University of Virginia Library

48. CHAPTER XLVIII.

It can hardly be necessary for me to confess
that it is not among our privileges to dip daily in
the ever-welling stream of current literature, and so
brighten our dusty notions. New books seldom
find their way into these shades. It must have
required no great penetration to discover that our
round is very limited; and for my own part I am
rather disposed to boast of this as one of our advantages.
We claim to be deeper read than our
neighbors. We have time to get the very marrow
out of one book before we are tempted with another.
We do not practise skimming, or finger
reading. We begin at the title-page and end at
“finis,” omitting not a word between; and then
begin at “finis” and go back again; and then begin
in the middle and read both ways. At least such
is my own practice, though I sometimes reverse
the mere order of the process, for which I quote no

less authority than that of Dr. Johnson himself.
If the “man of one book” is to be shunned as an
antagonist, I hope the woman of one or two books
may come in for at least a woman's share of the
respect due to intense concentration of ideas.

Some two or three years ago, a kind friend of
those left behind in the world sent us Lockhart's
Life of Scott, then newly out; a particularly delightful
book both as to quality and quantity; a
literary pièce de resistance,—truly a “cut and
come again.” Upon this reservoir of good things
did I fasten with all the eagerness of famine, and
before I felt at all satisfied I found I had read it till
not a page in the whole seven volumes but was
perfectly familiar to me. It is a melancholy book
—most melancholy;—Moore's Life of Byron
scarcely more so;—but it is so rich, so vivid, so
touching; so filled to overflowing with the deep
and boundless human sympathies of the world's
favorite, that it had for me a fascination perfectly
irresistible, and I took it for granted that every
body's head and heart were as full of it as my own.

When we took that pleasant peep at the outer
life to which reference was made somewhere in
these skipping pages, I felt much solicitude to
obtain a preparatory hint or two as to costume,
knowing how soon one's most respectable gear
may be left behind by the fleeting fashions; but I
never thought of a similar anxiety as to mental
array. What then was my surprise when awakened

to the knowledge that in the whirling race
of mind—it is no longer a march—my book had
become one of the antiquated;—that people had
forgotten it entirely! Here was a mortification!
to find one's only reading—one's mental costume,
obsolete! I tried to hide my mistake, but it would
not do. I could not, for my life, remember not to
refer to my treasury, and to save people the trouble
of hunting up my allusions to musty literature I
was compelled to become a concordance—a walking
commentary upon the Life and Letters of the
Author of Waverley. If I should ever venture
forth again I mean to get the latest advices and read
up for the occasion.

But how I pitied such infatuation, and how I
exclaimed against the intellectual dissipation which
had allowed a multitude of skimmed books to cast
into the shade a treasure so far richer than all their
tribe! I only got laughed at for my pains. This
was counted among my Rip-Van-Winkle-isms.

But although I deferred habitually to such
opinions while I was myself within the influence
of the same whirl, I could not but return to my
own after some consideration of the matter in the
quiet atmosphere of my rustic home. Circumstances
have much to do with our estimates of
every thing. Here in this little cell,—this den—
this nest—this cranny—where a partie quarrée
who should stand in the corners and make a simultaneous
bow would be in danger of knocking their

heads together,—in this secret recess, whose silence
and privacy are guarded by double doors, so
that no sound profane can ever penetrate its twilight
precincts,—here and here only, with none
but spiders' eyes to intimidate me, I dare avow
that I think the true delight and sweetness of reading
lies in the dwelling upon the good and pleasant
thoughts of others until we incorporate them with
the texture of our own minds.

The thing may be carried to extremes, to be
sure. One of our compatriots, being solicited to
purchase one of those almanacs put out by the
benevolent, the reading matter of which has an
especial bearing upon one point of morals to the
exclusion of most other subjects, was heard to
reply—

“No! I don't like to have all my reading of one
kind!”

This is further than I should care to extend my
notion of the concentration of ideas. But I cannot
help thinking that we of the country get more of
the true pleasure of reading than those whose attention
is distracted by incessant novelty. And as
to the utility of reading, that must be proportioned
to the degree to which we are able to make the
thoughts of others our own, so that when we ply
the mental distaff we draw forth a newly-colored
thread—tinctured with a hue formed we know not
how—distinct from that of our own ordinary
thoughts, yet not exactly resembling the color of

the thoughts of others;—as red and blue, well
combined, form that richer and softer color, purple.

It is by some such tricks of fancy that we of the
wilds console ourselves for the want of the many
good things which have not yet found their way
so far. We exercise our ingenuity in discovering
our advantages. We praise peace and security (as
well we may, when we read of the bold advance
of crime!) and independence and industry. We
speak of the pleasure of seeing every thing about us
in a state of continual improvement, as contrasted
with the downward tendency of the over-wrought
world. We please ourselves with the idea that we
are preparing materials for the most enlightened
civilization, for those who are to succeed us, if not
for ourselves. We pity those whose ears are
doomed to an incessant roar of carts and omnibuses;
who cannot hope for a night's rest unbroken
by terrific cries of fire and the sound of
melancholy bells.

