CHAPTER XVI.

Unfinished character of many things on this continent—Old Country roads—Differing aspects of farms—Moving from the old log-house to the palatial residence—Landlord and tenant should make their own bargains—Depletion of timber reserves.

InAmerica everything is begun, and but few things finished. Persons from the Old World tell us this, and there is a great deal of truth in it. Driving on Ontario roads one sees a good farm-house, surrounded by trees and fences, all nicely kept, when perhaps the very next field adjoining this well-cultivated farm is considerably given up to stumps and a few boulders, although of stones the best parts of Ontario are happily almost free. There may be a little brook crossing the highway; to get over this brook a bridge or culvert of cedar sticks has been put down, which does well enough in itself, and is quite safe, but it manifestly will not last any great length of time. Now, in Europe, such little streams would be spanned by a stone arch bridge. The little stream as it passes along the fields in many parts, notably in Germany, would be straightened and walled in with stones to keep it from wearing away its banks. Of course, we cannot afford to do all this in our new country, but Ithink from this time forth what work we do at all should be of a more permanent character than it has been, for the first outlay would be the cheapest in the end. Again, beside a farm well kept, on the next lot will be often found old fences barely sufficient to turn cattle. If it is a board fence half the boards will be off, and one end of them lying on the ground, while the other end still adheres by a solitary nail to the proper post. Or a few posts will have got out of the perpendicular, and point their several ways heavenward, but unfortunately each post points a way and on an incline of its own.

Besides the country roads are, sometimes, even in our best settlements, remains of old logs, nearly rotted away, an old stump or so, and on the sides of the road, upon either side of the waggon track, stumps and convolutions, just as it came from primeval forest, and never smoothed down by the hand of man. The waggon track, passing between these stumps, decaying logs and hillocks, will generally be a good one, but it is this unfinished appearance which causes the European to tell us, with a shade of truth, that things are begun in America but not yet finished. Driving in Europe all seems finished. There is nothing left in the roads, and even if they be narrow, the hedges or walls upon either side are perfect, and there is nothing to mar the scene. It is literally finished. Man has done all there is to do. We must, of course, recollect that ours is a young country, and I am only presenting this disagreeable side of our country that we may begin to right these features. For utility and resource the people ofEurope cannot begin to compare with us. The very nature of things here, commencing as we did a few years ago in the native woods, compelled us to seek the quickest and easiest ways of getting on. But all that is past now, and we ought to commence to finish our country.

Those who remain constantly at home do not feel the deficiency so particularly, but to those who go abroad these defects are so glaring that one notices them at every turn. The more we beautify our country the better it will please ourselves, and likewise will be the means of inducing capitalists from abroad to invest among us. We may often see, in driving along our roads, first-class capacious barns and sheds, and every fence on a farm neat and tidy, gates all right, nicely painted, and the whole get-up of the farm neat and thrifty. At the same time this farmer may be living in an ordinary farm-house, or perhaps the original log-house which he built when he commenced to subdue the forest. The farmer is among our best citizens, and presents a striking contrast to our American cousin, who builds a showy house first, and perhaps a very small barn afterwards. This farmer has carved his fortune from his forest and farm, and appreciates that his stock makes money for him, hence he prepares first-class stabling for them, while his own family lives in meagre quarters within square log walls. No doubt his family are quite comfortable in their log-house, but do not essay to cut so great a figure in the world as many of his neighbors of much smaller means and fewer acres. Many times this person will own his200 or 300 acres, and all paid for. He drives great fat horses on the road, and pulls his cap squarely down on his head, and goes on as if he meant business, which he really does. It is a matter of indifference to him if his wife and daughters be dressed in the latest fashions or not. If they have good, strong, serviceable clothing, he considers it sufficient, and the gimps and gew-gaws of modern times have not yet entered upon his calculations; but he can show a whole row of stalls in his cow-barn containing twenty head of good fat cattle and a lot of growing young calves. Such citizens are desirable, and we are proud of their industry and success. Now and again such farmers get around to the house business, and when they do build, they build well—usually brick, or it may be he has for years been gathering the stones in piles from his fields; if so, his house will be of solid stone walls two feet thick. Many such persons put $3,000 or $4,000 in their houses, and the abrupt transfer from the old log-house to the palatial residence is almost startling to the inmates. Some little time has to elapse before they sit their new house well. But, gradually, furniture comes in furtively in the great farm waggon, returning home from the market, and in a year or so their new homestead is complete in its appointments and in detail, and there is a house any man in America or in Europe might be proud of. The old log-house, likely as not, is left standing behind the new one. As an excuse for leaving the old log-house standing, he says it is handy to put implements in and a good place—up-stairs—for seed corn. But in many instances I suspect heleaves it that he may look upon it and upon the new one likewise in the same glance, and call a justifiable pride to his mind, that the new palace, comparatively speaking, grew from the old log-house, now holding his seed corn and implements. You call on him, and he passes by the old log-house without a remark, but you speak of it, and with just a tinge of pride he tells you, as he pulls down his cap and thrusts his hands in his trousers’ pockets, that on that site where the old log-house now stands, forty-five years or so ago, he cut down four maple trees to make room for it, for there was then no room elsewhere for it on his lot.

In former days, as has already been remarked, the great fertility of the soil caused people to farm rather carelessly and without any consideration of the desirableness of a rotation of crops. Time has changed that to a great extent. I have a number of farm tenants, and would not allow them to crop continually without seeding, etc.—not because my soils are exhausted, but because I do not want them exhausted. While we sympathize with Ireland and would like to see her condition bettered, still to-day I, as a landlord, would not accept her land law and abide by it. If I had to send my leases in to a land commissioner to tell me what I must charge for my lands, I would not any longer own lands, but would sell them out at once and put the proceeds in Government bonds. It is obvious that here in Ontario each landlord and tenant ought to make his own bargain, just the same as regarding interest for money. Until our country is as thickly populated as Ireland is, we need not raise this question of adjudicating upon rentsbut if that time were to come I would not any longer consider my position as a landlord in Ontario desirable. By this means I would let Ireland have a home parliament, and I was in favor of the Gladstonian programme, but I should think it extremely hard for any government to dictate to me what I must receive as income for my estate, Henry George to the contrary notwithstanding. Should our fair Ontario ever get to entertaining communistic notions, the tenure of property and estates would be not worth the effort to retain, and, as far as I am concerned (and there are many like me), I would rather go over to Old England and take up my abode.

