“Well, when the men get to their offices, they are half roasted alive, and have to take ices to cool them, and then for fear the cold will heat them, they have to take brandy cock-tail to counteract it. So they keep up a sort of artificial fever and ague all day. The ice gives the one, and brandy the other, like shuttlecock and battledore. If they had walked down as they had ought to have done, in the cool of the morning, they would have avoided all this.
“How different it is now in the country, ain’t it? What a glorious thing the sun-rise is! How beautiful the dew-spangled bushes, and the pearly drops they shed, are! How sweet and cool is the morning air, and how refreshing and bracing the light breeze is to the nerves that have been relaxed in warm repose! The new-ploughed earth, the snowy-headed clover, the wild flowers, the blooming trees, and the balsamic spruce, all exhale their fragrance to invite you forth. While the birds offer up their morning hymn, as if to proclaim that all things praise the Lord. The lowing herd remind you that they have kept their appointed time; and the freshening breezes, as they swell in the forest and awaken the sleeping leaves, seem to whisper, ‘We too come with healing on our wings;’ and the babbling brook, that it also has its mission to minister to your wants. Oh, morning in the country is a glorious thing, and it is impossible when one rises and walks forth and surveys the scene not to exclaim, ‘God is good.’
“Oh, that early hour has health, vigour, and cheerfulness in it. How natural it seems to me, how familiar I am with everything it indicates! The dew tells me there will be no showers, the white frost warns me of its approach; and if that does not arrive in time, the sun instructs me to notice and remember, that if it rises bright and clear and soon disappears in a cloud, I must prepare for heavy rain. The birds and the animals all, all say, ‘We too are cared for, and we have our foreknowledge, which we disclose by our conduct to you.” The brooks too have meaning in their voices, and the southern sentinel proclaims aloud, ‘Prepare.’ And the western, ‘All is well.’”
Oh, how well I know the face of nature! What pleasure I take as I commence my journey at this hour, to witness the rising of the mist in the autumn from the low grounds, and its pausing on the hill-tops, as if regretting the scene it was about to leave! And how I admire the little insect webs, that are spangled over the field at that time; and the partridge warming itself in the first gleam of sunshine it can discover on the road! The alder, as I descend into the glen, gives me notice that the first frost has visited him, as it always does, before others, to warn him that it has arrived to claim every leaf of the forest as its own. Oh, the country is the place for peace, health, beauty, and innocence. I love it, I was born in it. I lived the greater part of my life there, and I look forward to die in it.
“How different from town life is that of the country! There are duties to be performed in-door and out-door, and the inmates assemble round their breakfast-table, refreshed by sleep and invigorated by the cool air, partake of their simple, plain, and substantial meal, with the relish of health, cheerfulness, and appetite. The open window admits the fresh breeze, in happy ignorance of dust, noise, or fashionable darkness. The verandah defies rain or noon-day sun, and employment affords no room for complaint that the day is hot, the weather oppressive, the nerves weak, or the digestion enfeebled. There can be no happiness where there is an alternation of listlessness and excitement. They are the two extremes between which it resides, and that locality to my mind is the country. Care, disease, sorrow, and disappointment are common to both. They are the lot of humanity; but the children of mammon, and of God, bear them differently.
“I didn’t intend to turn preacher, Doctor, but I do positively believe, if I hadn’t a been a clockmaker, dear old Minister would have made me one. I don’t allot, though, I would have taken in Slickville, for I actilly think I couldn’t help waltzing with the galls, which would have put our folks into fits, or kept old Clay, clergymen like, to leave sinners behind me. I can’t make out these puritan fellows, or evangelical boys, at all. To my mind, religion is a cheerful thing, intended to make us happy, not miserable; and that our faces, like that of nature, should be smiling, and that like birds we should sing and carol, and like lilies, we should be well arrayed, and not that our countenances should make folks believe we were chosen vessels, containing, not the milk of human kindness, but horrid sour vinegar and acid mothery grounds. Why, the very swamp behind our house is full of a plant called ‘a gall’s side-saddle.’1
1 This is the common name for the Sarracenia.
“Plague take them old Independents; I can’t and never could understand them. I believe, if Bishop Laud had allowed them to sing through their noses, pray without gowns, and build chapels without steeples, they would have died out like Quakers, by being let alone. They wanted to make the state believe they were of consequence. If the state had treated them as if they were of no importance, they would have felt that too very soon. Opposition made them obstinate. They won’t stick at nothing to carry their own ends.
“They made a law once in Connecticut that no man should ride or drive on a Sunday except to a conventicle. Well, an old Dutch governor of New York, when that was called New Amsterdam and belonged to Holland, once rode into the colony on horseback on a Sabbath day, pretty hard job it was too, for he was a very stout man, and a poor horseman. There were no wheel carriages in those days, and he had been used to home to travel in canal boats, and smoke at his ease; but he had to make the journey, and he did it, and he arrived just as the puritans were coming out of meeting, and going home, slowly, stately, and solemnly, to their cold dinner cooked the day before (for they didn’t think it no harm to make servants work double tides on Saturday), their rule being to do anything of a week day, but nothing on the Sabbath.
“Well, it was an awful scandal this, and a dreadful violation of the blue laws of the young nation. Connecticut and New Amsterdam (New York) were nothing then but colonies; but the puritans owed no obedience to princes, and set up for themselves. The elders and ministry and learned men met on Monday to consider of this dreadful profanity of the Dutch governor. On the one hand it was argued, if he entered their state (for so they called it then) he was amenable to their laws, and ought to be cited, condemned, and put into the stocks, as an example to evil-doers. On the other hand, they got hold of a Dutch book on the Law of Nations, to cite agin him; but it was written in Latin, and although it contained all about it, they couldn’t find the place, for their minister said there was no index to it. Well, it was said, if we are independent, so is he, and whoever heard of a king or a prince being put in the stocks? It bothered them, so they sent their Yankee governor to him to bully and threaten him, and see how he would take it, as we now do, at the present day, to Spain about Cuba, and England about your fisheries.