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We have now no bill over $3 in Newburyport.
We are amply provided for this year and the next must take care of itself. . . . On looking back at our expenses, the clothing account surprises me most— our united expenses have never gone beyond $80, which is very little.
These frugal habits pleased the young clergyman's mother and she exhorted him: ‘Rise up moralist and preach frugality to the age!’
And the son responded, ‘The most trying thing is this great big house.
I pine for a nutshell.’
Yet he determined to make the best of unwonted luxury and wrote to his brother:—
I am fairly settled now in a lovely house, with a noble-hearted wife and a marvellous parish. . . .
You can hardly imagine how far off my dreamy Cambridge life now seems to me.
In the spring, they rejoiced in a garden:—
Our sunny little garden is insane with tulips everywhere—appearing in the most unexpected and improper places.
Of his parish, he wrote:—
They [the parishioners] manifest regard for us only by full and attentive presence at church— certainly the most agreeable way, but queer.
Not a particle of petting. Rather afraid of us, in fact, Mary thinks—as if we were handsome spotted panthers, good to look at and roaring finely—something to
