here it was held superior to that
of all other markets; it was sold in New York and Baltimore, and
sent as far as Boston as a welcome present, and undoubtedly not
churned oftener than twice a week. Fresh butter every morning! who
ever heard the like? Twice-a-week butter not good enough for
anybody! who ever dreamt of such vagaries? The young woman was quiet
and Quakerly sober, in spite of her unbounded astonishment at such a
demand; but when, having exhausted my prettiest vocabulary of
requests and persuasions, and, as I thought, not quite without
effect, I turned to leave her, she followed me to the door with this
parting address: "Well--anyhow--don't thee fill theeself up with the
notion that I'm going to churn butter for thee more than twice a
week." She probably thought me mad, and I was too ignorant to know
that to "bring" a small quantity of butter in the enormous churn she
used was a simple impossibility: nor, I imagine, was she aware that
any machine of lesser dimensions was ever used for the purpose. I
got myself a tiny table-churn, and for a little while made a small
quantity of fresh butter myself for our daily breakfast supply; but
soon weaned of it, and thought it not worth while--nobody cared for
it but myself, and I accepted my provision of market butter twice a
week, with no more ado about the matter, together with the
conclusion that the dairy at Butler Place would decidedly not be one
of its mistress's hobbies.

Of any charitable interest, or humane occupation, to be derived from
the poverty of my village neighbors, I very soon found my
expectation equally vain. Our village had no _poor_--none in the
deplorable English acceptation of that word; none in the too often
degraded and degrading conditions it implies. People poorer than
others, comparatively poor people, it undoubtedly had--hard workers,
toiling for their daily bread; but none who could not get well-paid
work or find sufficient bread; and the abject element of ignorant,
helpless, hopeless pauperism, looking for its existence to charity,
and substituting alms-taking for independent labor, was unknown
there. As for "visiting" among them, as technically understood and
practiced by Englishwomen among their poorer neighbors, such a
civility would have struck mine as simply incomprehensible; and
though thei