Bad habits endured after the prosperity had departed; and in some cases those who had once owned their farms as well as occupied them had to quit the homes of their forefathers.

Here and there one, however, laid the foundation of a fortune, as fortunes are understood in the country; and shrewd old Jonathan was one of these.
Even down to very recent days a spell of drinking--simple drinking--was the staple amusement of many an otherwise respectable farmer.

Not many years since it was not unusual for some well-to-do farmer of the old school to ride off on his nag, and not be heard of for a week, till he was discovered at a distant roadside inn, where he had spent the interval in straightforward drinking.

These habits are now happily extinct.

It was in those old times that wheat was bought and hoarded with the express object of raising the price to famine pitch: a thing then sometimes practicable, though not always successful.