Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 18.djvu/292



256 Harvey W, Scott

manners of that time, that the constitution which had been made for our state was an immature work. ' It was a product of preceding experience in government, adapted to our times and conditions. So ripe was it, so complete, that it has answered our purposes ever since. Permanent principles are fixed in it. It contains little that could be called temporary, and that little passes almost unnoticed, for what is unnec- essary in constitutions and laws quickly becomes obsolete.

Yet life had" its special attractions. We were content with little, and were not poor, because we had few wants. We were, I think, more cordial and hearty toward each other; for in- tense devotion to our various pursuits had not then thrown all the energies of each into a single channel, and so to an extent separated us from each other, as now. True, we had to work to live, but each one felt that we had a little time for the intercourse of social life. There is not much of that sort of leisure now. Yet there might better be. Nature requires us to work, but has ways of punishing excesses in that direction, too. If she does it in no other way, she makes success itself useless, for her wreath often covers hair that has grown gray, and fame comes when the hearts it should have thrilled are numb. The greatest of all moral writers has said : "They lose it that do buy it with much care."

Many are yet living who have seen the wool that made the family clothing carded and spun in the house ; who have seen the spinning wheel and the loom, indispensable portions of the domestic plant, occup3ring a large part of the space in a small cabin; who have seen the dye pots standing in the chimney comers at the open fire where the meals of the family were cooked ; who have been members of households where every part of the work about house and farm was done in a partic- ular way with clocklike regularity — ^the management of crops, the care of animals, the making of soap, the curing of meats, and attention to all the arts and duties of independent family life. Scarcely anything was bought ; each family supplied its