only about their crops and cattle, but also discussing church affairs and
politics, local and national. It was the grandfathers of these men who
drove the British back from Concord bridge, and it was their sons who
fought their way from the Rapidan to Richmond. With the help of country
lawyers they sent Sumner and Wilson to the Senate, and knew what they
were about when they did this. For wit, humor, and repartee,--and, it may
be added, for decent conversation,--there is no class of men like them.
Both Lowell and Emerson have testified to their intrinsic worth.

On one occasion a Concord farmer was driving a cow past Sanborn's school-
house, when an impudent boy called out, "The calf always follows the
cow." "Why aren't you behind here, then?" retorted the man, with a look
that went home like the stroke of a cane. If Lowell had been present he
would have been delighted.

The Yankee dialect which he makes use of as a vehicle in these verses is
not always as clear-cut as it might be. He says, for instance,

"Pleasure doos make us Yankee kind of winch
As if it was something paid for by the inch."

The true New England countryman never flattens a vowel; if he changes it
he always makes it sharp. He would be more likely to say: "Pleasure does
make us Yankee kind er winch, as if 'twas suthin' paid for by the inch."
There are other instances of similar sort; but, nevertheless, if the
primitive Yankee should become extinct, as now seems very probable,
Lowell's masterly portrait of him will remain, and future generations can
reconstruct him from it, as Agassiz reconstructed an extinct species of
mammal from fossil bones.