VISITORS. 
161 
asked him if he did not want the world to be changed; 
but he answered with a chuckle of surprise in his Cana¬ 
dian accent, not knowing that the question had ever 
been entertained before, 66 No, I like it well enough.” 
It would have suggested many things to a philoso¬ 
pher to have dealings with him. To a stranger he ap¬ 
peared to know nothing of things in general; yet I some¬ 
times saw in him a man whom I had not seen before, 
and I did not know whether he was as wise as Shak- 
speare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to sus¬ 
pect him of a fine poetic consciousness or of stupidity. 
A townsman told me that when he met him sauntering 
through the village in his small close-fitting cap, and 
whistling to himself, he reminded him of a prince in 
disguise. 
His only books were an almanac and an arithmetic, 
in which last he was considerably expert. The former 
was a sort of cyclopaedia to him, which he supposed to 
contain an abstract of human knowledge, as indeed it 
does to a considerable extent. I loved to sound him on 
the various reforms of the day, and he never failed to 
look at them in the most simple and practical light. He 
had never heard of such things before. Could he do 
without factories? I asked. He had worn the home¬ 
made Vermont gray, he said, and that was good. Could 
he dispense with tea and coffee ? Did this country afford 
any beverage beside water ? He had soaked hemlock 
leaves in water and drank it, and thought that was bet¬ 
ter than water in warm weather. When I asked him 
if he could do without money, he showed the con¬ 
venience of money in such a way as to suggest and 
coincide with the most philosophical accounts of the 
origin of this institution, and the very derivation of the 
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