Litchfield enquirer., 1880-09-09
Our Rack-Ooor Visitor.

in this county, by Southerner, who had been
Yankee is like. 'B" is an excellent, we
might even say an admirable writer, describing
very graphically the men and places he sees,
writing with more thought of matter than of
manner, yet with the ease and aptness of one
quite athome in that species of literary work. 1t
is the writer himself, however, and the stand
4 point from which he views us and ours, that
lend their greatest interest to these letters.
1t is very refreshing in time like this,
when politics is so largely taken up with Sec
tional irritations, to find that there is some
thing besides bitterness in the dispositions of
men of one section towards those of another. The
gentleman who has come among us, though
watching US very sharply, though making
some funny if not unnatural blunders in writ
ing about US on such short acquaintance, evil
down fairly what he sees here on the thresh-
hold of Yankeedom. When difference of
habit comes under his observation, he gives it
fair play seeks out no evil motive for it
but rather good one; and confesses its merit
frankly, If it has any. Least of all is there
any of that narrowness which considers every
difference an offence. :n...
| Reprinted here at home, portions of his let
tiers may seem unduly personal. For the read
ers to whom they are addressed they are not
SO. 1t Is through those details which may
seem trivial to us that he illustrates the most
important differences between Northern and
Southern life. 1t surprises him to hear color
ed women called "ladies." He is astonished to
hear cornet played in church. Yet he
| candidly remarks that lit helped the music
nightly. The cornet smoothed down the in
| equalities of the voices, Furnished the music,
and give as it were gilt edge to it," He is
still more surprised to see that great many
| modern descendants of the Puritan Fathers
are not regular attendants at church, and that
some 90 there to sleep;
Truth compels me to say that the congrega-
tions were small on all three occasions. There
was, on the part of the men at least, an unusul-
al amount OF somnolency, and this even at
night. Yet the sermons, two of them certain
ly, were up to and indeed q little above the
mark Of average sermons.
In fact he finds fewer true Yankees than he
expects, but those he does find he evidently
admires:
There are in this congregation OF hundred
and twenty, fully e-half of whom are stran-
gers, thee typical New England faces that
draughtsman or painter would almost cross the
continent to see. Strong, distinct, peculiar,
Northern in every fibre, they tell of foregone
time when hardy men contended in these wids
with the red Indian and with rugged nature
The men are old that have the granite faces
that recall the pioneers, and seem to justify
of the fore fathers. .
The contribution plate with only thirty cents
on it was, we suspect, penny collection such
as often taken up in Methodist congregation to
pay petty church expenses.
What strikes him as strange in our farming
10 the small scale on which we raise our crops
He saw no fields" of grain, corn or potatoes,
only patches: .o. ....:.- st.
It seems land of patches, much like an old
negro mans breeches or, if that be deemed
unfriendly, like quilt, great, solemn, rock
bordered quilt.
Stranger as he is among us he cannot but
see many evidences OF a dwindling rural pop
ulation, and he asks the question which natur-
ally occurs to Virginian, ''as he looks over
these fields and remembers the ceaseless tread
of the young men of New England to cities or
to the prairies Of the great West" why do
not these men also 60 South The Cornwall
man of whom he asked this question thought
'incompatiblity of thought and feeling"
sufficient reply. 1t did not SO seem to this fair
minded Southerner:
l did not so tell him, but my rejoinder
would be, that if the men are like himself and
few others that know with some degree of
intimacy, if the faces of the farmers meet in
the stores do not belle their character then
there is no incompatibiity worth serious con-
sideration. There never was and there never
will be Il say it with deliberate confdence)
the least trouble between fair-minded men of
any section or cline on earth (be their religi-
GUS and political convictions what they may)
and the better class of the Southern people.
If all Southerners were as disposed Is ''B"
to treat the different modes of living and
the different social views of Northerner and
southerner kindly and candidy, there would
be little difficulty but those differences are, in
reality, quite serious. They would be most
serious between the resident Southern woman
and the immigrant Northern woman The
lady who can do her own house work in Corn
wall seems quite revelation to our Southern
friend. He admires and appreciates her.
Would the ladies of his section view the mat
ter In that light? We doubt. The 'ncom.
patibility" between the Northerner and South
erner is quite as much social as political The
kind of incompatibility "B." sees very clear
ly; but hardly, as it strikes us, the amount of
1t: ......t. 49,.
Hereafter shall have something to say
about the DRESS the speech. the physiognomy
of the good people, have seen nothing but
good in them as yet-with whom I an now
thrown. Up to date the conviction that slow
ly forces its way into my mind is that after
all, there is no great difference between the
Yankee and the Southerner, except this-that
here a sterile soil and an inhospitable cline
| developed habits of industry and economy
which have become part of the mental and
| moral frame of the New Highlander while with
| us genial cline, productive lands and abun-
dant servants, encouraged the love of ease
/ the habit of spending and of being waited on.
Very noteworthy IS the fact, daily forced upon
| me, that these people have hands, know what
| to do with them, and do 1t. -
Now that slavery is abolished, and that
Northern and Southern society rest, apparently
at least, on the same basis of free labor 1t
would indeed seem as though the Southerner
could learn nothing more valuable than that
industry and economy and that readiness for
manual labor which have been hitherto the dis
tinguishing characteristic of the New Englan-
der. Nodoubt our people could learn much from
them in return; but theirs is an immediate
necessity. That the South has already made
considerable progress towards overcoming its
dislike of manual labor, we see muck reason
to believe; and when that difficult feat has
hor,r, LTD