The sons and daughters grew up, all, as you will perceive, in the closest habits of industry. The keen jocky way of whittling out a living by small bargains sharply turned, which many suppose to be an essential characteristic of the Yankee race, is yet no proper inbred distinction, but only a casual result, or incident, that pertains to the transition period between the small, stringent way of life in the previous times of home-production and the new age of trade. In these olden times, these genuine days of homespun, they supposed, in their simplicity, that thrift represented work, and looked about seldom for any more delicate and sharper way of getting on. They did not call a man's property his _fortune_, but they spoke of one or another as being _worth_ so much; conceiving that he had it laid up as the reward or fruit of his deservings. The house was a factory on the farm, the farm a grower and producer for the house. The exchanges went on briskly enough, but required neither money nor trade. No affectation of polite living, no languishing airs of delicacy and softness indoors, had begun to make the fathers and sons impatient of hard work out of doors, and set them at contriving some easier and more plausible way of living. Their very dress represented work, and they went out as men whom the wives and daughters had dressed for work; facing all weather, cold and hot, wet and dry, wrestling with the plow on the stony-sided hills, digging out the rocks by hard lifting and a good many very practical experiments in mechanics, dressing the flax, threshing the rye, dragging home, in the deep snows, the great woodpile of the year's consumption; and then when the day is ended--having no loose money to spend in taverns--taking their recreation all together in reading or singing or happy talk or silent looking in the fire, and finally in sleep--to rise again with the sun and pray over the family Bible for just such another good day as the last. And so they lived, working out, each year, a little advance of thrift, just within the line of comfort. No mode of life was ever more expensive: it was life at the expense of labor too stringent to allow the highest culture and the most proper enjoyment. Even the dress of it was more expensive than we shall ever see again. Still it was a life of honesty and simple content and sturdy victory. Immoralities that rot down the vigor and humble the consciousness of families were as much less frequent as they had less thought of adventure; less to do with travel and trade and money, and were closer to nature and the simple life of home.