as it is attainable. I am not going, like the admirable Crichton, to make an oration in praise of ignorance; but a very high degree of refinement certainly produces a quickness of discernment, a niggard approbation, and a fastidiousness of taste, that find a thousand repulsive and disgusting qualities mingled with those that excite our admiration, and would (were we less critical) produce affection. Alas! that the tree should so literally impart the knowledge of good and evil; much evil and little good. It is time to return from this excursion, to the point from which I set out.

The Princes and Cæsars of the Flats had as much to tell of the sagacity and attachments of the animals, as their mistress related of their own. Numberless anecdotes that delighted me in the last century, I would recount; but fear I should not find my audience of such easy belief as I was; nor so convinced of the integrity of my informers. One circumstance I must mention, because I well know it to be true. The colonel had a horse which he rode occasionally, but which oftener travelled with Mrs. Schuyler in an open carriage. At particular times, when bringing home hay or corn, they yoked Wolf, for so he was called, in a wagon; an indignity to which, for a while, he unwillingly submitted. At length, knowing resistance was in vain, he had recourse to stratagem ; and whenever he saw Tyte marshalling his cavalry for service, he swam over to the island; the um

brageous and tangled border of which I formerly mentioned: there he fed with fearless impunity till he saw the boat approach; whenever that happened he plunged into the thicket, and led his followers such a chase, that they were glad to give up the pursuit. When he saw from his retreat that the work was over, and the fields bare, he very coolly returned. Being, by this time, rather old, and a favorite, the colonel allowed him to be indulged in his dislike to drudgery. The mind which is at ease, neither stung by remorse, nor goaded by ambition or other turbulent passions, nor worn with anxiety for the supply of daily wants, nor sunk into languor by stupid idleness, forms attachments and amusements, to which those exalted by culture would not stoop, and those crushed by want and care could not rise. Of this nature was the attachment to the tame animals which the domestics appropriated to themselves, and to the little fanciful gardens where they raised herbs or plants of difficult culture, to sell and give to their friends. Each negro was indulged with his great squirrel, or musk rat; or perhaps his beaver, which he tamed and attached to himself, by daily feeding and caressing him in the farm-yard. One was sure about all such houses, to find these animals, in whom their masters took the highest pleasure. All these small features of human nature must not be despised for their minuteness. To a good mind they afford consolation.

Science, directed by virtue, is a godlike enlargement of the powers of human nature; and exalted rank is so necessary a finish to the fabric of society, and so invariable a result from its regular establishment, that in respecting those, whom the divine wisdom has set above us, we perform a duty such as we expect from our own inferiors; which helps to support the general order of society. But so very few in proportion to the whole can be enlightened by science, or exalted by situation, that a good mind draws comfort from discovering even the petty enjoyments permitted to those in the state we consider most abject and depressed.

IT

Chapter XXXII

RESOURCES OF MADAME - PROVINCIAL

CUSTOMS

T may appear extraordinary, with so moderate an income, as could in those days be derived even from a considerable estate in that country, how Madame found means to support that liberal hospitality, which they constantly exercised. I know the utmost they could derive from their lands, and it was not much: some money they had, but nothing adequate to the dignity, simple as it was, of their style of living, and the very large family they always drew around them. But with regard to the plenty, one might almost call it luxury, of their table, it was supplied from a variety of sources, that rendered it less expensive than could be imagined. Indians, grateful for the numerous benefits they were daily receiving from them, were constantly bringing the smaller game, and, in winter and spring, loads of venison. Little money passed from one hand to another in the country; but there was constantly, as there always is in primitive abodes, before the age of calculation begins, a kindly commerce of presents. The people of New York and Rhode Island, several of whom were wont to pass a part of the summer with the

colonel's family, were loaded with all the produc tions of the farm and river, when they went home. They again never failed, at the season, to send a large supply of oysters, and all other shell-fish, which at New York abounded; besides great quantities of tropical fruit, which, from the short run between Jamaica and New York, were there almost as plenty and cheap as in their native soil. Their farm yielded them abundantly all that in general a musket can supply; and the young relatives who grew up about the house, were rarely a day without bringing some supply from the wood or the stream. The negroes, whose business lay frequently in the woods, never willingly went there, or any where else, without a gun, and rarely came back empty handed. Presents of wine, then a very usual thing to send to friends to whom you wished to show a mark of gratitude, came very often, possibly from the friends of the young people who were reared and instructed in that house of benediction; as there were no duties paid for the entrance of any commodity there, wine, rum, and sugar, were cheaper than can easily be imagined; and in cider they abounded.

The negroes of the three truly united brothers, not having home employment in winter, after preparing fuel, used to cut down trees, and carry them to an adjoining saw-mill, where in a very short time, they made great quantities of planks, staves, etc., which is usually styled lumber, for the West India