Abandoning An Adopted Farm

listening with reverence and delight to Mrs. Howe, Mr. Higginson, and a brilliant circle of celebrities ; to-day plowing through two feet of snow, with only dogs for companions. This alternation of urban privileges and rural delights makes a perfect combination. In my young days Boston to me meant all that was best in life. College professors in a fresh-water college had but starvation salaries. How did they manage to live comfortably on fifteen hundred dollars a year, entertaining willingly and generously the anxious parent of wild students, ministers who exchanged, agents for various societies, commencement orators, stray missionaries, give class parties, supply themselves with needed books, educate their families ? One of the trustees had but three hundred dollars per year as a pastor ; yet he lived well, kept horse and cow, and educated three children. Of course, they could not afford to travel much. I remember one professor saying of an associate instructor: "John needs to travel to rub off sharp corners and broaden his views. If he could only get to White River Junction, or possibly as far as Thet- ford, it would be an immense advantage." But those same professors, overworked, underpaid, restricted by narrow incomes and narrower codes of life, were scholars and heroes, and knew how to make men out of the rough, gawky material sent from the even poorer families in New Hampshire and Vermont. It has been the poor boys that have been heard from. D...