Resting on earth's bosom, like fairest gems
That deck beauty's form or monarch's diadems,
Are lakes, to enhance the enchanting scene,
Like pictures in a frame of living green.
Beautiful! beautiful! I said, and a newer light
Came into my soul, while far into the night

I sat me there, on the verdant sod,
In holy communion with nature's God.

Tell me not, in your classic rhyme,

Of Etrurian glades, or fair Italia's clime,

Where no dark cloud ere dimmed the azure blue,
And richest fruits, in profuse luxuriance grow,
Or Switzerland's grandeur, or Alpine showers,
Or sparkling fountain in old Alhambra's bowers.
No! no! not these, my heart with purest pleasure thrills,
But what I find on old New England's hills.

CHAPTER III.

CHARACTER OF THE INHABITANTS.

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
When wealth accumulates and men decay.
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade,
A breath can make them as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry their country's pride,

When once destroyed can never be supplied.”—Goldsmith.

CCORDING to the information which we are able to glean,
ORDIN

from such sources as are accessible, Gardner had, at its incorporation, a population of only about three hundred and seventy-five, embraced in about sixty families. At the present time, the inhabitants number about four thousand, among whom are many Irish and French, who are a very industrious and frugal people. These ancient families, were not clustered then, as most of our families are at the present time, in villages, but scattered far and wide over the entire surface of the town and accessible by rough and inconvenient roads. The geographical centre of the town, then, as now, was where stands the First Congregational Church.

In speaking of the first settlers of this town, we are aware that there is some danger of indulging in an undue and fulsome veneration of those who have preceded us. Still we do not think that we, of the present day, are justly chargeable with this infirmity, regarding our fathers. It is not possible, for any candid mind, to trace the deeds of these men, as they stand, recorded upon the yellow and dingy pages of our town records,

written, often in almost illegible chirography, and by no means faultless orthography, and not feel like thanking God, from the depths of a heart overflowing with gratitude, that such men preceded us in laying the foundations of these institutions, whose benefits we to-day enjoy. They were no strangers to a variety of hardships and privations. They wooed and wedded their wives and reared their children, amid the environments of poverty. In reflecting upon their toils and hardships, their wants and privations, their industry and frugality, the words of Gray, come forcibly to our minds, as admirably descriptive of their condition.

"Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield

Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their teams afleld,
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke.
"Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile,
The short and simple annals of the poor.

"Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life,

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way."

It is true that, compared with the demands of the imperious goddess, Fashion, at whose shrine, we all so devoutly worship, the wants of our fathers and mothers were few and simple. From the soil, we tread to-day, they wrung with unremitting labor, the products upon which themselves and their children subsisted. Then in almost all the dwellings of this town, might have been heard the whir of the old spinning wheel, which, under the skillful hand of the matron and her daughters, spun the warp and woof which afterwards, the swiftly flying shuttle, in the same dexterous hands, amid the rattle and thuds of the domestic loom, standing in the chamber above, constructed into long webs of thick woolen cloth, in which, dressed at the neighboring mill and manufactured into suitable garments, by the newsy, itinerant tailoress, the members of the household, defied the winter's cold.

In those days, our fathers raised and thrashed, retted and broke, swinged and hatcheled, their own flax, which our mothers, with the distaff and spindle, of the busy foot-wheel, drew out into that fine linen thread which, combining with woolen yarn, they wrought into that once famous fabric, known as linsey-woolsey, in which they and their children clothed themselves, as their every-day attire. With what an air of pomp and fresh importance, did the boys and girls of those days, carry themselves in their newly made garments.

Those were days devoid of sham. The modern king, shoddy, had not then begun to display his art of making things not what they seem, days, when as Solomon says of the "virtuous woman," the housewife did her husband good and not evil, all the days of her life, when she sought wool and flax and worked willingly with her hands, when she rose while it was yet night and gave meat to her household and a portion to her maidens, when she laid her hands to the spindle and her hands held the distaff, when she was not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household were clothed with double garments, when she made herself coverlets, and fine linen and sold it, and looked well to the ways of her own household and ate not the bread of idleness, when her children rose up and called her blessed, her husband also, and he praised her.”

Then it was, that instead of ready-made boots and shoes, now so abundantly supplied by our wholesale and retail stores, made to fit any and all feet, sewed with cable wire, or pegged by a machine, our fathers, taking the hide from their own fatted oxen, or calves, whose juicy meat they consumed in part, immediately, or stored in barrels for future use, carried it to the tanner and the leather dresser, and after it had been, for a long time, subjected to the process of tanning and dressing, brought home, and then summoning to the ancient kitchen, the shoemaker, whose coming had long been anticipated, and whose bench and lap stone, clamps and "waxed ends" had come to be familiar objects in the farmer's dwelling, they bid him proceed to the manufacture of the yearly supply of shoes, for the various members of the household.

What a scene of joy was that in these country homes. How gladly did Ebenezer, Theophilus and David, Elizabeth, Rebecca and Rhoda, these last more modestly, step forward, at the invitation of this wonderful conjurer of leather, to be measured for their next pair of new shoes. Standing firmly against the side of the house, how heavily they pressed their feet, upon the measure of this domestic artist, that they might be sure of having their shoes of ample length and breadth. How eagerly they watched his motions from day to day, till out of a chaos of leather, sole and upper, he formed, the long wished for articles, for the protection of their feet.

In these early homes, instead of the modern furnace, range and stove, plumbed for a convenient supply of hot water, in all the rooms of the house, with sink and pump, making housework so convenient, was seen only the old open fireplace, on whose side, where was piled the

"The crane and pendent trammels showed,"

"Nightly stack

Of wood against the chimney-back,

The oaken log, green, huge and thick,

And on its top, the stout back-stick,"

sending out its light and heat, cheerily over the room,

"On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,

Until the old, rude-furnished room

Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom."

Before this great consumer of fuel, where roared the winter's blast, the busy housewife placed her covered tin baker, or erected her pewter or wooden plate, supported by brick or flat-iron, in which she cooked the yellow johnny-cake, or where, suspended by a line from the overhanging hook, vibrated and revolved the sparerib, or when grander occasions demanded, the Thanksgiving turkey, which coming well cooked, brown and smoking upon the clothless table, was food fit for the Olympian gods. Then too, there was the good old brick oven, now obsolete, in modern houses, standing grim and firm, upon the side of the fireplace, with its big mouth and capacious interior, from which, having been well heated and carefully