"Yes, but they have more endurance than anything else. It has become second nature to them; so some of them would long endure a pain or discomfort rather than relieve it. Doubt it, if you like, but I am speaking from a great mass of experience. I've heard much of the endurance of the North American Indian, but the Indian is a baby to these farmer-settlers. Endurance is in their every muscle, bone, and nerve, and they pass it down to their children. Eastern babies would scream unceasingly at maladies that some of our youngsters bear without a whimper. Many of the Presidents of the United States were born of just such stock; of course they were examples of the survival of the fittest, for any who are weak in such a country must go to the wall in a hurry, if they chance to escape the grave--and the graveyards are appallingly full." "And 'tis the women and children that fill them!" Grace said. "Yes," assented the Doctor. "If I could have my way, no women and children would be allowed in a new section until the men had made decent, comfortable homes, with crops ready for harvest, all of which shows what an impracticable old fool a man of experience may become." "But a little work, by the men of some of these places, would make the women and children so much more comfortable!" "Yes, but the women and children don't think to ask it, and the men don't notice the deficiency." "But why shouldn't they? Many men elsewhere are perpetually contriving to make their families more comfortable." "Yes, but seldom unless the necessity of doing so is forced to their attention in some way. Besides, to do so, they must have the contriving, inventive faculty, which is one of the scarcest in human nature!" "Oh, Doctor! I've often heard that we Americans are the most inventive people in the world." "So we are, according to the Patent Office reports, though the patents don't average one to a hundred people, and not more than one in ten of them is worth developing. I am right in saying that invention--except, perhaps, of lies--is among the rarest of human qualities. It requires quick perception and a knack at construction, as well as no end of adaptiveness and energy, all of which are themselves rare qualities. Countless generations ached seven or eight hours of every twenty-four, until a few years ago, when some one invented springy bottoms for beds. Countless generations of men had to cut four times as much wood as now, and innumerable women smoked their eyes out, cooking over open fires, before any one thought of making stoves of stone or of iron plates. Almost every labor-saving contrivance you've seen might have been perfected before it was, if the inventive faculty hadn't been so rare. Why, half of the newest contrivances of the day are so simple and obvious, that smart men, when they see them, want to shoot themselves for not having themselves invented them."