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Updated: June 3, 2025
"In burghers' mansions, peasants' cottages, mechanics' back-parlors; on board herring-smacks, canal-boats, and East Indiamen; in shops, counting-rooms, farm-yards, guard-rooms, alehouses; on the exchange, in the tennis court, on the mall; at banquets, at burials, christenings, or bridals; wherever and whenever human creatures met each other, there was ever to be found the fierce wrangle of Remonstrant and Contra-Remonstrant, the hissing of red-hot theological rhetoric, the pelting of hostile texts.
By following the paths of the buffaloes, bears, deer, and other animals, they discovered the Salines or Licks, where salt is made at the present day. The paths, in approaching the salines, were trodden as hard and smooth, as in the vicinity of the farm-yards of the old settlements.
The company was spread out in groups of four; these again were separated by a few yards, and in this order, sweeping like a drag-net, they advanced over the dry fields, through the clustering pines or into cultivated acres, and through great farm-yards. Back of them the long column came, slowly winding over the sandy highway which curved through the undulating land.
Queer old towns, draw-bridged and walled: with odd little towers at the angles, like grotesque faces, as if the wall had put a mask on, and were staring down into the moat; other strange little towers, in gardens and fields, and down lanes, and in farm-yards: all alone, and always round, with a peaked roof, and never used for any purpose at all; ruinous buildings of all sorts; sometimes an hotel de ville, sometimes a guard-house, sometimes a dwelling-house, sometimes a chateau with a rank garden, prolific in dandelion, and watched over by extinguisher-topped turrets, and blink-eyed little casements; are the standard objects, repeated over and over again.
The eye is nowhere delighted with the sight of rich and flourishing farm-steads, nor do the abundant harvests of France make any shew in regular farm-yards. All the wealth of the peasantry is concealed. Each family hides the produce of their little estate within their house. An exhibition of their happy condition would expose them to immediate spoliation from the tax-officers.
The little boy stood at the coach window with a happy heart, and looked upon the green fields and pleasant dwellings; upon the poultry in the farm-yards, and the cattle upon the hills. He had not the least idea that he should die that day. But while he was looking out of the window, the iron rim of the wheel broke, and struck him upon the forehead.
These animals were the pests of the farm-yards, and made havoc with the geese, cats, turkeys, and chickens. In the fall of the year, particularly after the frosts, the clearings were overrun by them night and morning.
"No," he returned shortly, and taking up the pamphlet, he quitted the room. "No!" "But why 'No'?" Here was his telescope, by the aid of which he viewed the heavens by night, and by day observed the doings of his fellow-men. He noticed everything that went on about him. He peered into the neighboring farm-yards and cottages, was a spectator of the community's disputes as well as its diversions.
He rushed further across the snow, past houses, past trees, past a terror-struck face, that stared out through a window-pane, round stacks of grain and through farm-yards, where dogs howled and tore at their chains. He ran round the front wing of a building and stood suddenly before a brightly, restlessly lighted window.
Happily, my health became so affected that a removal into the country was judged necessary, and I forgave the doctors all their past persecution of me, in consideration of their parting injunctions, which were, that I was to have unbounded liberty; to live entirely in the open air, save when the weather forbade; to be amused with all rural occupations; and especially to frequent farm-yards, for the purpose of inhaling the breath of cows.
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