rings, no kid gloves.
The boots are strong and thick, substantial, but not ornamental. A man
with his ten or fifteen thousand perhaps will walk down the street
buttoned up in an ungainly greatcoat and an old hat, not half so smartly
dressed as a well-paid mechanic, and far behind the drapers' assistants
in style. There is a species of contempt among them for the meretricious
and showy; they believe in the solid. This very fact makes them good
friends to shopkeepers, who have no better customers. They carry this
leading idea too far, for they admire an article in precisely a
corresponding ratio to the money it costs, totally oblivious of all
considerations of art or ornament. The first question invariably is, if
they are asked to admire anything, "What did it cost?" This results in a
heavy and cumbrous style of furniture even in the best farmsteads.
Everything must be massive, costly, and strong. Artistic tendencies they
have none. They want something durable, and they get it. But on the
whole they make marvellously little show for their money. Hundreds of
the most substantial agriculturists, whose cheques would be honoured for
thousands of pounds, seem absolutely to make no show at all. At the
same time it is quite true that some of the rising generation, who have
very little to do it on, make a great display with hunters and plated
harness, and so forth. But they are not the rule. The generality go just
the other way, and live below their income, and take a lower station in
society than they might reasonably claim.

Farmers are decidedly a marrying class of men. The farm is a business in
which a wife is of material service, and can really be a helpmate. The
lower class of farmers usually marry quite as much or more for that
reason than any others. The higher classes of agriculturists feel that
they have a right to marry because they too can show a home in which to
keep a wife. Though they may not have any large amount of capital, still
they possess a good house and sufficient provision. They are, therefore,
a marrying class of men, but do not commonly contract matrimonial
alliances very early in life. The great object of an agriculturist who
has sons is to get them settled in farms, and it is astonishing to what
an extent this is carried by men who do not seem to have much capital to
start their children with. Instances are common in which a man has
three or four sons all in farms, and doing fairly well. One of the
gre