letters from an american farmer letter 3 quizlet

This horrid noise so effectually frightened poor Andrew, that, unmindful of his courage, of his broadsword, and his intentions, he rushed out, left them masters of the house, and disappeared. for no European foot has as yet travelled half the extent of this mighty continent! Where this will reach no one can tell, perhaps it may leave a vacuum fit to receive other systems. Next again lives a Low Dutchman, who implicitly believes the rules laid down by the synod of Dort. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. Their children will therefore grow up less zealous and more indifferent in matters of religion than their parents. Mr. Neiel, said Andrew; the like of him is not to be found in any of the isles; his forefathers have lived there thirty generations ago, as we are told. from the essay “What is an American?” (Letter #3 of 12) from Letters from an American Farmer by Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur (first published in 1782) I wish I could be acquainted with the feelings and thoughts which must agitate the heart and present themselves to the mind of an enlightened Englishman, when he first lands on this continent. Agreeable to the account which several Scotchmen have given me of the north of Britain, of the Orkneys, and the Hebride Islands, they seem, on many accounts, to be unfit for the habitation of men; they appear to be calculated only for great sheep pastures. He also examines the identity of Americans with respect to their God bless the king, and William Penn; we shall do very well by and by, if we keep our healths. Who then can blame the inhabitants of these countries for transporting themselves hither? Their histories assert the contrary. But what I might observe there is but natural and common; for to draw comfortable subsistence from well fenced cultivated fields, is easy to conceive. What a strange compliment has our mother country paid to two of the finest provinces in America! It is with men as it is with the plants and animals that grow and live in the forests; they are entirely different from those that live in the plains. Does he want uncultivated lands? We at last reached my friend's house, who in the glow of well-meant hospitality, made them all three sit down to a good dinner, and gave them as much cider as they could drink. It is not composed, as in Europe, of great lords who possess everything, and of a herd of people who have nothing. Whoever traverses the continent must easily observe those strong differences, which will grow more evident in time. from the essay “What is an American?” (Letter #3 of 12) from Letters from an American Farmer by Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur (first published in 1782) I wish I could be acquainted with the feelings and thoughts which must agitate the heart and present themselves to the mind of an enlightened Englishman, when he first lands on this continent. Thus all sects are mixed as well as all nations; thus religious indifference is imperceptibly disseminated from one end of the continent to the other; which is at present one of the strongest characteristics of the Americans. That is enough to begin with; is not your land pretty hard to clear? The laws, the indulgent laws, protect them as they arrive, stamping on them the symbol of adoption; they receive ample rewards for their labours; these accumulated rewards procure them lands; those lands confer on them the title of freemen, and to that title every benefit is affixed which men can possibly require. They brought along with them their national genius, to which they principally owe what liberty they enjoy, and what substance they possess. Whenever I hear of any new settlement, I pay it a visit once or twice a year, on purpose to observe the different steps each settler takes, the gradual improvements, the different tempers of each family, on which their prosperity in a great nature depends; their different modifications of industry, their ingenuity, and contrivance; for being all poor, their life requires sagacity and prudence. Industry, good living, selfishness, litigiousness, country politics, the pride of freemen, religious indifference, are their characteristics. Soon after he hired a carpenter, who put on a roof and laid the floors; in a week more the house was properly plastered, and the chimney finished. When any considerable number of a particular sect happen to dwell contiguous to each other, they immediately erect a temple, and there worship the Divinity agreeably to their own peculiar ideas. They get drunk with them, and often defraud the Indians. It must have been a most unintelligible altercation between this honest Barra man, and nine Indians who did not much care for anything he could say. Europe has no such class of men; the early knowledge they acquire, the early bargains they make, give them a great degree of sagacity. Every thing has tended to regenerate them; new laws, a new mode of living, a new social system; here they are become men: in Europe they were as so many useless plants, wanting vegetative mould, and refreshing showers; they withered, and were mowed down by want, hunger, and war; but now by the power of transplantation, like all other plants they have taken root and flourished! That very year, he and his son sowed three bushels of wheat, from which he reaped ninety-one and a half; for I had ordered him to keep an exact account of all he should raise. This effect will extend itself still farther hereafter, and though this may appear to you as a strange idea, yet it is a very true one. As citizens it is easy to imagine, that they will carefully read the newspapers, enter into every political disquisition, freely blame or censure governors and others. Those who inhabit the middle settlements, by far the most numerous, must be very different; the simple cultivation of the earth purifies them, but the indulgences of the government, the soft remonstrances of religion, the rank of independent freeholders, must necessarily inspire them with sentiments, very little known in Europe among people of the same class. Trent and an introduction by Ludwig Lewisohn.New York, Fox, Duffield, 1904. Upon my word it is a considerable sum for a Barra man; how came you by so much money? As northern men they will love the cheerful cup. This encourages him much, he begins to form some little scheme, the first, alas, he ever formed in his life. The following dialogue passed at an out-settlement, where I lately paid a visit: Well, friend, how do you do now; I am come fifty odd miles on purpose to see you; how do you go on with your new cutting and slashing? One of them, more skilful than the rest, mimicked the owls so exactly, that a very large one perched on a high tree over our fire. That is honest, we will explain these things to you by and by. Landing on this great continent is like going to sea, they must have a compass, some friendly directing needle; or else they will uselessly err and wander for a long time, even with a fair wind: yet these are the struggles through which our forefathers have waded; and they have left us no other records of them, but the possession of our farms. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury, and useless labour, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence.