136 IValks in New England 



hills, where a shop, making churns, or drums, or 

 tool-handles, or cheese-boxes, or axes, or cloth, 

 or yarn, centered the activities of a community 

 to which the surrounding farmers contributed 

 their custom and whence they shipped their prod 

 uce. Those which still exist are not what they 

 were, yet they still add to the pleasure of a country 

 life. The mail comes in twice a day in the sum 

 mer, once a day in the winter ; there is enough to 

 draw thither the farmers to swap stories at the 

 village store ; and such a village is one of the 

 centers of the world. For the newspaper comes 

 there, and all of the people get the news, although 

 not all of them buy the newspapers. 



But why do we linger in the world in this 

 way ? It is now as it was when Wordsworth 

 wrote : 



&quot; The world is too much with us : late and soon, 

 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 

 Little we see in Nature that is ours ; 

 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 

 The sea that bares her bosom to the moon, 

 The winds that will be howling at all hours, 

 And are up-gathered now, like sleeping flowers, 

 For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; 

 It moves us not. Great God ! I d rather be 

 A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn, 

 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 



