Conscience in New England women.
Nowhere is conscience so dominant and all-absorbing as with New England women. It is the granite formation which lies deepest, and rises out even to the tops of the highest mountains.
DRED.
Selling their disadvantages.
“But these Yankees turn everything to account. If a man’s field is covered with rock, he’ll find some way to sell it, and make money out of it; and if they freeze up all winter, they sell the ice, and make money out of that. They just live by selling their disadvantages!”
POGANUC PEOPLE.
Yankee grit.
Zeph was a creature born to oppose, as much as white bears are made to walk on ice.
And how, we ask, would New England’s rocky soil and icy hills have been made mines of wealth unless there had been human beings born to oppose, delighting to combat and wrestle, and with an unconquerable power of will?
Zeph had taken a thirteen acre lot, so rocky that a sheep could scarce find a nibble there, had dug out and blasted and carted the rocks, wrought them into a circumambient fence,—ploughed and planted and raised crop after crop of good rye thereon. He did it with heat, with zeal, with dogged determination; he did it all the more because neighbors said he was a fool for trying, and that he could never raise anything on that lot. There was a stern joy in this hand-to-hand fight with Nature. He got his bread as Samson did his honeycomb out of the carcass of the slain lion. “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.” Even the sharp March wind did not annoy him. It was a controversial wind, and that suited him; it was fighting him all the way, and he enjoyed beating it. Such a human being has his place in the Creator’s scheme.