Eight Dollars an Acre. 333 



This man may not live long enough to die rich ; but, on the other hand, 

 we may be sure that he will never become insolvent. The moderation of 

 his wants gives assurance of pecuniary safety. His gains, though small, 

 are steady and certain ; his aspirations are few, and cheaply supplied ; and 

 he indulges in no extravagances. His ultimatum is six per cent. The 

 long catalogue of American insolvents contains the names of few who are 

 farmers. It is the men who grasp at two per cent a month who lose all, 

 and fail. The thousands, who, in great financial dislocations, come down 

 from a condition of luxury, have not been farmers. It is the merchants 

 and manufacturers, the speculators and the adventurers, who do so. Every 

 panic that convulses the country brings multitudes of them to grief, until 

 bankrupt-laws are found necessary to relieve them. Eight dollars per acre 

 comes up in strange contrast with a brown-stone mansion at a rent of ten 

 thousand a year ; but, when its gay occupant has gone forth by invitation 

 of the sheriff, how much greater does the contrast become ! The picture, 

 like all others, has two sides ; and the brown-stone mansion with its luxuri- 

 ous appurtenances cannot be pronounced a success. 



The conditions necessary to prosperity in rural life are various. In hor- 

 ticulture especially, the primary one is that of being as near as possible to 

 the largest market, — one which no supply can glut. There are hundreds of 

 villages in which the product of two acres of strawberries would prove an 

 overwhelming surfeit; but New York and Philadelphia have never yet been 

 glutted. Thirty odd years ago, before the railroad between these cities was 

 built, we had the same teeming sandy loams that we have now, as ready 

 then to yield up a generous fruit-crop as one of corn or rye. But no mar- 

 ket was at hand. Philadelphia, only twenty miles ^away, was too far to 

 wagon to it the perishable fruits. The distance, already great, was made 

 greater by reason of roads intolerably sandy. It was therefore useless to 

 produce fruit which it was impossible to deliver promptly to the consumer. 

 Some, however, whose land bordered on the Delaware, managed occasion- 

 ally to reach the city by means of shallops. But the contingencies of wind 

 and tide were such, that no one could be certain of getting there on time. 

 If arriving too late, or if detained too long in transitu, the market-hours 

 were over, the fruit was in a perishing condition, and prices sunk to almost 