In some instances there is too much liberty in Ontario. In this wise the general public think nothing of tramping over fields, either in crop or not, as the case may be, for short cuts, rather than follow the highways. Some of us are endeavoring to preserve a grove of trees, but there are those who, whenever they are in want of any especial stick for poles, or axe handles, or what not, think nothing of cutting and taking away one or more of the trees of a prized grove. No doubt heretofore it has been thoughtlessness on the part of the public, and the example handed down from the time when timber could be got anywhere for the cutting. But that has passed from us, never to return, and in the future we shall necessarily have to be more strict, as our country is increasing in population. To prevent persons walking over fields is not the idea. I well recollect an anecdote told me in England when I was over there a year or two ago. A man was walking along astream through a pasture, when he was met by the owner, who asked, “Do you know whose land you are walking on?” “No, I do not.” “Well, it is mine, and you have no business to walk on my land.” “But I have no land of my own to walk on, and where shall I walk?” And the poor man was correct. In Ontario we do not wish even to restrain the poor man to that extent, but the thoughtless and lawless trespass upon crops and timber, and the tearing down of fences cannot much longer be allowed. Those living in the vicinity of large towns keenly feel the need of change in this particular.

Aside from all reasons of utility, it is a very great pity that all our trees are disappearing in the older portions of Ontario. It has been felt that our trees would never be all cut away, and it was thought fifteen years ago that we would not have to rely upon coal. The beauty of England is largely made up by her small groves of trees interspersed throughout the country, and if not great in extent, they relieve the eye and serve as wind-breaks. We have been too prodigal of our forests, but since we have had to go to coal we begin to realize the use, beauty, and benefit of even a few acres of woods here and there upon our farms. I heard an owner of a 200-acre farm near here last year say, that if it were possible he would give $300 per acre to have the ten acres of woods replaced upon the north end of his farm. And this farmer had to draw what wood he did use ten miles, but he wanted the forest on his farm to serve as a wind-break and a thing of beauty.

Book farmers and their ways—Some Englishmen lack adaptiveness—Doctoring sick sheep by the book—Failures in farming—Young Englishmen sent out to try life in Canada—The sporting farmer—The hunting farmer—The country school-teacher.

Bookfarmers come to us now and again. These are usually persons from Britain, possessing some means, but not sufficient to make them gentlemen at home. They have had no particular knowledge of farming at home, but since farming is supposed to be so easy a matter in Canada, they do not for a moment doubt their ability to get on with a farm. They resort to the best works on agriculture; and after the perusal of a few volumes really begin to flatter themselves that they have a very superior knowledge of farming, and are able to teach the Canadian on his native heath just how it ought to be done. Such a man purchases his farm and usually pays the cash down for it, and for his stock as well. Searching over the community he finds a pair of the heaviest horses he can, for the light Canadian horses, he knows, will be of no use to him, and he gets some long poles made at the nearest carpenter shop, and hires the village painter to paint them in black and red sectionsthat he may set them up for his man to strike out his lands by in ploughing.

Light, strong, durable Canadian harness is not to his mind, for he recollects seeing the plough horses in England return from the fields with great broad back-bands on their harness, to which were attached immense iron chains of traces, and he follows suit. And he sets John to ploughing, properly equipped, not for a moment doubting the result of all this preparation. And after a proper method of ploughing he does raise fair crops as a rule, for our lands are ordinarily so rich that if they have even a fair show at all they will produce. Harvest-time coming on, many other hands are brought into requisition, and he follows up the old time-honored custom in England of serving up the quart of beer per day to each hand. In due time his harvest is all garnered properly, and his work nicely done. His man comes in in the morning and tells him, about the time the first few rains come on, that “one of the sheep is sick.” “All right, John, I will attend to it,” for, of course, he can, for he knows he has at his elbow, upon the shelf, somebody’s treatise on the sheep, which is the best extant. The sheep volume is brought down and closely scanned, and the right page describing the disease sheep ought to have at this time of the year found. With the volume under arm he sallies forth to view the sheep, while John follows with the remedies. Arrived at the sheep he adjusts his spectacles at the proper angle upon his nose, and intently examines his sick patient The more he examineshis patient and gets at its symptoms the more he is in doubt if the symptoms really correspond with those mentioned on the particular page of the treatise.

Shoving the spectacles up just a little closer on his nose he re-examines his patient, and glances from the patient to the book, the quandary all the time deepening in his mind. John is not allowed to suggest that the sheep has caught cold by lying in some exposed place through the last storm, and that he only wants warmth and food. It would never do to give in to John, for “what has John read about sheep?” The proper remedy is at last hit upon. There can possibly be no doubt about it, but to make assurance doubly sure he re-reads the page and looks his patient over again. No doubt this time, and John is sent to the house for a bottle, from which he will administer the proper remedy internally. John returns with the bottle, with a little water in it, and our book farmer adds the proper remedy and shakes it up thoroughly. All being ready, John makes the poor sheep swallow the mixture, much against its will, for it’s the most noxious stuff it ever had in its life, and the book farmer quietly awaits the result, his spectacles gradually continuing to slip away from the bridge of his nose, and to run an imminent risk of falling off the extreme end of that important organ. Some twenty minutes now elapse and John says the sheep is worse.

Back upwards again the spectacles are pushed, and the patient critically examined. While the examination is going on the sheep dies under his gaze. “Dear me; how can that be? I must have got the wrong page. Oh, yes, I see, I did get the wrong page. Never mind, John, I will fix the next one up all right in case it becomes ill.” And he closes the book with a snap, and goes back again to his library.

