of rent which is charged for it--is incapable of nourishing any
sentiment, and is, in any case, not a home but a lodging.

This idea is no doubt chimerical; for in a vast city, where the great
object is to escape starvation, no one has time to interest himself
deeply in the kind of house he occupies, and still less has he the
opportunity to build a house which is the expression of his own taste
and labour. But in the country the idea is not only practicable, it is
urgent. Independence is made necessary because there are fewer people
on whom we can become dependent. I soon found that if I wanted
potatoes and cabbages, I must grow them; if a pipe burst there was no
plumber to mend it, I must mend it myself; and so through a long range
of occupations, with which I had had no previous acquaintance. The
immortal Captain Davis, of the _Sea Ranger_, remarks to the incompetent
landsman Herrick, whom he has engaged as first mate on the _Farralone_,
'There ain't nothing _to_ sailoring when you come to look it in the
face,' and I am inclined to think that the observation is true of other
things besides navigation. There is nothing in ordinary gardening,
carpentering, or work about a house that any intelligent man cannot
learn in a month by giving his mind to it. Intelligence, industry, and
a deft hand will take any man of capacity through any of the ordinary
employments of life with moderate credit, or at least without disgrace.
When once the right handling of tools is learned, the rest is merely a
matter of intelligence. At all events, I had to learn how to be
proficient in the handling of many strange tools, because there was no
one within reach to handle them for me. The experience was salutary
for me in every way. It taught me to be ashamed of that kind of
inefficiency which in towns is reckoned the hall-mark of gentility. It
taught me the virtue of that independence which makes a man equal to
his own needs. It also saved me from ennui. I found myself living a