Of two of its members and some of their make-shifts we have this account, copied from his journal: _“The Economical Family._—My father was an excellent man (for no one provided better dinners—soups, codfish, mutton-chops; even, upon great days, he has been known to have a _turkey_). He was a man of enlarged mind and great sagacity. He was before his age in his views, and always before his salary in his expenses. This was from no want of calculation: nobody ever was longer and shrewder in that. But he was aspiring, and by nature seemed to go beyond things seen, far into the region of things _hoped_ for. “His sister, an antique maiden lady, differed vastly from him and could in no sense be called enlightened. It was astonishing to see how his example and his reasoning were thrown away upon her. To the last she clung to those earthly, _low_ notions which seem so peculiar to this world. She would persist in saying that no one should buy what he could not pay for, nor pay for any new thing until old debts were settled. Nor could she be brought to adopt an enlarged policy in respect to the family. We were obliged to wear clothes until they were worn out—at least out at the knees and elbows—altho’ the fashion should change a dozen times during that period. So that it was not uncommon to find one’s self two or three times the pink of fashion before a suit was fairly condemned as unseaworthy. In fact, we may be said always to have set the fashion at such times, since we were seen wearing the proper cut before even the leading beau. But if this was comfortable it was but little amends for the days of darkness which ensued. One day we revelled (?) in our glory; the next every one gaped at our uncouth fashion. We might properly be likened to a ship riding gracefully upon the water, but suddenly left by the tide sticking in the mud, stiff and immovable. I used to comfort myself, when laughed at, by saying, ‘Never mind; you laugh now, before six months you’ll be imitating me.’ And so it often proved, till I began to think I was a prophet. “But it is of the family I write and not of myself, for be it known that I am not under vassalage. I am free from both authority and—money; the latter condition as no reproach. I have often noticed that these two kinds of independence are closely allied. True independence seems always in the lurch.” One amusing incident that grew out of the half country-farm life which they then lived he used often to refer to.