and in a city in which the german audience and now for our pleasure will take a turn at the stone and the lovely of the boxes in the shining garments of worth with soft disdain of will essay with of the finest texture to out the ocean the dinner in he easy chair went up lately to the hills to enjoy the annual dinner at it is a summer feast which tradition to some old academy in those parts supposed to have been founded by a of the village in the days before when there was no path to except that which is still sometimes pursued it is a winding way through woods and by singing streams and solitary farms and as you drive slowly on you feel yourself penetrating farther and farther into a rural seclusion to which the modern world has hardly found its way and where you might expect to surprise a peaceful community of ancient new england as in the recesses and heights of the you might come upon a party of s crew in this loneliness of the hills the young who was in delicate health and unmarried relieved the sombre severity of life by teaching a few boys and girls by that fond he brightened with fresh air and natural music and sunshine the dry routine of his days for the cheerless solemnity of the life of the country clergy in those times it is hard to imagine the to east london tell us that the peculiar characteristic of that vast region with human beings is want of entertainment the people there do not laugh they have no diversion there is nothing pleasant to see or to hear it is a huge stone mill in which human life is ground up in an endless and barren monotony of hard work it is odd to trace any resemblance to it in a life so different but the old fashioned divine in his small country parish revolving in an actual world of petty details and in another world of grim speculation and in the contemplation of death must have seldom smiled the young was bound by no vow of but he knew that his life must be brief and he gladly surrounded himself with children in the guise of pupils and when he died he left a bible to his church a small sum for the education of heathen youth in america some manuscript sermons to his parents and the rest of his little property to found an academy for youth this at least is the tradition but when came once to the dinner he put the story aside as a pleasant fiction and that the annual feast was simply to two friends of the town and enjoy them forever this had a sound that contrasted not with the seriousness of the hills and suggested an origin not unlike that of the in the worship of the still another theory which is like to grow with time associates it with the memory of two strangers of aspect who appeared suddenly in the village like the gray haired at and the towns people not with a sword but with a departed they are all pleasant tales but the earliest tion is likely to be the it was the good who the modest seed which has now sprung up a hundred fold this year the text of the afternoon for the dinner begins at one o clock was the report of the that the town is declining in population the guests were a company of the people of the hills they came from a circuit of a score of miles the dinner is served cold and the guests feast in summer when the days are long on dainty chicken snow white bread and by two o clock the blue is spread over the the benches are turned so that the whole company faces the and then speech begins it was the verdict of the hills upon the report of the that if the number of individuals is the number of families is not the ancient are disappearing and the tale of children in a family is but the general welfare of the family itself is increasing while the marvellous of communication bring all resources into the hills and the remote little village of the old is practically becoming a if a higher general welfare what matter if the population somewhat quality is better than quantity if as a of says the people of the hills are merely descending into the valleys who can complain if they bring with them the simple and hardy virtues which grow upon the hills like the great agricultural let the say what it will need not frighten until they show a of character as well as a decline of population if however character is if the conditions of that life of the country are changing a general change may be anticipated but in those signs do not yet appear whether there are more or fewer persons than there were fifty years ago the comfort the resources the opportunities are constantly greater undoubtedly they bring their dangers and but the same steady force of character that dealt with the old difficulties can deal with the new perhaps the trouble lies less in the of the hills than in the of the shore the of the glittering scales that american youth and maidens may be rather by the sea than on the hills it may be also rather the annual half million of utter that come from other lands strange to us in ever that a national life rather than the hundreds who come down morally as well as from the nearer heaven so in the larger academy which the young unconsciously founded the various voices of suggestion experience and reflection spoke it was a rural feast an holiday such as the poet might have in simple and melodious measure or artists carved upon 