Rufus Blanchard, for many years a leading map publisher of Chicago, told me the other day, that in 1838 he was farming in Union county, Ohio.  That year he grew about 1,000 bushels of oats, some 250 bushels of wheat, and raised 100 hogs.  He sold his oats for eleven cents per bushel, his wheat for twenty-five cents, and his hogs for one cent and a quarter per pound.  He hauled his grain to Columbus, forty miles, to market, and took his pay in salt.  I remarked that this was pretty rough farming.  “On the contrary,” said he, “in those days we were happy as clams.  We had all the pork we wanted without cost, for our hogs fattened themselves on the mast of the woods.  We paid by toll for grinding our wheat into flour.  The woods supplied us with deer, turkeys, and many other kinds of game.  Our clothing was homespun.  We had plenty of corn meal and cheaply grown vegetables, and helped each other in sickness or accident.  If a neighbor’s log house burned down, we all joined together in putting him up a better one than he had before.  We had pretty good schools and interesting religious meetings without expensive pew rents or style in dress.  We visited each other and had plenty of sound amusement.  I never was so happy or so well contented in my life,” he added, and I believe him, for his face is wrinkled with care and saddened by misfortune.  It don’t do, you see, to get too far removed from this simple, natural life.

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I am looking out for a little colder weather.  The pond is not yet frozen sufficiently for us to cut ice as we want it.  But both my neighbor and myself have gotten all things in readiness for the harvest.  I like an open winter pretty well, but I do want ice.

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It seems to me that Dr. Detmers is always going off “half-cocked.”  He once did the foreign cattle shipping interest great harm by an ill-advised and unwarranted dispatch concerning the prevalence of pleuro-pneumonia at the Chicago Stock Yards, and now I notice that his alleged statements regarding diseased hogs and the disposal of them at the same point have furnished the French Corps Legislatif an excuse for enacting the decree prohibiting the introduction of American pork products into France.  Isn’t it about time the Department of Agriculture at Washington sat a little down on this man who writes too much with his pen?  Not that I would silence any man who sticks to facts, no matter whose soap-bubble he pricks; but a simple alarmist who rushes into print mainly for the pleasure it gives him to see his name in print, and to know that he is talked about, deserves to be squelched.  For aught I know, though, Dr. Detmers has been misrepresented by the wily Frenchmen.  What has Dr. Loring to say on the subject?

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