all their worldly gear on a sled drawn by a yoke of oxen. Their
neighbors helped them build a house of logs, with a roof of
black-ash bark and a floor of hewn white-ash plank. A great stone
chimney and fireplace--the mortar of red clay--gave light and
warmth, and cooked the meat and baked the bread, when there was any
to cook or to bake. Here they lived and reared their family, and
found life sweet. Their unworthy descendant, yielding to the
inherited love of the soil, flees the city and its artificial ways,
and gets a few acres in the country, where he proposes to engage in
the pursuit supposed to be free to every American citizen,--the
pursuit of happiness. The humble old farmhouse is discarded, and a
smart, modern country-house put up. Walks and roads are made and
graveled; trees and hedges are planted; the rustic old barn is
rehabilitated; and, after it is all fixed, the uneasy proprietor
stands off and looks, and calculates by how much he has missed the
picturesque, at which he aimed. Our new houses undoubtedly have
greater comforts and conveniences than the old; and, if we could
keep our pride and vanity in abeyance and forget that all the world
is looking on, they might have beauty also.

The man that forgets himself, he is the man we like; and the
dwelling that forgets itself, in its purpose to shelter and protect
its inmates and make them feel at home in it, is the dwelling that
fills the eye. When you see one of the great cathedrals, you know
that it was not pride that animated these builders, but fear and
worship; but when you see the house of the rich farmer, or of the
millionaire from the city, you see the pride of money and the
insolence of social power.

Machinery, I say, has taken away some of the picturesque features of