New England Bygones

IN Northern New England, in the traditional good old times, to own a house was a condition of thrifty citizenship. For this a young couple would toil early and late with heroic self-denial. No matter how humble this home was, it must be one's own. When a man married, he at once set up a household, and, as he needed, he let out his four walls, and seamed and patched them. His barns ran over, and he added to them. He planted an orchard, and set out poplars before his door. The roughness of toil was ground into his bones and muscles. He grew hard-featured and hard-fisted, while his wife grew jaded and angular. Their children became like them. They were all weather-changed into a kind of peculiar peasantry, - a readily recognized product of their condition, - the busy, honest, persistent, hopeful, helpful New England farmer's family. The visible signs of their labors were hardly more than an orchard of straggling trees; the annual rotation of crops; and the daily spilling out from the doors of family-life. . . . .