8 



is no proi^eet more hopefial, no other opportunity so open for oiir advantage ad 

 that which lies in the fact that we are no more than 20 miles from a point where 

 two railroads, the Duchess and Columbia, and the Rhinebeck and Connecticut, 

 crosHing only a single county, lead to the two great coal depots of America, 

 Newburgh and Rondout. Why could we not build our Massachusetts Central 

 in Massachusetts and not in Connecticut ? 



Through what a long desert the nation has passed, of barren hopes and 

 toil that bore no fruits, when the sweat of the brow seemed to claim in vain 

 the privilege of the curse in earning bread — a desert way where heaven's omens 

 seemed reversed, — the fire by day and the cloud by night ! 



Better times ! What have we in mind when we use this term so freely ? 

 We shall put up doubtless with what comes. We have a way of doing it. 

 *' Was your wife resigned?" asked the minister of the bereaved husband "Ya, 

 dominie, she had to be." But there is a wisdom and probably some comfort 

 in fixing it in our minds before hand. First, are not the times meeting us at 

 least halfw&y'i They will grow better whenever we are willing to adapt our- 

 selves to them, and herein lies the solution of the problem ; not in special devices 

 of legislation. Do better times mean days when there shall be no need of dili- 

 gent labor and strict economy and actual values ? Is it not true that every one 

 of us has enough for every real comfort, with luxury enough for his own and 

 his children's good ? Prices will probably improve, sales become quicker, and 

 exchanges more brisk, but unless we are in some way independent of laws 

 which human experience everywhere reveals, nine- tenths of the world, live and 

 will live plainer lives than we are now leading. Or does it mean that we shall 

 inflate our pockets with promises, and then by mutual prestos become rich ? 



But neither coaxing or compulsion will make all our sons farmers. Nature 

 does not make the nest to hold the full fledged birds, and through the same law 

 come to the minds of the young and strong, those feelings of unrest and am- 

 bition, 



" Which in part are prophecies, and in part 

 Are longings wild and vain." 



It is the old fact of the fable of the Athenian youth and the Labyrinth, — some 

 find the thread that guides them safe, others are bewildered and lost. A ratio 

 based on the proportion of births and deaths in our large cities, termi- 

 nates in less than a century. In 90 years their life would run out and busy 

 streets become dumb as church yards. All this terrible deficit must be made up 

 by blood and bone, and muscle bred on country hills. Not one in one hundred 

 who do the business of great cities was born in them. But New England is 

 singularly, wonderfully fortunate in the compensations which come back, from 

 these very losses, to her country towns, — those "brood combs'' as Beecher 

 calls them. How many who have been thus sent forth to positions of power, 

 through health or wit or wisdom, have made it their mission to benefit their 

 birth place, — the church where they learned the fear of God, the school where 

 a better ambition was awakened, the poor above whose level Providence has 

 lifted them, the old homestead and farm where they may show '*New England 

 Farming Restored. " Ten years of rest after the hard labor of life, ten years 