Such book farmers invariably have failed in Ontario. I defy any reader to fix on any one such book farmer who has succeeded. When he comes to strike his balances, after his crops have been marketed, and has taken an inventory of stock, he finds that his crops have cost him more than they brought back in cash. Another year will remedy that, however, and he tries it again, only to find the balance on the wrong side once more. Usually two years suffice to teach this book farmer that he is not a farmer, but he may possibly hold on for three seasons. Then he calls a sale, sells or rents his farm, and gets a neat, comfortable little dwelling in some neighboring town, which is quite sufficient for him and his household, even if it be not palatial in its appointments. From his retirement he writes back to England that farming won’t pay in Canada, for he has tried it, and it certainly will not pay.

This does a great deal of harm, and our country gets in bad odor among many persons at home, when the book farmer alone is to blame, and not the country.

As to failures at farming, I do not think you can call to mind the failure of any farmer in Ontario, onany good farm, who farms his land in right down earnest. Benjamin Franklin said:

“He who by the plough would thrive,Must himself both hold and drive.”

And that was perfectly true then as now. Look at the farmer in Ontario who rolls up his shirt sleeves and follows the plough, who does as much work himself as he possibly can, and only hires for doing that which he can’t do himself, and you will find that farmer succeeding.

We have been getting in Ontario of late another class of farmers whom I wish to speak of. They are the sons of men of means in Britain. Usually they are about twenty years of age, and have just left their schools and homes. Every avenue at home being so full, they are sent to Canada to learn farming, with the parent’s view of buying them a farm as soon as they have learned the occupation. Sometimes these persons pay a small sum to our good farmers, annually, to be taught farming, but they are to work at the same time the same as a hired man. Such a one has worn good clothes all his life, and the transition from a tight-fitting, neat suit to garments suitable for shovelling manure into the waggon is very sudden and hard to endure. A blister or two is on his hands at night, and his back aches from bending so many times all day with his fork for the billets of manure out of the heap. That night he tosses upon his bed, for his bones even are tired and ache, but he is up betimes next morning and at it again, only to find that he hasmore blisters on his hands again in the evening. If he sticks to it he soon gets accustomed to the work, his blistered hands get all calloused over, blisters are no more dreaded, and he stands his work well. Those who stick to the work succeed and learn to farm well, but in very many cases he gives up and goes to town, and waits, all anxiety, for the next remittance from home. For a couple of years the remittances come to him pretty regularly, and our young would-be farmer is a gentleman about town. During those two years, however, some very urgent letters have been written home for money, and thus far they have not failed to draw. At this lapse of time, and after the receipt of so many letters asking for money, it begins to dawn upon the parental mind that the son is not sticking to the farm in Canada.

Reluctantly and grieving, the parent makes up his mind to send no more until his son will begin to do something himself. Our would-be farmer then gets some light occupation, and does not fail to continue to write for money. Mamma, with a mother’s love, may still send over a few pounds, but if all the pounds cease to come, go to work he must at last.

It is hard to get at what these young men really will do in the end. Some even get so low as to drive a circus waggon, while others work as day laborers in some of our manufactories. When some months roll round, and the parents at home find that their son is still alive and promising amends, past offences are condoned and more remittances follow. And so the years and months slip by, money-less at times and again flush.

It really appears to us here in Ontario that the families from whence these young men come have no end of means, and we grieve to see them fooling away their time and opportunities. Who ever heard of learning to farm in that manner, or who ever heard of any one succeeding in Canada by such methods of life?

I am glad to say, however, that many such young men who are sent out to learn farming do succeed. They who have the grit in them, and who really make up their minds to work, do, notwithstanding the blisters on their hands, or callosities, or tired limbs, get over them all and become self-sustaining and good citizens.

For those who will work we have plenty of room, and good places are always open to them, but the man who comes to us, and who cannot throw off his Oxford suit and don blue overalls and shovel manure when it is required, will not succeed as a farmer in Ontario.

A class of farmer in Ontario I may say a word or two about is the sporting farmer. Usually he is the owner of 150 acres or so of inherited lands, upon which are good buildings, which his father erected, and also cleared the forest from the land. He’s not going to take anybody’s dust on the roads, and he procures a horse which can pass that of any of his neighbors. For a time this satisfies him, but sporting men begin to find him out, and tell him where he can get a colt which can go in less than three minutes. Gradually he comes to think that he might as well get

A SAILING CANOE ON LAKE ONTARIO

a colt, for it will make a fine driver, and now and again he can win some races, which will go to reduce the price he must pay for him. Entering him at the races, he must necessarily be prepared to back his own horse, and he makes his first bet on a horse-race. Once more sporting men are too sharp for him, for though his horse makes a good dash and behaves well upon the track, it comes in just a head behind, and far enough in the rear to lose the race. He is assured, however, that with some training his colt will do better, and he pays a professional trainer to train him.

At the next race he enters him again, and again backs his own horse, for success is this time assured. By some mischance this time he again loses the race, and his money at the same time. But by this time his courage is up, and he’s bound to win, so he buys a better horse. Again the process goes on, at the end of which he still finds himself out of pocket. The 150-acre farm, which his father prided never yet bore a mortgage, now gets “a plaster” put on it. While this racing has been going on, his farm has been neglected, and does not produce as formerly, so that he is in a poorer position to pay the interest on the mortgage and make both ends meet at the same time. In most cases such young men lose their farms, and at middle age have to begin at the bottom of the ladder and work their way up by themselves and unaided. Fortunately for them, however, they know how to work, and can get along even in their reduced state.

The hunting farmer is another class which we have in Ontario. Like his sporting brethren, he, too, has inherited a farm and can easily make a living, and some money besides. He keeps some hounds and a breech-loader. Do a flock of pigeons fly over, the plough is left in the field to get a shot at them, and the balance of that half day is consumed. Or it may be that some ducks are around in the swamp or creek a mile or so from his house, and a day must be given to them.

A fox has been seen around some hills in the neighborhood, and he must have a day with the hounds. While all this is going on, with the press of work, while he really is at home, many things are neglected. Fences, which his father used to pride himself in keeping always trim, begin to lean. A gate has lost its lower hinge, and a few shingles have blown off the corner of his barn. Gradually his farm loses its neat, trim appearance, and the neighbors begin to call Johnny So-and-so a shiftless fellow. Hunting farmers do not usually lose their farms, for their losses are mainly through want of care for their farms. Unlike his sporting brother, he does not bet, but has a keen zest for the chase, and must indulge in it.

