world's improvability than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men
seldom fall twice, in a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and higher is the nature
that can thus magnanimously persist in error.
    Stout Silas Foster mingled little in our conversation; but when he did
speak, it was very much to some practical purpose. For instance: -
    »Which man among you,« quoth he, »is the best judge of swine? Some of us
must go to the next Brighton fair, and buy half-a-dozen pigs!«
    Pigs! Good heavens, had we come out from among the swinish multitude, for
this? And again, in reference to some discussion about raising early vegetables
for the market: -
    »We shall never make any hand at market-gardening,« said Silas Foster,
»unless the women-folks will undertake to do all the weeding. We haven't team
enough for that and the regular farm-work, reckoning three of you city-folks as
worth one common field-hand. No, no, I tell you, we should have to get up a
little too early in the morning, to compete with the market-gardeners round
Boston!«
    It struck me as rather odd, that one of the first questions raised, after
our separation from the greedy, struggling, self-seeking world, should relate to
the possibility of getting the advantage over the outside barbarians, in their
own field of labor. But, to own the truth, I very soon became sensible, that, as
regarded society at large, we stood in a position of new hostility, rather than
new brotherhood. Nor could this fail to be the case, in some degree, until the
bigger and better half of society should range itself on our side. Constituting
so pitiful a minority as now, we were inevitably estranged from the rest of
mankind, in pretty fair proportion with the strictness of our mutual bond among
ourselves.
    This dawning idea, however, was driven back into my inner consciousness by
the entrance of Zenobia. She came with the welcome intelligence that supper was
on the table. Looking at herself in the glass, and perceiving that her one
magnificent flower had grown rather languid, (probably by being exposed to the
fervency of the kitchen-fire,) she flung it on the floor, as unconcernedly as a
village-girl would throw away a faded violet. The action seemed proper to her
character; although, methought, it would still more have befitted the bounteous
nature of this beautiful woman to scatter fresh flowers