For the rest, as to manners, morals, arts, and sciences, the people in Newbury always went to their parties at three o’clock in the afternoon, and came home before dark; always stopped all work the minute the sun was down on Saturday night; always went to meeting on Sunday; had a schoolhouse with all the ordinary inconveniences; were in neighborly charity with one another, read their Bibles, feared their God, and were content with such things as they had,—the best philosophy after all. * * * * * [Sidenote: The farmhouse.] Everything in Uncle Abel’s house was in the same time, place, manner, and form, from year’s end to year’s end. There was old Master Bose, a dog after my uncle’s own heart, who always walked as if he were studying the multiplication table. There was the old clock, forever ticking in the kitchen corner, with a picture on its face of the sun forever setting behind a perpendicular row of poplar-trees. There was the never-failing supply of red peppers and onions hanging over the chimney. There, too, were the yearly hollyhocks and morning-glories blooming about the windows. There was the “best room,” with its sanded floor, the cupboard in one corner with its glass doors, the evergreen asparagus bushes in the chimney, and there was the stand with the Bible and almanac on it in another corner. There, too, was Aunt Betsey, who never looked any older, because she always looked as old as she could; who always dried her catnip and wormwood the last of September, and began to clean house the first of May. In short, this was the land of continuance. Old Time never took it into his head to practice either addition, or subtraction, or multiplication on its sum total. UNCLE TOM’S CABIN [Sidenote: Conscience in New England women.] Nowhere is conscience so dominant and all-absorbing as with New England women. It is the granite formation which lies deepest, and rises out even to the tops of the highest mountains. DRED. [Sidenote: Selling their disadvantages.] “But these Yankees turn everything to account. If a man’s field is covered with rock, he’ll find some way to sell it, and make money out of it; and if they freeze up all winter, they sell the ice, and make money out of that. They just live by selling their disadvantages!” POGANUC PEOPLE. [Sidenote: Yankee grit.] Zeph was a creature born to oppose, as much as white bears are made to walk on ice. And how, we ask, would New England’s rocky soil and icy hills have been made mines of wealth unless there had been human beings born to oppose, delighting to combat and wrestle, and with an unconquerable power of will?