SOLON ROBINSON, 1845 519 



to tell you that you must leave the piano. Yes, you won't 

 need it. True it cost $150 or perhaps $300, money fool- 

 ishly laid out, too, on account in part for which "that 

 mortgage" was given, and it will now only bring half 

 the money; but that will buy 120 acres of the richest 

 kind of the western soil. You don't know how much an 

 elegant piece of furniture of this kind looks out of place 

 in a log cabin. I do. During my travels last winter, I 

 came upon a lonely cabin all unadorned by plant or shrub, 

 and against the rough black logs, and upon the rough 

 puncheon floor, stood a costly piano. The wife had been 

 raised in luxury, fitted for life with a finished education, 

 which naturally unfitted her now, without servants to 

 take care of her humble house and growing family. 

 And what use had she for a piano? None whatever. 

 But before marriage it had been her dearest friend, and 

 now her parents, thinking to make her a most acceptable 

 present, had sent her this old friend (dear at the cost of 

 freight), soon to be ruined under its rough shelter. Half 

 its cost in necessary and useful articles, would have been 

 far more valuable. I now speak to the farmers who ex- 

 pect and intend to occupy a log cabin in the West. In 

 preparing then to emigrate, dispose of all costly, easily 

 damaged articles of furniture. Take no tables, chairs, 

 bedsteads, sofas, bureaus, except, perhaps, one very plain 

 one, well packed, for upon all such articles you will have 

 to pay freight by the pound. Sell the china and cut 

 glass, and pack up only what you now call the kitchen, 

 table, and cooking furniture. Don't take, to break, those 

 great gilt looking glasses ; cheaper ones will look as well, 

 in which you will look as well as in better. — A rag carpet 

 must be substituted for those for which "that mortgage" 

 was given. Yes, certainly, the book-case must go, and 

 let it be well filled and don't forget to leave the needful 

 with the printer to induce him to continue to send "the 

 paper" to your new home in the west. — Beds and bedding 

 carefully packed in tight boxes or barrels, and in the 

 proper way, and let every article be put up and plainly 



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