The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1910-06-02
Passing of the Abandoned Farm
New York SUM-

A remarkable exhibit confronts us
on page II of New Hampshire Farms
for Summer Homes a handsomely
illustrated and geographically excell-
ent publication for which the State
Board of Agriculture is sponsor We
refer to the picture of an implanted
frame house with pent up door and
broken windows under the shadow of
a great elm and looking out over a
tumbledown stone fence on a road
untraveled 1t might be taken for
the place where Hawthorne wrote
The House of the Seven Gables"
but it has a distinction all it's own.
Aline OF type under the picture tells
us: There are abandoned farms still.
This is one in Hopkinton, Merrimack
county,
Twenty years ago abandoned farms
were a drug on the market in New
Hampshire; in the boulder country
there seemed to be no other kind of
farm. A tract of 300 acres. wood
and pasture, with rambling house
and spring water piped into 1t, to-
gether with progeny of gray barns
aud outhouses, could be bought for
two or three thousand dollars. 1t was
melancholy reproach to the old State.
Sometimes a forgotten graveyard was
found by the musing stranger in a
second growth of forest. The census
taker had less and less to do. The
bear numbered through the orchards of
decrepit trees. Then the Legislature,
in a brave attempt to stay the depop-
ulation of the back country, imposed
upon the Board of Agriculture the task
of promoting immigration by using
printers ink; but the remedy was not
found until it occurred to some genius
that the honorable board was promot-
ing the wrong kind of immigration,
and that instead of husbandmen on
her abandoned farms New Hampshire
wanted captains of industry, states
men, lawyers. doctors and literary
men. In short. the right course was
to advertise the attractions of New
Hampshire as a summer pleasure
ground. The abandoned farms had
been a scarecrow; it was now to be
q
the son of New Hampshire who con-
ceived the fetching idea of "Old Home
Week." Don't tell us that he was a
flourishing exil ewhose heart untrav-
eled fondly turned to Hooksett or
Boscawen, still to Coos or Carroll
turned with ceaseless pain, and dragg
ed at each remove a frightening chain.
- A.. tS
turn the tide of migration from the
city to the country and sell the hill
pasture to men who were more in
teressted in the azure robe of the
mountain than in separators and
scanty hay crops.
We see the perfect result in the
sumptuous publication already men
toned farm advertising. In the pre-
face there is confession-in the very
first sentence in fact: "The New
Hampshire State Board of Agricul-
ture, charged by the Legislature of
the Commonwealth with the duty of
promoting immigration to the farm
ing sections of the State, issues here
with the eighth edition of its annual
publication, designed to further chat
end and called New Hampshire Farms
for Summer Homes" 1t is like look
ing through a picture gallery of state
ly and luxurious homes to turn over
the pages of this book. Take the
MacVeagh estate at Dublin, for in
stance. What cool and spacious por-
ticos, what far smoothed lawns, what
Italian gardens, what enhancing Wis
tas of deftly trimmed woodland! Be-
tween them the architect and land
scape gardener have made a paradise
where once was a senile farmhouse
(carted away to make room for the
pleasure palace and hillside given
up to the prodgality of nature. A
most beautiful group of pictures shows
another Dublin estate, including It.
allan garden and ancient theatre
with marble Venuses and naiads peep
ing at one another through the shrub
berry and displaying charms that were
only dreamed of on abandoned farms
by the original proprietor There are
summer homes" humber by COM