Page:Extracts from the letters and journals of George Fletcher Moore.djvu/276

 250 short of reality itself. Vain philosophy! how easily and readily poor human nature resumes its sway when she finds you sleeping on your post! I wish some of you were here; I wish all of you were here:—no; 'tis a selfish wish; this life would not do for any of you. You would be obliged to forget, or at least dispense with, many comforts and refinements altogether; you must endeavour to lose the recollection of your former home, and if possible, of your former friends and feelings. What a task! how difficult! how impossible! yet otherwise no emigrant can be contented and happy here; he must not look back after having put his hand to the plough. Imagination paints this sunny clime as the land of fruits; so it is! but time, labour, money, skill, and judgment, must combine to raise them. The land of pastoral ease and simplicity; so it may be! but the flocks and herds must first be acquired; here again money! money! The land of agriculture and smiling harvests; true, it may be! but money is the manure to set them growing.

"Oh cives, cives quaerenda est pecunia primum."

A little will do to set things going, if managed judiciously, and persevering with skill and activity. Servants are so scarce and consequential, that we must serve ourselves as far as possible; so that a fine gentleman has no business here. I read your plan, last night, for supplying us