Litchfield enquirer., 1880-09-09

will HE, and see what is to be seen. First,
there is queer house, no bigger than hut,
with mansard roof, IN which day laborer
and his family live. Here you will see one
or two children, genuine autochthones, poor,
and, dare say, uneducated, or practically So,
but evidently not suffering for the want OF
food. Just here it is in point to say that con-
sidering the number and size of the colleges
Yale has 1000 students and Trinity College,
at Hartford, nearly a hundred-in New
England, it is surprising how few college men
you meet Leaving out visters there are in
the village have just left but three Of the
older men who have received diplomas. We
pass charcoal wagon near the next house,
which is better than the first, but still small
house, old and weather. worn. Here is q
trough of the purest water, fed by mountain
rivuleE, and high enough from the ground for
horse to reach it without undoing the har-
ness. Such troughs are common in this sec
ton, are a great convenience and a declded
improvement upon the Southern system, which
forces the driver either to unhitch the rein or
else hold a bucket up to the mouth OF his
horse. ~. r, -
Next came grove of tall sugar naples, a
''sap orchard, f" as it is here called but seldom
tapped nowadays. Beyond is a stony field,
in which farmer and his two boys arehaying.
His house, though ancient, is large, wonder
fully so fer the farm to which it is attached,
and IN excellent preservation. To the left
rises a mountain denuded of its timber not
many years ago and grown up now with young
trees. All the yards we have passed are small
virtually no yards at all in some places. In
this there is a wide difference between New
England and the South. Such a thing as
lawn, in one sense of the term, have yet to
see in the country farms Of four or five hun
dred acres having yards little bigger than those
we have just passed.
Next Comes, a swampy vale, beset with al
ders, in which ague and fever has cropped
out of late years. At the upper edge of this
marsh is forlorn house, almost black with
age, the little front porch propped up with
poles from the adjoining woods. Close to it
is tailor's shop of the days when tailors
could make living in the country On the
hillside, little beyond this shop, is large
eight-room house, without a porch, the win
dows above and below broken out, the upper
story uninhabltable and the lower barely 50.
In one room of this lower story is family of
''transients," as they are called, brought from
Massachusetts by farmer of the vicinity.
The man of this family, proving worthless as
a laborer on the farm or elsewhere, the farmer
has sought to make a town charge of the,
whole concern or else to get them sent back to
Massachusetts, but the selectmen of Cornwall
have very properly refused. A few steps
from this decayed mansion is the former shop
of tombstone cutter of the old days, unten-
anted now. His monument il on q neighbor-
ing hill The road descends now to the en-
trance of gorge leading down to the Housa-
tonic river, and here we find, perhaps, the
worst ramshackle of them all, not so ancient
as some, but more neglected. I am informed
that amost excellent woman lives here, the
wife of ne -do-weel husband.
GA fnraiUnar T foka n ~
Foreigner, no; genuine Yorker"
"Drinks, of course"
mo, just shiftless, that's ALL"
The country opens a little, and on the
heights to the right appear three comfortable
houses, in which live three brothers, who are
'coining money"in New York by selling
milk from their own and the adjoining farms.
Milk in bulk fetches in the city from one and
a-half to two cents quart in summer months
but put into cans and taken from the same
cow readily brings ten cents q quart. 1t is
are particular aboutlmilk and willing TO pay
high for it. - N.S i q 49,
Houses of better class, one the residence
of city merchant, thicken as we enter the
gorge,but lower down, where years age there
were numbers of dwellings that gave shelter
to workmen and their families, all is now bare.
A furnace or mill. which was then in opera
ton, has left not even trace. The only in
dustry we discover in the village below is
shears factory, to which shears in the rough
(and rude enough they are) are brought to be
edged with steel, and Japanned or nickle-
plated. 1t is small affair, employing at the
most ten hands. Our journey, made slowly,
has lasted an hour, and we have come fou:
miles. r.. --s ~. .-i.@r.
This is a sorry picture of the rural districts
Of the Nutmeg State" Is it TYPICAL? Well,
no but it is even better than parts of the
country along the road from Cornwall to
Litchfied. That leads over a mountain, pas
ses East Cornwall and Milton, and ends in
far better, more open and more fertile coun-
try Here and there you see wonderfully
neat ahndee, in the POI Ches of which shining
tin pans by the score tell of abundant milk.
On the other hand, you come to just another
such large house as the old mansion of eight
rooms which have described only it is not
so far gone in decay, and Is inhabited by an
Irish family. The decent wife appears at the
front gate and offers blackberries by the gal
Ion for SALE You also pass what from dis
lance appears to be fourishing orchard of
young apple trees, but on closer view turing
out to be rank growth of alders, with few
dying appletrees in their midst. A mile or
two further on appears what seems another
orchard, but the story is told over again, with
a variation, young pines crowdng out the old
appletrees. IT'S bad sight. Rarely do you
see in this townshipyoung and thrifty orchards,
the trees being almost invariably old and neg
lected, the fruit small and seldom abundant.
Evidently no attention is paid in these parts
to fruit culture; how it may be elsewhere re-
mains to be seen.
Returning to our first point Of observation
let us take different road. We go through
q mil orr Mi in Ula hy o@I
those crystal streams that are found every
where in this vicinity, the road so narrow that
vehicles can hardly pass each other; here
milk house, in which the pans are set to COOL
the door fastened only by hasp and staple
then comes q short wooden railway leading to
another milk house hidden away in the woods
now the grey escarpment of q little mountain
sparsely clothed with stunted pines confronts
us; then meadow, broad for this country
hillside next, where snug farm-houses cluster,
some of them behind stone walls three or four
feet thick and superbly built one all tumbled
down, or rather never built, although the stones
for it have been lying here for twenty years,
as | am told (procrastinatisn, you see, even
in Yankeeland), and last, upon the hilltop or
near it the home of one of the largest and most
noted farmers in the State. He owns 400 or
500 acres in one s'tract" as we say in the
South. Of him individually, more hereafter. |
He has old barns and new barns, an old cheese
factory and a new creamery" His place is |
settlement that reminds you of Southern |
Enthusiastically the outbildings seem incon- |
venientlys close together, and his neighbours |
houses crowd him, at least we should think so.
His land is good and well-tilled, but you have |
seen better, cleaner filth at home.H
How about the land through which we have
passed. / am coming to that. Let me first |
complete my photograph. All the way along |
you have seen the weeds and wild flowers that !
The golden rod may be new to you, but even
the mullen is here, and in one place saw a |
'.jimson" weed. The "hard hack" with its /
yellow flowers and its tough stunted form, |
will attract your attention. 1t Is the pest of |
this country, combining in itself the vices of |
the ox-eyed daisy and the sassafras bush The |
ox-eye is here, but is not abundant; the sassa.