The true Democrat., 1854-10-04
Rich Men UnawareS.

There are thousands of rich men in the world, who think themselves poor. They lament their hard fate, while fortune has filed their laps- Such are all the dWellers by the side of new railroads, through countries that do not enjoy easy access to market. IL is amusing to go along line Of country where railroad has just opened, and listen to the doleful tales that are
 unfailingly told-how the road ran right through
 Mir. As farm and put him to the inconve- nience of docking out for the locomotive"
 every time his team went to and from the hay field; how Mir. B.'s ''interval'-the finest pas
 ture ground in all the country-was cut into narrow strips from one end to the other, to his mcalculable detriment; how Mir. C's garden, that had been manured to the highest pitch of fertility, was traversed by the track; and Mr. D.'s finest grafted pear-tree, that had borne choice fruit for half a century, was cut down by the Vandal engineers, as if 1t had been worth less poplar or Balm of Gilead; how Mr. E.. had lost two promising spring calves already, and Mir. F. had lost a colt, that in three years would have sold for every cent of two hundred dollars! This is the universal experience. and everywhere that railroad goes, tis an unmit- gated curse in the eyes of the people for the first years of its operation. But locomotive along track soon burns out such old-time pre- judices. It is not many years before the farmer sees that he gets for the produce that used to rot in his granary: or never was deemed profita- ble enough to ralse price that astonishes him. The surplus of every crophe turns straig ight into cash. The garden bed that yielded a peck of vegetables beyond the demands of his kitchen. he converts directly into money. The stock that he cannot winter he exchanges without the trouble of riding to the nearest town, into hard silver. The tree that shaded his corn-feld. and which had not been cut down simply because there were no earthly use to make of 1t, he measures into cord-wood and transmutes into luXurieS or comforts as he chooses He dis covers at last that railroad does something for a place more than by building a wooden depot house, and furnishing to a crippled peanut vender employment for his time Before he stops his growing at the 'cussed railroad'' i, has quadrupled the value of his farm, larded all his lean acres, given price to what had nc sort of value before, and marked upon every product that can be turned out on his premises a definite value We have conversed with scorces of such unwittingly wealthy men dur Ing a ramble of a week or two past. There were men whose farms were hardly worth re- ceiving before as gifts, that now tell their worth to thousands every day of the year. There were those who owned large tracts of timber
 still growing because locomotives sometimes set woods on fire, who have treasures in their forests that they do not dream of It Is G a day ot roads," and it would not do any harm, for some of our secular preachers to thunder il
 In their ears, lest they die thinking themselves poor, while their heirs will take fat lesacies from their death clenched bands.-M F. Times