8 



the hardest soil an abundance for the physical wants of the race, until our 

 numbers have increased a thousand fold. But in the midst of the plenty, which 

 I have described, the product of the wisely directed industry of every man and 

 woman capable of labor, there is another picture. The mountains are filled 

 with minerals, and adventurers have gathered there from every quarter — men 

 who are determined to do no work, but to live by fraud — by fighting and by 

 cheating, and by violence in every form. Whiskey and tobacco are the sub- 

 stantial of their physical life — honest food an accidental thing — and a home an 

 unknown thing. A rough cabin covers them in the mountains, and an unknown 

 grave is their resting place when the pistol or bowie knife or whiskey has done 

 its work. My sojourn in such a place brought New England before me in 

 contrast with the country in which I then was, in contrast with the mountains 

 and the plains, and in contrast with all the countries I had visited. 



What has New England that the thoughts of her children should turn so 

 fondly to her ? What does she lack that she should be the best abused spot on 

 our continent, if not upon our globe ? What does she lack that her children 

 are so ready to scatter from the old homesteads for new homes that can never 

 equal those which they leave behind ? When we see the numbers of New Eng- 

 enders in every part of the country we wonder that there are enough left to 

 keep the fires burning on the old hearthstones, and when we see the spots they 

 have chosen and contrast them with the loveliness of a New England home, we 

 wonder at the infatuation that led them away, and still holds them, even while 

 they remember their birth-place with love and pride. Just before leaving 

 Utah I was invited to eat a dinner of codfish and pork scraps, because I was 

 from New England. And when we four people gathered around the table, we 

 found that we were all natives of Maine. The host acknowledged that New 

 England was the best place in the world for the comforts of life, and yet he 

 could not be contented when he returned there. Why ? Because he had that 

 v iru8 in his veins — that, being a mere taint when it impelled him to leave home, 

 is now the fever that rages through every vein, and will give him no rest but in 

 places of rapid change. 



" So, when a raging fever burns, 



We change from side to side by turns ; 



And 'tis a poor relief we gain 



To change the place, but not the pain." 

 The whiskey drinker, whose throat has become parched with the poison, and 

 whose veins are filled with its fire, has no taste for the clear water in which is 

 his only hope ; but he pours down larger draughts of the exciting stimulant. 

 So it is with those who live in the midst of a changing population — in the 

 excitement of a new country. Some long for the quiet which they have left, 

 which they can never again enjoy, and others rail at the stupidity of those who 

 remain at home, when the excitements of the whole western world is open for 

 their choosing. 



We can omit for a single day the discussion of methods for raising crops and 

 fertilizing land to enquire how the New England home can be preserved and 

 rendered more beautiful and attractive than it is. We may go the world over 



