A home on the outskirts of civilization--habits of society which allow the maid and her mistress to do the honours in complete equality, and to make the social tea visit in loving conjunction--such a distribution of the duties of life as compels all, without distinction, to rise with the sun or before him--to breakfast with the chickens--then,

"Count the slow clock and dine exact at noon"--

to be ready for tea at four, and for bed at eight--may certainly be expected to furnish some curious particulars for the consideration of those whose daily course almost reverses this primitive arrangement--who "call night day and day night," and who are apt occasionally to forget, when speaking of a particular class, that "those creatures" are partakers with themselves of a common nature.
    I can only wish, like other modest chroniclers, my respected prototypes, that so fertile a theme had fallen into worthier hands. If Miss Mitford, who has given us such charming glimpses of Aberleigh, Hilton Cross and the Loddon, had by some happy chance been translated to Michigan, what would she not have made of such materials as Tinkerville, Montacute, and the Turnip?
    When my husband purchased two hundred acres of wild land on the banks of this to-be-celebrated stream, and drew with a piece of chalk on the bar-room table at Danforth's the plan of a village, I little thought I was destined to make myself famous by handing down to posterity a faithful record of the advancing fortunes of that favoured spot.
    "The madness of the people" in those days of golden dreams took more commonly the form of city-building; but there were a few who contented themselves with planning villages, on the banks of streams which certainly never could be expected to bear navies, but which might yet be turned to account in the more homely way of grinding or sawing--operations which must necessarily be performed somewhere for the well-being of those very cities. It is of one of these humble attempts that it is my lot to speak, and I make my confession at the outset, warning any fashionable reader who may have taken up my book, that I intend to be "decidedly low."
    Whether the purchaser of our village would have been moderate under all possible circumstances, I am not prepared to say, since, never having enjoyed a situation under government, his resources have not been unlimited; --and for this reason any remark which may be hazarded in the course of these my lucubrations touching the more magnificent plans of . . . .