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But on the whole he was unhappy over this subject. He did not like to be called a spendthrift in a case so utterly destitute of true merit. He could conceive of no real temptation to such a sin, if sin it were, and he confessed himself more troubled about it than he ever remembered to have been before.

Poor, conscience-stricken Bunce. He has very sad reflections -- the paupers notice and speak of it -- but at the same time, he encounters another great difficulty, the two are almost enough to crush him; it is this, to find a rule of fractions by which to work a larger denominational value to his poor-house "findings."

CHAPTER IX.
NORTHERN fear of the Poor-house. The Pepper's. Very poor people, and people not the poorest, often and generally envy the rich. It was an early development in society that riches carried great weight, so all the poor people have been mad after them. Here we show you what a pleasant thing it is to be rich.

CRAMPTON had a large, busy town-population, i.e., an active, enterprising village citizenship, where the majority of the people resided, and it had a large rural population. There were some very large and fine farms in the place. The village, or "city," as it was called, quite on the east side of the town, like many others in New England, was filled up with mechanic shops, manufactories of various kinds, stores, hotels, and so forth. A large, rapid stream, formed by the union of the Little Bear and Slip-Slop Creeks, furnished a magnificent power for machinery, and was improved to its utmost extent by the enterprising capitalists of the place and of the neighboring towns. A very large cotton factory, four stories high, two hundred feet in length, containing eight thousand spindles, and thirty or forty looms, involving a first cost of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and giving work to more than two hundred men, women, and children, was the principal manufacturing establishment in the place, though as it was on the east side of the bridge, it was really in the town of Ladderville. But the bridge, a wide, strong, stone arch, formed a connection so complete that it was all called by the name of Crampton, a very busy, factory-bell sounding village, grown up rapidly, having also a large imported population, three or four churches with and without crosses, long lines of similar looking dwellings, interspersed with hotels, stores, "saloons,'' as they are called, and "bazaars," entered at the sides of screens, and brilliantly lighted, where, behind the screens, pieces of naked statuary fill the niches and recesses of the walls, (such is, indeed, the public taste!) and exquisite paintings of robeless women in every luscious attitude also adorn them, pleasant incitives these to a social "round" at the bar; billiards, cards, and dancing completing the happy joviality of these -- forsooth -- saloons! bazaars!

In this busy town there were also found the usual appendages to society in its highly civilized state, and without which a certain per cent. of the population would die of ennui, sensibly and painfully noting the absence of their chief good -- and making the streets of Crampton as still and as gloomy as a Sabbath to them -- I mean the appendages of oyster shops, groggeries, and beer-holes, nine-pin alleys, cock-fights, cards, billiards, and so forth. And at and in these, graduated much of the pauperism of the town. In these rummies, and licensed houses for the "refreshment" of body and spirit, many a Harnden, Dodge, and Sherman, got his ticket to the privileges and entertainments of the poor-house. Here, also, were livery-stables where horses and carriages were furnished on Sundays, at higher prices than on week days, for the demand was greater. Here were found open drug-stores, all day and evening of the Sabbath, for there are more calls for ipecac and elixir paregoric on Sunday than on, any other day. We wonder why the banks did not follow the example, on account of notes maturing on that day. It would, indeed, seem to be more in accordance with the exactness of banking rules, than to make those notes payable on Saturday, or to "grace" them till Monday -- a never-thought-of-thing, this last, we agree!

In the village proper, or city as was its nom de plume, there were also here and there, in the so-called "places," "avenues," and "squares," smart blocks of houses, tenanted by the aristocracy of the place, i.e., by retired rich men, by owners of stock in the factory, bank presidents, directors, stockholders, brokers, overseers, heavily salaried agents, officers in various benevolent institutions, etc., etc. And in one of these, a princely dwelling it was, on the Ladderville side of the stream, where were several of the handsome public buildings, and three or four modern built churches, lived George Pepper, Esq., a hundred thousand dollar stockholder in the great brick factory.

Pepper was an only child of John Pepper of Crampton -- miserly, churlish, rich old John Pepper -- who, though once young, once an active merchant, once a man 'among men, is now a peevish, unhappy, fearful old miser, living in the outskirts of the town, on one of his farms, in a low, dingy-looking house, once tenanted by one of his farmers. He is an owner, though unwillingly, in the factory -- George Pepper managing his interest there and his own. But the old gentleman does not leave it wholly to George, his anxiety forbidding this wholesale reliance on another, even his first-born son and only one. He is owner in other stock, in bank stock, in real estate, and has money on exorbitant interest well and securely funded. But he is poor: nobody is more so. He has not a dollar he can call his own; he has no money to let, or lend, or give to any body or for any object. But still he is every body's banker who can give him his security; and notwithstanding his great poverty, he can command immense sums of money. The miserly quality of John Pepper's old age is communicated to the soul of his wife, Mrs. Rachel Pepper, who incessantly busies her mind with the uncomfortable consideration that her husband is too great a spendthrift, and that both he and she will yet come to be occupants (in re) of the Crampton poor-house. So thought Pepper himself. It was this idea that made him extremely nervous, unaccommodating, and personally griping. Mr. and Mrs. Pepper lived on less food than the individual half-fed paupers. But their dieting in this cheap way was a voluntary act, the result of their private reasonings on the future, and the conviction of their minds on the score of duty.