Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/419

Rh Rose, the youngest child, is still on the mother's breast. Hawthorne's house is a happy, quiet little abode, embracing a beautiful family life.

At the rural inn where I was staying with my friends, the O.'s, also resided as guests several young girls for the benefit of country air and life. There was also a handsome and still youthful mother, with five handsome daughters. I one morning asked every one of these what she wished for as her ultimatum in life. Every one replied by mentioning some tolerably indifferent occupation and condition of life. I reproached them with not being candid, and asked them, whether in their conscience they would not reply, as an amiable young girl had done to whom I had once put the same question, “To be married, and to see all my friends happy around me?” The young girls laughed, and two of them said, “Yes, if the right man came.” And this reply is characteristic of the young American woman's state of life and feeling. These young girls, indulged by every one, enjoying their life and their liberty, without compulsion or restraint of any kind, are not likely to be anxious, or to trouble themselves about the circumstances of their lives. Yet they will not say, “no,” when “the right man comes.” And for many young girls he comes quite too soon; at least so it seems to me in many cases where they are married as soon as they cease to be children. I have heard of a young girl who was married at fourteen, and then was sent by her husband to a girls' school.

I paid a visit with my friends on Sunday to the Shaker community at New Lebanon, which is merely a few miles distant from Lennox. We were again there in a great assembly; saw precisely the same figures in the dance, and heard the same kind of discourse and singing as I had heard a year before. The same friendly Shaker sisters brought forward benches for the spectators; the same elder Evans stood up and delivered the same kind of