nement whatever, nor any
superfluous sensibility, but gifted with a native wholesomeness of
character which must have been a very beneficial element in the atmosphere
of the almshouse. He spoke to his pauper family in loud, good-humored,
cheerful tones, and treated them with a healthy freedom that probably
caused the forlorn wretches to feel as if they were free and healthy
likewise. If he had understood them a little better, he would not have
treated them half so wisely. We are apt to make sickly people more morbid,
and unfortunate people more miserable, by endeavoring to adapt our
deportment to their especial and individual needs. They eagerly accept our
well-meant efforts; but it is like returning their own sick breath back
upon themselves, to be breathed over and over again, intensifying the
inward mischief at every repetition. The sympathy that would really do
them good is of a kind that recognizes their sound and healthy parts, and
ignores the part affected by disease, which will thrive under the eye of a
too close observer like a poisonous weed in the sunshine. My good friend
the governor had no tendencies in the latter direction, and abundance of
them in the former, and was consequently as wholesome and invigorating as
the west-wind with a little spice of the north in it, brightening the
dreary visages that encountered us as if he had carried a sunbeam in his
hand. He expressed himself by his whole being and personality, and by
works more than words, and had the not unusual English merit of knowing
what to do much better than how to talk about it.

The women, I imagine, must have felt one imperfection in their state,
however comfortable otherwise. They were forbidden, or, at all events,
lacked the means, to follow out their natural instinct of adorning
themselves; all were dressed in one homely uniform of blue-checked gowns,
with such caps upon their heads as English servants wear. Generally, too,
they had one dowdy English aspect, and a vulgar type of features so nearly
alike that they seemed literally to constitute a sisterhood. We have few
of these absolutely unilluminated faces among our native American
population, individuals of whom must be singularly unfortunate, if, mixing
as we do, no drop of gentle blood has contributed to refine the turbid
element, no gleam of hereditary intelligence has lighted up the stolid
eyes, which their forefathers brought from the Old Country. Even in this
English almshouse, ho