The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1904-08-11
BRITISH INVADE ANEW
Are TAXING UP THE FARMS
ABANDONED ON Love ISLAND.

ABAAUOGEU ON LONG ISLAND.
Imported Farm Hands working and
Saving and Making New Prosperity
in, the old CoIonInI Houses Where
FIntIocks Used Mt Lexington Hung.
The last campaign of the Revolution
ary war is being fought. The hattle-
field IL the eastern end Of Long Island.
Sad to say the odds are about two to
one on British victory.
The British general is parson, the
Rev. George J. Newton. The Ameri-
cans have no leader They are the
same old mob Of unorganized but de-
termined farmers who started the I'M
pleasantness on Concord Common
something over one hundred and twen-
ty-nine years ago.
Nowhere in the United States has the
cid Revolutionary anti-British feeling
fingered as It has on Long Island. The
original Inhabitants came over from
Connecticut long before CORVALLIS
threw up the sponge at Yorktown
Some of these old settlers bore arms in
the Revolution. They brought along
the fierce family hatred of the old enc
my which was the handspring Of Amer
lean diplomacy and American politics
In the first half century of the republic.
On Long Island they set up their colo
NAL houses and hung over the fire.
places the old fiintlocks which had done
duty at Saratoga, on the Brandywine
and at Stony Point.
The colonial houses, the fiintlocks and
the prejudice are mostly there yet.
No community in America sticks tight
err to old tradition. The generation of
the Revolution and Of 1872 taught it to
the generation that voted against Jack
son and to the generation Of the civil
war. They say yet on the island that
the boys who went to be shot in the
wilderness or to die in the fever
swamps of Virginia enlisted not So
much because they loved the Union or
because they wanted to free slaves, as
because they thought that England
had hand in the Confederacy some-
where. The next generation would
have cherished the same feeling, if
there had been any next generation Of
the old families left In that corner Of
Long Island. But there isn't any press
ent generation. There's where the Brit
ish victory begins
Nowhere in the United States have
the young men been more reluctant to
stay with the farms than In this par
ticular corner Of Long Island. The
movement of farmer boys to the cities
which has kept economists puzzling for
a whole generation, has been almost a
stampede in these parts. AS soon as an
American farmer boy got old enough to
chew hay and energetic enough to wear
d paper collar he would get a job on
the railroad. The railroad leads to the
city, and the city to the wide world;
and the next time the little town by the
farm heard Of the boy he would be rum
ming a store in Pennsylvania or clerk
ing in Chicago or railroading in Texas
or prospecting in Colorado.
Then the old folks-they of the civil
war generation would die, IKE as not.
The sons would come home to the fun
eral, try to lease the place, and falling,
decide to hold It until land came to
be worth something" amigo back to
the railroad or the mine or store.
There are dotted all over that part of
Long island now the ghosts Of a past
that was not inglorious in its way.
Drive out down any of the country
roads that branch from ANALOGUE or
Wading river or Batting Hollow, and
you run across them. First few rows
of unkept apple trees, their roots
checked with plantain, wild oats and
golden rod, and then a field of weeds
behind a Wfallen fence, and after that
a house.
1t is, likely as not, colonial house,
SO well made in the only real native
style of American architecture, SO pic
turesoue In its dilapidation, as to make
the heart Of an artist jump The odds
are that 1t has colonial doorway. a.
GOV forever, with the soft tones Of age
upon it. There is no more beautiful
example in America of the real colonial
doorway than the entrance to an aban-
doned farmhouse on the road between
Riverhead and Wading river.
The windows of these houses are
boarded up, and the good old roofs
with their double slopes, are falling in.
The neighbor, driving past, tells his
load of summer boarders that this be-
longs to the Smith boys or the Jones
outfit.
Good placer"
ooh, yes, but the boys didn't want to
farm it and nobody wanted a lease.
Leastways, nobody but passed. of Po-
lacks that wouldn't pay enough rent to
feed a COW.
Between these farms there lie, in
Come parts tracts as strange to
plough and harrow as an Indian reser-
walton of the west. These were forests
Of oak and pine in the old days, but the