in Massachusetts--and if the man of the
house occasionally smoked a pipe he was requested to blow the smoke on
the plants in the south windows, so as to kill the vermin. Nothing was
wasted.

The child born into such a family where industry and economy are prized,
unless he is a mental defective and a physical cripple, will be sure to
thrive.

The father had made one trip in a whaler. He was gone three years and
got a one-hundred-and-forty-seventh part of the catch. The oil market
was on a slump, and so the net result for the father of a
millionaire-to-be was ninety-five dollars and twenty cents. This happy
father was a grocer, and later a clerk to a broker in whale-oil. Pater
had the New England virtues to such a degree that they kept him poor. He
was cautious, plus.

To make, you have to spend; to grow a crop, you have to plant the seed.
Here's where you plunge--it is a gamble, a bet on the seed versus the
eternal cussedness of things. It's you against the chances of a crop. If
the drought comes, or the flood, or the chinch-bug, or the brown-tailed
moth, you may find yourself floundering in the mulligatawney.

Aside from that one cruise to the whaling-grounds, Rogers Pere played
the game of life near home and close to shore. The easy ways of the
villagers are shown by a story Mr. Rogers used to tell about a good
neighbor of his--a second mate on a whaler. The bark was weighing anchor
and about to sail. The worthy mate tarried at a barroom over in New
Bedford. "Ain't you going home to kiss your wife good-by?" some one
asked. And the answer was: "What's the use? I'm only going to be gone
two years."

Half of Fairhaven was made up of fishermen, and the rest were widows and
the usual village contingent. The widows were the washerwomen.

Those who had the price hired a washerwoman one day in the week. This
was not so much because the mother herself could not do the work, as it
was to give work to the needy and prove the Jeffersonian idea of
equality. The wash-lady was always seated with the family at table, and
besides her wage was presented with a pie, a pumpkin, or some outgrown
garment. Thus were the Christian virtues liberated.

Where the gray mare is the better horse, her mate always lets up a bit
on his whiffletree and she draws most of the load. It was so here. The
mother planned for the household. She was the economist, bursar and
disburser. She was a member of the Congregational Church, with a liberal
bia