really felt. The ideal is still for the many, more powerful than the real. The conscientiousness and painful self-consciousness of the early days still represses the joyful or peaceful side of life, and makes angles more to be desired than curves. Reticence is the New England habit. Affection, intense as it may be, gives and demands small expression. Good-will must be taken for granted, and little courtesies and ameliorations in daily life are treated with disdain. "Duty" is the watchword for most, and no matter how strange the path, if this word be lined above it, it is trodden unquestioned.
As in the beginning, the corner-stone still "rests upon a book." The eagerness for knowledge shown in every act of the early colonial years has intensified, till "to know" has become a demon driving one to destruction. Eternity would seem to have been abolished, so eager are the learners to use every second of time. Overwork, mental and physical, has been the portion of the New England woman from the beginning. Climate and all natural conditions fostered an alertness unknown to the moist and equable air of the old home. While for the South there was a long perpetuation of the ease of English life, and the adjective which a Southern woman most desires to hear before her name is "sweet"; the New England woman chooses "bright," and the highest mark of approval is found in that rather aggressive word. Tin pans, scoured to that point of polish which meets the New England necessity for thoroughness, are "bright," and the near observer blinks as he suddenly comes upon them in the sun. A bit of looking-glass handled judiciously by the small boy, has the same quality,
