FAR AND NEAR 



a farmer, I rejoiced in the endless vistas of beauti- 

 ful fertile farms, all busy with the spring planting, 

 and reaching from horizon to horizon of our flying 

 train. As a home-body and lover of the cosy and 

 picturesque, I recoiled from the bald native farm- 

 houses with their unkempt surroundings, their rude 

 sheds and black muddy barnyards. As one goes 

 West, nature is more and more, and man less and 

 less. In New England one is surprised to see 

 such busy, thriving towns and such inviting coun- 

 try homes amid a landscape so bleak and barren. 

 In the West, on the contrary, his surprise is that such 

 opulence of nature should be attended by such 

 squalor and makeshift in the farm buildings and 

 rural villages. Of course the picturesque is not an 

 element of the Western landscape as it is of the East- 

 em. The predominant impression is that of utility. 

 Its beauty is the beauty of utility. One does not 

 say, what a beautiful view, but, what beautiful 

 farms ; not, what an attractive home, but, what 

 a superb field of com, or wheat, or oats, or barley. 

 The crops and the herds suggest a bounty and a 

 fertility that are marvelous, but the habitations 

 for the most part look starved and impoverished. 

 The country roads are either merely dusty or black 

 muddy bands, stretching across the open land with- 

 out variety and without interest. As one's eye grows 

 fatigued with the monotony, the thought comes to 

 him of what terrible homesickness the first settlers 

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