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as the heart and the brain of New England. She has had (so she has believed) the heart to feel a moral principle and the head to accept a great thought. She has had brave-hearted men and clear-eyed women. Once--let us make a brief retrospect--she had "pilgrim fathers." She had what she and the world too thought a religion, which she believed in. She had a people of sound English stock, who in this clear New England air grew to hate squalor, vice, beggary, debt, and damnation. Once, fifty years ago, she had no great cities; her "Hub," Boston, in 1830 had but the poor population of 61,392, nearly all born on her soil, few of them dirty or beggared. Once, fifty years ago, all through Massachusetts were clean, decent, white-housed towns, such as Worcester, and Springfield, and Northampton, and Concord, and Salem, and Newburyport, centres of small but most cultivated and earnest social life. Then small farms were cultivated by families of New England birth, out of whom came able men and handsome women. Children lived with parents, and did not tyrannize them. Silk gowns were rare, and pianos unknown; "art" and "culture" had not become household words, but butter was made at home, and the mystery of bread was known to ladies. Few then had been to Paris, and few therefore knew how vulgar they were. But "where ignorance is bliss," etc. They got on, and did not know what poor creatures they were. Every child was expected to learn the three R's at the little red school-house, and to _perfect_ his education by taking hold of material nature with his hands, and learning what it was by mastering it. That was education. The parson knew a little Latin, and he was all. They thought this worked well. Lamentable indeed! The man expected to marry a capable wife, and to bring up children; he expected to work on his land or in his shop, to dress decently in clothes which his wife had made, securing a reasonable support in this world by his own labor, not by _hocus-pocus_; he provided for his future salvation by imbibing the five points of Calvin through fifty-four sermons a year, with now and then a Thursday lecture to fill in the cracks. Thus he was sure of his food here and of salvation hereafter--through the merciful providence of God, and not his own righteousness. New England thus produced a breed of people unlike and they fancied not inferior to any that history tells of. But it would not do. There was no progress--it was a lam
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