The Republican journal., 1903-04-09
A RETURNED NEW highlander.
His Notes Upon Conditions After An
Absence of Twenty Years.

At present the tide of New Englands
Younger generation sets cityWard. rms
movement is quite likely to be checked
to some extent within the next genera
tion. The city is approaching the coun-
try, and with its approach there comes 4
counteracting influence to the sense OF
isolation and to the feeling of depriva-
ton of life's fuller enjoyment. The
extension of railroads, and now the
more rapid extension of electric lines,
is bringing much of that which the city
offers within the comparatively easy
reach of the youth of the country.
While this presents faculties which en-
able the young men and young women
of the country to become more readily
part of that which appeals to them,
it also tends to bring that other and less
known life into closer familiarity, and
so robs it OF, no little Of its attractive
ness and glamour. This cannot fail to
WELD an influence upon the tendency to
migration. How potent the influence
may become as restrictive force can
not be estimated.
Twenty-Five years ago l was a COM
mercial traveller, with route which
covered the major portion of New Eng
land. For the last 20 years l have seen
but little of the region in which l was
born and 'brought up" as the New
England phrase has it. Within recent
months have, to some extent, renewed
my acquaintance with it. That which
impresses me more than all else is the
growth into villages of places | knew
as hamlets; the growth of villages into
towns and of towns into miniature cit
les with brick stores, electric lights,
street car lines and water works. L
note the enormous increase i'll the num-
Der OF cozy cottage homes of recent
erection, we'll painted and we'll kept.
This obtains not only in suburban
towns, but in distinctly rural towns as
we'll. Naturally, this increase is more
evident along the lines of the railways,
but the number of New England towns
which can be regarded as remote from
railways is no very large percentage OF
the whole.
TO this growth there have been many
channels of contribution. The busy
mills and factories, the dairy and the
orchard and the tobacco field, the tour
ist, the sportsman and the summer
boarder, have all played their part
among these many channels. Maine,
not SO very many years ago, Was pine
clad wilderness with two waterway
outlets, the Penobscot and the Kenne-
bee rivers. She produced lumber, lime
and schooners. These industries still
survive, but on a greatly lessened scale.
Their place has been filed by other in
terests. Even far away Aroostook
county is producing center with many
a thrifty hamlet and home in place of
the log hut Of the early settler and the
lumberman. Maine has her quota of
abandoned farms, but the number of
her homes has vastly increased, and she
never was richer than she is today in
homes, i'll money, in comforts OF III the
general average of intellectual culture.
The same is equally true of all the
other New England states.
The abandoned farm" is Il bugaboo
whose Wlsightly presence is unduly en-
phasIzed by the newer places which
have grown up around it. Intellectual
ly decadent, New England certainly is
not Her public schools ard her public
libraries stand without peer in number
and equipment Such institutions as
Harvard and Yale, Dartmouth and Bow
doin, Brown, Trinity, Amherst, Middle
bury, Williams, Smith and Wellesley,
continue business at their old stands.
Oliver Wendell Holmes comment that
New England is watershed which
drains brains into all the rest of the
country" may lack the comparative
emphasis which it contained 40 years
ago, but New England still produces a
sufficient supply of that article to pro
vide for her own needs, and some of her
product in that line still trickles across
her borders.
Socially decadent she is not. The
standard of daily life, of home comfort,
of hospitality, was never higher than
now Industrially decadent she is not.
The proof of this lies in dry statistics.
There has been change in industrial
lines. Old enterprises have given place
to new interests. The life of the farm
has changed, but it has changed for the
better New England's abandoned
farms are neither menace to her pros
perity nor sign of decay. Her area is
with three centuries of stren-
uous life which has sent its myriad root
let westward to the shores of the Pa
cific The parent stem may bear few
fruitless branches, but it is still in full
and vigorous growth.-Albert Gardiner
II l.; A,1-J ,,Io