IX 



by the Town Collector ; and in a few days afterwards came 

 the Agent for taking the United States census. She imme- 

 diately, on being apprised of the object of his visit, seized the 

 clock, which hung up by the wall, and threw it upon the fire, 

 exclaiming, that it had been already taxed twice, and should 

 not be taxed again ; and when he ventured to ask her the num- 

 ber and ages of her children, she became almost frantic, and 

 the poor things, there was reason to fear, had they not been her 

 children, would have gone where the clock went. Instan- 

 ces, however, of such diseased caution and obtuseness, are 

 rare. In general, his visits have been received with kindness, 

 and with the more kindness as their objects became better un- 

 derstood. To many is he indebted for good deeds ; to many 

 more for good promises, which he has no doubt they intended 

 to fulfil, and which he has as little doubt they have, to his 

 great regret, often failed to fulfil from a mistaken distrust of 

 their ability to communicate what would be valuable. In re- 

 spect to the great majority of the rural population of Massachu- 

 setts, the delightful conviction has been only the more strength- 

 ened as his acquaintance with them became the more extended, 

 that, taken as a whole, it would be difficult to find a more 

 enlightened, more moral, or more favored population. It has 

 been, too, with singular pleasure he has found, as he went 

 on, that the more the disinterested objects of his survey became 

 understood, the more highly were they appreciated, and the 

 more ready became the co-operation of the farmers, upon which 

 its success so much depended. Should it be hereafter renewed, 

 in more competent hands, some great impediments to its suc- 

 cess will, therefore, have been removed. 



The survey being now arrested, and, with the popular and 

 severe notions of public economy prevailing, not likely to be 



B 



