124 FROM A NEW ENGLAND HILLSIDE. 



attached to the soil, but are incessantly 

 tearing them up and breaking off all the 

 delicate fibres through which they should 

 drink in the life needed to sustain us for 

 fine social uses. We not only have no 

 continuing city&quot; here, which would not 

 be so bad, since we have no city which as a 

 whole is yet worthy of continuance, but 

 we have no continuing country, either. 

 We are like the people at Mt. Desert ; 

 some of us are cottagers, and some of us 

 are boarders, and some of us are hauled 

 inealers, and some are only mealers. 



Perhaps this is the most inappropriate 

 place in the country in which to indulge 

 such reflections, for in this village there is 

 a certain permanence, and one finds around 

 him owners of one or other of nearly all 

 the names which appear upon the records 

 of two hundred and fifty years ago. This 

 is one of the great attractions of the village, 

 and it is much to be hoped that if it should 

 gradually lose this distinction of permanence 

 it will only be through the increase in that 

 quality on the part of other localities. For 

 I am persuaded, not that immovability is a 

 supreme virtue, but that a vital attachment 

 between a family and its environment is a 

 good thing. And this refers both to the 



