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The climate of New England, though often abused, is not a bad 

 chmate on the whole. We have long winters and hot summers ; 

 but the air of winter is pure and bracing, and the heat of our short 

 summers is rarely so great as to interrupt labor, or make it dan- 

 gerous to health. Such degree of solar heat as we have in New 

 England, is not only not injurious to health, but I beheve benefi- 

 cial to it. When we are summing up the good and the bad of our 

 climate, we must bear it in mind that it is to the heat of our sum- 

 mers we owe the variety and fine flavor of our fruits, in which we 

 excel the English as much as they excel us in scientific farming. 

 From the heat of our summers, too, comes our Indian corn, by far 

 the most important agricultural production of this country ; the 

 value of which slightly exceeds the aggregate of the three great 

 staples of wheat, cotton, and hay. 



The climate of New England, though often disrespectfully spo- 

 ken of, is not unfavorable to health and longevity in those who, in 

 their way of living, observe the laws and conditions of health. We 

 are apt to make the climate a sort of scape-goat for sins which 

 really lie at our own door. The general standard of health here 

 is not so high as it might be, and ought to be ; but this is not the 

 chmate's fault. Nor is it because we work too hard. Men do 

 not work any harder here than they do in Great Britain, either 

 in the learned professions, or the active employments of business. 

 The truth is that men never are killed by work, but they are 

 sometimes by worry. In New England there are many men and 

 many women whose lives are shortened, and whose vital force is 

 diminished while they do live, by moral causes ; by the corrosion 

 of disappointed aspirations, by the failure of unreasonable and fan- 

 tastic hopes, by the shrinking of ill woven ambitions, by feverish 

 longings for those glittering prizes of life which very few can hope 

 to win, and by a rebellious chafing against the will of God, when 

 their lot is poverty, obscurity, and failure. And there is another 

 source of ill health in New England, which stands at a point in 

 the circle of humanity directly opposite to that which I have just 

 been considering, and that is the prevalence of bad cookery, and 

 the amount of unwholesome food which is consequently consumed. 

 It is doubtless mortifying to the pride of humanity to be obliged 

 to confess that the grandest energies of the will, and the finest op- 

 erations of the understanding, are dependent upon the way in 