If people who have been born and bred in the
country find it difficult to form an idea of the
splendor and importance of the great marts, those
who have lived nowhere but in that vortex of excitement
can as little appreciate the calm, contemplative
quiet of a country life. The contrast can
be imagined only by those who have tried both,
and to them it is marvellous indeed. It seems like
a glimpse of two separate worlds; or, to speak
more moderately, the difference may be compared

to that which marks the course of the Niagara;—
in one place rapids and cataracts agitating the
mighty flood till the air is filled with a brilliant
spray, and earth trembles to the deep-voiced roar
of waters; and again, after only a single bend in
the river, a glassy, waveless expanse, whose onward
movement is scarcely perceptible. Over the
one may now and then be discerned a glorious
rainbow, but the other reflects always the green
and peaceful shores, and the bright and steady
lamps of heaven. Yet I suppose one must be like
the fish, cold-blooded, to prefer the still water.

A comparison between the advantages and disadvantages
of city and country life, though in the
estimation of some not deserving of even a question,
is yet to a certain class of thinking people no
uninteresting subject. The lot of the great majority
of mankind is determined more by circumstances
than by choice; but there are yet a few
who deliberate and decide upon this momentous
point, feeling within themselves the power to
govern circumstances, if not completely, yet to a
degree of which more timid spirits know nothing.
Providence regulates our condition not so much by
the bestowal of fortune as by the gift of a greater
or less amount of energy and ability; and daily
observation shows that none are so often the mere
puppets of circumstance as those who are born to
the possession of wealth such as might seem to

promise a command over the world's most enviable
positions.

There are some who, though dissatisfied with
their condition, and without the materials of ordinary
content, yet make no effort towards a better
lot; but this is a class scarcely worth considering,
in our country at least.

The number of those among us who feel the
disadvantages of a wrong position or an overcrowded
arena, and who are full of determination
to remedy the evil, and only deliberating upon the
best mode of accomplishing this, is an immense
one—larger probably at the present moment than
ever before in the history of our nation. To this
fact is to be ascribed the interest with which all
works touching upon the condition of this great,
growing Western country—this peculiar field for
the energetic and the enterprising—have been
regarded, for some years past.

It was not without an especial reference to this
state of things that these simple and unpretending
sketches were undertaken. Their form was scarcely
a matter of choice. Politics and statistics are
work for wiser heads, and abler hands, and more
extensive information. But views of society have
been thought to come legitimately within the
feminine province, and for this purpose the humblest
form has been adopted;—that which ventures
only upon a general outline of truth, with a
saving veil of acknowledged fiction.

When I began this second attempt to note some
of the peculiarities of the Western settler's life, it
was my intention to have dwelt rather more upon
such portions of our experience as related principally
to our own simple selves. But before I had
proceeded far I made the discovery that the day
had gone by for such plain personal reminiscences
as filled the pages of “A New Home.” A
stranger, feeling as a stranger, equally indifferent
to all, writes with a freedom which a friend and
neighbor of several years' standing must renounce
entirely. It is impossible to describe minutely our
own personal experience without giving in some
degree the experience of others; and this is a matter
requiring careful handling, to say the least.
We may say of ourselves what we must not say
of others. We may describe our own log-house,
but woe betide us if we should make it appear
that any body else lived in one! We may tell of
our own blunders, but we must beware how we
touch upon the blunders of others.

So that upon the whole I thought I should
better succeed in my object of giving a fair and
truthful picture of our present condition, if I allowed
general inferences to be deduced by the
reader from such recollections of real life as I
might without offence lay before him. That my
views are drawn from real life need not be doubted,
when it is considered that a very monotonous
course of daily cares, such as falls to the lot of

most housekeepers in this region, is not likely to
brighten the inventive faculties, or to give wings
to the fancy.

If it should be thought that such a state of things
as I have pictured is not very enticing to the educated
and refined, I can only say that the emigration
of a few such persons as the objectors themselves
would soon add all that is desirable. Every
natural advantage is already ours, and the foundation
for the best and most substantial state of
society is laid in an unusually orderly and moral
population. I wished to be fair. If I had written
as a partisan, the addition of a few shades of dashing
color would have made a more glowing picture,
but it would have been at the expense of truth.

I now take my leave for the present, only remarking
that the want of continuity observable in
these sketches is to be ascribed, in part at least, to
their having been written at long intervals, and
under every variety of hinderance.

Leaving to the last what might more properly
have been said at first, I entreat the reader not to
puzzle himself by endeavoring to draw the line
between the true and the imaginary; but to surrender
himself to the writer, and go with her in
good faith; looking only for such amusement or
instruction as may be found in what professes not
to be a narrative of facts, but only the Picture of
an Idea.