City and country life compared--No aristocracy in Canada--Long
winter evenings--Social evenings--The bashful swain--Popular
literature of the day--A comfortable winter day at home--Young
farmers who have inherited property--Difficulty of obtaining female
help--Farmers trying town life--Universality of the love of country
life--Bismarck--Theocritus--Cato--Hesiod--Homer--Changes in town
values--A speculation in lard.
Your city dweller turns away from a life in the country on account of
society. Granted that we in the country cannot make calls and pay
fashionable visits as easily as you can. But most good country families
have a few genuine friends and acquaintances whom they visit
periodically, and such visits are really appreciated by the persons
entertaining. There is not much duplicity about our friendships, for we
are not so much thrown together as city people; and when we do meet at
the different family boards, genial right good fellowship is the rule.
The cant and half-friendly reception of your city fashionables we know
not of.
There is no aristocracy in Canada, and all attempts to found any such
class in America have signally failed. It is contrary to the genius and
spirit of the democracy of America, for are we not quite as democratic
as our neighbors to the south of us? Of all the prominent families who
were on the boards at the time of the American Revolution, in the last
century, only five are in existence this day. What a comment on the
mutability of human affairs! Your titles and riches don’t stick in
America, and there is many a boy in rural Ontario who now follows the
plough who will yet rise to eminence as his years increase. To create
and maintain a titled class in Canada, in the face and eyes of the great
Republic adjoining us, would be an anomaly, and it never can be done.
There seems to be a growing disposition to exclusiveness among the city
families, and to discriminate to too great a nicety as to whom their
sons and daughters shall marry. Their alliances in the matrimonial way
are ever to be with those of the presumably rich, in contradistinction
to others possessing push and merit, but not quite as many dollars in
immediate view. So far as I can judge, I do not know of the son of a
business man to-day in any of the country towns hereabout who inherits
the wealth his father once possessed, and who pursues his father’s
calling. John Adams, when ambassador of the United States to Paris,
wrote home to his daughter who asked his views about her approaching
marriage: “Marry an honest man and keep him honest.” In Adams’s advice
there is no mention of the _dot_, as the continental Europeans use the
term, and it is earnestly to be hoped that this word will never find any
currency among us.
The long winter evenings, when our inhabitants must perforce remain by
the lamplight, are the most trying period for our young people. Some
sort of excitement seems to be the great _desideratum_. In most country
parts the local church will have evening anniversaries and teas, to
which the near inhabitants invariably flock. Ministers on other circuits
usually come to such gatherings, to assist the local minister, and much
genial talk usually flows. The half-grown farmer’s son at these meetings
usually essays his first attempt to wait upon the fair sex, and brings
some neighboring farmer’s young daughter to the entertainment. Paying
the required admission fee for both, he considers her usually his
partner for the evening, and pertinaciously sits by her side. His
half-bashful, scared look, and the twitch of his downy moustache, even
if they do show some awkwardness on his part, betoken a thoroughly
honest fellow, whose intentions are above suspicion.
The influence which the clergy exert upon the community cannot for a
moment be gainsaid. Ontario to-day listens to her ministers, and in a
great measure they form a standard for the opinions and actions of its
inhabitants. It must necessarily be so, for Ontario people are a
church-going people, and in many country parts the ministers are the
best read and most cultivated persons in their midst. All honor to our
clergy, for they have done and are daily doing a good work. Even
sceptics tell us that we must build gaols or churches. We prefer the
churches, hence we have them, and our people attend them and listen to
our ministers, and crime is rare, and our people are law-abiding, no
mobs, and industrious. Protoplasm, evolution, or modern agnosticism have
not reached our rural population to disturb their simple faith.
Comparisons of travel lead me to think that our country churches might
be made more attractive. Who has not seen in the Old World gems of
little country churches, moss-grown, ivy-wreathed, and surrounded by
trees, shrubs and hedges? Among the graves at the church’s side are
invariably rare shrubs and grasses, let alone flowers, but the whole
embowery of green giving an air of quiet repose. And with the steeple or
tower pointing to heaven, no place seems better calculated for
reverential feelings than do the rural churches of the British Isles.
