While in the neighborhood of these lakes, we visited also a foreign settlement of great interest.  Here were minds, it seemed, to “comprehend the trust” of their new life; and, if they can only stand true to them, will derive and bestow great benefits therefrom.

But sad and sickening to the enthusiast who comes to these shores, hoping the tranquil enjoyment of intellectual blessings, and the pure happiness of mutual love, must be a part of the scene that he encounters at first.  He has escaped from the heartlessness of courts, to encounter the vulgarity of the mob; he has secured solitude, but it is a lonely, a deserted solitude.  Amid the abundance of nature, he cannot, from petty, but insuperable obstacles, procure, for a long time, comforts or a home.

But let him come sufficiently armed with patience to learn the new spells which the new dragons require, (and this can only be done on the spot,) he will not finally be disappointed of the promised treasure; the mob will resolve itself into men, yet crude, but of good dispositions, and capable of good character; the solitude will become sufficiently enlivened, and home grow up at last from the rich sod.

In this transition state we found one of these homes.  As we approached, it seemed the very Eden which earth might still afford to a pair willing to give up the hackneyed pleasures of the world for a better and more intimate communion with one another and with beauty:  the wild road led through wide, beautiful woods, to the wilder and more beautiful shores of the finest lake we saw.  On its waters, glittering in the morning sun, a few Indians were paddling to and fro in their light canoes.  On one of those fair knolls I have so often mentioned stood the cottage, beneath trees which stooped as if they yet felt brotherhood with its roof-tree.  Flowers waved, birds fluttered round, all had the sweetness of a happy seclusion; all invited to cry to those who inhabited it, All hail, ye happy ones!

But on entrance to those evidently rich in personal beauty, talents, love, and courage, the aspect of things was rather sad.  Sickness had been with them, death, care, and labor; these had not yet blighted them, but had turned their gay smiles grave.  It seemed that hope and joy had given place to resolution.  How much, too, was there in them, worthless in this place, which would have been so valuable elsewhere!  Refined graces, cultivated powers, shine in vain before field-laborers, as laborers are in this present world; you might as well cultivate heliotropes to present to an ox.  Oxen and heliotropes are both good, but not for one another.

With them were some of the old means of enjoyment, the books, the pencil, the guitar; but where the wash-tub and the axe are so constantly in requisition, there is not much time and pliancy of hand for these.