Chapter VIII - Page 2

Hiram is ready to fight the first comer on the slightest provocation. He doesn't care whom he offends, so long as it isn't his wife. These people know how to make what they want, and what they can't make they do without. That's the way to form a great nation. You raise, in this way, a self- sustaining, resolute, unconquerable people. The reason the North conquered the South was because we drew our armies mostly from the self-reliant farming class, while we had to fight a people accustomed for generations to having things done for them."

"Why don't you buy a farm, Yates?"

"Several reasons. I am spoiled for the life here. I am like the drunkard who admires a temperate life, yet can't pass a ginshop. The city virus is in my blood. And then, perhaps, after all, I am not quite satisfied with the tendency of farm life; it is unfortunately in a transition state. It is at the frame-house stage, and will soon blossom into the red-brick stage. The log-house era is what I yearn for. Then everything a person needed was made on the farm. When the brick-house era sets in, the middleman will be rampant. I saw the other day at the Howards' a set of ancient stones that interested me as much as an Assyrian marble would interest you. They were old, home-made millstones, and they have not been used since the frame house was built. The grist mill at the village put them out of date. And just here, notice the subtlety of the crafty middleman. The farmer takes his grist to the mill, and the miller does not charge him cash for grinding it. He takes toll out of the bags, and the farmer has a vague idea that he gets his grinding for almost nothing. The old way was the best, Renny, my boy. The farmer's son won't be as happy in the brick house which the mason will build for him as his grandfather was in the log house he built for himself. And fools call this change the advance of civilization."

"There is something to be said for the old order of things," admitted Renmark. "If a person could unite the advantages of what we call civilization with the advantages of a pastoral life, he would inaugurate a condition of things that would be truly idyllic."

"That's so, Renmark, that's so!" cried Yates enthusiastically. "A brownstone mansion on Fifth Avenue, and a log hut on the shores of Lake Superior! That would suit me down to the ground. Spend half the year in each place."

"Yes," said the professor meditatively; "a log hut on the rocks and under the trees, with the lake in front, would be very nice if the hut had a good library attached."

"And a daily paper. Don't forget the press."

"No. I draw the line there. The daily paper would mean the daily steamer or the daily train. The one would frighten away the fish, and the other would disturb the stillness with its whistle."

Yates sighed.