If you will look about you, you will find that such persons do not add to their means, but just get a fair living from their farms, and do not make any great improvements on the homestead. His neighbor beside him, who may take even a day now and again for a hunt, but who daily plods along and follows hisplough and drives his own horses, has bought another farm and has a credit at his bankers or at some loan and savings company.

The country school-teacher under the old order of things, and before the school law was amended, deserves a notice. Numbers of these old school-teachers, who furbished up their faculties and got passably well qualified to teach an ordinary district country school in the past, in many instances married the daughters of neighboring farmers, who attended their schools as pupils. In some instances, without a doubt, this teacher had occasion to punish his future wife for some slight infraction of school laws. Causing her to stand upon the floor or to write an extra exercise was a frequent method of such punishments. Becoming the teacher’s wife must, in after years, one would say, make the position rather anomalous, and would, one would think, be a delicate, debatable ground between husband and wife as the years rolled on. Ontario wives are noted for their urbanity, but in such instances it would be manifestly fair for the wife and former pupil to indulge in a little punishment for some infractions by her husband of new rules as the time went by. She could not fairly be blamed if she now and again gave him an extra dose of salt in his porridge, or refused him a light in the evening to do his reading by, or even indulged at a little pull of his whiskers, to pay off old scores of ante-nuptial days. We, however, charitably infer that, at the time the teacher insisted upon his punishments of his future wife, Cupid had not got around.These marriages have uniformly been happy ones, and these former teachers have become successful men after turning farmers. In many instances they get farms with their pupil wives, and having the work in them, usually succeed, and become good men for our country. Such former teachers are frequently found in our township councils, are school trustees, and useful men generally. As their children grow up to the age of understanding, it, however, must be just a little funny for their children to know that “pa” formerly punished “ma” in school, and they are always bound to aver that “ma” has not yet got even with “pa” in the account of punishment.

Horse-dealing transactions—A typical horse-deal—“Splitting the difference”—The horse-trading conscience—A gathering at a funeral—Another type of farmer—The sordid life that drives the boys away.

Thereare some few persons in every community who have always a weather-eye open for a likely horse which they may see passing by. These men are usually free-handed, and know how to match horses and train them nicely, that they may drive quietly and travel evenly and slowly, so as to be desirable carriage teams. When they can make a trade for such a desirable beast they are in their happiest moods. Trade failing, if the owner does not wish to trade, they will buy for the cash at the very lowest possible figure. Disparaging others’ goods which one wants to buy seems to be the general rule among traders in our province. Not that it is thought that such tactics are disreputable, but it would seem almost inherent in the nature of such traders. Perhaps the farmer has a likely young horse harnessed beside a steady old one, which he is driving along, and the horse-trader fastens his eye on him.

“Wouldn’t you like to trade my off black beast forthat awkward colt of yours?” and the conversation is opened and the “dickering” commences.

“How much boot would you give me?” and the farmer turns and looks attentively to the trader’s old nag, checked up so high and so tight that he champs continually at his bit. But it’s an old beast after all, although nicely groomed and made to look its best. On its nigh hindfoot is just a suspicion that a spavin has at one time been “doctored,” and on the whole the trader’s horse much resembles the shabby genteel man with his threadbare broadcloth and napless silk hat carefully brushed.

“As for boot, why I really ought to have $35, but seeing it’s you, I’ll trade for $25,” says the trader.

And the farmer chirrups to his team, becoming impatient with the man’s absurdity. “Hold on a minute, let’s see if we can’t split the difference,” says the dealer.

Now, there’s this peculiarity in many an Ontarian’s dealings that it is very generally proposed to “split the difference” where the buyer and seller cannot come to terms. It may be a hap-hazard way of doing business, and has no foundation in sound reasoning; yet it is a fact that very much of the buying and selling in rural Ontario is done by “splitting the difference.”

Our farmer, however, has not yet seen any difference to split, and thinks still that he should get the best. And the horse-trader tells of the merits of his horse, its weight, how gentle it is, how well and handily it will work, and impresses his idea upon thefarmer that his colt is yet untried and scarcely broken. Up to this time in this “dickering” the farmer has not made a positive offer, and once more chirrups to his team and starts upon his way.

“Stop a minute. If you think you could not split the difference, how will you trade, any way?”

“Well, I might trade even, since your horse is heavier than mine and better able to do my work, but how old did you say he was?”

And the farmer gets off his waggon and looks in the horse’s mouth.

Here, as all the way along in this “dicker,” the horse-trader has been too sharp for the farmer, and the horse’s teeth have been nicely filed and his horse is made to appear only seven years old.

A swap is made at length on even terms, and this horse-trading jockey drives off with the farmer’s valuable colt, worth about $165, and leaving for it an old used-up horse, worth perhaps $80 at most. And these horse-traders are not gipsies either, for every one expects them to trade horses, but men in the community, who, take them out of their own specialty, pass as respectable men. Between services at the church this trader slyly tells his neighbor how he got $125 the better of So-and-so at the last trade, with a sly laugh and a cough. With his forefinger he digs his companion gently in the ribs, and in great confidence tells him that he knows where there is another whopping good trade for him. A bank account this man has, too, and in every way is the pink of perfection, save in his own peculiar business; pays his billspromptly, dresses his family well, and is never backward in his contributions to the church, and is really, as he pretends to be, a decent man. But on a horse trade he would cheat his own father. Just how he reconciles this peculiarity with his theology we have never been able to discover, but somehow his theology is elastic enough to stretch over the point, and he conveniently allows it to do so.

Maybe it’s a horse I want to sell, and I have advertised the fact in the local papers. After tea, and on the eve of setting out for a drive, this horse-buyer comes along and inquires for the “boss.”

“Understands I want to sell a horse,” and I tell him that the hired man is in the stable and will show him the horse.

But he must talk with the “boss,” and I am forced to go to the stable with this would-be buyer.

“Bring out that Clyde horse, John; this gentleman wants to buy him,” and John leads by the halter the horse which six months ago I paid $180 for, and now having no further use for him, I wish to convert into bankable funds.

