Page:Traveler from Altruria, Howells, 1894.djvu/144

138 reading up all she can about it. She'll want to talk with you, and she won't give the rest of us much of a chance, I guess."

"Oh, I shall be glad to see her," said the Altrurian, "and to tell her everything I can. But won't you explain to me first something about your deserted farms here? It's quite a new thing to me."

"It isn't a new thing to us," said the young fellow, with a short laugh. "And there isn't much to explain about it. You'll see them all through New England. When a man finds he can't get his funeral expenses out of the land, he don't feel like staying to be buried in it, and he pulls up and goes."

"But people used to get their living expenses here," I suggested. "Why can't they now?"

"Well, they didn't use to have western prices to fight with; and then the land wasn't wornout so, and the taxes were not so heavy. How would you like to pay twenty to thirty dollars on the thousand, and assessed up to the last notch, in the city?"

"Why, what in the world makes your taxes so heavy?"

"Schools and roads. We've got to have schools, and you city folks want good roads when you come