eir houses, at last emptied, and
vow a vow that never again will they take "city folks to board." But the
great law of supply and demand is too strong for them. The city must come
out of itself for a few weeks, and get oxygen for its lungs, sunlight for
its eyes, and rest for its overworked brain. The country must open its
arms, whether it will or not, and share its blessings. And so the summers
and the summerings go on, and there are always to be heard in the land the
voices of murmuring boarders, and of landlords deprecating, vindicating.
We confess that our sympathies are with the landlords. The average country
landlord is an honest, well-meaning man, whose idea of the profit to be
made "off boarders" is so moderate and simple that the keepers of city
boarding-houses would laugh it and him to scorn. If this were not so,
would he be found undertaking to lodge and feed people for one dollar or a
dollar and a half a day? Neither does he dream of asking them, even at
this low price, to fare as he fares. The "Excelsior" mattresses, at which
they cry out in disgust, are beds of down in comparison with the straw
"tick" on which he and his wife sleep soundly and contentedly. He has paid
$4.50 for each mattress, as a special concession to what he understands
city prejudice to require. The cheap painted chamber-sets are holiday
adorning by the side of the cherry and pine in the bedrooms of his family.
He buys fresh meat every day for dinner; and nobody can understand the
importance of this fact who is not familiar with the habit of salt-pork
and codfish in our rural districts. That the meat is tough, pale, stringy
is not his fault; no other is to be bought. Stetson, himself, if he dealt
with this country butcher, could do no better. Vegetables? Yes, he has
planted them. If we look out of our windows, we can see them on their
winding way. They will be ripe by and by. He never tasted peas in his life
before the Fourth of July, or cucumbers before the middle of August. He
hears that there are such things; but he thinks they must be "dreadful
unhealthy, them things forced out of season,"--and, whether healthy or
not, he can't get them. We couldn't ourselves, if we were keeping house in
the same township. To be sure, we might send to the cities for them, and
be served with such as were wilted to begin with, and would arrive utterly
unfit to be eaten at end of their day's journey, costing double their
market price in the added express