“Rather stocky, and just a little heavy in the legs,” and I prepare myself to hear my good, sound, strong horse so run down as to be only fit for slowest and easiest work on a farm.

“You’d be asking as much as $125 for that horse, I suppose, boss?”

Now, as far as I have ever known or can discover, I never yet heard of any one selling a horse for as much as he gave for it, unless he belonged to thehorse-dealing fraternity. I reply, however, “A hundred and forty dollars is my price for this horse, and I paid $40 more for him only six months ago.”

“Whew! boss, you paid far too much; don’t know as you know it, but just now the Americans are buying lighter horses, and horses of this stamp don’t sell so well. Now, if you were to say $130, I might—”

“John, take him back to his stall, for I am afraid this gentleman and I can’t agree.” And John turns the horse for the stable door.

“Don’t be in such a hurry, boss; perhaps we can split the difference.” An appeal, as before, to “split the difference.” But at this stage of the dicker I am thoroughly disgusted, and wonder if it be necessary to practise so much deceit and cunning in the purchase and sale of a horse simply.

I reply that $140 is my price, and not a cent less. “Well, boss, I guess I’ll take him, but you’re a very impatient man anyway. There’s a blanket on the fence; I suppose you’ll throw that in, and, of course, the halter now on him.”

In sheer desperation to get rid of this pest of a buyer, I give up the blanket, and the horse is put in the buyer’s charge. “Grand growing weather now, boss; hope your turnips haven’t been eaten by the fly;” and thus the conversation drifts to polite subjects, and he inquires as to the health of the family, and I can do no less than reciprocate and ask him if his care are likewise well.

There’s something mean about the whole transaction, and one feels that his manhood is lowered byhis “dickering.” This buyer knew that my horse was richly worth all I asked for him at the first, but he formed a deliberate plan to cheat me out of just as many dollars as he could by lying, or by running my horse down contrary to his own deliberate judgment.

There’s a gathering at neighbor Jones’s, and I see over the fields a lot of carriages in the road. Looking still, I see the village hearse come driving down the road towards the house, with its black plumes nodding as the wheels feel the inequalities of the road. More of the neighbors have collected, and now I see the pastor of one of the village churches coming in his light covered carriage.

“So Mr. Jones’s eldest boy has gone, boss, and it will likely be rather hard on the old man, for he did think a lot of the boy, even if he did run away from him,” neighbor Dixon remarks to me as he is driving by to the funeral. This neighbor Jones is one of the fore-handed farmers of Ontario, and the only quality that can be praised about him in any way is his industry. Up before day dawn, winter and summer, and drudging daily till dark at night, and his wife’s just like him.

He’d only two boys, and this oldest one was so harried at home that two years ago he ran away to Texas and became a cowboy. Only a few short weeks ago he returned with seeds of that dreadful malarial fever in his system, and only to die. The second boy is not yet old enough to run away, but in the ordinary course of events, as soon as he does get old enough, he’ll follow his poor dead brother’s example.

This Jones is a Yorkshire man, and his wife is a North of Ireland woman. Last winter they boarded the school-master. At four o’clock of a winter morning this dame would call him up for breakfast. For some days the school-master stood it meekly, until he finally told Mrs. Jones that this first meal would do for a lunch, and that he’d take some breakfast before he went to school. It is a large farm-house Jones has, and it is nicely painted and well finished, and for a marvel contains really good and appropriate furniture. The matter of furniture can be explained, for Jones sold a lot of hay to some cabinet-maker, and being afraid of his pay was glad to get the furniture.

His hired help are worked beyond all reason, and have scarcely ever a part of Sunday for themselves. Some poor ignorant fellow of an emigrant has come over and has not yet learned our prices, and Jones has pounced on him, and so he gets his work done for a song.

Get rich? Of course, he does. How could such a man help it?

The parlor is open to-day—the first time I have seen it for a twelvemonth—and the shutters are thrown back. Neighborly decency says I must go to the funeral, and I get my horse and carriage.

In the parlor the boy is laid, and the fine embellished coffin contains all that is mortal of the poor lad, Jones’s eldest heir.

Well, it’s a nice parlor, even so, and those things which money could buy in a lump are there. The little bric-a-brac, or knick-knacks, or books, are ofcourse absent, for Mrs. Jones only sees the parlor monthly, when she dusts it out, and no one has any time about Jones’s to make it homelike.

Books are conspicuous by their absence, save only one, a large gilt family Bible, opened last when it was put in here, some months ago, for no one has any time to read at Jones’s.

A hush, and the minister rises and announces the hymn. Neighbors’ wives and daughters have mercifully gathered, and, standing in the hall, and upon the stairs, raise their voices in one of Watts’s soul-stirring hymns, and gradually the assembled neighbors join in. A prayer follows, and then the solemn warning. All voices are hushed. Boys of the neighborhood are the bearers—boys whom this Jones boy once loved and made his confidants and associates. The coffin is placed within the hearse. The procession moves, and soon the grave closes all, and Jones has lost his oldest son, and is disconsolate for a day or two.

Again the parlor is closed. When its cobwebs will be again dusted from it, as I have attempted to do, it is impossible to say. Possibly not until the next boy comes home to die like his brother. I am picturing Jones’s home to show one of a class of money grabbers and slaves in Ontario. The bright sunshine of a home is not there. Books, papers, recreation, society and neighborly chat are all absent.

City and country life compared—No aristocracy in Canada—Long winter evenings—Social evenings—The bashful swain—Popular literature of the day—A comfortable winter day at home—Young farmers who have inherited property—Difficulty of obtaining female help—Farmers trying town life—Universality of the love of country life—Bismarck—Theocritus—Cato—Hesiod—Homer—Changes in town values—A speculation in lard.

Yourcity dweller turns away from a life in the country on account of society. Granted that we in the country cannot make calls and pay fashionable visits as easily as you can. But most good country families have a few genuine friends and acquaintances whom they visit periodically, and such visits are really appreciated by the persons entertaining. There is not much duplicity about our friendships, for we are not so much thrown together as city people; and when we do meet at the different family boards, genial right good fellowship is the rule. The cant and half-friendly reception of your city fashionables we know not of.

