of which could make them forget
their little native Ithaca; nor were they so wanting to themselves in
faith as to burn their ship, but could see the fair west wind belly the
homeward sail, and then turn unrepining to grapple with the terrible
Unknown.

As Want was the prime foe these hardy exodists had to fortress themselves
against, so it is little wonder if that traditional feud is long in wearing
out of the stock. The wounds of the old warfare were long ahealing, and an
east wind of hard times puts a new ache in every one of them. Thrift was
the first lesson in their horn-book, pointed out, letter after letter, by
the lean finger of the hard schoolmaster, Necessity. Neither were those
plump, rosy-gilled Englishmen that came hither, but a hard-faced,
atrabilious, earnest-eyed race, stiff from long wrestling with the Lord in
prayer, and who had taught Satan to dread the new Puritan hug. Add two
hundred years' influence of soil, climate, and exposure, with its necessary
result of idiosyncrasies, and we have the present Yankee, full of
expedients, half-master of all trades, inventive in all but the beautiful,
full of shifts, not yet capable of comfort, armed at all points against the
old enemy Hunger, longanimous, good at patching, not so careful for what is
best as for what will _do_, with a clasp to his purse and a button to his
pocket, not skilled to build against Time, as in old countries, but against
sore-pressing Need, accustomed to move the world with no {pou sto} but his
own two feet, and no lever but his own long forecast. A strange hybrid,
indeed, did circumstance beget, here in the New World, upon the old Puritan
stock, and the earth never before saw such mystic-practicalism, such
niggard-geniality, such calculating-fanaticism, such cast-iron-enthusiasm,
such unwilling humour, such close-fisted-generosity. This new _Graeculus
esuriens_ will make a living out of any thing. He will invent new trades
as well as tools. His brain is his capital, and he will get education at
all risks. Put him on Juan Fernandez, and he would make a spelling-book
first, and a salt-pan afterwards. _In c[oe]lum, jusseris, ibit_,--or the
other way either,--it is all one, so any thing is to be got by it. Yet,
after all, thin, speculative Jonathan is more like the Englishman of two
centuries ago than John Bull himself is. He has lost somewhat in
solidity, has become fluent and adaptable, but more of the original
groundwork of character rem