A moderate-sized farm, of from 200 to 800 acres, will no more enable the
mistress and the misses to play the fine lady to-day than it would two
generations ago. It requires work now the same as then--steady,
persevering work--and, what is more important, prudence, economy,
parsimony if you like; nor do these necessarily mean the coarse manners of
a former age. Manners may be good, education may be good, the intellect
and even the artistic sense may be cultivated, and yet extravagance
avoided. The proverb is true still: 'You cannot have your hare and cook
him too.' Now so many cook their hares in the present day without even
waiting to catch them first. A euphuism has been invented to cover the
wrongfulness of this system; it is now called 'discounting.' The fine lady
farmers discount their husbands' corn and fat cattle, cheese and butter,
before they reach the market. By-and-by the plough stops in the furrow,
and the team is put up to auction, and farewell is said to the old
homestead for evermore.

There was no warmer welcome to be met with in life than used to be
bestowed upon the fortunate visitor to an old house in the country where
the people were not exactly farmers in the ordinary sense, because they
were sufficiently well off to be independent, and yet made no pretence to
gentility. You dropped in quite unexpectedly and informally after a
pleasant stroll about the fields with a double-barrel, untrammelled by any
attendant. The dogs were all over cleavers sticking to their coats, and
your boots had to be wiped with a wisp of straw; your pocket was heavy
with a couple of rabbits or a hare, and your hands black enough from
powder and handling gates and stiles. But they made you feel immediately
that such trifles were not of the slightest account.

The dogs were allowed to rush in anyhow and set to work to lick their paws