Page:The Genius of America (1923).pdf/149

 or southwestern desert, as a vision of home—the historic home.

There rest from their labors seven or eight generations of simple, pious folk, who, toiling from sunrise to sunset, brought the forlorn hope of their time to reluctant blossom and explored the difficult meaning of a new world—small independent farmers who lived on the land, skilled workmen who did not watch the clock, the doctor who cared more for his patient than for his fee, and the minister passing rich on six hundred dollars a year.

For one reason or another these provincial folk—it must be remembered that the Adamses now declare even Boston provincial—these provincial folk, as all our fashionable anti-Puritan writers are complaining, showed a marked indifference to the more expensive pleasures of the senses. I sometimes gravely doubt whether it is true, as is often asserted, that they did not care for beauty. They had, for example, a kind of native instinct for beautiful and sound woodwork. Urbane people of more taste than means are still combing the clocks, highboys, and sideboards out of the remoter hill villages of New England. Still it probably is true that they gave comparatively little attention to the decoration of their homes or to the adornment of their