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no respect, impair their weight and force, might, by an occa- 

 sional playfulness, attract the attention of a class of readers, 

 whose condition may, by these facts, be fixed for life, but who 

 would otherwise be repelled from tables of mere dry details. 

 If, instead of presenting my bundle tied by a coarse birchen 

 withe, I have bound it together with an awkward band of 

 such wild flowers as I could pick up by the road-side, though 

 the correctness of such taste maybe questioned, my motives, by 

 the candid, will not be condemned. I have occasionally inter- 

 woven such moral and religious suggestions as have sprung up 

 in my own full heart in every contemplation of the Divine 

 Goodness, as manifested in the charms of rural scenery and the 

 unmeasured and immeasurable variety and abundance of the 

 products of the earth, for the comfort of man and beast. If 

 ever man should be religious, it is the privileged dweller in the 

 country. If ever the reflecting mind and the feeling soul are 

 called upon to commune with God, it is in the open horizon, 

 from the darting up of the first ray of light on the eastern sky 

 to the soft hour of twilight, when the sun, drawing his golden 

 drapery around him, sinks into his evening's repose ; it is in 

 brushing the dew from verdant meadows enameled with flow- 

 ers, and witnessing the almost visible influences of the refresh- 

 ing and life-giving rain ; it is in watching the ceaseless miracles 

 of vegetable and animal life, from the opening spring to the 

 close of autumn. All is full of God, and every object and 

 occurrence is resplendent with the reflection of his adorable 

 power, wisdom and benevolence. 



" God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ! " She is 

 my parent, and I would honor her with filial reverence. Her 

 children are my own kith and kin, and wherever I meet one of 

 them I shall grasp the hand of a brother. In her pride, I shall 



