ior of the country. Numerous summer fallows are
burning around, and the breeze flings over us showers of blackened
leaves and blossoms. As we approached home, we were accosted by one Mr.
Isaac Hanselpecker, a neighbour of ours; he was leaning over the bars,
apparently wanting a lounge excessively. He had just finished milking,
and had handed the pails to Miss Hanselpecker, as he called his wife. If
there be a trait of American character peculiar to itself, displayed
more fully than another by contrast with Europeans, it is in the
treatment of the gentler sex, differing as it does materially from the
picture of the Englishman, standing with his back to the fire, while the
ladies freeze around him; or the glittering politeness of the Frenchman,
hovering like a butterfly by the music stand; it has in it more of
intellect and real tenderness than either, although tending as it does
to the advancement of national character, some of their own talented
ones begin to complain that in the refined circles of the States they
are becoming almost too civilised in this respect: the ladies requiring
rather more than is due to them. Yet among the working classes it has a
sweet and wholesome influence, softening as it does the asperities of
labour, and lightening the burthen to each. Here woman's empire is
within, and here she shines the household star of the poor man's hearth;
not in idleness, for in America, of all countries in the world,
prosperity depends on female industry. Here "she looketh well to the
ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness," and for
this reason, perhaps, it is, that their husbands arise and call them
blessed. Now Mr. Hanselpecker had all the respect for his lady natural
to his country, and assisted her domestic toils by milking the cows,
making fires, and fetching wood and water. Yet there was one material
point in which he failed: she was often "scant of bread," he being one
who, even in this land of toil, got along, somehow or other, with
wondrous little bodily labour; professing to be a farmer, he held one of
the finest pieces of land in the settlement, but his agricultural
operations, for the most part, consisted in hoeing a few sickly stems of
corn, while others were reaping buckwheat, or sowing a patch of flax,
"'cause the old woman wanted loom gears;" shooting cranes, spearing
salmon, or trapping musquash on the lake, he prefers to raising fowl or
sheep, as cranes find their own provisio