Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1910 — FINDING A COUNTRY HOME. [ARTICLE]

FINDING A COUNTRY HOME.

Some ot the Mistakes Which Mast Be Gnarded Against by Novice. It is easy to prove that an income df H,OOO in the country is worth $2,000 in the city, and that the difference is saved in the cost of living and in the fact ‘ that the home helps to support Itself. On the other hand, there are vexations, disadvantages and .even hardships Incident to rural life, and they cannot fairly be passed by, says Ralph D. Paine in Collier’s. Money is bound to be wasted in experiments, in bungling methods, and in learning how to do things right. The utmost vigilance la required to avoid spending what is saved on the one hand by going ahead too fast with improvements on the other. A dozen temptations to put more money into the place lie in ambush at every turn. Economy is fully as difficult as in the city. Isolation, lack of congenial society, and, maddening inability to find efficient servants —in fact, any kind at all —are Insistent factors of the problem. The Initial outlay is likely to be no more than half the ultimate cost. Tools' and equipment pile up bills to dismay the novice. Labor is lazy and untrustworthy. If there are children, and there ought to be children in every country home, their education must be considered. It still remains true, however, that to find and ' own and improve one’s own farm, however small and humble, is an achievement worth fighting for, whether it be for an all-the-year-home or not And few there be who have won this fight that would willingly return to the fiat in the city or the hired house in the suburbs with its fifty-foot

fNnUga of laws. Ths ownsrshlp of land, aad plenty of It, creates a spirit of independence. It was ths "embattled farmers" who drove back the red-, coats from the redoubt on Bunker Hill. To-day the foreign immigrant is populating the abandoned farms of the Eastern States and gaining prosperity for himself and his children. The man who is tied to the city by his business or profession, yet who genuinely desires for himself and his family the peculiar kind of contentment, health and. self-reliance that are bred of country life, has the solution of the problem in his own hands. Let him first choose the region in which he wishes to live. Then let him lease a farm for a year, spend as much time on it as he can afford and learn all he can about making It productive. If he takes kindly to the experiment, let him go in quest of g farm of his own, buy it (and farms are sold on uncommonly easy terms of payment) and make up his mind to retire to it whenever circumstances will permit. Owning a country home is not a speculation. It is one of the soundest and sanest Investments in the world.