Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Two Years and Three Months in the New York Lunatic Asylum at Utica: Together With the Outlines of Twenty Years' Peregrinations in Syracuse
I was born and brought up in the State of Vermont, Wind. Sor county, and town of Barnard, and emigrated to Syracuse in 1834; and every scholar will readily know that Vermont young ladies had an introduction to the kitchen before they were considered capable of filling any other sphere in life. My days of childhood were occupied in going to a small dis trict school, and a portion Of my time was devoted to the care of domestic fowls, such as geese, goslings and chickens; and also a few yards of cloth, made of ?ax, received a little at tention by the way of bleaching it on the grass by the brook. We all found it necessary to apply ourselves to manual labor, and consequently we had much less time to devote to super ficial appearances than many who think themselves more highly favored, simply because they can indulge in indolent habits, much more so in the western world than in the eastern States.
When I was a child my father was able to make ample pro vision for his family, and his Children knew nothing of su?er ing, nor want, nor begging; but we were all brought up to think it was a sin to be idle, and when I was not otherwise employed, I spent my time in exploring the soil I was born and brought up on. I was Very happy in examining the bowels of old mother earth, for the purpose of ascertaining what she yielded that would contribute to my benefit. I was familiar with every root, herb and bark that the farm yielded, and their medicinal qualities, and tag-alder not excepted. Mul len and burdock were also on the list. My father had an orchard on the farm that was five acres square, surrounded by a single stone wall, which was made by my grandfather, and I thought it almost an unpardonable sin to find a stone Off that wall and not put it back again, because I was brought up to venerate my grandfather and respect all his deeds, and they were worthy of respect from every one who knew him.
Nearly every tree in that orchard had a name, and the trees were not exactly known by their fruit, but more by their names. Each cow had a name, and each young one had a name; but I think there must have been a scarcity of names after supplying as numerous a family as we were. And there are plenty Of us, such as we are, and we all took just such heads as Deity had to spare when He created us, and if He created them in His own image, how can the world make a person responsible for the crime of being created honest, when God created him, and we all know that God was never guilty of a dishonest act in all His life? My father would be called a criminal here in this mongrel state of society, for he is an honest man, and always was, and I never took a lesson on duplicity in my life until I took it from the fashionable society in Syracuse. I had no more knowledge of what the world calls high life than a cedar stump or root, and I wish I was as ignorant of it now; but I came here in an unsophisti cated state of mind, as much so as the most of children three years of age.
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