We have our doubts, though, from the stamp upon
literature, always the nearest evidence of truth we can get, whether,
even there, the difference between town and country life is as much in
favor of the latter as is generally supposed. But in our land, where
the country is at present filled with a mixed population, who come
seeking to be purified by a better life and culture from all the ills
and diseases of the worst forms of civilization, things often
_look_ worse than in the city; perhaps because men have more time
and room to let their faults grow and offend the light of day.
There are exceptions, and not a few; but, in a very great proportion
of country villages, the habits of the people, as to food, air, and
even exercise, are ignorant and unhealthy to the last degree. Their
want of all pure faith, and appetite for coarse excitement, is shown
by continued intrigues, calumnies, and crimes.
We have lived in a beautiful village, where, more favorably placed
than any other person in it, both as to withdrawal from bad
associations and nearness to good, we heard inevitably, from
domestics, work-people, and school-children, more ill of human nature
than we could possibly sift were we to elect such a task from all the
newspapers of this city, in the same space of time.
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