The master of the house was absent, but with a kindness beyond thanks
had offered us a resting place there. Here we were taken care of by a
deputy, who would, for his youth, have been assigned the place of a page
in former times, but in the young west, it seems he was old enough for a
steward. Whatever be called his function, he did the honors of the place
so much in harmony with it, as to leave the guests free to imagine
themselves in Elysium. And the three days passed here were days of
unalloyed, spotless happiness.

There was a peculiar charm in coming here, where the choice of location,
and the unobtrusive good taste of all the arrangements, showed such
intelligent appreciation of the spirit of the scene, after seeing so
many dwellings of the new settlers, which showed plainly that they had
no thought beyond satisfying the grossest material wants. Sometimes they
looked attractive, the little brown houses, the natural architecture of
the country, in the edge of the timber. But almost always when you came
near, the slovenliness of the dwelling and the rude way in which objects
around it were treated, when so little care would have presented a
charming whole, were very repulsive. Seeing the traces of the Indians,
who chose the most beautiful sites for their dwellings, and whose habits
do not break in on that aspect of nature under which they were born, we
feel as if they were the rightful lords of a beauty they forbore to
deform. But most of these settlers do not see it at all; it breathes, it
speaks in vain to those who are rushing into its sphere. Their progress
is Gothic, not Roman, and their mode of cultivation will, in the course
of twenty, perhaps ten, years, obliterate the natural expression of the
country.

This is inevitable, fatal; we must not complain, but look forward to a
good result. Still, in travelling through this country, I could not but