l say, the human horizon widens in cities. Yes; but if there are
six bright points in it you are fortunate, while here, the whole horizon
round is sapphire and purple and gold.

Well, peace be with you wherever you are, and with your house. My wife
and Mary send love to you all, as I do, [who] am, as ever.

Yours faithfully,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

To his Daughters.

ST. DAVID'S, Feb. 23, 1869.

. . . WE are going on very nicely, neither sick nor sad. Our winter
evening readings have been very fortunate this season. First, "Lord
Jeffrey's Life and Letters," and now, "Draper's Intellectual Development
in Europe." I had read it before, but it is a greater book than I had
thought. I must say that I had rather pass my evenings as we do,--some
writing, some reading, then a quiet game, and then at my desk
again,--than to take the chances of society, in town or country. If I
can get you to think as I do, we shall pass a happy life here. Heaven
grant that I may not fall into a life of pain! With our good spirits, as
they now are, we every day fall into a quantity of dramatic capers that
are enough to make a cat laugh,--no bigger animal.

Hoping you may have as much folly, for what saith Paley? "He that is not
a fool sometimes, is always one,"--and wishing you all merry, I am as
ever,

Your loving father,

ORVILLE DEWEY.

[307] Nothing can be imagined more peaceful than the retirement of
Sheffield. Removed from the main lines of traffic and travel, even now
that a railroad passes through it, the village remains, as it has been
for a hundred and fifty years, the quiet centre of the quiet farms
spread for four or five miles about it. The Housatonic wanders at its
own sweet and lazy will among the meadows, turning and returning upon
itself till it has loitered twenty miles in crossing the eight-mile
township, but never turning a mill or offering encouragement to any
industry but that of the muskrats who burrow in its banks, or the
kingfishers who break its glassy surface in pursuit of their prey. No
busy factories are there; no rattle of machinery or feverish activity
of commerce disturbs the general placidity; and the still valley lies
between its enclosing hills as if it were, indeed, that happy Abyssinian
vale my father fancied it in his childhood.

The people share the calm of the landscape. Like many New England towns
where neither water-power nor large capital offers opportunity for
manufactures, and where farming bri