84 AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
March, 1909 
Monthly Comment 
What Are You Going to Do About It ? 
JE RY presently the entire country side every- 
where will be alive with people, hunting in 
couples, in threes, in whole families, per- 
‘ sonally or with trusted friends, hunting, 
hunting for that most desirable of human 
possessions, a home! ‘The expeditions set 
out at all hours and extend in every direc- 
tion. The most likely as well as the most unlikely places are 
searched, scanned, examined and investigated. The litera- 
tures of the real estate owners and home promoters are 
studied with avidity, and many anxious days consumed in 
testing the realities of the descriptions by personal examina- 
tions of the alleged sites of future happiness and well being. 
‘The more fortunate set out on their travels in automobiles; 
some pursue their journeys in wagons, often of an archaic 
style; others still make their researches afoot and often have 
a most uncomfortable time in doing so. The annual hegira 
to the country is about to begin, and those whose lives have 
been stifled for years in the cities are about to seek a free 
quota of the air to be inhaled for the rest of their lives. 
Ir is curious that this annual upheaval should be quite dis- 
tinctly a sign of spring. ‘The country is not at its best in 
March; on the contrary, it is decidedly at its worst. ‘The 
whole winter, with its devastating effects, is behind, and the 
healing touch of warmth and sunshine has not yet made itself 
felt. Presently the new season will open up, and when the 
spring has fairly opened, there is no region so enchanting as 
the countryside, with its fields springing into green, its bud- 
ding trees, its early flowers, its new unfolding life, at once 
so mysterious and so stimulating! It is the finest part of the 
year, the most charming and most delightful, and to those 
who first see the country at this period of the year it must 
appear as a region of unnumbered joys, of gentle peace and 
quietude, a place, in short, not only to relax one’s tired nerves 
in, but the place of all places in which to live. 
AND this 1s perfectly true. There is no place like the coun- 
try, no region that offers so much and provides so boun- 
teously. But no pleasure needs to be approached with 
greater care. It is a well recognized fact that in the tem- 
perate zone, and especially in the northerly latitudes, the year 
is divided into four seasons. ‘The gentle winds of spring 
pass into the torrid heat of midsummer that, in its turn, gives 
way to a brilliantly illuminated fall. For each of these 
periods the country offers activenesses that the most agree- 
able of cities can not, for a moment, compete with. ‘Then 
‘comes the death of the year we know as winter. The 
almanacs may divide the twelve months into four equal parts 
of three each, but be assured that if, by good luck, the winter 
keeps to its own particular three, they are very apt to seem 
as long as any other five or six months one ever lived through 
or had acquaintance with. Yet if one is to live in the coun- 
try for the entire year—as many people must do—these 
winter months are the real test of the joy of country life and 
the true criterion by which its success must be measured. 
THE promoters of the sale of country real estate are in- 
terested solely in the question of sales. ‘Their literature, to 
be true, is eloquent as to the value of country life and homes, 
but these are purely academic questions with these good folk, 
whose entire interest in life—at the moment—is to sell land, 
exactly as other people devote themselves to the sale of dress 
goods, or the distribution of imitation jewelry—for a price. 
These excellent dealers are fully alive to the drawbacks of 
dangers and difficulties. 
a winter in the country, and have a hibernating period of 
their own, like the bears, bees, squirrels and other animals of 
like habit. But the spring they have appropriated to them- 
selves, and their invitations to the countryside are never so 
alluring as at this season. It is good business, no doubt, but 
those who buy in the spring, and have never passed a winter 
in the country, are not actually alive to what is before them, 
nor are they aware of the discomforts that even in the most 
agreeable of country regions is bound to beset them. If one 
has had no experience with country life, it will be found to be 
a good thing to pass a few days or a week in a rural region 
before deciding that one is fitted for this mode of existence. 
THE country offers so much that one is embarrassed by the 
multitude of openings and activities it seems to present. 
Quite a number of most excellently disposed persons have 
written books telling what an ingenious person may accom- 
plish in the country, how little he can live for, how self- 
supporting he may make his place, how idealistic is this style 
of life. No doubt these things are true, for they are care- 
fully set down in handsomely printed books published by 
reputable houses. Yet nothing could be more delusive or 
ensnaring than much of this literature. Every form of coun- 
try industry is attended with expense, anxieties and the likeli- 
hood of failure. ‘The seeds you plant may germinate and 
start, and all sorts of catastrophies intervene before the 
culminating period, when there may be nothing worth culmi- 
nating. Your chickens will gorge themselves with food that 
you must pay for, and then suddenly cease to lay, or contract 
a disease that will run through the whole flock. As for the 
larger animals the perils they are subject to are so dishearten- 
ing that it is best not to think of them. Even the care of a 
lawn involves labor, and the simplest of flowers will not 
bloom without planting and care. 
Ir is true enough that many people will make a living on 
an acre of ground or even less; it is true that comfort and 
luxury can often be accumulated in the country and directly 
from the soil. But it is the hardest possible kind of work. 
It means unremitting care, constant attention, an early getting 
out of bed and an exhausted body that seeks repose with 
work half done, and more to do to-morrow than has been 
accomplished to-day. Moreover, it does not follow that 
because one man has made a success of country living that 
all men can do so, or most men. Do not some achieve colossal 
fortunes in the stock market or in the manufacture of steel? 
Yet these are the exceptions and not the rule, and the average 
man has as many chances of failure in these brilliant fields as 
has his more humble prototype in the countryside. 
Wuart, then, are you going to do about it? It is a problem 
quite terrible in its complexity and beset with all sorts of 
There is but one single word of 
general advice that can be given, and that is to go slowly. 
The establishment of a country home is not a lottery in 
which one may take a chance and perhaps survive disaster. 
The disaster, when it comes—if it does come—is apt to be 
serious and disheartening. It is always possible to buy coun- 
try real estate; it is a very different matter to sell it. One 
may move out into the country, but it is not so easy to return. 
One may enjoy the spring, the summer and the fall, but the 
winter may freeze the very marrow in one’s bones, and entail 
discomforts, expenses and sicknesses that, in the warmly 
glowing days of the springtime, were not only never thought 
of, but seemed utterly impossible and irreducibly remote. 
