for ourselves; the general distress, dismay, confusion, and suffering—the excess of misery—which follow its paralyzing progress through a country, are only known to us as evils which our fellow-men have suffered, and from which we, and those we love most warmly, have ever been graciously spared. Year after year, from the early history of the country, the land has yielded her increase in cheerful abundance; the fields have been filled with the finest of wheat, and maize, and rice, and sugar; the orchards and gardens, ay, the very woods and wastes, have yielded all their harvest of grateful fruits; the herds have fed in peace within a thousand quiet valleys, the flocks have whitened ten thousand green and swelling hills; like the ancient people of God, we may say, that fountains of milk and honey have flowed in upon us; the humming of the cheerful bee is heard through the long summer day about every path, and at eventide the patient kine, yielding their nourishing treasure, stand lowing at every door.
General scarcity in anything needful has been unknown among us; now and then the failure of some particular crop has been foretold by the fearful, but even this partial evil has been averted, and the prognostic has passed away, leaving no trace, like the gray cloud overshadowing but for an instant the yellow harvest-field, and followed by the genial glow of the full summer sunshine. In this highland valley we often hear fears expressed of this or that portion of the produce being cut off by the frosts belonging to our climate; now we are concerned for the maize, now for our stock of fruits, and yet how seldom has the dreaded evil befallen us! What good thing belonging to the climate has ever wholly failed; when have we wanted for maize, when have we suffered from lack of fruit? Every summer, currants have dried on the bushes,
