The Household

The transition from motaer md daughter power to water and steam power is a great one, greater by f ar than many have as yet begun to conceive - oae that is to carry with it a complete revolution of domestic life and social manners. If, in this transition, thero is something to regret, there is more, I trust, to desire. If it carries away the old simplicity, it must also open higher possibiliües of culture and social ornament. The principal danger is, that, in removing the rough necessities of the homespun age, it may teke away also the severe virtues and the homely but deep and true piety by I %vhich, in tbeir blessed fruite, that age j is so honorably distinguished. Be the issue what it may, good or bad, hopeful or unhopeful, it ha3 come; it is alI Teady i f act, and the consequenees must follow. Everytliing thafc was most distinctive f tlie old homespun mode of life will joon have passed away. The spinning wheels of wool and fiax, that used to buzz so i'amiliarly in the childish ears of some of us, will be heard no more forever ; seen no more, in f act, save in tlie halls of the Antiquarian Societies, where the delicate daughters will be asking what these strange machines are and how they are made to go? The huge, hewn-timber looms, that used to occupy a room by themselves ia the farm-houses will be gone, cut up i'or cord wood, and thair heavy thwack, tieating up the wool', will be heard no move by the passer-by - not even the Antiquarian Halls will flnd room to harbor a specimen. The long strips of ïinen, bleaching on the grass, and tended by a sturdy maiden, sprinkling i hem each hour f rom her watering-can, u i ider a broiliug suu - thus to prepare the Sunday linen for her brothers' and her own wedding outfit - will have disappeared, save as they return to lili a picture in some novel or bailad of the old time. The tables will be spread with some cunuing water-power Silesia not yet invented, perchanco with some raeaner fabric from the cotton nims. xne iieavy ounuav wa vuav grew on sneep individually remembered -more comfortably carried, in warin weather, on the arm - and the specially üne-striped blue and white pantaloons of linen just f rom the looms, will no longer be conspicuous in preoessiona of footmen going to their liomespun worship, but will have given place to proeeasious of broadcloth gentlemen lolling n the upholstery of tlieir coaches, able ;o worship, it may be, in a more cultiíateil figure, but not with a flner sinserity. The churches, too, that used to 36 simple brown meeting houses cover;d with rived clapboarda of oak, will lave come down, mostly f rom the bleak lilltops in the close villages and popnous towns that crowd the waterfalls nd the rallroads ; and the old burial places, where the fathers sleep, will be ieft to their lonsly altitude - token, ihall we say, of an age that lived as much nearer to heaven and as much sb under the world. The change will be complete. Would that we might aise some worthy monument toa social state, then to be passed by, worthy, in ïll future time, t be held in the dear3st reverence. It may have seemed extravagant ov fantastic, that I should think to give a character of the century now past, unaer the one article of homespun. It certainly is not the only, or in itself the chief article of distinction; and yet we shall flnd it to be a distinction that runs through all others, and gives a color to the whole economy of life and character, in the times of which we speak. Thus, if the clothing is to be manur factured in the house, then fSax will be grown in the plowed land, and sheep will be raised in the pasture, and the measure of the flax ground, and the number of ftock will eorrespond with the measure of the house market - the numher of the sons and daughters to be clothed- so that the agriculture out of doors will watoh thefamily indoors. Then as there is no tliought of obtaining the artieles of clothing, or dress, by exchange; as there is little passing of money, and the habit of exchange is feebly developed; the family will be fed on home grown products, buckwheat, maize, rye, or whatevev the soil will yield, And as carriages are a luxury introduced only with exchanges, the lads will be going back and forth to the mili on horseback, astride the fresh grists, tokeep themouths in supply. The meat market will be equally domeetic, a kind 01 qur.uciva.tóter slaughter and eupply, láid up in the cellar, at üfc times in the year. The daugtiters that in faotory days, would go abroad to join the female conscription of the cottoii mili, will be kept in the home factory, or in that oí some other f amily, and so in the retreats of domestio lire. And so it will be seen, that a forin of life whieh includes almost every point of economy, centres around the article of liomespun dress, and is by that determined. Given the f act that a people spin their wn dress, you have in. that f act a whole volume of pharaeteristics, They may be shepherds dweUing in tents, or they may build them flxed habitations, bnt