There is no aristocracy in Canada, and all attempts to found any such class in America have signally failed. It is contrary to the genius and spirit of the democracy of America, for are we not quite asdemocratic as our neighbors to the south of us? Of all the prominent families who were on the boards at the time of the American Revolution, in the last century, only five are in existence this day. What a comment on the mutability of human affairs! Your titles and riches don’t stick in America, and there is many a boy in rural Ontario who now follows the plough who will yet rise to eminence as his years increase. To create and maintain a titled class in Canada, in the face and eyes of the great Republic adjoining us, would be an anomaly, and it never can be done. There seems to be a growing disposition to exclusiveness among the city families, and to discriminate to too great a nicety as to whom their sons and daughters shall marry. Their alliances in the matrimonial way are ever to be with those of the presumably rich, in contradistinction to others possessing push and merit, but not quite as many dollars in immediate view. So far as I can judge, I do not know of the son of a business man to-day in any of the country towns hereabout who inherits the wealth his father once possessed, and who pursues his father’s calling. John Adams, when ambassador of the United States to Paris, wrote home to his daughter who asked his views about her approaching marriage: “Marry an honest man and keep him honest.” In Adams’s advice there is no mention of thedot, as the continental Europeans use the term, and it is earnestly to be hoped that this word will never find any currency among us.

The long winter evenings, when our inhabitantsmust perforce remain by the lamplight, are the most trying period for our young people. Some sort of excitement seems to be the greatdesideratum. In most country parts the local church will have evening anniversaries and teas, to which the near inhabitants invariably flock. Ministers on other circuits usually come to such gatherings, to assist the local minister, and much genial talk usually flows. The half-grown farmer’s son at these meetings usually essays his first attempt to wait upon the fair sex, and brings some neighboring farmer’s young daughter to the entertainment. Paying the required admission fee for both, he considers her usually his partner for the evening, and pertinaciously sits by her side. His half-bashful, scared look, and the twitch of his downy moustache, even if they do show some awkwardness on his part, betoken a thoroughly honest fellow, whose intentions are above suspicion.

The influence which the clergy exert upon the community cannot for a moment be gainsaid. Ontario to-day listens to her ministers, and in a great measure they form a standard for the opinions and actions of its inhabitants. It must necessarily be so, for Ontario people are a church-going people, and in many country parts the ministers are the best read and most cultivated persons in their midst. All honor to our clergy, for they have done and are daily doing a good work. Even sceptics tell us that we must build gaols or churches. We prefer the churches, hence we have them, and our people attend them and listen to our ministers, and crime is rare, and our people arelaw-abiding, no mobs, and industrious. Protoplasm, evolution, or modern agnosticism have not reached our rural population to disturb their simple faith.

Comparisons of travel lead me to think that our country churches might be made more attractive. Who has not seen in the Old World gems of little country churches, moss-grown, ivy-wreathed, and surrounded by trees, shrubs and hedges? Among the graves at the church’s side are invariably rare shrubs and grasses, let alone flowers, but the whole embowery of green giving an air of quiet repose. And with the steeple or tower pointing to heaven, no place seems better calculated for reverential feelings than do the rural churches of the British Isles.

In Ontario we build bare, glaring walls, and our churches are right, from a modern architectural point of view. Even if we cannot grow ivy, we can greatly beautify our churches and grounds by planting shrubs and evergreens, and thus relieve the stiffness of our newly constructed churches and grounds.

Henry Ward Beecher says that he never knew a bad family to come from a home where there was an abundance of books and papers. Our Ontario farmers do not provide enough and sufficiently varied reading matter for their families. Most of them take a weekly paper, an agricultural paper, and generally some religious paper, the organ of the denomination to which they belong. These are all well enough so far as they go, but pictures are perhaps the quickest, best, and most agreeable way of imparting instruction. All our farmers couldeasily spare annually the cost of enough journals to make home daily attractive, so that the new papers to come each day forward would be looked for and something sought. The LondonGraphicor LondonIllustrated Newswould keep us posted pleasantly on matters at home, and, in fact, they would follow England all over the world, and improve the family taste at the same time. From New York a paper should certainly be taken, for we must, of course, follow our cousins just south of us, with their seventy-five millions of people. The New York semi-weeklyTribunewould keep us thoroughly up with the times, and there will be nothing in it that one need be ashamed to read before his daughters, which is a great recommendation in this day of trashy literature. By all means addHarper’s Weekly Illustrated, andFrank Leslie’sas well, for they do not require much time to read—the pictures show for themselves; and then there is theCentury Magazine, which is perhaps the most popular to-day. As to merit, I only wish we in Canada could afford to produce anything nearly as good. Its illustrations will shame any English magazine, and I would certainly addHarper’s Magazineas well. For the little folks, by all means theSt. Nicholas Magazine, beautifully illustrated, and with stories down to the mental calibre of the little ones. Of course, I would not forget our own productions, and would take a few of them in addition to those now taken.

Now, I know a good many will look upon this as too much to read, will say it costs too much, etc.They can all be taken for less than $50 per year, and if once they begin to come to the family, the boys will soon stay at home nights rather than go prowling around the country or seeking society in the towns and villages.

Excitement people must have, and your city people get their excitement by conversing with one another, the theatre, lectures, etc. But if our country people would take the periodicals I have outlined, in conjunction with their social gatherings at churches and in neighbors’ houses, they would have a constant fund of excitement and pleasure at home. Each mail would be looked forward to with eagerness, and the quiet evenings at home would be most pleasurably and profitably spent.

Even if they read upon subjects quite foreign to their own occupations, some knowledge would be gained. Knowledge from whatever source is valuable, and some day will, without a doubt, come into play. In this fast century many people who are able financially eschew a country life, and flock bag and baggage to the cities. There are some instances wherein a city life is more desirable than life in the country. Admitted that the city dweller can hear the best lectures of the day, and now and again witness a play of genuine merit upon the stage, yet there are pleasures in a country life which will outbalance those privileges, and of which I cannot help speaking now and again when my pen flows freely and I am in the humor. When writing of life in the country I do not mean twelve miles from a lemon, as GailHamilton writes in her New England bower, but rather within easy reach of the daily mail. Around me are no signs of want. The examples of wretchedness the city dweller has brought to his notice so very often we know not of. It is truly said, “that one-half of the world does not know how the other half lives.” So far as our pleasures and feelings are concerned we do not want to know,i.e., while we are willing to relieve the distressed we are glad that such examples do not come before us to harrow our feelings.

