1C0S. 
THIS RURAI/ NEW-YORKER 
406 
Hope Farm Notes 
THE HOPE FARM MAN’S STORY. 
Part I. 
I am sure that as you have so many new 
subscribers it would be well to tell them 
what Hope Farm is and what it was started 
for, and what its object is. p. b. 
• Ohio. 
Easter came with a most agreeable 
change in the weather. The cold wind 
which had been howling down our val¬ 
ley changed its tune and began to whis¬ 
per of Spring. There was a soft rain 
the night before, and the sun came with 
the morning, bringing a genuine feel of 
the Spring which we had not known for 
a year or more. There were clouds 
later, but we had a short vision of 
Spring. We had breakfast in good sea¬ 
son, and now all our folks have gone 
to church, leaving me to keep house and 
see to dinner. I cannot say that our 
people displayed any great variety of 
new clothes. Any beauty on our part 
will have to come from good behavior. 
We shall have to leave the fine raiment 
this year to the farm. And it does be¬ 
gin to show up. The rye on the top of 
the hill begins to feel the fertilizer, and 
has turned a rich green. The brown 
of the old grass beside it makes a good 
contrast. The leaves on the crab apple 
trees are all out, and the peach buds 
are turning pink. The pear trees are 
spotted where the buds are opening, and 
the maples show their color along the 
road. This is surely the most hopeful 
and promising season of the year, and it 
seems to me a good time to tell a lit¬ 
tle of the story of Hope Farm. I still 
meet people who evidently do not be¬ 
lieve there is any such place. Others 
often ask about it. It is likely that I 
can make myself clear in telling about 
our work if readers can understand 
something of our problems here. I 
know that I should be just as much in¬ 
terested in knowing about your farm; 
lmw you came to get it, why you live 
in the country, what hopes you have for 
your children, where you came from 
and the other things which lie at the 
foundation of home and human life. So 
let us imagine that we are sitting right 
before your fire, or up on my hill if 
you like, talking things over. 
I sometimes wonder what it must seem 
to a man to do his life work, make his 
home and raise his family where he was 
born and lived as a boy. I should think 
a man’s life would be filled with satis¬ 
faction and pride to stand on such a 
day as this and look across fields which 
his ancestors before him had cultivated 
and made productive. It is all well 
enough to say that he who starts a line 
is as worthy as he who ends one, yet 
many of us who are very humble starters 
would like well to have an inheritance 
of home back of us. Life has taught 
me surely that any young man with 
good body and fair brain may if he will 
earn competence and home. He will be 
obliged to struggle and deny himself, 
but what else is life for? The struggle 
will often take him away from the 
friends and scenes of his childhood. 
The world enlarges his views, and 
when finally he goes back to the old 
town or the old farm the body seems 
cramped and the spirit short of breath. 
If that same man had' followed father 
on the farm, or in some trade or busi¬ 
ness, he would not feel that way. I 
should think it would be one of the 
greatest blessings of a farmer’s life to 
feel that he is doing father’s work and 
making father’s farm better than it ever 
was before. I would like to have boys 
and young men on the farm think that 
over now—before they get to he my age. 
T believe that my own farm is more 
hopeful and, on the whole, more pro¬ 
ductive than it ever was before, yet the 
old line has run out and nothing of 
personal interest goes back of our own 
efforts. 
I was born in a seaport town near 
Cape Cod. The southeastern part of 
Massachusetts is rich in history and in 
nation making. People who live there, 
and seldom go away, seem to think the 
very soil they carry away upon their 
shoes ought to cary the bacteria of re¬ 
spect and veneration. They are apt to 
let it go at that. My boys went to Ply¬ 
mouth last Summer and actually knew 
more about the old Pilgrim characters 
than some one who had always lived in 
the town. Life was plain and simple 
when I was a boy. Men like my father 
did most of the hard, rough work. They 
would get out of the ditch or leave the 
fish market or cooper’s shop and stand 
right on an equality with the village 
doctor or lawyer or business man. At 
town meeting those men would argue 
down the lawyers, and beat them when 
right was on their side. A few miles 
from us, at Marshfield, Daniel Webster 
lived on a farm close to the salt marsh. 
Webster took an interest in town affairs. 
When I was a boy I heard an old man 
who knew Webster well give this accu¬ 
rate opinion: 
“Mr. Webster may have been a great 
man in the United States Senate, but 
here in Marshfield there were half a 
dozen men who could talk him down in 
town meeting and beat him !” 
