THE SEARCH AND FINDING. 7 



erable fcr home consumption ; enough, in short, to 

 be brought to that last test of profit a market, and 

 a price ; then the culture and its costs have a plain 

 story to tell. The basis will not be wanting for an in- 

 telligent decision of the question whether a man is 

 richer in the cultivation of a hundred acres, or of ten ; 

 whether, in short, farming is a mere gross employ- 

 ment, remunerative, like other manual trades, to 

 those immediately concerned ; or whether it is a pur- 

 suit subject to the rules of an intelligent direction, 

 and will pay the cost of such direction, without every- 

 day occupancy of the field. 



My advertisement named three hours' distance 

 from the city, as one not to be exceeded. Three 

 hours in our time means eighty miles ; beyond that 

 distance from a great city, one may be out of the ed- 

 dies of its influence ; within it, if upon the line of 

 some connecting railway, he is fairly in a suburb. 

 Three hours to come, and three to go, if the necessity 

 arise, leave four hours of the pith of the day, and of 

 its best sunshine, for the usurers of the town. Double 

 four hours of distance, and you have a journey that 

 is exhausting and fatiguing ; double two hours, or 

 less, and you have an ease of transit that leads into 

 temptation. If a man then honestly determines to be 

 a country liver, I hardly know a happier mean of dis- 

 tance than three hours from the city. If, indeed, he 



