The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1879-09-11
New England Thrift.

There is one thing that has impressed
me unexpectedly as it were, in the excur-
sions which / have made from this lovely
little island to points of note and interest
along the New England coast. l knew
the people to be well-to.do, but never
before have I been so struck by the vast
aggregation of wealth. New England is
three hundred years old. Its people we're
not, perhaps, originally more thrifty than
the early settlers of Virginia and the
Carolinas. But they happened to pick a
hard soil and to encounter long winters.
They were obliged to work and to store
up. Thus the habit of labor and the
process of accumulation began. These
have continued ever since. On the
Southern seaboard short winters and an
easy soil produced the opposite re-
suits, and the negro greatly assisted them.
Slavery being gone, and time having worn
the soil of the South down TO sort OF
equality with that OF New England, we
may hope that the newly developed ne
cessities will create a new character, and,
in its order, bring up the lost average of
once more prosperous section? / fear
not. The New Englander has prodigi-
Gus start; and, as John Happy used to
say, "a starts a start" We never had a
great deal of ready money in the South,
and what we had we squandered. We
had plenty of fun, debts and niggers;
we went in for glory; and for fifty years
we paid tribute to these people, as we are
doing now. They had no constitutional
scruples which stood in the way of a
lighthouse or break-watcr. They sent
men to Washington who knew how to
stick their hands into the treasury, and
if one of them happened to get back
empty-handed they set him aside and
sent some one else. The people en- n,asse
became race of practical politicians.
Whilst the South was toying with the
ruffie on its shirt, and whirling its silver
headed cane, New England was fixing"
itself. 1t is now "f1ed," it is finished"
1t can afford to be complacent and hos
pitable. 1t is so. 1t is the South which
is poor and yet refuses to learn its lesson
which dreamily look toward the West,
when it ought to give its days and nights
to q study of the methods of patience,
self. denial and thrift, which have made
these rocks to blossom like the rose, and,
in less than century, completely re-
versed The relative positions of the Sec
tions.
Emphatically, the New Englander is
as choleric as the Southerner. Consider
ing his advantages-for education and
for travel-he is less liberal and knows
less. 1t is silly enough to hear the av-
erage Southern notion ola Yankee. But
it is sillier to hear the average Yankee
notion of a Southerner. Intercourse
would mend each's estimate of the other.
In the meantime, I ought to say that it
is impossible to exaggerate the hearty
manliness of the genuine New England
man, or the fine and noble characteristics
of the real New England woman, or to
overstate the open-handed, genial hospi-
tality which prevails everywhere in this
New England country. What is it, and
why is it? 1t is, to begin with, robust
health, and, to end on, plenty of money.
The man who is sick cannot be hearty,
and the man who is straitened cannot be
hospitable. You will observe that l don't
dislike the Yankees nor envy them their
prosperity. But, even if / did, should
not quarrel with them. "When l see
rattlesnaik stick his head out of a hole,"
says Josh Billings, "I sheer of, and says
1 to myself, that hole belongs to that
snaik." Travers' last has it that there
"are but three liars in this country-Tom
Ochiltree is one, and Eli Perkins is the
other two" Making trayersity Of this,
it seems to me there are but three pros
porous sections of our Union-New York
is one, and New England is the other
two.-Hcnry Wattcrson's Block Island
Letter.