XL] CONCLUSION. 



will cheerfLilly assist in this way, who would 

 sneak a mile in another direction rather than be 

 squatted down singly, or even in company, to 

 husking corn if you were called to work. Labour 

 is pain ; and nobody likes pain ; and this is suf- 

 ficient to say upon the subject. So well is this 

 philosophy understood in America, that there 

 they give the name of frolic to a great many 

 things, which we call work : the putting together 

 of the frame of a roof of a house or barn, they 

 call a raising frolic. Wherever a considerable 

 number of persons are wanted to be working 

 together at the same thing, they call the aii^iir 

 a froHc. The getting together of stones or 

 rocks, as they call them, to make the foundation 

 of a barn or a house, they call a rock frolic ; 

 and you will sometimes see forty or fifty vvagons 

 and pairs of oxen or horses coming from all 

 parts of the neighbourhood, each bringing a 

 load of stones or rocks. This is, I may say, 

 always done, in case of a house building for a 

 new-married couple, especially if they be poor. 

 Some bring rocks, some lime, some sand, others 

 boards, others timbers, others sliingles and 

 laths, while others are at work digging out the 

 foundation, building the walls, preparing the 

 frame ; and, in short, here is a house built in a 

 twinkling, and the owner of it, very frequently, 

 has it, without the cost to himself of any thing 



N 



