THE COUNTRY HOME [chapter 



complete country home is never obtrusive, but, like 

 the trees and the lawns and the hedges, is a part of 

 the place. 



This home of ours is associated with privileges 

 that even the city could not indulge fifty years ago. 

 It has advantages peculiar to the country, but also 

 those that have been peculiar to the city. Half a 

 century ago the conditions of life were such that 

 pneumonia, typhoid fever, and a whole gamut of 

 similar ills were looked upon as inevitable accesso- 

 ries of life — if not orderings of Providence. As 

 late as 1850 machinery was just beginning to lift 

 the farmer from his knees — where he had worked 

 with hook to reap his grain — to ride upon har- 

 vesters, and do in a single day the work of twenty 

 men. He was old at forty, and worn out at fifty; 

 to-day he is erect and stalwart at eighty. A strike 

 in the coal field would not then have affected him, 

 for he knew nothing about coal as fuel. 



In our gardens and orchards we are forming a 

 collection of the best achievements of the whole 

 temperate zone, vegetables and fruits that mark the 

 progress of science all along down through the cen- 

 turies. What is it that makes the farmer's every- 

 day meal ? It is coffee from Arabia, sugar from 



[370] 