In Ontario we build bare, glaring walls, and our churches are right,
from a modern architectural point of view. Even if we cannot grow ivy,
we can greatly beautify our churches and grounds by planting shrubs and
evergreens, and thus relieve the stiffness of our newly constructed
churches and grounds.
Henry Ward Beecher says that he never knew a bad family to come from a
home where there was an abundance of books and papers. Our Ontario
farmers do not provide enough and sufficiently varied reading matter for
their families. Most of them take a weekly paper, an agricultural paper,
and generally some religious paper, the organ of the denomination to
which they belong. These are all well enough so far as they go, but
pictures are perhaps the quickest, best, and most agreeable way of
imparting instruction. All our farmers could easily spare annually the
cost of enough journals to make home daily attractive, so that the new
papers to come each day forward would be looked for and something
sought. The London _Graphic_ or London _Illustrated News_ would keep us
posted pleasantly on matters at home, and, in fact, they would follow
England all over the world, and improve the family taste at the same
time. From New York a paper should certainly be taken, for we must, of
course, follow our cousins just south of us, with their seventy-five
millions of people. The New York semi-weekly _Tribune_ would keep us
thoroughly up with the times, and there will be nothing in it that one
need be ashamed to read before his daughters, which is a great
recommendation in this day of trashy literature. By all means add
_Harper’s Weekly Illustrated_, and _Frank Leslie’s_ as well, for they do
not require much time to read--the pictures show for themselves; and
then there is the _Century Magazine_, which is perhaps the most popular
to-day. As to merit, I only wish we in Canada could afford to produce
anything nearly as good. Its illustrations will shame any English
magazine, and I would certainly add _Harper’s Magazine_ as well. For the
little folks, by all means the _St. Nicholas Magazine_, beautifully
illustrated, and with stories down to the mental calibre of the little
ones. Of course, I would not forget our own productions, and would take
a few of them in addition to those now taken.
Now, I know a good many will look upon this as too much to read, will
say it costs too much, etc. They can all be taken for less than $50 per
year, and if once they begin to come to the family, the boys will soon
stay at home nights rather than go prowling around the country or
seeking society in the towns and villages.
Excitement people must have, and your city people get their excitement
by conversing with one another, the theatre, lectures, etc. But if our
country people would take the periodicals I have outlined, in
conjunction with their social gatherings at churches and in neighbors’
houses, they would have a constant fund of excitement and pleasure at
home. Each mail would be looked forward to with eagerness, and the quiet
evenings at home would be most pleasurably and profitably spent.
Even if they read upon subjects quite foreign to their own occupations,
some knowledge would be gained. Knowledge from whatever source is
valuable, and some day will, without a doubt, come into play. In this
fast century many people who are able financially eschew a country life,
and flock bag and baggage to the cities. There are some instances
wherein a city life is more desirable than life in the country. Admitted
that the city dweller can hear the best lectures of the day, and now and
again witness a play of genuine merit upon the stage, yet there are
pleasures in a country life which will outbalance those privileges, and
of which I cannot help speaking now and again when my pen flows freely
and I am in the humor. When writing of life in the country I do not mean
twelve miles from a lemon, as Gail Hamilton writes in her New England
bower, but rather within easy reach of the daily mail. Around me are no
signs of want. The examples of wretchedness the city dweller has brought
to his notice so very often we know not of. It is truly said, “that
one-half of the world does not know how the other half lives.” So far as
our pleasures and feelings are concerned we do not want to know, _i.e._,
while we are willing to relieve the distressed we are glad that such
examples do not come before us to harrow our feelings.
My hardwood fire burns brightly in the open fireplace as I sit behind
double windows defying the 7° below zero without to penetrate, and my
books and papers rest upon my writing-desk within easy reach of my hand.
The children come in from their slides upon the ice with cheeks aglow
and faces on fire, induced from the sudden change from the cold outside
to the genial warmth within. You city dweller would think half-grown
boys and girls too big to enjoy their hilarious, life-giving fun, and
would want them to be nicely dressed and walk your city streets in the
prim of propriety.
