one side, and a few half-cleared acres, with a shed or two upon them,
occupied the other, giving accommodation to cows, horses, pigs, and
chickens innumerable. Immediately before the house was a small potato
garden, with a few peach and apple trees. The house was built of logs, and
consisted of two rooms, besides a little shanty or lean-to, that was used
as a kitchen. Both rooms were comfortably furnished with good beds,
drawers, &c. The farmer's wife, and a young woman who looked like her
sister, were spinning, and three little children were playing about. The
woman told me that they spun and wove all the cotton and woollen garments
of the family, and knit all the stockings; her husband, though not a
shoe-maker by trade, made all the shoes. She manufactured all the soap and
candles they used, and prepared her sugar from the sugar-trees on their
farm. All she wanted with money, she said, was to buy coffee, tea, and
whiskey, and she could 'get enough any day by sending a batch of butter
and chicken to market.' They used no wheat, nor sold any of their corn,
which, though it appeared a very large quantity, was not more than they
required to make their bread and cakes of various kinds, and to feed all
their live stock during the winter. She did not look in health, and said
they had all had ague in 'the fall' but she seemed contented, and proud of
her independence; though it was in somewhat a mournful accent that she
said, ''Tis strange to us to see company: I expect the sun may rise and
set a hundred times before I shall see another _human_ that does not
belong to the family.'

"These people were indeed, independent--Robinson Crusoe was hardly more
so, and they eat and drink abundantly; but yet it seemed to me that there
was something awful and almost unnatural in their loneliness. No village
bell ever summoned them to prayer, where they might meet the friendly
greeting of their fellow-men. When they die, no spot sacred by ancient
reverence will receive their bones--Religion will not breathe her sweet