There must be no vagrants,
not even in the forest, the once free and merry greenwood, our
policeman-civilization says; nay, the forest, even, must keep a-moving!
We must have farms here, and happy homesteads, and orchards heavy with
promise of cider, and wheat golden as hope, instead of silent aisles and
avenues of mournful pine-trees, sheltering such forlorn miscreations as
our poor cranberry-stealing friends! Railways are piercing the Pines;
surveyors are marking them out in imaginary squares; market-gardeners
are engaging land; and farmers are clearing it. The Rat is driven from
point to point, from one means of subsistence to another; and shortly,
he will have to make the bitter choice between regulated labor and
starvation clean off from the face of the earth. There is no room for
a gypsy in all our wide America! The Rat must follow the Indian,--must
fade like breath from a window-pane in winter!
In fact, the forest, left so long in its aboriginal savagery, is about
to be regenerated. A railroad is to be constructed, this year, which
will place Hanover and the centre of the forest within one hour's travel
of Philadelphia; and it is scarcely too much to anticipate, that, within
five years, thousands of acres, now dense with pines and cedars of a
hundred rings, will be laid out in blooming market-gardens and in fields
of generous corn.
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