My hardwood fire burns brightly in the open fireplace as I sit behind double windows defying the 7° below zero without to penetrate, and my books and papers rest upon my writing-desk within easy reach of my hand. The children come in from their slides upon the ice with cheeks aglow and faces on fire, induced from the sudden change from the cold outside to the genial warmth within. You city dweller would think half-grown boys and girls too big to enjoy their hilarious, life-giving fun, and would want them to be nicely dressed and walk your city streets in the prim of propriety.

The examples of all great men and women prove distinctly that in order to be such you must first have good constitutions to support big brains, and our children by this are laying the foundations of such sound constitutions. Soon enough they will be men and women, and let them have their fun as long as they can.

In this locality most of our lands are held by inheritance. The sons of the pioneers who cleared theforests are the owners of the soil as a rule to-day. The rising generation, the immediate sons of the pioneers, are not as a rule equal to the old stock. The reason is, so far as I can judge, that they have seen the hard toil and steady, unchangeable life of their future, and having received a little education, which their fathers did not possess, they judge themselves too smart to follow their fathers’ footsteps. A good many of these sons, as I have before remarked, flock to the cities to live as half gentlemen, and very many others lease their farms to tenants, and reside in the towns hereabout.

There come before my mind as I write dozens of instances of young men who inherited a hundred or a hundred and fifty acres of land, worth probably from $80 to $125 per acre, or, say, they are worth individually $8,000 to $12,000, and these young men think to be gentlemen on these means. There are so many of such instances that I must needs make a note of it. Seemingly they get on for the present tolerably well. But the fences and buildings which their fathers built are yearly rotting away, and there is no timber here to replace them; and having yearly lived up to their full rental it becomes a serious question to know what this class of persons will do in the end. Englishmen with small means are gradually buying up such farms. Given the entering payment, and your sturdy English emigrant, who has spent a few years in this country, will pay for the property from the money which he makes off it.

Many of the pioneers and their sons in this localityhave been as nomadic as the Indian. Having cleared or partly cleared up their lands, which they obtained for a merely nominal sum, or by Government grant, and spent many years in hard toil, in fact the very hardest kind of toil, they pull up and sell out, and move to the promised West.

So far as I have yet been able to learn, I cannot now recall a single instance in which an Ontario farmer, from this locality, who left a 100 or 150 acre farm, is to-day worth more money in the West than the same lands he left are worth here to-day. It would appear that these persons obtained their properties too easily to learn their real value, and hence are supplanted by the emigrant, whose previous lot in his old home has been a hard one.

Upon the other side of the picture, there are some of the sons of those pioneers who early learned wisdom, and commenced just where their forefathers left off. Such young men or middle-aged men are buying out very many of the small properties around them, are keeping good blooded and grade stock, and are a credit and a benefit to the country. They ever dispense a generous hospitality when called upon, and ordinarily will give the visitor as much of their time as he desires. Their sons and daughters are invariably healthy and well on in a common school education, and are the hope and interest for the future of our glorious Province of Ontario.

And yet there is a dark side to their lives, or rather that of their wives. Female help in the house is so difficult to obtain that the wife of many and many aman, who is worth easily from $30,000 to $50,000, has perforce to perform more hard manual labor than has the wife of the ordinary mechanic, the owner, perhaps, of a very humble home, and who earns his $1.25 or $1.50 per day. Pardon me, reader, for drawing this unpleasant picture, but it is indeed too true, and there is something very wrong in the “eternal fitness of things,” when men of such ample means are able and willing to pay for servants to ease their wives’ lots, and they cannot be obtained. The only hope on this score seems to be in emigration. When our country becomes more thickly populated, and a living in the country is not quite so easily obtained, then the daughters of households having therein a number of girls will go out to work rather than be pinched at home. Formerly the daughters of the farmers would go out to work among the neighboring farmers, and usually married the sons of those farmers, and became in their turn mistresses themselves. All this is now past, and our farmers’ families, with increasing wealth, do not go out to work but feel perfectly able, as no doubt they are, to live at home.

Not a few of our farmers, feeling that they were not big enough upon their own farms, became storekeepers or manufacturers in the towns. No doubt, in the abstract this may be well for the general progress of those towns in building them up and laying the nucleus of new industries. They do not, however, as a rule, succeed in the new fields of business they have chosen, or if they do not become the principals of businesses in the towns, they sometimes lend theirnames as endorsers to assist those who are principals of such businesses. Endorsations were sometimes very easily obtained by the glib-tongued business man, and for a time all went on well, until some financial crisis overtaking the business man, consequent ruin came to the farmer. These instances have been so many that I speak of them as exemplifying another phase of life in the country. Latterly, however, the landowners are becoming more conservative of their means and credit, and are disposed to “paddle their own canoe.”

Since the law of primogeniture was abolished in Canada, the hold upon land has become very slight, and the examples of large landed estates being retained in the same families for over two generations are so very rare that they need scarcely be mentioned. In some cases our rich men make a terrible mistake in bringing up their families. They are not taught to labor, but live a life of ease, with the idea that the family property will be sufficient to support each individual member. But with the nomadic habits of our Canadians, and the light stress usually heretofore laid upon the paternal acres, each individual share soon vanishes, leaving them to learn to fight the battle of life at a terrible disadvantage, because frequently they are then past their first youth at least.

My wood fire still burns brightly as I turn to my morning mail with its treasures of current literature. Talk about your city bustle compared with this, in my cosy seat beside the fire and all these treasures atmy elbow! There are no gas bills to pay, nor water rates, and the mail comes to me daily, just as regularly as your city mail does. Then what do we want with your city?

