But the tenant farmer's wife who made the butter and cheese, and even
helped to salt bacon, where is she now? Where are the healthy daughters
that used to assist her? The wife is a fine lady--not, indeed, with
carriage and pair, but with a dandy dog-cart at least; not with
three-guinea bonnets, but with a costly sealskin jacket. There are kid
gloves on her hands; there is a suspicion of perfume about her; there is a
rustling of silk and satin, and a waving of ostrich feathers. The daughter
is pale and interesting, and interprets Beethoven, and paints the old
mill; while a skilled person, hired at a high price, rules in the dairy.
The son rides a-hunting, and is glib on the odds. The 'offices'--such it
is the fashion to call the places in which work was formerly done--are
carefully kept in the background. The violets and snowdrops and crocuses
are rooted up, all the sweet and tender old flowers ruthlessly eradicated,
to make way for a blazing parterre after the manner of the suburban
villa--gay in the summer, in the spring a wilderness of clay, in the
autumn a howling desert of musty evergreens..

The 'civilisation' of the town has, in fact, gone out and taken root
afresh in the country. There is no reason why the farmer should not be
educated; there is no reason why his wife should not wear a sealskin
jacket, or the daughter interpret Beethoven. But the question arises, Has
not some of the old stubborn spirit of earnest work and careful prudence
gone with the advent of the piano and the oil painting? While wearing the
dress of a lady, the wife cannot tuck up her sleeves and see to the
butter, or even feed the poultry, which are down at the pen across 'a
nasty dirty field.' It is easy to say that farming is gone to the dogs,
that corn is low, and stock uncertain, and rents high, and so forth. All
that is true, but difficulties are nothing new; nor must too much be
expected from the land.