36 LIBERTY AND A LIVING. 



store, where we stopped for the mail, there are 

 reports of ducks in plenty. A man with a good 

 gun ought not to starve around here. Two of 

 the children fell asleep at dinner, and, after a 

 little music, we decided to go to bed, omitting 

 the usual literary exercises, and rejecting A.'s 

 proposition to read a chapter on mental lazi- 

 ness. The dinner enlivened by a heated dis- 

 cussion over the " good gray poet," now 

 reported to be very low in health. 



I do not know whether this little extract 

 from my diary gives a picture which impresses 

 the casual reader as pleasant or the reverse. 

 Not once during such a week had I to discuss 

 unpleasant matters, or distressingly common- 

 place matters with unpleasant or commonplace 

 people. I had earned enough money by writ- 

 ing to more than pay the modest cost of this 

 life. Every thing but the groceries and the 

 little meat required we had supplied ourselves 

 the vegetables, the eggs, the chickens, the 

 oysters, the crabs, the honey, and the apples 

 the last stolen. No doubt chopping down 

 wood, although an occupation much affected 

 by a famous Englishman perhaps the most 

 famous Englishman of this age, might appeal 

 to some of us, owing to the idiotic Anglomania 



