“His genial face, his engaging manners, his hearty laugh, the twinkle in his eye, the sincerity with which he asked after the health of the carpenter’s daughter, the interest he took in the family of the poorest laborer, the good nature with which he stopped to chat with the farm hands about the prospect of the corn crops and the turnip crops, made him the favorite for miles around. When he rode out he knew the names and personal history of the occupants of every house he passed. The farmers’ lads pulled off their hats, and the girls dropped courtesies to him. Sunshine and rain, daylight and darkness were alike to him. He would ride ten miles on the darkest night, over the worst roads, in a pelting storm, to administer a dose of calomel to an old woman, or to attend a child in a fit. He was present at every birth; he attended every burial; he sat with the minister at every death-bed, and put his name with the lawyer to every will.” From the consideration of these vanishing or vanished types, a single illustration of which alone was usually to be found in any ordinary village, we turn now to a class that then, as their successors do now, made up the predominant element in every section—the “Country Farmer”—and I mean the country farmer of fifty years ago. The farmer of to-day is a man who lives in a comfortable, perhaps handsome house, whose parlor is carpeted and is graced with a piano, whose acres are mowed or reaped by the horse-power machine, and grain threshed by steam, who drives in a good carriage, and his son has a top buggy of his own; whose wife wears silk, and his daughters spend their winters in the city. He wears handsome clothes, takes one or two agricultural papers, keeps fancy stock, Jerseys and Hollands, and occasionally furnishes articles to the press on “Creameries” and “Ensilage.” Not such was the typical farmer of a generation or two ago—a man whose comforts were fewer and helps much less, and also a man of stronger traits of character, more decided convictions, harder working, and probably in proportion fully as successful in accumulating the profits of careful industry. One such I have in mind, an example of the best of his class. He was a large man, well built, tall and muscular. He had been educated at the common district school of the vicinity, had succeeded his father in ownership of the farm, had married early, and became in time the head of a large family. No chance visitor ever spent the night at the house without being taken out into the kitchen and shown the long line of boots, seven pairs arranged in a regularly diminishing row, and all ready for the morning.