Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/428

Rh Pittsburg, Harrisburg, and many others, have their mechanical and mercantile associations, their meeting-houses, libraries, assembly-rooms, and guilds on a large scale. And these kindred associations are all in connection with each other. As, for instance, an artisan who cannot get work in the Eastern States is passed on by means of these associations to their members in the Western States, where there is abundance of work for all hands.

Life in this country need never stand still nor stagnate. The dangers lie in another direction. But this free association is evidently an organising and conservative principle of life called forth to give law and centralisation to the floating atoms, to the disintegrated elements.

Among the various dramatic assemblies and scenes in which human-nature and popular life exhibit themselves on the soil of the New World, I may mention those small communities of socialists, who aim at producing a regenerated world (but who are all in a dwindling condition, excepting the Shaker-community, which has no children); those dancing Shakers; those silent Quaker meetings; those many-tongued anti-slavery meetings; those religious festivals, camp-meetings at night in the woods, and scenes of baptism by the rivers, beautiful and affecting, especially where they have reference to the children of Africa. At the Conventions for the Rights of Women, in which women as well as men stand forth and speak for the civil rights of woman, I have not as yet been present, but I intend to embrace the first opportunity of being so. These first originated in Ohio, but are just now being held in the States of New England—abused and calumniated by many, attended and supported by many also. These furnish and afford a striking scene in the great drama which is now being performed. For all that lives fettered in Europe is brought forward in America, acquires form, builds a church, combines in union, takes a name,