and shabbiness, and at the first opportunity to take their ease in the
new world they had won from nature they sank down, too nerveless for
passion or violence, into the easy vices: idleness, whining, gossip,
drunkenness, sodden inutility. Against such qualities Mr. Howe has from
the first proceeded with the doctrines of another Franklin, but of a
Franklin without whimsical persuasions or elegant graces. Having
apparently come to the conclusion that he was a failure as a novelist
because he made no great stir with his experiments in that trade, he
confined himself to more or less orthodox journalism for a generation,
and then, retiring, founded his organ of "indignation and
information"--_E.W. Howe's Monthly_--and began to pour forth the stream
of aphoristic honesty which makes him easily first among the rural
sages.

In no sense, of course, does he assume the cosmopolitan and
international attitude which most of the naturalists assume:
"Provincialism," he curtly says, "is the best thing in the world." Nor
is he in any of the casual senses a radical: "In everything in which man
is interested, the world knows what is best for him.... Millions of men
have lived millions of years, and tried everything." Neither has he any
patience with speculation for its own sake: "There are no mysteries.
Where does the wind come from? It doesn't matter: we know the habits of
wind after it arrives." As to politics: "The people are always worsted
in an election." As to altruism: "The long and the short of it is,
whoever catches the fool first is entitled to shear him." As to love:
"We cannot permit love to run riot; we must build fences around it, as
we do around pigs." As to money: "In theory, it is not respectable to be
rich. In fact, poverty is a disgrace." As to literature: "Poets are
prophets whose prophesying never comes true." As to prudence: "Trying to
live a spiritual life in a material world is the greatest folly I know