158 



sustained their parents on one side of the house. They have 

 brought up three children ; and, with the co-labor of the chil- 

 dren, they have given them a substantial and useful education, 

 so that each of them, now of sufficient age, is capable of keep- 

 ing a good school, as they have done, with a view to assist their 

 own education. He began with thirty-five acres of land, but 

 has recently added fifty-five more to his farm at an expense of 

 nearly thirteen hundred dollars, for which there remained to be 

 paid five hundred — a debt which, if health continued, he would 

 be able to discharge in two years. The products of his farm 

 are various. He raises some young stock ; he fattens a consider- 

 able amount of pork for market, and occasionally a yoke of cat- 

 tle. He sells, in a neighboring village annually, about one 

 hundred dollars worth of fruit, principally apples and peaches. 

 Such a situation may be considered, in the best sense of the 

 term, as independent as that of any man in the country. 



Now what are the causes of such success ? Persevering in- 

 dustry ; the strictest and most absolute temperance ; the most 

 particular frugality and always turning every thing to the best 

 account ; living within his own resources; and above all things, 

 never in any case suffering himself to contract a debt, except- 

 ing in the purchase of land, which could be made immediately 

 productive, and where of course the perfect security for the 

 debt could neither be used up, nor wasted, nor squandered. 



Example 2. — I met with another example of domestic econ- 

 omy as interesting, but I cannot dwell upon it. The house 

 was filled with beautiful and substantial fabrics, the products 

 of domestic industry ; and the matron of the household, though 

 she had completed her sixty-ninth year, still plied at the wheel 

 and the distatf with all the energy of youth. These are pic- 

 tures of what rural life once was in New England ; but of 

 which, in their original simplicity, instances are more rare than 

 formerly. Such men need have no envy of the city milli- 

 onaires, whose slumbers are often broken in upon by the whis- 

 tling storm which forebodes destruction to their floating barks, 



