A neighboring farmer came to our house with his little boy, about five years old. I handed the little fellow a penny, and he began to pull his father, who was talking.
“He gives it to you, does he?” I asked.
“Yes, to put into his box. He’s got two full. I’ll have to steal them some day, I guess,” winking at me.
“That’s the way you teach them to save?” said I.
“Yes, keep them till he gets big. Buy a horse and buggy with them, he says.”
Then, with paternal pleasure, “He tells his mother he don’t want no hilly land.” Strange for a family of Swiss descent? Their ancestors had enough hills in Switzerland. How they enjoy this level limestone land!
One of my acquaintances thinks that the reason these people or this class got the rich limestone land was that they were not afraid of the labor of cutting down the heavy timber which grew on it.
I have just told how the little fellow was saving his pennies to “buy a horse and buggy,”—the great pride of our farmer boy’s heart. On a neighboring farm to ours lived the grandfather, who had his own plain carriage, the father with another, and two sons, aged about twenty-one, each with a buggy. This must be the great extravagance of our young farmers now. But having buggies they can take the girls to ride; and they can sometimes take others too. The other day a lad kindly took me up; an Amish boy, in a plain buggy, driving a pretty good horse. As our Amish so often drive in wagons, covered with light-colored oil-cloth, I made some remark about the buggy, and the lad answered that it was his. He is fourteen years old.