NEW ENGLAND HO^IE-LIFE. 63 



ters, the apple-tree bends beneath its burden, and the stacks 

 are heavy with the choicest grain. So much must be said of 

 Mormon industry without indorsing the mode of life among 

 them. 



All this shows that we have but to eliminate from our midst 

 the drones, — those who do not produce, — to have all that this 

 physical Ufe demands. The sage-brush of Utah has given 

 place to gardens which show that it is labor that wi'ings from the 

 hardest soil an abundance for the physical wants of the race, 

 until our numbers have increased a thousand-fold. But in the 

 midst of the plenty which I have described, the product of 

 the wisely-directed industry of every man and woman capable 

 of labor, there is another picture. The mountains are filled 

 with minerals, and adventurers have gathered there from 

 every quarter, — men who are determined to do no work, but 

 to live by fraud, — by fighting and by cheating, and by vio- 

 lence^ in every form. Whiskey and tobacco are the substan- 

 tials of their physical life, — honest food an accidental thing, 

 — and a home an unknown thing. A rough cabin covers them 

 in the mountains, and an unknown grave is their resting-place 

 when the pistol or bowie-knife or whiskey has done its work. 

 My sojourn in such a place brought New England before me 

 in contrast with the country in which I then was, in contrast 

 with the mountains and the plains, and in contrast with all 

 the countries I had visited. 



What has New England that the thoughts of her children 

 should turn so fondly to her ? What does she lack that she 

 should be the best-abused spot on our continent, if not upon 

 our globe? What does she lack that her children are so 

 ready to scatter from the old homesteads for new home's that 

 can never equal those which they leave behind ? When we 

 see the numbers of New Englanders in every part of the coun- 

 try, we wonder that there are enough left to keep the fires 

 burning on the old hearthstones ; and when we see the spots 

 they have chosen and contrast them with the loveliness of a 

 New England home, we wonder at the infatuation that led 

 them away, and still holds them, even while they remember 

 their birthplace with love and pride. Just before leaving 

 Utah I was invited to eat a dinner of codfish and pork-scraps, 

 because I was from New England. And when we four peo- 



