For the family inclined to delve in the soil, a definite saving can be accomplished by tending a vegetable garden, raising small fruits and berries, and even maintaining a hen roost.  Some people (I would I could honestly include myself) have a gift for making things grow and getting crops that are worth the work that has gone into them.  Likewise there is such a thing as possessing a knack with that unresponsive and perverse creature, the hen.  Possibly good gardening and an egg-producing hen-yard are the result of willingness to take infinite pains but, out of my disappointments and half successes, I am more inclined to hold that it is luck and predestination.  So, I have reduced agricultural activities sharply, but I do know families where each fall finds cellar shelves groaning under cans of fruits and vegetables, products of the garden, and foretelling distinct economies in purchases of canned goods or fresh vegetables.

One of the largest single savings that country life makes possible is elimination of private school tuition.  Theoretically city public schools are good enough for anybody’s children.  Actually most good neighborhoods have an undesirable slum just around the corner and the public school is for the children of both.  So, many city-dwelling families, not from snobbishness but because they do not want their young hopefuls to acquire slum manners and traits, dig deep into their bank accounts and send their children to private schools.

Seldom is this necessary in the country, especially if the educational system is investigated beforehand.  Instead, the children start in a good consolidated graded school, proceed through the local high school, and are prepared for college with all the cost of tuition included in the tax bill that must be paid anyway.  The children are none the worse for this less guarded education.  They are, in fact, benefited for they have a democratic background that makes later life easier.

Besides these creature comforts and financial gains, there are the intangibles.  Chief of these is that indescribable something, country peace.  All the family responds to it.  It is impossible to maintain the highly-keyed, nervous tension that characterizes city life when the domestic scene is surrounded by open fields or an occasional bit of woodland.  The placid calm soothes frayed nerves and works wonders in restoring balance and perspective toward family and business problems.  The harassed come to realize the inner truth of “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.”

Along with this, the family transplanted from the city gradually comes to know the genuine joys of much simpler pleasures.  Separated from the professional recreations that beckon so engagingly in cities and the larger towns, adults and children alike develop resources within themselves.  They learn that they can be just as contented with homely enjoyments as they ever were when they sat passively and were