h I were sackless of thought or
interest in anything save amusement. The manufacture of the wool raised
on the farm is the most important part of the women's work, and in this
the natives particularly excel. As yet I knew not the mysteries of
colouring brown with butternut bark, nor the proper proportion of _sweet
fern_ and indigo to produce green, so that our wool, on its return from
the carding mill, had been left with this person--lady, "par
courtesie,"--who was a perfect adept in the art, to be spun and wove:
and the business on which I now call is to arrange with her as to its
different proportions and purposes. What for blankets, for clothing, or
for socks and mittens, which all require a different style of
manufacture, and are all items of such importance during the winter
snows. Melancthon Grey, whose most Christian and protestant appellation
was abbreviated into "Lank," was a true-blooded blue nose. His father
had a noble farm of rich intervale on the banks of the river Saint John,
and was well to do in the world. Lank was his eldest son, yet no
heritage was his, save his axe and the arm which swung it. The law of
primogeniture exists not in this country, and the youngest son is
frequently heir to that land on which the older ones have borne the
"heat and burthen of the day," and rendered valuable by their toil,
until each chooses his own portion in the world, by taking unto himself
a wife and a lot of forest land, and thus another hard-won _homestead_
is raised, and sons enough to choose among for heirs. Melancthon Grey
had wedded his cousin, a custom common among the "blue noses," and which
most likely had its origin in the patriarchal days of the earlier
settlers, when the inhabitants were few. Sybel was a sweet pretty girl,
deficient, as the Americans all are, in those high-toned feelings which
characterise the depth of woman's love in the countries of Europe, yet
made, as they generally do, an affectionate wife, and a fond and doating
mother. Those two names, Sybel and Melancthon, had a strange sound in
the same household, awaking, as they always did in my dreamy fancy, a
train of such differing memories. Sybel recalling the days of early
Rome, the haughty Tarquin and his mysterious prophetess, while
Melancthon brought back the "Reformation," and the best and most pious
of its fathers. In the particular of names, the Americans have a decided
"penchant" for those of euphonious and peculiar sound--they are sel