rtainly a very primitive people--unrefined, unfashionable,
"coarse"--and many of their sons and daughters are even now ashamed to
think what "savages" their parents were! In their mode of life, they
sought comfort, not "appearances;" and many things which their more
sophisticated descendants deem necessaries, they contemned as luxuries.

But, in the course of time, these things began to change, for simplicity
is always "primitive," and the progress of refinement is only the
multiplication of wants. As the country was reduced to cultivation, and
peace settled upon its borders, new classes of emigrants began to take
possession of the soil; and, for the immediate purposes of rapid
advancement, and especially of social improvement, they were better
classes than their predecessors: for, as the original pioneers had
always lived a little beyond the influences of regular civilization,
these had remained within its limits until the pressure of legal
organization began to grow irksome to their partially untamed spirits.
There was, indeed, an unbroken gradation of character, from the nearly
savage hunter, who visited the country only because it was uninhabited,
except by wild beasts, to the genuine _citizen_, who brought with him
order, and industry, and legal supremacy.

The emigrants, of whom we are now writing, constituted the third step in
this progression; and they imported along with them, or drew after them,
the peculiarities belonging to their own degree of advancement. Their
notions of comfort and modes of living, though still quite crude,
indicated an appreciable stage of refinement. They were better supplied,
for example, with cooking utensils--their household furniture was not so
primitive--and in wearing apparel, they manifested some regard to
elegance as well as comfort. Social intercourse disseminated these ideas
among those to whom they were novel; where, previously, the highest
motive to improvement had been a desire for convenience, the idea of
gentility began to claim an influence; and some of the more moderate
embellishments of life assumed the place of the mere necessaries.

The transition was not rapid nor violent, like all permanent changes, it
was the work of years, marked by comparatively slow gradations. First,
tin-ware, of various descriptions, became necessary to the operations of
the kitchen; and that which had been confined to one or two articles,
was now multiplied into many forms. A housewife co