1871.] 



NEW ENGLAND FAR]VIER. 



615 



fort and thankfulness. All the neighborhood 

 has changed and improved. The farms are 

 well kept and trim, the orchards free from 

 rubbish, the lands cleared of stubble, white 

 fences displacing the crazy old boards, orna- 

 mental trees, clean, comfortable barns and 

 cosy white houses, — everybody taking pride 

 in their homes and surroundings, just because 

 one man of thrift, energy and taste, appre- 

 ciating the object of living, ciioses to enjoy a 

 neat, comfortable, and consequently, attrac- 

 tive and pleasant home. 



Why is it that farmers keep such shocking 

 and duleful-looking horses ? To be sure, they 

 keep them for work, but what makes them ap- 

 jjear so bony and troubled, even when young ? 

 Show me a plump, bright horse, and in its 

 owner PU show you a man with a generous 

 heart. Ah, Fleetwing ! happy is memory to 

 recall thy swift-footed virtues. May thy 

 shadow never grow less ! — and it never will 

 while my host possesses thee. 



Isn't it singular how difFt- rently people live ? 

 Now that I'm dwelling upon it, I must tell 

 you how a class of Unitie Sam's children, 

 called "mountaineers," exist among the Ossi- 

 pee mountains, whose heights my eyes rest 

 upon daily. AVe rode over and about one of 

 the mountains one afternoon, and it is truly 

 marvellous that, so near the cities, people 

 can be found so barbarous, and really prefer 

 being so. About twenty-five families exist 

 among these hills, literally "like pigs." They 

 live "from hand to mouth," the men walking 

 many miles from the mountains to work on 

 the adjacent farms, returning at evening ; the 

 women and children, — and they are just as 

 thick and brown as blackberries, — pick berries 

 all day upon the hills, walking many miles to 

 sell them. The}' are never hap[)y away from 

 their mountain homes, and will hurry back 

 when night comes, with all the ardor of a 

 lovesick swain. A man in Moultonville, one 

 of the villages in the town of Ossipee, hired a 

 mountaineer for a time, and brought him home 

 one Sunilay night ! When the family arose in 

 the morning, the fellow had cleared for his 

 mountain nest, so homesick had he already 

 become. Another mountaineer had the use of 

 a farm offered him at Ossipee Corner. He 

 moved upon it and into a nice, comfortable 

 house, but the wife, in a week, wept herself 

 sick and useless, and he was forced to return 

 to their mountain hut. Their children are as 

 ignorant and nearly as wild as savages, and 

 it is only within a few years that a school has 

 been established among them, with faint suc- 

 cess. It is kept in some home shanty, and 

 the session continues six weeks. This suffices 

 for a year. They clan together closely, living 

 and quarrelling among themselves. One can 

 scai'cely ever be engaged to work alone, — they 

 must labor in company. Other men's society 

 is uncomfortable and makes th';m dumb. If 

 one or a party be engaged for the morrow's 

 harvesting, Farmer John never depends upon 



them till they appear. May be they do not 

 choose to work when the morrow comes ; per- 

 haps some one has offered them a few more 

 pence for the day. They never hold them- 

 selves responsible for any inconvenience they 

 occasion the farmers who are obliged to em- 

 ploy them, as laborers are scarce. They are 

 obliged to start by daylight from their huts to 

 get to work early enough, and they breakfast 

 at their employer's table, yet so unreliable are 

 they that their breakfast is seldom prepared 

 till they appear. They are employed for one 

 dollar per day, — two during haying, — and 

 faithful workers they are too. This is their 

 redeeming quality. They are thoroughly des- 

 titute, having no ambition to better their con- 

 dition. It is a practice with farmers having 

 discontented wives to take them anwng the 

 mountaineers on a visit, — a wise and shi'ewd 

 stratagem, for the fretted women always re- 

 turn apparently satisfied with their cares and 

 condition. And these ignorant mountaineers 

 reside in New England, where education is as 

 free as water and civilized modes an estab- 

 lished fact. Tiiey cannot read a newspaper, 

 and scarcely know tiie meaning of politics. 

 Yet they can exercise the right to vote, with- 

 out understanding or appreciating the privi- 

 lege, while the most intelligent women in the 

 republican United States, — even Mrs. Julia 

 Ward Howe or INIrs. Livermore, — are not al- 

 lowed to do so. 



Everything is being done to keep down the 

 price of hay, now forty dollars per ton. For- 

 tunately corn is abundant, and it has been 

 equal in price with hay, ton for ton. Pota- 

 toes are excellent and plentiful, — good tidings 

 for the j)Oor. But apples will be few and ex- 

 pensive ; cider ditto. Last fall cider was lit- 

 erally as cheap as water, for at a fire not far 

 distant, where the streams and wells had been 

 dried up by the drought, a quantity of cider 

 was freely used and property saved that had 

 been fired in seven places. 



Susie C. Vogl. 



Pleamnt View Home, ) 



Tamworth Iron. Works, N. //., Sept., 1871. \ 



THE LOVE OF DIRT. 



The love of dirt is among the earliest of 

 passions, as it is the latest. Mud pies gratify 

 one of our first and best instincts. So long 

 as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for 

 the ground comes back to a man after he has 

 run the round of pleasure and business, eaten 

 dirt, and sown wild oats, drifted about the 

 world, and taken the wind of all its moods. 

 The love of digging in the ground (or of look- 

 ing on while he pays another to dig) is as sure 

 to come back to him as lie is sure, at last, to 

 go under the ground, and stay there. To own^ 

 a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to' 

 plant seeds, and watch the renewal of life — 

 this is the commonest delight of the race, the 

 most satisfactory thing a man can do. Let us 