The examples of all great men and women prove distinctly that in order
to be such you must first have good constitutions to support big brains,
and our children by this are laying the foundations of such sound
constitutions. Soon enough they will be men and women, and let them have
their fun as long as they can.
In this locality most of our lands are held by inheritance. The sons of
the pioneers who cleared the forests are the owners of the soil as a
rule to-day. The rising generation, the immediate sons of the pioneers,
are not as a rule equal to the old stock. The reason is, so far as I can
judge, that they have seen the hard toil and steady, unchangeable life
of their future, and having received a little education, which their
fathers did not possess, they judge themselves too smart to follow their
fathers’ footsteps. A good many of these sons, as I have before
remarked, flock to the cities to live as half gentlemen, and very many
others lease their farms to tenants, and reside in the towns hereabout.
There come before my mind as I write dozens of instances of young men
who inherited a hundred or a hundred and fifty acres of land, worth
probably from $80 to $125 per acre, or, say, they are worth individually
$8,000 to $12,000, and these young men think to be gentlemen on these
means. There are so many of such instances that I must needs make a note
of it. Seemingly they get on for the present tolerably well. But the
fences and buildings which their fathers built are yearly rotting away,
and there is no timber here to replace them; and having yearly lived up
to their full rental it becomes a serious question to know what this
class of persons will do in the end. Englishmen with small means are
gradually buying up such farms. Given the entering payment, and your
sturdy English emigrant, who has spent a few years in this country, will
pay for the property from the money which he makes off it.
Many of the pioneers and their sons in this locality have been as
nomadic as the Indian. Having cleared or partly cleared up their lands,
which they obtained for a merely nominal sum, or by Government grant,
and spent many years in hard toil, in fact the very hardest kind of
toil, they pull up and sell out, and move to the promised West.
So far as I have yet been able to learn, I cannot now recall a single
instance in which an Ontario farmer, from this locality, who left a 100
or 150 acre farm, is to-day worth more money in the West than the same
lands he left are worth here to-day. It would appear that these persons
obtained their properties too easily to learn their real value, and
hence are supplanted by the emigrant, whose previous lot in his old home
has been a hard one.
Upon the other side of the picture, there are some of the sons of those
pioneers who early learned wisdom, and commenced just where their
forefathers left off. Such young men or middle-aged men are buying out
very many of the small properties around them, are keeping good blooded
and grade stock, and are a credit and a benefit to the country. They
ever dispense a generous hospitality when called upon, and ordinarily
will give the visitor as much of their time as he desires. Their sons
and daughters are invariably healthy and well on in a common school
education, and are the hope and interest for the future of our glorious
Province of Ontario.
And yet there is a dark side to their lives, or rather that of their
wives. Female help in the house is so difficult to obtain that the wife
of many and many a man, who is worth easily from $30,000 to $50,000,
has perforce to perform more hard manual labor than has the wife of the
ordinary mechanic, the owner, perhaps, of a very humble home, and who
earns his $1.25 or $1.50 per day. Pardon me, reader, for drawing this
unpleasant picture, but it is indeed too true, and there is something
very wrong in the “eternal fitness of things,” when men of such ample
means are able and willing to pay for servants to ease their wives’
lots, and they cannot be obtained. The only hope on this score seems to
be in emigration. When our country becomes more thickly populated, and a
living in the country is not quite so easily obtained, then the
daughters of households having therein a number of girls will go out to
work rather than be pinched at home. Formerly the daughters of the
farmers would go out to work among the neighboring farmers, and usually
married the sons of those farmers, and became in their turn mistresses
themselves. All this is now past, and our farmers’ families, with
increasing wealth, do not go out to work but feel perfectly able, as no
doubt they are, to live at home.
