follow_ out their facts to results, instead of
_reasoning_ them out. Then, the multiplicity of objects and events that
exist in the old countries to quicken the powers of the mind, has no
parallel here. It is owing to this want of the present and the past, which
causes the American, the moment he becomes speculative, to run into the
future. That future promises much, and, in a degree, may justify the
weakness. Let us take heed, however, that it do not lead to
disappointment.

After all, I have found Lucy the most dear to me, and the most valuable
companion, since we have both passed the age of fifty. Air is not more
transparent, than her pure mind, and I ever turn to it for counsel,
sympathy, and support, with a confidence and reliance that experience
could alone justify. As we draw nearer to the close of life, I find my
wife gradually loosening the ties of this world, her love for her husband
and children excepted, and fastening her looks on a future world. In thus
accomplishing, with a truth and nature that are unerringly accurate, the
great end of her being, nothing repulsive, nothing that is in the least
tinctured with bigotry, and nothing that is even alienated from the
affections, or her duties in life, is mingled with her devotion. My
family, like its female head, has ever been deeply impressed by religion;
but it is religion in its most pleasing aspect; religion that has no taint
of puritanism, and in which sin and innocent gaiety are never confounded
It is the most cheerful family of my acquaintance; and this, I must
implicitly believe, solely because, in addition to the bounties it enjoys,
under the blessing of God, it draws the just distinction between those
things that the word of God has prohibited, and those which come from the
excited and exaggerated feelings of a class of theologians, who,
constantly preaching the doctrine of faith, have regulated their moral
discipline solely, as if, in their hearts, they placed all their reliance
on the efficacy of a school of good works that has had its existence in
their own diseased imaginations. I feel the deepest gratitude to Lucy for
having enstilled the most profound sense of their duties into our
children, while they remain totally free from cant, and from those
exaggerations and professions which so many mistake for piety of purer
emanation.

Some of my readers may feel a curiosity to know how time has treated us
elderly people, for elderly we have certainly