"Mother's been
reading up all she can about it. She'll want to talk with you, and she
won't give the rest of us much of a chance, I guess."
"Oh, I shall be glad to see her," said the Altrurian, "and to tell her
everything I can. But won't you explain to me first something about your
deserted farms here? It's quite a new thing to me."
"It isn't a new thing to us," said the young fellow, with a short laugh.
"And there isn't much to explain about it. You'll see them all through New
England. When a man finds he can't get his funeral expenses out of the
land, he don't feel like staying to be buried in it, and he pulls up and
goes."
"But people used to get their living expenses here," I suggested. "Why
can't they now?"
"Well, they didn't use to have Western prices to fight with; and then the
land wasn't worn out so, and the taxes were not so heavy. How would you
like to pay twenty to thirty dollars on the thousand, and assessed up to
the last notch, in the city?"
"Why, what in the world makes your taxes so heavy?"
"Schools and roads. We've got to have schools, and you city folks want
good roads when you come here in the summer, don't you? Then the season is
short, and sometimes we can't make a crop.
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