But
it don't agree with us New England folks; we don't enjoy good health
there; and what in the world is the use of food, if you have such an
etarnal dyspepsy you can't digest it? A man can hardly live there
till next grass afore he is in the yaller leaf. Just like one of our
bran' new vessels built down in Maine, of best hackmatack, or what's
better still, of our real American live oak (and that's allowed to be
about the best in the world); send her off to the West Indies, and
let her lie there awhile, and the worms will riddle her bottom all
full of holes like a tin cullender, or a board with a grist of duck
shot through it, you wouldn't believe what a BORE they be. Well,
that's jist the case with the western climate. The heat takes the
solder out of the knees and elbows, weakens the joints and makes the
frame ricketty.
"Besides, we like the smell of the salt water; it seems kinder
nateral to us New Englanders. We can make more a-ploughin' of the
seas, than ploughin' of a prayer-eye. It would take a bottom near
about as long as Connecticut river, to raise wheat enough to buy the
cargo of a Nantucket whaler, or a Salem tea ship. And then to leave
one's folks, and naTIVE place where one was raised, halter broke,
and trained to go in gear, and exchange all the comforts of the Old
States for them are new ones, don't seem to go down well at all.
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