A year's residence in the United States of America / [William Cobbett].

  • William Cobbett
Date:
1822
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A year's residence in the United States of America / [William Cobbett]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    66 ¢ through,’ for which there is a ‘shutter,’ made also of “ cleft oak, and hung on wooden hinges. All this has “been executed by contract, and well executed, for “ twenty dollars. I have since added ten dollars to the “cost, for the luaury of a floor and ceiling of sawn ‘“ boards, and it is now a comfortable habitation.” _ 624. In plain words, this is a log-hut, such as the free negroes live in about here, and a hole it is, fit only for dogs, or hogs, or cattle. Worse it is than the negro huts; for they have a bit of glass; but here is none. This miserable hole, black with smoke as it always must be, and without any window, costs, howeyer, 30 dollars. And yet this English acquaintance of yours is to have “a house extremely comfortable and convenient for fifty “ dollars.” Perhaps his 50 dollars might get him a hut, or hole, a few feet longer and divided into two dens. So that here is to be cooking, wasiing, eating, and sleeping all in the same “ extremely convenient and “comfortable” hole! And yet, my dear Sir, you find fault of the want of cleanliness in the Americans! You have not seen “ the Americans.” You have not seen the nice, clean, neat houses of the farmers in this Island, in New England, in the Quaker counties of Pennsyl- vania. You have seen nothing but the smoke-dried Ultra-montanians; and your project seems to be to make the deluded English who may follow you rivals in the attainment of the tawny colour. What is this family to do in their 50 dollar den? Suppose one or more of them sick! How are the rest to sleep by night or to eat by day? “i]t Se 625. However, here they are, in this miserable place, with the ship-bedding, and without even a. bed- stead, and with 130 dollars gone in land and house. _ Two horses and harness and plough are to cost 100 dollars | These, like the hinges of the door, are all to be of wood I suppose; for as to flesh and blood and bones in the form of two horses fer 100 dollars, is impossible, to say nothing about the plongh and harness, which would cost 20 dollars of the money. Perhaps, however, you may mean some of those horses, ploughs and sets of harness, which, at the time when yon wrote this letter, you had all ready waiting for the