--This is an American. Who is to frame it, sure you don't understand that work yet? Essays for Letters from an American Farmer. I shall be able perhaps hereafter to explain myself better; in the meanwhile, let the following example serve as my first justification. I knew a man who came to this country, in the literal sense of the expression, stark naked; I think he was a Frenchman, and a sailor on board an English man-of- war. The third letter- part of a series of letters called Letters from an American Farmer (Line 2). If you recede still farther from the sea, you will come into more modern settlements; they exhibit the same strong lineaments, in a ruder appearance. In all societies there are off-casts; this impure part serves as our precursors or pioneers; my father himself was one of that class, but he came upon honest principles, and was therefore one of the few who held fast; by good conduct and temperance, he transmitted to me his fair inheritance, when not above one in fourteen of his contemporaries had the same good fortune. Two essential ends would be answered by this simple operation. For instance, it is natural to conceive that those who live near the sea, must be very different from those who live in the woods; the intermediate space will afford a separate and distinct class. Many ages will not see the shores of our great lakes replenished with inland nations, nor the unknown bounds of North America entirely peopled. What then is the American, this new man? As he had neither mowing nor reaping to do that year, I told him that the time was come to build his house; and that for the purpose I would myself invite the neighbourhood to a frolic; that thus he would have a large dwelling erected, and some upland cleared in one day. No, no, said I, if you are careful and sober, and do what you can, you shall receive what I told you, after you have served a short apprenticeship at my house. If he is a good man, he forms schemes of future prosperity, he proposes to educate his children better than he has been educated himself; he thinks of future modes of conduct, feels an ardour to labour he never felt before. I looked on the map, and by its latitude, easily guessed that it must be an inhospitable climate. There is not among them an esquire, saving the unlettered magistrate. Triumph and military honours do not always imply those two blessings. A pleasing uniformity of decent competence appears throughout our habitations. Pray is the sterility of the soil the cause that there are no trees, or is it because there are none planted? A father dies and leaves a decent house and rich farm to his son; the son modernises the one, and carefully tills the other; marries the daughter of a friend and neighbour: this is the common prospect; but though it is rich and pleasant, yet it is far from being so entertaining and instructive as the one now in my view. The poor are worse lodged there than anywhere else in Europe; their potatoes, which are easily raised, are perhaps an inducement to laziness: their wages are too low, and their whisky too cheap. It will procure her a substantial husband, a good farmer--and that is all my ambition. What is the best synonym for the word "exuberant" in line 55? Nobody disturbs them. Well then as soon as you are able to handle the axe, you shall go and live with Mr. P. R., a particular friend of mine, who will give you four dollars per month, for the first six, and the usual price of five as long as you remain with him. 1782, selections.The landscape images above depict the New York Catskill Mountains in 1761—the embodiment of American expanse and opportunity, far from the class-locked societies of Europe. The Irish do not prosper so well; they love to drink and to quarrel; they are litigious, and soon take to the gun, which is the ruin of everything; they seem beside to labour under a greater degree of ignorance in husbandry than the others; perhaps it is that their industry had less scope, and was less exercised at home. • letters from an american farmer • letter i. introduction • letter ii. My rating: 5 of 5 stars It might sound odd to call such a ubiquitous text underrated, but I think Letters from an American Farmer is just that. What a happy change it must be, to descend from the high, sterile, bleak lands of Scotland, where everything is barren and cold, to rest on some fertile farms in these middle provinces! It is difficult to account for this surprising locality, one would think on so small an island an Irishman must be an Irishman: yet it is not so, they are different in their aptitude to, and in their love of labour. Hunting is but a licentious idle life, and if it does not always pervert good dispositions; yet, when it is united with bad luck, it leads to want: want stimulates that propensity to rapacity and injustice, too natural to needy men, which is the fatal gradation. Agreeably to my promise, I put them all with different families, where they were well liked, and all parties were pleased. However, when compared to the standards of what makes an American in today’s world, it seems that becoming an American then was much simpler then, than it is today. “I trace their various inclinations and the different effects of their passions, which are exactly the same as among men; the law is to us precisely what I am in my barn-yard, a bridle and check to prevent the strong and greedy from oppressing the timid and weak.” (Letter II, Page 30) Here man is free as he ought to be; nor is this pleasing equality so transitory as many others are. How can it pervade every corner; as they were driven there by misfortunes, necessity of beginnings, desire of acquiring large tracts of land, idleness, frequent want of economy, ancient debts; the re-union of such people does not afford a very pleasing spectacle. Thus are our first steps trod, thus are our first trees felled, in general, by the most vicious of our people; and thus the path is opened for the arrival of a second and better class, the true American freeholders; the most respectable set of people in this part of the world: respectable for their industry, their happy independence, the great share of freedom they possess, the good regulation of their families, and for extending the trade and the dominion of our mother country. I believe he had never before mounted such a beast, though I did not choose to ask him that question, for fear it might suggest some mortifying ideas. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe. He immediately consented. Bad enough, said he; we have no such trees as I see here, no wheat, no kine, no apples. This is a strange little Colonial-era book that, nonetheless, tells us something about America today. Here then is honest Andrew, invested with every municipal advantage they confer; become a freeholder, possessed of a vote, of a place of residence, a citizen of the province of Pennsylvania. Posterity will look back with avidity and pleasure, to trace, if possible, the era of this or that particular settlement. I well remember your philanthropic turn of mind. Would you wish to travel in independent idleness, from north to south, you will find easy access, and the most cheerful reception at every house; society without ostentation, good cheer without pride, and every decent diversion which the country affords, with little expense. Now, gentlemen, you may judge what an ancient family estate it must be. What a change indeed! About forty people repaired to the spot; the songs, and merry stories, went round the woods from cluster to cluster, as the people had gathered to their different works; trees fell on all sides, bushes were cut up and heaped; and while many were thus employed, others with their teams hauled the big logs to the spot which Andrew had pitched upon for the erection of his new dwelling.

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