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ON THE MISTAKES OF CITIZENS IN COUNTRY LIFE. 



We might throw our views into a more 

 concrete shape, perhaps, by saying that the 

 disappointments in country life arise chiefly 

 from two causes. The first, is from expect- 

 ing too much. The second, from under- 

 taking too much. 



There are, we should judge from obser- 

 vation, many citizens who retire to the 

 country, after ten or twenty years' hard 

 service in the business and society of towns, 

 and who carry with them the most roman- 

 tic ideas of country life. They expect to 

 pass their time in wandering over daisy 

 spangled meadows, and by the side of me- 

 andering streams. They will listen to the 

 singing of birds, and find a perpetual feast 

 of enjoyment in the charm of hills and 

 mountains. Above all, they have an extra- 

 vagant notion of the purity and the simplicity 

 of country life. All its intercourse, as well 

 as all its pleasures, are to be so charmingly 

 pure, pastoral and poetical ! 



What a disappointment, to find that there 

 is prose even in country life, — that mea- 

 dows do not give up their sweet incense, 

 or cornfields wave their rich harvests with- 

 out care, — that "work-folks" are often 

 unfaithful, and oxen stubborn, even an 

 hundred miles from the smoke of towns, 

 or the intrigues of great cities. 



Another, and a large class of those citi- 

 zens, who expect too much in the country, 

 are those who find, to their astonishment, 

 that the country is dull. They really ad- 

 mire nature, and love rural life ; but, though 

 they are ashamed to confess it, they are 

 "•bored to death," and leave the country 

 in despair. 



This is a mistake which grows out of 

 their want of knov/ledge of themselves, 

 and, we may add, of human nature gene- 

 rally. Man is a social, as well as a reflec- 

 tive and devout being. He must have 

 friends to share his pleasiires, to sympa- 



thise in his tastes, to enjoy with him the 

 delights of his home, or these become wea- 

 risome and insipid. Cowper has well ex- 

 pressed the want of this large class, and 

 their suffering, when left wholly to them- 

 selves : — 



•' I praise the Frenchman ; his remark was slirewd, — 

 How sweet, how passing s^veet, is solitude 1 

 Bui give me still a friend, in my retreat, 

 Whom I may whisper — solitude is sweet. '^ 



The mistake made by this class, is that 

 of thinking only of the beauty of the scenery 

 where they propose to reside, and leaving- 

 out of sight the equal charms of good so- 

 ciety. To them, the latter, both by nature 

 and habit, is a necessity, not to be wholly 

 waived for converse of "babbling brooks." 

 And since there are numberless localities 

 where one may choose a residence in a 

 genial and agreeable country neighbor- 

 hood, the remedy for this species of discon- 

 tent is as plain as a pike-staflfl One can 

 scarcely expect friends to follow one into 

 country seclusion, if one will, for the sake 

 of the picturesque, settle on the banks of the 

 Winipissiogee. These latter spots are for 

 poets, artists, naturalists; men, between 

 whom and nature there is an intimacy of 

 a wholly different kind, and who find in the 

 structure of a moss or the flight of a water 

 fowl the text to a whole volume of inspiration. 



The third class of the disappointed, con- 

 sists of those who are astonished at the cost 

 of life in the country. They left town not 

 only for the healthful breezes of the hill- 

 tops, but also to make a small income do 

 the business of a large one. To their 

 great surprise, they find the country dear. 

 Everything they grow on their land costs 

 them as much as Avhen bought, (because 

 they produce it with hired labor ;) and eve- 

 rything they do to improve their estate, 

 calls for a mint of money, because with 

 us labor is always costly. But, in fact, 

 the great secret of the matter is this ; they 



