As if any taste or imagination could take
the place of fidelity! The old Duty is the old God. And we may come
to this by the rudest teaching. A friend of ours went five years ago
to Illinois to buy a farm for his son. Though there were crowds of
emigrants in the roads, the country was open on both sides, and long
intervals between hamlets and houses. Now after five years he has
just been to visit the young farmer and see how he prospered, and
reports that a miracle has been wrought. From Massachusetts to
Illinois, the land is fenced in and builded over, almost like New
England itself, and the proofs of thrifty cultivation everywhere
abound; -- a result not so much owing to the natural increase of
population, as to the hard times, which, driving men out of cities
and trade, forced them to take off their coats and go to work on the
land, which has rewarded them not only with wheat but with habits of
labor. Perhaps the adversities of our commerce have not yet been
pushed to the wholesomest degree of severity. Apathies and total
want of work and reflection on the imaginative character of American
life, &c.
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