our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but
the savage stands on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex
Cattle Show goes off here with eclat annually, as if all the joints of
the agricultural machine were suent.

The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a
formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his shoestrings
he speculates in herds of cattle. With consummate skill he has set his
trap with a hair spring to catch comfort and independence, and then, as
he turned away, got his own leg into it. This is the reason he is poor;
and for a similar reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand savage
comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. As Chapman sings,

"The false society of men--
--for earthly greatness
All heavenly comforts rarefies to air."

And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the
poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. As I understand
it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which
Minerva made, that she "had not made it movable, by which means a bad
neighborhood might be avoided"; and it may still be urged, for our
houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather
than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own
scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who,
for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in
the outskirts and move into the village, but have not been able to
accomplish it, and only death will set them free.

Granted that the majority are able at last either to own or hire the
modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has been
improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to
inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create
noblemen and kings. And if the civilized man's pursuits are no worthier
than the savage's, if he is employed the greater part of his life in
obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a
better dwelling than the former?

But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found that just in
proportion as some have been placed in outward circumstances above the
savage, others have been degraded below him. The luxury of one class
is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one side is the
palace, on the other are the almshouse and "silen