The Newtown bee., 1907-06-21

flags. Altogether the effect was stun l ming. The c. H. Roster Go. were the designers.
 The Bennitt block occupied by Hen ry Donnehy. Hubert Thomas, A. w. Dayton. the temperance pool room and and Henry Harris, the barber, was brilliant in it's dress of bunting and iags. It was very neat job. the work ,f the Waterbury Decorating Go.
 The decorative arrangement on J. P. Treadwell's 5 residence was rich in the extreme The house was draped with K 12 standard buntingfags, while hie.ds were used. 1t was the work of the Roster people.
 MONDAY AFTERNOONS SPEAK
 FRS.
 The exercises of Monday afternoon were of exceedingly high character. Attorney F. M. Williams presided and was happy in his introductions, prov ing to be the right man in the right place. The orations of Chief Justice Baldwin of the State Supreme court and of Attorney Daniel Davenport of Brideport were exceedingly able and were followed with deep interest.
 The Chorus was again heard with keen delight in number of selections and were heartily applauded.
 ADDRESS OF REV SAMUEL HART,
 D. D.
 The addr ress, Monday afternoon, of that leading churchman and splendid gentleman. Rev Samuel Hart, D. D., of Middletown, was heard with deep interest:
 Mir President: The recurring anni- versaries of the towns of our ancient State are bringing before us, as in a series of living pictures, the history of the whole commonwealth and of all it's parts. Beginning, within the easy of ho auarter-millen of the first settled towns, Hartford and it's sister towns of the Great River, Saybrook at it's mouth. New Haven on it's fair har- Dor at the mouth of the Quinnipiac. and then it's allied towns, Guilford to the east and Milford, your mother-city, to the west, we are passing now to the oi-centenaries of those the history of which begins in the opening years of the eighteenth century. Our origins have been brought before us, and we have studied again the men and the and the foundations which they laid, the early history of two differently or dered federatiOns or groups of organ ized communities, and their union in | to one government under a charter from the English king which made them almost independent of his author ity.
 We are passing now to another pc riod, when under varied influences and 1 in changed circumstances many of our most beautiful and prosperous towns were founded. Two years ago New town. which once had part of it's boundary line in common with you, ob- | erved it's bi-centennial and the two hundredth anniversaries of Derby and Woodbury and Waterbury and Danbury ito mention only those in this neigh boorhood- earlier than that N1, ,f C. l. | part of Connecticut, the meaning and result of which will be brought before you by those who have studied it in it's details and can describe it with local color. Without repeating or anticipat- ing their words. may venture to ask you to think of the difference which a little more than seventy years has made in the motives that swayed mems minds and tie imressions that were made on them ty the lands which they occupied. One thinks of the stern resolve, both political and ecclesiasti- cal which sent Hooker and his com pany on their long walk through the wilderness till they came to the river and crossed it into strange land, with a determination like that of the father of the faithful when he crossed the great river of the eastern world; and then one wonders whether they ad- mired the beauty of the meadows, and one 1ee!S sure that they climbed the hills and looked down into the more Ebeautiful valley of the Tunxis they were drawn by it to look still further west. One follows in mind the mili- tary instinct which saw the importance of the control of the Connecticut. and built fort at its mouth, and levied dues on traffic and transportation, and laid out streets for the houses of peo- pie of quality who were expected to come, to dwell there. And one thinks of the surprises which befell those who sailed slowly along the shore of and finding at the Fair Haven a place where they might build a city after the pattern of the heavenly Jerusalem, and in it dwell and get gain. In each of these early instances there was an ele- ment of romance, of strong conviction of duty mingled with an appreciation alike of the beautiful and the practical, that combination which, as Horace told us long ago, "carries every vote '' To some extent this had passed awan two hundred years ago, when possssioy was taken of the farming lands and the fair though rugged hill-sides enclosing the river valley in which we now stand. The settlers who came up into the high grounds from the shores of the Sound did not leave, for the more part, on account of disagreement with their neighbors in the matters civil or
 
 of divine calling or mission. They were rather led by the Anglo-Saxon spirit of colonization, to settle on new soil, to extend former industries or to undertake new ones, and to organize new units of life in the body polite. Still, we cannot doubt that when they. too, looked over the fields they saw more than the possibility of gathering harvests and crops from them, and that when they followed the water -ourse they did more than estimate the use which they might make of the force ot 1 the falling sream. They had somethir g | of the enthusiasm of discovery, and | something of the joy of those who fl. st | turn natures forces to mans account. 1t is worth our while, as we go back | in mind to these beginnings, to try to think as they thought who first look ed | lpol the natural feat lces ofthe Ia d. scape, which it takes much more than two centuries materially to change, and to see why they chose as they did who fixed on this spot as their hon e. [n this regard there is in all our set dement's, early and late. something that they have in common, which ap- oeals rather more, I am inclined to think, to the philosopher than to the historian. Perhaps the student of his story delights more in noting the difference is in the plans and purposes 'f those who settled our early towns, md in finding in each as he readily