health, temperance, and a great equality of conditions, or the most abject misery.  Could the manners of luxurious countries be imported here, like an epidemical disorder they would destroy everything; the majority of them could not exist a month, they would be obliged to emigrate.  As in all societies except that of the natives, some difference must necessarily exist between individual and individual, for there must be some more exalted than the rest either by their riches or their talents; so in this, there are what you might call the high, the middling, and the low; and this difference will always be more remarkable among people who live by sea excursions than among those who live by the cultivation of their land.  The first run greater hazard, and adventure more:  the profits and the misfortunes attending this mode of life must necessarily introduce a greater disparity than among the latter, where the equal divisions of the land offers no short road to superior riches.  The only difference that may arise among them is that of industry, and perhaps of superior goodness of soil:  the gradations I observed here, are founded on nothing more than the good or ill success of their maritime enterprises, and do not proceed from education; that is the same throughout every class, simple, useful, and unadorned like their dress and their houses.  This necessary difference in their fortunes does not however cause those heart burnings, which in other societies generate crimes.  The sea which surrounds them is equally open to all, and presents to all an equal title to the chance of good fortune.  A collector from Boston is the only king’s officer who appears on these shores to receive the trifling duties which this community owe to those who protect them, and under the shadow of whose wings they navigate to all parts of the world.

LETTER V

CUSTOMARY EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT OF THE INHABITANTS OF NANTUCKET

The easiest way of becoming acquainted with the modes of thinking, the rules of conduct, and the prevailing manners of any people, is to examine what sort of education they give their children; how they treat them at home, and what they are taught in their places of public worship.  At home their tender minds must be early struck with the gravity, the serious though cheerful deportment of their parents; they are inured to a principle of subordination, arising neither from sudden passions nor inconsiderate pleasure; they are gently held by an uniform silk cord, which unites softness and strength.  A perfect equanimity prevails in most of their families, and bad example hardly ever sows in their hearts the seeds of future and similar faults.  They are corrected with tenderness, nursed with the most affectionate care, clad with that decent plainness, from which they observe their parents never to depart:  in short, by the force of example, which is superior even to the strongest