I have no doubt of it whatever, for 
no man can be considered “great’’ in 
anything unless he studies it and masters 
it to the exclusion of other things. 
When a man tells me that he is a mas¬ 
ter at raising everything—berries, cel¬ 
ery, wheat, apples and flowers—I simply 
don’t believe it. Webster may have 
mastered the United States Constitution, 
but the farmers and fishermen knew 
more than he did about town matters. 
You couldn’t fit the Constitution to 
Marshfield any more than you could fit 
the affairs of Marshfield to the Nation. 
The only place they “nicked” was in 
human nature, and the farmers had that. 
My father was killed in the Civil War 
when I was a mere child. I suppose 
it will be impossible for me to make 
those who are now under 40 really 
understand what war meant in those 
New England towns. For years the 
North had been preparing for it in 
spirit, yet paying little attention to the 
practical aspect of it. What I mean is 
that the New England people had de¬ 
bated the right or wrong of slavery in 
all its aspects. Aside from what they 
considered the moral side of the ques¬ 
tion, they believed that slave labor in 
one part of the country would be a con¬ 
stant menace to free labor in another. 
It seems strange to me to-day. remem¬ 
bering this, how I have seen the effect 
of the free, cheap labor of Europe in 
these same New England towns. I 
think very few New England people 
really expected there would be a war 
and actual fighting. They talked, but 
kept on at their work, so that when the 
war broke out there was nothing but a 
crowd of strong men, untrained and 
undrilled. My father organized a com¬ 
pany composed chiefly of sailors and 
fishermen. When they went into camp 
some of them wanted to know where 
they could hang their hammocks! My 
father was like thousands of others 
who, at Lincoln’s call, dropped their 
tools, gave up all they had and marched 
off, leaving wife and children to be 
cared for by God and the Nation. Men 
would go about for days with hanging 
heads trying to decide whether they 
would go or not. Then some news 
would come from the front which over¬ 
powered them, and they would rush 
home to tell their wives they had en¬ 
listed. Many of us now far from those 
wild days can see how unbusinesslike 
this was. With our present feeling we 
would not do it and leave those who 
mean so much to us as wards of the 
Government. Perhaps we do not trust 
the Government as men like my father 
did. If that is so very likely it is our 
own fault, because we have not made 
sacrifice for it, and in our humble lives 
and quiet places gone on the cross of 
trouble or self-denial for good govern¬ 
ment. You may say that all this is a 
slow way of telling about Hope Farm. 
It all comes in the foundation of a 
home, as I hope to show before I am 
done. It is the same with you if you 
would take the time at Easter to roll the 
stone from the grave of motives and 
really see zvhy you have worked for a 
home and competence. 
My father left his wife and five chil¬ 
dren to be cared for. I can make no 
complaint as to the way the Nation paid 
its obligation. My mother drew a pen¬ 
sion until her death. I found oppor¬ 
tunity to work and get an education and 
good friends in time of trouble. I never 
had any right to ask more than this— 
that is all my children are entitled to. 
My mother could not keep us all, and 
I went to live with some relatives on a 
small farm in the country. Farming 
in those days in the Cape Cod district 
was not much of a business. The soil 
was poor and rocky. A few people in 
the swamps grew cranberries in a crude 
way, and the old Light Brahma hens 
were eating up the substance of many 
a farm. In late years milk and fruit 
and vegetables have changed the coun¬ 
try, and the Rhode Island Red hen has 
saved many a farm. In those days 
every farm had a shoe shop, either in a 
corner of the barn or in a small out¬ 
building. Here we pegged shoes, largely 
the old-fashioned wooden-pegged affairs. 
H. w. c. 
For 
Emergencies 
at Home 
For the Stock on the Farm 
SLOAN’S LINIMENT 
is a wholfe 
Medicine 
Chest. 
Price, 25c-, 50c., and 51.00. Send for Free Booklet on Horses, Cattle, Hogs and Poultry. 
Address DR. EARL S. SLOAN, Boston, Hass. 
Light Running Stag 
Stag plows look like thoroughbreds 
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For 70 years the 
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WEEKS SCALE WORKS, Buffalo, N. Y. 
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POTATO 
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Made In two sizes. Send 
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\Y S3 
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CINCINNATGOHIQ. 
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lit the FINEST state, government anil 
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Send for catalogue. 
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x Fine 
Farm Land 
Write me today and let me tell 
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has done for others and what it 
can do for you. Address care of 
Union Pacific 
E. L. LOMAX, C. P. A 
Omaha. Neb. 
