Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 11).djvu/222

to kill himself with hard work. He was sick twice in consequence, and once nearly unto death. Mrs. Ingle and her husband gain and deserve a good name, and feel happy and contented on a good farm, which is too near the road. They bought a log-house, town lot, pro tempore, at Princeton, at a forced {224} sale, for 300 dollars; which they now let for forty dollars a year, to Mr. and Miss Fordham, Flower's nephew and niece, who were sick of the prairie of Illinois, where health could not attend them. Your friend, J. Ingle, lost his horses for three weeks. He is expecting more of his English friends to follow him. Mr. Birkbeck is disappointed and unhappy; I know him well. He has not cultivated nor raised, as yet, any thing from his land, although the Harmonites refused to sell him produce, because they thought it was his duty to raise it himself, and plainly told him so. He will never make a farmer, nor money by farming there. It is idle to attempt to import English labourers for the use of yourselves exclusively, for Birkbeck and Flower lost all. The same, says Mr. Pittiss, late of the Isle of Wight. Women and girls, too, are here above assisting in the house, at a price per day or week. Wives and daughters must do all themselves. The girl, or white servant, if one can now and then be had, at one dollar per week and board, is pert and proud as her mistress, and has her parasol at six dollars, and bonnet at ten or twelve dollars, and other articles in character, which, as dress generally does with all grades, seduces them from a virtuous regard for their duties, says this young and sprightly lawyer. People here, though poor and idle, feel above thieving, the facility of living without, and the certainty of exposure and summary {225} punishment, seem to conquer the propensity, where it may happen to exist.