Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/141

Rh pride in my celebration of the national prosperity, as it flowed from our western farms of five, and ten, and twenty thousand acres; I could not very well help putting on the pedal in these passages. Mrs. Makely listened almost as eagerly as the Altrurian, for, as a cultivated American woman, she was necessarily quite ignorant of her own country, geographically, politically and historically. "The only people left in the hill country of New England," I concluded, "are those who are too old or too lazy to get away. Any young man of energy would be ashamed to stay, unless he wanted to keep a boarding-house or live on the city vacationists in summer. If he doesn't, he goes west and takes up some of the new land, and comes back in middle-life, and buys a deserted farm to spend his summers on."

"Dear me!" said the Altrurian, "Is it so simple as that? Then we can hardly wonder at their owners leaving these worn-out farms; though I suppose it must be with the pang of exile, sometimes."

"Oh, I fancy there isn't much sentiment involved," I answered, lightly.

"Whoa!" said Mrs. Makely, speaking to the horses, before she spoke to the driver, as some women