stately old lady, dressed in black silk, and showing her steel-gray hair beneath her cap, I can now see semblances of this, my maternal grandmother.

My other grandmother was in all things the opposite: short, fat, blue-eyed, practical, utilitarian. She was a good example of the country dame-hearty, homespun, familiar, full of strong sense and practical energy. I scarcely know which of the two I liked the best. The first sang me plaintive songs; told me stories of the Revolution-her husband, Col. Ely, having had a large and painful share in its vicissitudes; she described Gen. Washington, whom she had seen; and the French officers, Lafayette, Rochambeau, and others, who had been inmates of her house. She told me tales of even more ancient date, and recited poetry, generally consisting of ballads, which were suited to my taste. And all this lore was commended to me by a voice of inimitable tenderness, and a manner at once lofty and condescending. My other grandmother was not less kind, but she promoted my happiness and prosperity in another way. Instead of stories, she gave me bread and butter: in place of poetry, she fed me with apple-sauce and pie. Never was there a more hearty old lady: she had a firm conviction that children must be fed, and what she believed, she practiced.

LETTER VIII.

Interest in Mechanical Devices-Agriculture-My Parents Design me for a Carpenter The Dawn of the Age of Invention-Fulton, &c.-Perpetual Motion- Whittling-Gentlemen-St. Paul, King Alfred, Daniel Webster, &c.-Desire of Improvement, a New England Characteristic-Hunting-The Bow and Arrow-The Fowling-piece-Pigeons— Anecdote of Parson M....-Audubon and Wilson-The Passenger Pigeon-Sporting Rambles-The Blacksnake and Screech-owl-Fishing -Advantages of Country Life and Country Training.

MY DEAR C*

I can recollect with great vividness the interest I took in the domestic events I have described, and which circled with the seasons in our household at this period. I had no great interest in the operations of the farm. Plowing, hoeing, digging, seemed to me mere drudgery, imparting no instruction, and affording no scope for ingenuity or invention. I had not yet learned to contemplate agriculture in its economical aspect, nor had my mind yet risen to that still higher view of husbandry, which leads to a scientific study of the soil and the seasons, and teaches man to become a kind of second Providence to those portions of the earth which are subjected to his care.

The mechanical operations I have described, as well as others-especially those of the weaver and carpenter, on the contrary, stimulated my curiosity, and excited my emulation. Thus I soon became familiar with the tools of the latter, and made such windmills,

kites, and perpetual motions, as to extort the admiration of my playmates, and excite the respect of my parents, so that they seriously meditated putting me apprentice to a carpenter. Up to the age of fourteen, I think this was regarded as my manifest destiny. I certainly took great delight in mechanical devices, and became a celebrity on pine shingles with a penknife. It was a day of great endeavors among all inventive geniuses. Fulton was struggling to develop steam navigation, and other discoverers were thundering at the gates of knowledge, and seeking to unfold the wonders of art as well as of nature. It was, in fact, the very threshold of the era of steamboats, railroads, electric telegraphs, and a thousand other useful discoveries, which have since changed the face of the world. In this age of excitement, perpetual motion was the great hobby of aspiring mechanics, as it has been indeed ever since. I pondered and whittled intensely on this subject before I was ten years old. Despairing of reaching my object by mechanical means, I attempted to arrive at it by magnetism, my father having bought me a pair of horse-shoe magnets in one of his journeys to New Haven. I should have succeeded, had it not been a principle in the nature of this curious element, that no substance will instantly intercept the stream of attraction. I tried to change the poles, and turn the north against the south; but there too nature had headed me, and of course I failed.

A word, by the way, on the matter of whittling. This is generally represented as a sort of idle, fidgety, frivolous use of the penknife, and is set down by amiable foreigners and sketchers of American manners as a peculiar characteristic of our people. No portrait of an American is deemed complete, whether in the saloon or the senate-chamber, at home or on the highway, unless with penknife and shingle in hand. I feel not the slightest disposition to resent even this, among the thousand caricatures that pass for traits of American life. For my own part, I can testify that, during my youthful days, I found the penknife a source of great amusement and even of instruction. Many a long winter evening, many a dull, drizzly day, in spring and summer and autumn-sometimes at the kitchen fireside, sometimes in the attic, amid festoons of dried apples, peaches, and pumpkins; sometimes in a cosy nook of the barn; sometimes in the shelter of a neighboring stone-wall, thatched over with wild grape-vines-have I spent in great ecstasy, making candle-rods, or some other simple article of household goods, for my mother, or in perfecting toys for myself and my young friends, or perhaps in attempts at more ambitious achievements. This was not mere waste of time, mere idleness and dissipation. I was amused: that was something. Some of the pleasantest remembrances of my childhood carry me back to the scenes I have just indicated, when in happy solitude, absorbed in my me

chanical devices, I still listened to the rain pattering upon the roof, or the wind roaring down the chimney -thus enjoying a double bliss-a pleasing occupation, with a conscious delight in my sense of security from the rage of the elements without.

Nay more these occupations were instructive: my mind was stimulated to inquire into the mechanical powers, and my hand was educated to mechanical dexterity. Smile, if you please-but reflect! Why is it, that we in the United States surpass all other nations, in the excellence of our tools of all kinds? Why are our axes, knives, hoes, spades, plows, the best in the world? Because-in part, at leastwe learn, in early life, this alphabet of mechanics theoretical and practical-whittling. Nearly every head and hand is trained to it. We know and feel the difference between dull and sharp tools. At ten years old, we are all epicures in cutting instruments. This is the beginning, and we go on, as a matter of course, toward perfection. The inventive head, and the skillful, executing hand, thus become general, national, characteristic among us.

I am perfectly aware that some people, in this country as well as others, despise labor, and especially manual labor, as ungenteel. There are people in these United States who scoff at New England on account of this general use of thrifty, productive industry, among our people as a point of education. The gentleman, say these refined persons, must not