The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1892-09-16
SOME UNEXPECTED THINGS.

ut is the unexpected that happens
has now come to be proverb; but we
do not all realize how strongly it applies
here at home. Let us, therefore, give a
few instances:
The early settlers of Poontoosuc plan
tatiOn expected it to become a very
prosperous town, and citizens of later
date looked upon it with pride and
hope which was ridiculed by the people
of rival towns; but their most sanguine
anticipations did not reach forward to
what the city of Pittsfield now is; and
much less to what, with reasonably good
management,it seems sure to be. And
yet much that was not expected by them
was the legitimate outcome of their
enterprise, character and understanding
OF what nature had done to prepare the
way for them. And so the future of the
city may exceed the expectations of
those who are now laboring for its
growth, and without checking the line
of progress which they have marked out
may extend into others now unthought
of. Let us see what the past teaches as
to that.
When Parson Allen and Elkanah Wat
son worked for and prophesied the pros
perity of Pittsfield as manufacturing
town, they did not expect-it would
have made their hair stand on end to
believe-that one of its leading indus
tries' would be the making of lightning;
that employees in the wooden and other
mills would ride to their work on a
homemade streak of it, be lighted in
their work by a tanned flash of it, and,
it may be, handle looms run by its
power, whereas, in their day, not even
water-not to mention steam-power
was available for that purpose. Its
work was all done by such looms as
England Brothers lately exhibited in
their windows as Armenia as they really
are-Berkshire having got ahead of
Armenia, and also of its old self, to that
extent.
When Berkshire people were afraid to
trust their own ears; when, over the
whole country, they heard the cannon at
the Battle of Bunker Hill, and when
they heard on South street and Poon-
toosuc lake, the drums and flies of the
military escort at an execution in Lenox,
they did not expect that the same law of
nature which enabled them to do it,
would, when human science and skill
had applied it to the telephone, enable a
man or woman in Pittsfield to talk with
friend in the then almost unknown
Pacific coast as though they were in an
adjoining room; nor could they expect
that New England ideas and civilization
would be planted at least as firmly on
that coast, as in Berkshire or Boston.
There was time-not hundred
years ago-when the only three religious
denominations then in Pittsfield, bitter
ly accused each other of dangerous
heresies on account of differences in
theological dogmas, which none of them
now considers as absolutely essential to
true christianity, while all agreed that
Unitarians-of which there were none in
Pittsfield-were infidels; all denounced
as idolatrous, the Roman Catholic form
worship, which nobody in Berkshire
county used, and censured the then ex-
tremely simple forms of the Protestant
Episcopal church, of which there were
perhaps half dozen members in town,
as tending towards it, and its observ-
ances,-particularly of Christmas and
Easter as relics of the Papacy, and like
ly to lead back to that which was the
horror of their souls.
The population of the town was then
wholly indigenous and no one in it ex-
pected that the time would come when
more than half its people would be of
other nationalities than the English and
the Scotch, and some from what they
would have called "the ends of the
earth" the Yankee synonym for ultima
Thule. If they had conceived of this
they certainly would not have expected
that, when this time came, eight
churches and one Jewish, would live
here, side by side in perfect harmony
DR. at least with charitable and courteous
1isagreement-and with mutual helpful
ness. Still less could they have ex-
Dected that Christian Pittsfeld mer-
chants would sell elegant joss-stocks to
pc burned by their Chinese fellow-resi-
tents before Chinese idols.
When the reverend and honorable trus-
,ees of Williams College replenished its
treasury by lottery, and Parson Allen
bought tickets in it, they did not expect
hat the churcdes would one day con-
lemn lotteries as immoral, and then run
title ones on their own account when
'ver they had church fair.
When the magnates of StOckbridge
we're giving what time they could spare
rom the mysteries of Free Will and
Election" to the making their town as
,ure as it is prominently beautiful,
hey did not expect that the great mys-
cry would ever be, who among its
mass of pure, honest and high-m minded |
itizens are the black sheep in deliber- !
tie scheme to rob the poor, who trusted |