130 WINTER SKETCHES. 



since deserted. I might have asked her, and 

 obtained an answer as satisfactory as I can get 

 from others or from myself, how it is that the 

 farmers hereabouts and the farmers of New 

 York State and New England manage to live. 



When these large houses were occupied, 

 their inhabitants did live by raising produce for 

 the city markets before railroads were known. 



According to the theory of the protection- 

 ists, they should live better now by supplying 

 the factory establishments which have been 

 built up in their neighborhood. But stubborn 

 facts may disprove any economic theory. The 

 farmer's occupation for everything but the 

 sale of milk is gone. The articles that he once 

 sold he is obliged now to buy. Even his hay 

 sometimes comes from the West. His land is 

 not worth the half of its price of fifty years 

 ago ; and yet, although he acts in direct op- 

 position to the scheme of Senator Frye, who 

 counsels us to sell everything and buy nothing 

 if we desire to be successful, he does live 

 as he did not live in the olden time, when he 

 and his family wore homespun dresses, when 

 he worked, his wife worked, his sons and 

 daughters worked, and when he had nothing 

 but hard-wood furniture and rag carpets. 



