to get at building stone; 

 miles of debris, showing the ages of human toil expended. Every navigable 

 stream has its rocks deeply cut into, as far as boats can be used, carrying 

 buildiug stone away; all fertile land is worked like garden plats; not a spot 

 for a homestead; no meadows " unprofitably gay " with wild flowers, but 

 vast stretches of cultivated land, and then a village of houses huddled 

 together, with scarcely a green spot in it, except the graveyard. The most 

 fertile land is devoted to the sugar beet. Picture stretches of twenty miles 

 or more of these in mathematical rows, without a weed, and the train passing 

 every short distance, lines of women, sometimes a hundred in a gang, as 

 straight a line as the row of beets, hoeing, or on their kuees weeding by hand, 

 the overseer, a man, walking behind to see that it was thoroughly done; the 

 picture only needed a slave-driver's whip to make it a southern scene " befo' 

 the waw." When so near that one could observe closely, these mothers of 

 Germany were bare- legged, in. rags, a coarse handkerchief over the head — 

 coarse-featured, bold-eyed animals. As we approached towns, squads of 