Not a few of our farmers, feeling that they were not big enough upon
their own farms, became storekeepers or manufacturers in the towns. No
doubt, in the abstract this may be well for the general progress of
those towns in building them up and laying the nucleus of new
industries. They do not, however, as a rule, succeed in the new fields
of business they have chosen, or if they do not become the principals of
businesses in the towns, they sometimes lend their names as endorsers
to assist those who are principals of such businesses. Endorsations were
sometimes very easily obtained by the glib-tongued business man, and for
a time all went on well, until some financial crisis overtaking the
business man, consequent ruin came to the farmer. These instances have
been so many that I speak of them as exemplifying another phase of life
in the country. Latterly, however, the landowners are becoming more
conservative of their means and credit, and are disposed to “paddle
their own canoe.”
Since the law of primogeniture was abolished in Canada, the hold upon
land has become very slight, and the examples of large landed estates
being retained in the same families for over two generations are so very
rare that they need scarcely be mentioned. In some cases our rich men
make a terrible mistake in bringing up their families. They are not
taught to labor, but live a life of ease, with the idea that the family
property will be sufficient to support each individual member. But with
the nomadic habits of our Canadians, and the light stress usually
heretofore laid upon the paternal acres, each individual share soon
vanishes, leaving them to learn to fight the battle of life at a
terrible disadvantage, because frequently they are then past their first
youth at least.
My wood fire still burns brightly as I turn to my morning mail with its
treasures of current literature. Talk about your city bustle compared
with this, in my cosy seat beside the fire and all these treasures at
my elbow! There are no gas bills to pay, nor water rates, and the mail
comes to me daily, just as regularly as your city mail does. Then what
do we want with your city?
Speaking of the post-office reminds me to say that the meanest hovel in
the land can to-day put itself in almost daily communication with the
best minds of the age. Such service the mail hourly and regularly
performs for us, and is such a great factor to the pleasure of our
lives, and yet we scarcely bestow a thought upon it. No, I do not
propose to try to assume that life in the country would be very pleasant
or desirable away from the mails. Given a daily mail and a comfortable
country-seat, and easy access to the train, so that I may come to the
city quickly and easily, if you have therein any real intellectual
treat, and I yet fail to see what are the inducements to make one prefer
life in the city to the free life in the country.
A rural life is a natural life, and a city life is an artificial life.
Man in his first estate was an arboreal being, and in such surroundings
throve as he does to-day. Our Ontario families, as a rule, who leave
good properties in the country to go into the cities, make a mistake in
almost every respect. Even if the parents do not feel the trouble
wrought upon their families during their lives, their children almost
invariably do not make the men and women they would have made had they
hung on and occupied the paternal acres. In most instances these are
sold, and in a few years the money scattered. Had they held on to the
paternal acres, and bought more, they would have been among our
staunchest and best citizens, as well as among the wealthiest.
In Europe all successful men look forward to the day when they can own
and live upon a farm. Bismarck had his country home, and we know he
prized it, for we often heard of him going there to get away from the
cares of office. Going back to earlier times, we find that the great men
of the world loved their country homes quite as much as the English
country squire does at this day. I take down old Xenophon from its place
on the bookshelf and see that he says he sees the ridges piling along
the ælian fields, and from the way that he makes the remark, he loves
the sight, and loves to be in the midst of such ridges, where some
husbandmen are ploughing. Theocritus hears the lark that hovers over the
straight laid furrows, and if Theocritus did not love such a scene and
dwell in its midst, he would never have given it to us at this remote
day. “Establish your farm near to market, or adjoining good roads,” old
Cato says. So old Cato loved the country, and we all know his head was
level. I am afraid some of us in Ontario have followed old Cato only too
literally, and have built our houses almost overhanging the road-side,
when they would have looked far better and presented a much prettier
sight set back from the road and surrounded by trees and lawns. Hesiod
tells us that we ought not to plough the land when it is too wet, and
also how to put in a new plough beam to replace the broken one. Homer
the Great says a farmer should keep two ploughs on hand for fear one
should get broken, and he does hot forget to praise the wine which the
country produces about his rural home, and adds some caution about its
too copious use.
When Hesiod and Homer loved country life in Greece so long ago, can we
be amiss in praising a country life in Ontario to-day? As my eyes run up
and down the pages, I can hear the swallows twitter and the lark sing,
in my fancy, as they heard them. They praise the crispness and freshness
of the vegetables which their gardens yield them, and they can go on and
describe feasts which they partake of at their country homes, the
materials of which come almost without exception from their farms.
