Summing up, however, the pleasing and unpleasing which I have touched upon, we see that the pleasing and beautiful exceeds the unsightly and ugly. I am indulging the hope that some day, in the near future, a way will be found by which we may enjoy all the best facilities of communication and transportation without having the landscape marred by unsightly poles or ugly railroad sheds. The sensibilities of many of our citizens have been wounded by the act of some individual or company, who, vandal-like, has removed a time-honored familiar forest, or erected a most surpassingly ugly house, barn or warehouse. These marrings of our horizon make life for all more circumscribed, as well as grieve the souls of the cultured. As we love our glorious country, let us beautify and preserve it. CHAPTER XV. Getting hold of an Ontario farm--How a man without a capital may succeed--Superiority of farming to a mechanical trade--A man with $10,000 can have more enjoyment in Ontario than anywhere else--Comparison with other countries--Small amount of waste land in Ontario--The help of the farmer’s wife--“Where are your peasants?”--Independence of the Ontario farmer--Complaints of emigrants unfounded--An example of success. It was far more difficult for our early settlers in Ontario to pay for their lands by their own exertions, even at the low prices then prevailing, than it is to-day at their greatly increased values. When Ontario lands could be purchased for $4.00 or $5.00 per acre, there was no market for their produce to any extent, and money was extremely difficult to get. Not only the absence of markets was against our settlers, but though they owned a farm it was wholly unproductive and useless until cleared of timber. So it was harder to pay the $4.00 per acre then than it is to pay $80 per acre to-day. A man without capital to-day in Ontario can start on a 100-acre farm, and pay for it off the farm in a series of years, by his own and his wife’s exertions. Of course, he will need a little more to start with in the first instance than his forefathers did, for he must needs make a small payment down in order that he may mortgage the farm to get the balance of the purchase money. Since money is now being loaned on farm security at five and six per cent., he can yearly more than pay his interest and reduce his principal, so that his burdens are daily becoming lighter. His wife and himself pulling together and practising economy invariably succeed on productive farms, and pay for them. We sometimes wonder at our forefathers that they did not take up more land when it was so cheap, but forget that even its cheapness, as it seems to us to-day, was no guide to them as to its being cheap. Grain in early times did not bring money, when these prices prevailed, nor would timber. Furs and potash were the only commodities commanding cash. Hence it was almost an