William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[325] whisky-loving Scots, was anything but a sober place under Captain Barney's rule. Yet life was dull and progress slow, till Thadeus Fairbanks, improver of the platform scale, gave the impetus which has made St. Johnsburg one of the most curious spots in the United States.

St. Johnsbury is a garden, yet the physical beauty of the place is less engaging than the moral order. No loafer hangs about the kerbstones. Not a beggar can be seen. No drunkard reels along the street. You find no dirty nooks, and smell no hidden filth. There seem to be no poor. In two days wandering up and down I have not seen one child in rags, one woman looking like a slut. The men are at work, the boys and girls at school. Each cottage stands apart, with grass and space; each painted either white or brown. White, the costlier and more cheery colour, is the test of order and prosperity. Few of the cottages are brown. I see no broken panes of glass, no shingles hanging from the roof. No yard is left in an untidy state.

The men who live in these cottages send their children to the grammar-school in Main Street, a public school, in which they are educated free of