The Merrimack River: its source and its tributaries. Embracing a history of manufactures, and of the towns along its course; their geography, topography, and products, with a description of the magnificent natural scenery about its upper waters./ By J. W. Meader.

ITS SOURCE AND ITS TRIBUTAPIES.
their toil, and their accumulations to the service of the Lord. Their
work, farming, mechanical, and manufacturing, is always done in
the proper season and manner, thorough, but in no sense wasteful.
Their workshop and mills are models of neatness and convenience,
peculiarly adapted by arrangement and fixtures to the kind of business carried on; their implements of the most improved pattern and
material. The consequence of this thoroughness is, the Shaker
products are sought at the highest prices. Agricultural implements, kitchen furniture, cloths, flannels, hose, herbs, and everything they have to sell find a ready market.
The laundry and dairy are arranged so conveniently and comfortably, that it seems as much pleasure to do the work as to see it
done. A stationary engine does all the work of lifting, lowering,
turning, washing, ironing, drying, churning, etc., and everything
may be said to be done literally like clock-work, as they design
each room shall be supplied with a clock, there being some hundred
in the various rooms in the village. There is also a large bell,
which calls the community to labor, meals, school, and devotion.
The Shaker barn is said to be the largest and best-arranged structure of the kind in the State. It holds from five to six hundred
tons of hay, besides grain and other produce; two stables, each
accommodating fifty cows, which are allowed to go in promiscuously,
each knowing its name and stall, and all tied and untied by a slight
and simple movement of a lever. There are also calf-pens, sheeppeis, places for sick animals, and the live stock of the Shakers here
find a hotel and hospital combined. The barn is surmounted by
a cupola, from which a good view of all the surrounding country is
obtained.
They maintain a kitchen-garden of two or three acres, luxuriant
with almost every variety of fruit and vegetables known to this
latitude, with which their table in the season is bountifully supplied,
they selling only what they cannot consume; and strangers are often
supplied here with meals, always substantial and good, at a price
neveroexceeding prime cost.
They do not believe in, or practise marriage at all, and regard
Brigham Young with a feeling of abhorrence which language is
inadequate to express; still instances have occurred where a brother
and sister have come to an understanding, either by translating the
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