The Portland daily press., 1881-06-30
Gath
Invades Massachusetts and Gossips about
Stockbridge.

IN. y. Tribune.
AT Stockbrldge [ went into the water-closet
as it seemed, whore Jonathan Edwards wrote
'The Freedom OF the WILL" and also rode
round the small, hill-embosomed lake where
Hawthorne lived three years and composed
many things. 1t is called the Stockbrdge bowl.
The lake is a mile or less from tho green, al
most sombre town. Our driver said 1t was full
of fish; but permit would have to be obtained
from the three selectmen to fish there, and
they generally sent somebody along to watch
one. Fancy fishing under a iailer's eye,
whose cold suspicion would scare all the Izaak
Walton out of onel Was it Izaak who said
"If you don't swear you won't catch any
fsh?''
Stockbridge is beautiful as the scenes be-
twix: death and heaven IN the Pilgrims Prog
ress. Its broad, flat street, with precise walks
in the grass, and sanity elms, 50 stiff and el.
bowy, yet weeping for the fall of man, and
widowy houses weedy in humid humility, and
noisless perfected everything made me long
for totally depraved boy to awake the sheriff
by screaming, "Shiue yer bootsl DAILY Nevis,
one cent? There was the inn, built in 1774,
whore once the Albany stages stopped, and on
Sunday nights the deacons drank rum flip aud
laid plans to entrap unbelievers and tories,
and is now decorated after Ruskin's own
heart, with gold paper and rugs and black cab
inets, and its great oak beams are smart as old
maidens about to be married in their scores
The site OF the church where Edwards preach
ed in dogmatic and feminine searchingness,
now holds sort of campanle raiseSl by our
fellow-citizens the Field brothers, to COM
memorate their father also, who, as a citizen
told me, preached gloomy world indeed,
which perhaps accounts for Cyrus putting SO
many sparks through it, David fitting a code to
its ankles, Henry keeping stern eye on it,
and Stephen resisting Internal machines.
Dudley Field,aged 76, but straight as an elm,
owns l4OO acres, they say hereabout. His
house, near which is his brother Henrys. COM
mands mountain view so peacefully grand as
to suppress silly comparisons. Between. the
brothers is the frame of the old mission house
where Edwards and his predecessors taught
the Indians. This part of Massachusetts, was
not settled till 1725, and was most readily en-
tered from Connecticut, hence the preponder-
ance OF Yale Calyinism up this way Laid out
in 1739 ia this very month of May, as an In
dian mission village, Stockbridge had 400 In
dian settlers and pupils in time, and teacher
for the mission, pastor for the church and a
dozen white mems homes, perhaps made the
nucleus for these impure booded aboriginals
From 1850 to 175S Jonathan Edwards and his
wife Sarah Pierrepont and many of
their ten children lived in this wilder
was already highest, poor as the Indians, poor
as authors have to be, and he was 80, his third
daughter, Esther, was 20, when along came
Rev. Aaron Burr at the age of Sc, who had
thought of everything concerning the existence
and fate Of man except wife and babies. He
was graduate of Yale, but did not row in her
crew, nor sing saw my leg off-short!" A
business revivalst and birch-wielding peda-
gogue, he ''scorned to proclaim the peace of
God" said his obituary-maker, It'll the rebel
laid down his armS.' Suph W the VII
came to Stockbridge to see his brother Ed
wards in the ministry, and talk about pupils
for the new dungeon-like college he had built
at Princeton, and about doctrine and funds
His eye fell on Esther Edwards, whom could
not help thinking all the while was in Stock
bridge, to have been the original of Hester
Prynne, and the Rev. Aaron to have been Ar
thur Dimmesdale, and Aaron Burr the second
to have been the Gipsy Pearl.
The room where Edwards wrote his book on
the Freedom of the Will is in the second story
of large, square frame house, which has been
altered and added to, and now neat porch
surrounds it, and its two dormer windows have
been enlarged to the proportions of gables, yet
the integral part of the building is unchanged,
and the low ceilings, high wooden wainscots
and large beams, the wide halls and airy bed
rooms still revive those days of all-absorbing
theology, when a revival meant anything but
business revival, and conviction meant the
SOULS own confession. A little CELL like
wash-closet, opens off one of the bedrooms,
with ono window in it, and there Edmunds
locked himself in and wrote from his own self
examinations mans place in the spheres.