f his friends. His recourse
in such case being the more carefully estimated stock of some neighbor,
who could in no wise suffer the reproach to lie at his door, that he had
turned his back, in such emergence, upon his good-natured, if
injudicious countryman.

This practical communism--borrowed from the Indians, among whom it was
inviolable--was, in the matter of hospitality, the rule of all,--a
reciprocation of good offices, in the absence of all houses of public
entertainment, becoming a social necessity. The manner of its exercise
hearty, a knitting of the people together,--no one was at a loss for a
winter camp when travelling. Every house he saw was his own, the
bustling wife, with welcome in her eyes, eager to assure your comfort.
The supper being laid and dealt sturdily with, the good man's pipe and
your own alight and breathing satisfaction,--a neighbor soul drops in to
swell the gale of talk, that rocks you at last into a restful sleep. How
now, my masters! Smacks not this of Arcady?

Early and universal marriage was the rule. Here you received the
blessings of home in the married life, and the care of offspring. There
were thus no defrauded women--called, by a cruel irony, "old maids"; no
isolated, mistaken men, cheated out of themselves, and robbed of the
best training possible for man. This vital fact was fraught with every
good.

On the young birds leaving the parent nest, they only exchanged it for
one near at hand--land for the taking; a house to be built, a wife to be
got--a share of the stock, some tools and simple furniture, and the
outfit was complete. The youngest son remained at home to care for the
old father and mother, and to him came the homestead when they were laid
away. The conditions were all faithful, home life dear indeed.

To the Hunters accepting their fall in the chase no wilder thought could
scarce be broached than that of solicitude as to the future of their
young. Boys who sat a horse almost as soon as they could walk, whose
earliest plaything was a bow and arrows; girls as apt in other ways,
happy; sustained in their environment with a faith truly simple and
reverent.

With so large an infusion of Norse blood and certain traditions anent
"usquebae" and "barley bree" it would--with so large a liberty--be
naturally expected, a liberal proportion of drouthy souls, but with an
abundance of what cheers and distinctly inebriates in their midst they
were a temperate people in its best