Speaking of the post-office reminds me to say that the meanest hovel in the land can to-day put itself in almost daily communication with the best minds of the age. Such service the mail hourly and regularly performs for us, and is such a great factor to the pleasure of our lives, and yet we scarcely bestow a thought upon it. No, I do not propose to try to assume that life in the country would be very pleasant or desirable away from the mails. Given a daily mail and a comfortable country-seat, and easy access to the train, so that I may come to the city quickly and easily, if you have therein any real intellectual treat, and I yet fail to see what are the inducements to make one prefer life in the city to the free life in the country.

A rural life is a natural life, and a city life is an artificial life. Man in his first estate was an arboreal being, and in such surroundings throve as he does to-day. Our Ontario families, as a rule, who leave good properties in the country to go into the cities, make a mistake in almost every respect. Even if the parents do not feel the trouble wrought upon their families during their lives, their children almost invariably do not make the men and women they would have made had they hung on and occupied the paternal acres. In most instances these are sold, and in a few years the money scattered. Had they held on to the paternal acres, and bought more, theywould have been among our staunchest and best citizens, as well as among the wealthiest.

In Europe all successful men look forward to the day when they can own and live upon a farm. Bismarck had his country home, and we know he prized it, for we often heard of him going there to get away from the cares of office. Going back to earlier times, we find that the great men of the world loved their country homes quite as much as the English country squire does at this day. I take down old Xenophon from its place on the bookshelf and see that he says he sees the ridges piling along the ælian fields, and from the way that he makes the remark, he loves the sight, and loves to be in the midst of such ridges, where some husbandmen are ploughing. Theocritus hears the lark that hovers over the straight laid furrows, and if Theocritus did not love such a scene and dwell in its midst, he would never have given it to us at this remote day. “Establish your farm near to market, or adjoining good roads,” old Cato says. So old Cato loved the country, and we all know his head was level. I am afraid some of us in Ontario have followed old Cato only too literally, and have built our houses almost overhanging the road-side, when they would have looked far better and presented a much prettier sight set back from the road and surrounded by trees and lawns. Hesiod tells us that we ought not to plough the land when it is too wet, and also how to put in a new plough beam to replace the broken one. Homer the Great says a farmer should keep two ploughs on hand for fear oneshould get broken, and he does hot forget to praise the wine which the country produces about his rural home, and adds some caution about its too copious use.

When Hesiod and Homer loved country life in Greece so long ago, can we be amiss in praising a country life in Ontario to-day? As my eyes run up and down the pages, I can hear the swallows twitter and the lark sing, in my fancy, as they heard them. They praise the crispness and freshness of the vegetables which their gardens yield them, and they can go on and describe feasts which they partake of at their country homes, the materials of which come almost without exception from their farms. Virgil, I infer, was not much of a farmer after all, but he tells us that he loved his country home, and seems not to have the most remote thought of removing to Imperial Rome. Mostly he praises the bees and the wine, so it is evident every one sees a beauty in country life for himself, as his peculiarities may be. Yet Virgil left us some very good hints, though he evidently made some mistakes. He tells us, for instance, that lands only need cultivating to obliterate the obnoxious weeds. Tull, however, said about one hundred years ago, that the land only needed mixing by deep ploughing to make it produce indefinitely. Now, Tull was a man of means, and only lived a rural life from the love of it, as did the old worthies whom I have instanced. Ontarians, we have a grand country, and we who are in it, let us stay therein and enjoy it. Let those persons remain in the cities who are nowin them. For us nature in all its beauties is daily unfolded before our eyes, and let us daily enjoy those beauties. If we can by any means inculcate an increased love of country homes, we will continue to beautify our homes and improve our country.

Real properties in the cities and towns of Canada have been very fluctuating, often being held at prices far beyond any intrinsic value they could possibly possess, while again, the very same properties fall away, and frequently become totally unsalable. Yet during commercial depression good farm lands have held their value very well and have even, after a temporary period of dulness, steadily risen in value year by year.

To illustrate the peculiar change of town values to which I allude, I may give an instance coming under my own knowledge. One of my forbears bought, about the year 1815, a large building tract situated on King Street, Toronto, very near the market. For many years after the purchase this property was wholly unsalable. Taxes were put upon it, and yearly it became a burden. Somehow, in Canada we are not very careful, as a community, of the rights in property of the individual. Accordingly, in this instance, taxes for street improvements, with gas, water, sewers and other special levies, were put upon this land. A day finally came, about the year 1845, when to own property in Toronto meant either disaster or a very large income from without to retain it. A purchaser coming along at about that year, his offer was taken with avidity. Mypeople were glad to get it off their hands, and thus was closed a history, so far as they were concerned, which was a fair sample of city property in Canada and its mutations for more than thirty years. Since that time the property in question rose to enormous value, but has again fallen on account of trade to some extent deserting the locality.

Another feature of city and town life we must notice, viz., the constant interchange of views among the inhabitants as to business and politics on account of their close proximity to each other. An instance occurring in one of our Canadian towns will illustrate what I mean. In this town some few moneyed men gathered nightly and exchanged views on stocks and the like. Some of them had speculated in this way to the extent of a few hundred dollars and had been moderately successful. At one of their meetings some one introduced the subject of lard.

Lard became the topic. Others came, heard and pondered. Small lots of lard were then bought in Chicago, and in a few weeks sold, and some ready profits realized.

“If a little capital will win money in lard in Chicago, a large capital will yield much more” was the reasoning, so they joined forces and got nearly every man with ready cash in that town to put money into the joint fund for lard. Again they bought in Chicago—this time largely—and the commodity began to rise in price. Moreover it kept on rising, and never seemed to recede a point. These operators began to reason that if they held all the lard, theycould dictate prices and could control the article. They put more money into it and bought more lard, for they considered it to be what is called “a dead certainty.” Days and weeks passed and lard still held on. Fortunes truly seemed to be within the grasp of our group of townsmen. There could be no mistake about it, for they had, as they considered, all the lard in America cornered, so that no one could beat them.

One day, however, some persons in Chicago offered an immense quantity of lard from some unknown source. So great was the amount that our townsmen could not tackle it.

Down came the price. Still down it came, and down every day, until in a few days these lard cornerers in the Canadian town were entirely “cleaned out” and a loss of $2,000,000 actually sustained. From that loss for ten years afterwards that town was as quiet as a country place, and its magnates felt and acted with the timorousness of poor men.

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