Nor is this the story of Massachusetts alone, nor of the tide-flats alone. It is the story of the whole of New England, inland as well as coast. The New England farm was cleared, worked, exhausted, and abandoned. The farmer was as exhausted as his farm, and preferring the hazard of new fortunes to the certain tragedy of the old, went West. But that tale is told. The tide from New England to the West is at slack ebb. There is still a stream flowing out into the extreme West; rising in the Middle Western States, however, not in the East. The present New England farmers are staying on their farms, except where the city buyer wants an abandoned farm, and insists upon its being abandoned at any price. So will the clammer stay on his shore acres, for his clams shall no more run out, causing him to turn cod-fisher, or cranberry-picker, or to make worse shift. The New England clam-digger of to-day shall be a clam-farmer a dozen years hence; and his exhausted acres along shore, planted, cultivated, and protected by law, shall yield him a good living. A living for him and clams for us; and not the long-neck clams of the Providence River and Duxbury flats only: they shall yield also the little-neck clams and the quahaug, the scallop, too, the oyster, and, from farther off shore, the green-clawed lobster in abundance, and of a length the law allows. Our children’s children may run short of coal and kerosene; but they need never want for clams. We are going to try to save them some coal, for there are mighty bins of it still in the earth, while here, besides, are the peat-bogs--bunkers of fuel beyond the fires of our imaginations to burn up. We may, who knows? save them a little kerosene. No one has measured the capacity of the tank; it has been tapped only here and there; the plant that manufactured it, moreover, is still in operation, and is doubtless making more. But whether so or not, we still may trust in future oil, for the saving spirit of our new movement watches the pipes that carry it to our cans. There is no brand of economy known to us at present that is more assuring than our kerosene economy. The Standard Oil Company, begotten by Destiny, it would seem, as distributor of oil, is not one to burn even its paraffine candles at both ends. There was, perhaps, a wise and beneficent Providence in its organization, that we might have five gallons for fifty-five cents for our children’s sake--a price to preserve the precious fluid for the lamps of coming generations.