exaggeration. Think of that, with all the seriousness of our Boston
east winds to give it force, and fancy the provision for amusement in
our society! The consequence is, that boys who have the longing for
amusement strongest within them, and plenty of combativeness to back
it, are the standing terror of good society, and our Fourth of July is
a day of fear to all invalids and persons of delicate nervous
organization, and of real, appreciable danger of life and limb to
every one."

"Well, Robert," said my wife, "though I agree with you as to the
actual state of society in this respect, I must enter my protest
against your slur on the memory of our Pilgrim fathers."

"Yes," said Theophilus Thoro, "the New Englanders are the only people,
I believe, who take delight in vilifying their ancestry. Every young
hopeful in our day makes a target of his grandfather's gravestone, and
fires away, with great self-applause. People in general seem to like
to show that they are well-born, and come of good stock; but the young
New Englanders, many of them, appear to take pleasure in insisting
that they came of a race of narrow-minded, persecuting bigots.

"It is true, that our Puritan fathers saw not everything. They made a
state where there were no amusements, but where people could go to bed
and leave their house doors wide open all night, without a shadow of
fear or danger, as was for years the custom in all our country
villages. The fact is, that the simple early New England life, before
we began to import foreigners, realized a state of society in whose
possibility Europe would scarcely believe. If our fathers had few
amusements, they needed few. Life was too really and solidly
comfortable and happy to need much amusement.

"Look over the countries where people are most sedulously amused by
their rulers and governors. Are they not the countries where the
people are most oppressed, most unhappy in their circumstances, and
therefore in greatest need of amusement? It is the slave who dances
and sings, and why? Because he owns nothing, and can own nothing, and
may as well dance and forget the fact. But give the slave a farm of
his own, a wife of his own, and children of his own, with a
schoolhouse and a vote, and ten to one he dances no more. He needs no
amusement, because he is happy.

"The legislators of Europe wished nothing more than to bring up a
people who would be content with amusements, and not ask after their
rights or