Town and Country. 219 



under cultivation. I would call the attention of cultivators in the East to 

 this variety, as being a potato especially adapted to their wants ; and have 

 no doubt, that, so soon as its merits become more generally known, it will 

 become the popular and standard variety with them. C. H. B. 



TOWN AND COUNTRY. 



" Happy the man whose wish and care 

 A few paternal acres bound, 

 Content to breathe his native air 

 On his own ground." 



The newspapers of New York inform us, that, in that city, there are thou- 

 sands of idle men vainly seeking employment. One of them exhorts the 

 surplus population to disperse, saying that the world does not need so 

 many clerks and salesmen, book-keepers and music-teachers ; there being 

 too many persons in the cities, and too few on farms and in rural work- 

 shops. Thus numbers are compelled to eke out a scanty living, while 

 others undergo privations of body and mind which make existence one long 

 and agonizing struggle against absolute starvation. The advice to all 

 these is to disperse, to go into the country, to get land ; but, anyhow, to go 

 into the country. The great city referred to has undoubtedly become the 

 most expensive place of residence in the civilized world. Many families 

 pay ten thousand dollars a year for board alone ; and tenants are practically 

 working exclusively for the landlords, for rents have gone up to frightful 

 figures. Marketing is on the most extravagant scale. Eveiy year, hundreds 

 of families abandon the city in disgust for some suburb which turns out to 

 be quite as expensive as a residence, with the additional annoyance of 

 being an hour or two in tra7isiiu between counting-house and home. 



It is just in such times of business-depression in the great cities, or when 

 prices of the necessaries of life rule extravagantly high, that multitudes 

 become desirous of dispersing by removal to the country, and of acquiring 

 a small tract of land which they can call their own. No matter if it be 

 but a single acre, it will be to them a farm. They are worn out with the 

 battle of a city life ; and, with the residuum of former affluence, seek to 



