The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1891-04-15

in our "best room" to-day, as a
"portiere," bed-spread spun and
woven by our wife's grandmother when
the latter was eighteen years old, and
which is often admired for its simple
elegance of pattern, dyeing and work
manship. We possessed also (until they
were lately burned in our house) blank
cts of like age, woven by our own
grandmother, which continued sound
and whole, while the best California
blankets of much less than half their
age and wear were nearly worn out.
In those days, and up to about 1887,
wheat was staple crop in Maine, and
in winter we have seen the village
street crowded with pungs laden there
with. Barrel flour was then unknown,
except as occasionally brought in YES
sci from Virginia as a part of her
stores. Shortly after, however, Genes
see flour began to be brought from that
new-settled country; and about the
same time the wheat nudge (called
weevil " made wheat-gro owing un-
profitable in New England. Not long
after came the potato rot. Wool went
down in price, the land began to be i'm
poverished, and the farmers sons took
more and more to seafaring, until the
" western fever" came to carry off
many to Ohio, Illinois and Michigan.
At about the same time the Lowell fac
tories began to draw away the girls,
and farming in Maine lost many of its
attractions.
Professor Welch thinks those old
times, when there were no railroads
and very little money, were the halcyon
days of New England agriculture. They
were indeed good enough. We all had
enough to eat, drink and wear. But
the people then were really much poorer
than now, and there was quite as
much indebtedness and complaint of
hard times. Bank failures and finan-
cial panics were of frequent occurrence;
counterfeit money was almost as plenty
as good, and the banks took regular
turns at failing as often as they could
make anything by it. Bank bills from
everywhere except Boston were at
discount, no matter how good, and the
holders had to submit to have them
shaved in order to make legal-tender
for debts.
We must think those good old times y.
were not quite so" halcyon and vocifer-
Gus" as they seem, seen through the haze
of memory by Professor WEIGH. They
are pleasant to think of because we
were young then and felt not the cares
that oppressed our parents and their
neighbors. Compared with the de-
pressed times which followed the great
panic of 1887, they were really good,
especially before the failure of wheat
and the rot of the potato. But those
old, laborious, ineffective ways of
farming, with the scarcity of money
and the limited horizon of life, would
be unspeakably irksome if they should
return to us. Those were the days of
free rum, implanted, unpapered, cold,
uncomfortable houses with old hats in
many broken windows, hard work and
poor pay. Food was abundant and
cheap, and homespun clothing was
warm and good, if not elegant. But
cheap books and newspapers, as we
have them now, were non-existent.
Fishing and hunting were much better
then, and our appetite and digestion
were good. Life seems bright when we
look back to boyhood's joys, but on the
whole we would not like to return to
these old times, except occasionally in
dreams.