the distinction given will show them to be a people who are not in trade, whole lite centres in the family, homebred in their mannors, priinitive and simple in their character, inflexible in their piety, hospitable without show, intelligent without refinemeut. And so it will be seen that our homespun fathers and mothers made a Puritan Arcadia, among these hills, answeying to the picture which Polybius, himself an Avcadian, gave of nis countrymen, when Ue said that thoy had, ilthroughout Gre9ce, a high and honorable reputation; not only on account of their hospitality to strangers, and their benevolente towards all men, but espeeially on account of their piety towards the Divine Being." Thus, if we speak of what, in the polite world, is called society, oor homespun age had just none of it - and perhaps the more of society for that reason; because what they had was separate from all the polite fictions and showy conventionalities of the world. I speak not here of the rade and promiaeuoua gathérings connected so often with low and vulgar oxcesses; the military trainings, the huskings, the raisings, commoníy ended with a wrestling match, These were their dissipations, and perhaps they were about as good as any. The apple-paring and quilting ñ-olics you may set down, if you will, as the polka-dances and masquerades of homespun. If they undertook a lormal entertainment of any kind, it was poiamonly stiff ancí quite unsuccessful. Bul when soaae two queens of the spindle, specially foDd of each other, instead of calling back and forth with a card-caso ia their hand, ' agreed to "join works," as it was called, for a week or two, in spinning, enlivening their talk by the rival buzz of ', their wheels, and, when the two skeins i were done, spending the rest of the day i in such kind of recreation as. pleased 1 them, this to them was real society, and, so far, a good type of all the society they had. It was the society not of the Nominal ists, but of iheEealists: cciety in orafter work; spontaneously ;athered, for the most part, in term 3 of ilective affinity - foot excursions of roung people, or excursions on Dack, after the haying, to the tops of ;he neighboring mountains; boatings jn the river or the lake, by moonlight, alling the woodwl shores and the recesses of the hills with lively eohoes; evening schools of sacred music, in which the music is notso sacred as pre pariug to be; evening circles of young persons, falling together, as they imagine, by accident, round som e village queen of song, and chasing away the time in bailada and glees so much f aster tufinthey wish.that jnateuch another accident is like to happen soon; neighbors calledin to meet the minister and talk of both workls together, and, if he is limber enough to suffer it, iu such happy mixtures, that both are melted into one. But most of all to be remembered are those friendly circles gathered so often round the vr inter's fire - not the stove, but the flre, and brightly blazing, hospitable fire. In the early dusk, the home circle begins to spread. Next a few young folks from the other end of the village, entering in a brisker mood, find as many more chairs set in as wedges into the periphery to receive them also. And then a friendly sleighfull of old and young, tliat have come down from the hill to spend an hour or two, spread the circle again, rnoving it still farther back froin the üre; and the fire blazes just aa much higher and more brightly, having a new stick added for every guest. There is no restraint, certainly no affectation of style. They teil stories, they laugh, they sing. They are serious and gay by turns, or the young folks go on with sorne play, while the f.athers and mothers are discussing some hard points of theology in the minister's last sermón, or porhaps the great danger coming to sound moráis from the multiplication of pikes and newspapers! Meantime tne good housewife brings out her choice stock oí home-grown exótica, gathered from three realms, doughuuts from the pantry, hickory-nuts from the chamber, and the nicest, smoothest, apples from the cellar; all which, including, I suppose I must add, the rather unpoetic beverage that gave its acid saiack to the aricient hospitality, are discussed as freely, with no fear of cansequences. And then, as the tall clock in the corner of the room ticks on nvijestically towards nine, the conversatioii takes, it rnay be, a little more serious turn, and it is suggested that a very happy evening may fitly be ended with a prayer. Whereupon the circle breaks ' up with a reverent, congratulative look on every face, which is itself the truest language of a social nature blessed in hanián fellowship. Such, in general, was the society of the homespun age. It was not that society that puts one iu oonnection with the great world of letters, or fashion, or power, raising as much the level of his conscionsness and the scale and styleof his action; but it was society back of the world, in the sacred retreats of r:tural feeling, truth and piety. - Ex.