Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1886-06-25

secure in a city residence. He lives, too,
in the midst of scenery as beautiful and
enchanting as any that nature has pro-
duced anywhere. aud far superior to any
which the resources of man have ever
placed in the town. lie drinks water
fresh from springs that have never
known the contamination of sewers,
stables and vaults, or been made dark
and heavy by long passages through
artificial waterworks. He is greeted in
the morning by sunshine that does not
have to struggle through clouds of
smoke. or creep through narrow alleys
and crawl around big buildings to meet
him. He goes to and fro without having
to force his way through the pulvcrized
dust of the streets; and much of his food
comes fresh from the garden, the poultry
yard or the dairy, toothsome and health
full beyond anything that money can buy
in the best of markets. When he wishes
to ride, his team is ready to carry him.
He may 90 to mill or to meeting if he
plcases in his everyday clothes without
provoking criticism, and he can act HIM
self ever ywhere without being consider
ed a crank. If he has children who live
with him he may generally know where
they are. and if he does not. need not
worry that they they are being ruined in
brothel or gambling den. When he is
sick kind neighbors will see that he does
not want. and when he dies they will
tenderly carry him to the grave without
charging his widow undertaker's rates
for doing it.
These and similar advantages are the
compensation of farm life; but the farm
er, accustomed to have and enjoy them
from his boyhood without money and
without price. values them but little if at
all. in considering his condition. 1t does
not occur to him that neither wealth. sta
ton nor influence can secure them in the
search for others with scarcely a feeling
of regret. But when he has lived for
awhile in a tenement house, when he is
compelled to breathe day in and day out
the fetid air of the street. when he must
seek in the common or upon the highway
for the sunshine that is shut from his
habitation. when the water with which
he quenches his thirst must be filtered
and strained to rid it of wigglerS and
worms. when he and his family cannot
leave home without being dressed in their
Sunday clothes, when every vegetable
that goes into his kitchen is more or less
shriveled with age, and ancient eggs and
patent butter insult his appetite for fresh
and pure food. and war upon his digeS-
ton: when he cannot ride a rod without
paying for it; every neighborly service
in health or sickness has Il market value:
when the safety of his sons and the sal
walton of his daughters are subjects of
constant anxiety. he begins. perhaps, to
learn that there are offsets to all he has
gained by moving to the city. And when
he sees half the residents of the town to
which he has moved begin aS soon aS the
hot season is upon them to plan and con-
trive and save and borrow in order to get
back among the hills for a few days or
weeks of fresh air, pure water, beautiful
scenery and the cleanliness, GOODNESS and
comforts of the country. he knows, or
ought to. that in all these things which
he once held so lightly because they were
free to him. there is "A money value which
can hardly he estimated too highly.
The fact is, the most of the people in
this world don't know when they are
well Off" Distance always lends EN-
chantment to the view. We are all too
apt to see only the hard things in our
own lot and only the pleasant ones in
that of our neighbOr and PARKWAY ac-
quaintance. We spend so much time
wishing for what we have not, that we
do not half appreciate what we have, and
to this feeling of envious unrest is to be
ascrbed half the changes for the worse
among us. Add to this what is fictitious
and eXtravagant in the popular estima-
ton of what are called city advantages,
and a fashionable and chronic disposition
to consider country life barren and I'M
profitable. which has no warrant in fact.
and we may, as We have said, account for
large share of the movement which has
been steadily depopulating our farming
districts and building up our cities and
vii 10 In rin no Len