the spirit of feudal and aristocratic ideas, the discipline of the
wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level; the gentleman felled
the wood for his log-cabin side by side with the ploughman, and thews
and sinews rose in the market. "A man was deemed honorable in proportion
as he lifted his hand upon the high trees of the forest." So in the
interior domestic circle. Mistress and maid, living in a log-cabin
together, became companions, and sometimes the maid, as the more
accomplished and stronger, took precedence of the mistress. It became
natural and unavoidable that children should begin to work as early as
they were capable of it. The result was a generation of intelligent
people brought up to labor from necessity, but turning on the problem of
labor the acuteness of a disciplined brain. The mistress, outdone in
sinews and muscles by her maid, kept her superiority by skill and
contrivance. If she could not lift a pail of water, she could invent
methods which made lifting the pail unnecessary,--if she could not take
a hundred steps without weariness, she could make twenty answer the
purpose of a hundred.

Slavery, it is true, was to some extent introduced into New England, but
it never suited the genius of the people, never struck deep root, or
spread so as to choke the good seed of self-helpfulness. Many were
opposed to it from conscientious principle,--many from far-sighted
thrift, and from a love of thoroughness and well-doing which despised
the rude, unskilled work of barbarians. People, having once felt the
thorough neatness and beauty of execution which came of free, educated,
and thoughtful labor, could not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery. Thus
it came to pass that for many years the rural population of New England,
as a general rule, did their own work, both out doors and in. If there
were a black man or black woman or bound girl, they were emphatically
only the _helps_, following humbly the steps of master and mistress, and
used by them as instruments of lightening certain portions of their
toil. The master and mistress with their children were the head workers.

Great merriment has been excited in the Old Country, because years ago
the first English travellers found that the class of persons by them
denominated servants were in America denominated _help_ or helpers. But
the term was the very best exponent of the state of society. There were
few servants, in the European sense of the word; there was