to say, yet I have not. What should a woman
write about, whose sole occupations are eating, drinking, and sleeping;
whose pleasures consist in nursing her baby, and playing with a brace of
puppies; and her miseries in attempting to manage six republican
servants--a task quite enough to make any "Quaker kick his mother," a
grotesque illustration of demented desperation, which I have just
learned, and which is peculiarly appropriate in these parts? Can I find
it in my conscience, or even in the nib of my pen, to write you all
across the great waters that my child has invented two teeth, or how
many pounds of tea, sugar, flour, etc., etc., I distribute weekly to the
above-mentioned household of unmanageables? To write, as to speak, one
should have something to say, and I have literally nothing, except that
I am well in mind, body, and estate, and hope you are so too.

Our summer has been detestable: if America had the grace to have fairies
(but they don't cross the Atlantic), I should think the little Yankee
Oberon and Titania had been by the ears together: such wintry squalls!
such torrents of rain! The autumn, however, has been fine, and we spent
part of it in one of the most charming regions imaginable.

A "Happy Valley" indeed!--the Valley of the Housatonic, locked in by
walls of every shape and size, from grassy knolls to bold basaltic
cliffs. A beautiful little river wanders singing from side to side in
this secluded Paradise, and from every mountain cleft come running
crystal springs to join it; it looks only fit for people to be baptized
in (though I believe the water is used for cooking and washing
purposes.)

In one part of this romantic hill-region exists the strangest worship
that ever the craving need of religious excitement suggested to the
imagination of human beings.

I do not know whether you have ever heard of a religious sect called the
Shakers; I never did till I came into their neighborhood: and all that
was told me before seeing them fell short of the extraordinary effect of
the reality. Seven hundred men and women, whose profession of religion
has for one of its principal objects the extinguishing of the human race
and the end of the world, by devoting themselves and persuading others
to celibacy and the strictest chastity. They live all together in one
community, and own a village and a considerable tract of land in the
beautiful hill country of Berkshire. They are perfectly moral and
exemplary