city rapidly uses men up; families run out, man becomes
sophisticated and feeble. A fresh stream of humanity is always
setting from the country into the city; a stream not so fresh flows
back again into the country, a stream for the most part of jaded and
pale humanity. It is arterial blood when it flows in, and venous
blood when it comes back.

A nation always begins to rot first in its great cities, is indeed
perhaps always rotting there, and is saved only by the antiseptic
virtues of fresh supplies of country blood.

* * * * *

But it is not of country life in general that I am to speak, but of
some phases of farm life, and of farm life in my native State.

Many of the early settlers of New York were from New England,
Connecticut perhaps sending out the most. My own ancestors were from
the latter State. The Connecticut emigrant usually made his first
stop in our river counties, Putnam, Dutchess, or Columbia. If he
failed to find his place there, he made another flight to Orange, to
Delaware, or to Schoharie County, where he generally stuck. But the
State early had one element introduced into its rural and farm life
not found farther east, namely, the Holland Dutch. These gave
features more or less picturesque to the country that are not
observable in New England. The Dutch took root at various points
along the Hudson, and about Albany and in the Mohawk valley, and
remnants of their rural and domestic architecture may still be seen
in these sections of the State. A Dutch barn became proverbial. "As
broad as a Dutch barn" was a phrase that, when applied to the person