“There are pleasanter ways of looking at a country village like Pepperell,” he writes to his somewhat discontented correspondent; “there are good studies both within doors and without, and either picture will be new to you. Talk to the men about farming, and you will find yourself in good society at once. Inquire of the women about the mysteries of cheese--and butter-making, and you will be more entertained than with the Georgics. At first, you find yourself in a false relation with them. You touch at no points and bristle repellingly at all. They flounder in their conversation and seek shelter in the weather or the price of pork, because they consider themselves under a painful necessity to entertain you. They can’t converse because they try--effort being the untimely grave of all true interchange of natures. They make a well where there should be a fountain. Get them upon any common ground, and you will find there is genuine stuff in them. The essence of good society is simply a community in habits of thought and topics of interest. When we approach each other naturally, we meet easily and gracefully; if we hurry too much we are apt to come together with an unpleasant bump. “Who knows how much domestic interest was involved in that question the goodwife asked you about Mr. Praisegod’s servant? Perhaps she has a son, or a daughter betrothed to a neighbor’s son, who thinks of beginning life (as many of the farmers’ children in our country towns do) by entering into service in the city. Perhaps she wished and yet did not dare to ask of the temptations he would be exposed to. I love our Yankees with all their sharp angles. “Maria is and has been remarkably well ever since the birth of our little darling, if I may call her so when Blanche still holds the first place in our hearts. Little Miss Mabel thrives wonderfully. She is, I think, as good a child as her little sister--though I tremble to trace any likeness between the two. She certainly has not Blanche’s noble and thoughtful eyes, which were noticeable even when she was first born. But some of her ways are very like her sister’s. Those who have seen her say that she is a very beautiful child.”