rs. A
door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood or oil, or
meal or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax, and
an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains, and the
stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,--these eat
up the hours. Do what we can, summer will have its flies; if we walk in
the woods we must feed mosquitos; if we go a-fishing we must expect a
wet coat. Then climate is a great impediment to idle persons; we often
resolve to give up the care of the weather, but still we regard the
clouds and the rain.

We are instructed by these petty experiences which usurp the hours and
years. The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitant of the
northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the
fixed smile of the tropics. The islander may ramble all day at will.
At night he may sleep on a mat under the moon, and wherever a wild
date-tree grows, nature has, without a prayer even, spread a table for
his morning meal. The northerner is perforce a householder. He must
brew, bake, salt and preserve his food, and pile wood and coal. But
as it happens that not one stroke can labor lay to without some new
acquaintance with nature, and as nature is inexhaustibly significant,
the inhabitants of these climates have always excelled the southerner
in force. Such is the value of these matters that a man who knows
other things can never know too much of these. Let him have accurate
perceptions. Let him, if he have hands, handle; if eyes, measure and
discriminate; let him accept and hive every fact of chemistry, natural
history and economics; the more he has, the less is he willing to spare
any one. Time is always bringing the occasions that disclose their
value. Some wisdom comes out of every natural and innocent action. The
domestic man, who loves no music so well as his kitchen clock and the
airs which the logs sing to him as they burn on the hearth, has solaces
which others never dream of. The application of means to ends insures
victory and the songs of victory not less in a farm or a shop than
in the tactics of party or of war. The good husband finds method as
efficient in the packing of fire-wood in a shed or in the harvesting
of fruits in the cellar, as in Peninsular campaigns or the files of the
Department of State. In the rainy day he builds a work-bench, or gets
his tool-box set in the corner of the barn-chamber, and stored