Virgil, I infer, was not much of a farmer after all, but he tells us
that he loved his country home, and seems not to have the most remote
thought of removing to Imperial Rome. Mostly he praises the bees and the
wine, so it is evident every one sees a beauty in country life for
himself, as his peculiarities may be. Yet Virgil left us some very good
hints, though he evidently made some mistakes. He tells us, for
instance, that lands only need cultivating to obliterate the obnoxious
weeds. Tull, however, said about one hundred years ago, that the land
only needed mixing by deep ploughing to make it produce indefinitely.
Now, Tull was a man of means, and only lived a rural life from the love
of it, as did the old worthies whom I have instanced. Ontarians, we have
a grand country, and we who are in it, let us stay therein and enjoy it.
Let those persons remain in the cities who are now in them. For us
nature in all its beauties is daily unfolded before our eyes, and let us
daily enjoy those beauties. If we can by any means inculcate an
increased love of country homes, we will continue to beautify our homes
and improve our country.
Real properties in the cities and towns of Canada have been very
fluctuating, often being held at prices far beyond any intrinsic value
they could possibly possess, while again, the very same properties fall
away, and frequently become totally unsalable. Yet during commercial
depression good farm lands have held their value very well and have
even, after a temporary period of dulness, steadily risen in value year
by year.
To illustrate the peculiar change of town values to which I allude, I
may give an instance coming under my own knowledge. One of my forbears
bought, about the year 1815, a large building tract situated on King
Street, Toronto, very near the market. For many years after the purchase
this property was wholly unsalable. Taxes were put upon it, and yearly
it became a burden. Somehow, in Canada we are not very careful, as a
community, of the rights in property of the individual. Accordingly, in
this instance, taxes for street improvements, with gas, water, sewers
and other special levies, were put upon this land. A day finally came,
about the year 1845, when to own property in Toronto meant either
disaster or a very large income from without to retain it. A purchaser
coming along at about that year, his offer was taken with avidity. My
people were glad to get it off their hands, and thus was closed a
history, so far as they were concerned, which was a fair sample of city
property in Canada and its mutations for more than thirty years. Since
that time the property in question rose to enormous value, but has again
fallen on account of trade to some extent deserting the locality.
Another feature of city and town life we must notice, viz., the constant
interchange of views among the inhabitants as to business and politics
on account of their close proximity to each other. An instance occurring
in one of our Canadian towns will illustrate what I mean. In this town
some few moneyed men gathered nightly and exchanged views on stocks and
the like. Some of them had speculated in this way to the extent of a few
hundred dollars and had been moderately successful. At one of their
meetings some one introduced the subject of lard.
Lard became the topic. Others came, heard and pondered. Small lots of
lard were then bought in Chicago, and in a few weeks sold, and some
ready profits realized.
“If a little capital will win money in lard in Chicago, a large capital
will yield much more” was the reasoning, so they joined forces and got
nearly every man with ready cash in that town to put money into the
joint fund for lard. Again they bought in Chicago--this time
largely--and the commodity began to rise in price. Moreover it kept on
rising, and never seemed to recede a point. These operators began to
reason that if they held all the lard, they could dictate prices and
could control the article. They put more money into it and bought more
lard, for they considered it to be what is called “a dead certainty.”
Days and weeks passed and lard still held on. Fortunes truly seemed to
be within the grasp of our group of townsmen. There could be no mistake
about it, for they had, as they considered, all the lard in America
cornered, so that no one could beat them.
One day, however, some persons in Chicago offered an immense quantity of
lard from some unknown source. So great was the amount that our townsmen
could not tackle it.
Down came the price. Still down it came, and down every day, until in a
few days these lard cornerers in the Canadian town were entirely
“cleaned out” and a loss of $2,000,000 actually sustained. From that
loss for ten years afterwards that town was as quiet as a country place,
and its magnates felt and acted with the timorousness of poor men.