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But how could they remedy it? What voice had they in the condition of life they were to lead?

They had no voice in it but that of entreaty or complaint -- a voice that might be answered with insult or with renewed rigor of treatment. The paupers must submit. They own nothing. Every thing is a gratuity. Live while they can -- die when they must; but let them not dictate!

They cannot choose their own masters or keepers. It is possible that among them there is one who was himself once an overseer of the poor. But it makes no difference; he must come into the same treatment with the others. The rule works evenly and well for all.

Why should not the vision of the poor-house rise in dreadful terror on the souls of all men and women in the North exposed to that tide of fortune which makes one a pauper? That the old rural poor-house was and is a frightful reality, we dare not deny.

Mr. Haddock resided four miles from Bacon's, and Mr. Phillips about two. His house was quite on the east side of the parish, among the hills. His farm was a rather hilly, hard piece of land for cultivation, but good for grazing, and, in consequence, he was in the habit of raising considerable stock for market.

The paupers could drive his cattle to pasture, help repair fences, milk the cows, feed the stock, and so forth. They were likewise able to do a little hoeing in the cornfield, weeding in the garden, coarse sewing in the house, washing of dishes, mopping and scouring. Mr. Bacon thus calculated a good twenty per cent, profit on their necessary expenses. He went over the figures a good many times before he ventured to undertake the risk.

One of his papers preserved read as follows:

Abraham concluded on the whole that, saying nothing of the four hundred dollars to himself and wife for their salary in the great and necessary vocation of taking care of them, he could stand it with twenty per cent, on their earnings. This he determined on, or he would take it out of their rations. This seems to have been the intention of their keepers generally. If they found the paupers, i.e., some of them, strong enough to earn some ten or twenty per cent, of the whole cost, they would continue their meals as usual, viz., beans and cheap pork one day in seven, bean soup and bread and cider one day, cider each day, (if needed,) salt prime beef one day, warmed bones and grizzle one day, and crusts of brown and white bread from the house; Friday, hard codfish, or number three rusty mackerel; Saturday, neck pieces of beef, or liver, pickings of the last days, and in summer occasional luxuries of greens and vegetables; cheap tea, without cream or sugar, was given them at Abraham's. This was about the general bill of fare. Of course nobody could be expected to starve on it if he could relish the bill. But, we say again, if the paupers were not helpful and saving by their manual labors, their rations were cut down to a point where the proprietor could feel himself safe. He did not take them to lose money. He was not expected by the town to feed and pamper them as he would pigs and fine stock for market! They were only broken-down human creatures, who, even at the best, would stay with us but a little time, and the whole of that time be to us only a bill of expense. Why endeavor to lengthen out life under these conditions?

Madam Bacon stands out to view as one of those ever-busy, all-work sort of Yankee women each of us has seen und read of a hundred times. She was a smallish body, firmly put together, her arms as hard and solid as bedposts, her figure, though slight to the view, having a decided appearance of elasticity and vigor. In fact, there did not seem to be a weak, or faint spot in her. She loved work; she loved the broom, the needle, the loom, the axe, the hoe, the coffee-mill, the dinner-kettle, the tea-kettle, the oven, the fire-place, the brasses, the carpets, the "windows, the milk pails, the milk room, the churn, the cheese press, fowls, calves, lambs, bees, geese, dogs, cattle, swine, horses, company, visiting, talking, trading, buying, selling, and laying up money against a wet day. What! a "wet day" for Madam Bacon? Impossible! Well, that was her way of talking.