The
Sewing Machine, Like Most Other Things, Is Out Of Order.
One
comb serves the whole family.
Mrs. C. is cleanly in her person
and dress, and the food, though poor, is clean. Work, work,
work, is their day and their life. They are thoroughly ungenial,
and have that air of suspicion in speaking of every one which is
not unusual in the land of their ancestors. Thomas Chalmers
is the man's ecclesiastical hero, in spite of his own severe
Puritanism. Their live stock consists of two wretched horses, a
fairly good bronco mare, a mule, four badly-bred cows, four gaunt
and famished-looking oxen, some swine of singularly active
habits, and plenty of poultry. The old saddles are tied on with
twine; one side of the bridle is a worn-out strap and the other a
rope. They wear boots, but never two of one pair, and never
blacked, of course, but no stockings. They think it quite
effeminate to sleep under a roof, except during the severest
months of the year. There is a married daughter across the
river, just the same hard, loveless, moral, hard-working being as
her mother. Each morning, soon after seven, when I have swept
the cabin, the family come in for "worship." Chalmers "wales" a
psalm, in every sense of the word wail, to the most doleful of
dismal tunes; they read a chapter round, and he prays. If his
prayer has something of the tone of the imprecatory psalms, he
has high authority in his favor; and if there be a tinge of the
Pharisaic thanksgiving, it is hardly surprising that he is
grateful that he is not as other men are when he contemplates the
general godlessness of the region.
Sunday was a dreadful day.
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