The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-06-18


 their generation. They were backs woodmen, the vanguard of that won- derful race which in 200 years pushed westward the frontier from this place to the Pacific, fighting with man and beast the whole way and sowed the land with vigorous sons and daugh- ters.
 The congregational singing in those days must have been an interesting performance. When the first settlers came to New England from the old country, they brought with them a few tunes to which they sang all the psalms and hymns.
 The proper mode of rendering these was through the nose. With the lapse of time and the advent of new gen- eration, these tunes became tangled together in inextricable confusion. The practice was for a deacon as leader to read line of the psalm or hymn, and the congregation then sang at 1t as as best they could, each one using such tune as he chose, and often sliding from one tune to another in the same line or improvising as he went on. Fin ally, in 1721, the Rev. Thomas Walter of Roxbury Mass, published q treatise upon the grounds or rules of music or an Introduction to the art of singing by rote, containing twenty four tunes harmonized into three parts. The attempt to supersede the OIJ ,,l tnt Ia 1ih- erty of the individual singers met with the greatest opposition and was long successfully resisted in all the church. es in New England, so tenacious were they of the rights of the individual singer It caused great dissention in the church at this place. Finally, in February, TAO, the church voted to half the time for the next year singing the old way one Sabbath and the new way the next, and in 1741, at a meet ing specially called to settle the mat ter, 1t was voted thirty to sixteen to sing thereafter the new way.
 No musical instruments were allow ed in the meeting house. They had never seen or heard a church organ. But they knew that their fathers liken- ed its sound to the belowing of bull the grunting of pig, and the bark ing of dog, and had resisted it's use in religious services even to the she'd ding of blood. Nor were flowers al- lowed in the church.
 In those days in New England worn- en were not thought to have minds worth educating, and they were brought up in extreme illiteracy. New ertheless, their natural wit, bright ness, and good sense made them very agreeable companions of the superior sex. And their influence over their husbands, sons and brothers, was quite as great as that of their more cultivated daughters of the present day. The refining, educating, stimulat- Ing influence of the women had much to do in withstanding that tendency back to barbarism, which life in and isolated and new comunity led to. The debt which Is owed to them Is meal culable.
 As the descendants of these people assemble here to-day, after the lapse of 200 years, to commemorate their work and rejoice in all the strength, beauty and order, now smiling around us in peace and plenty, which have grown out of what they began, and as we look back upon their condition, trials and experiences, we are apt to Imagine that their lot, contrasted with our own, was an unhappy one. No- thing could be further from the truth. They were a brave, hardy, thrifty, frugal, industrious and most capable people. Man for man, and woman for woman, they were probably superior to those here to-day in Faculty, and in the capacity for healthy enjoyment Their whole previous lives had inured them to their experiences. They were the sons and grandsons of the original pioneers of New England, and they had been born and reared in rude set- dement's. They never indulged the delusion that this region was land flowing with milk and honey. Before they came they knew that they were
 to wrest their living from an uncon- genial soil, to struggle With penury and to conquer only by constant toll
 and by self-denying thrift. The forest
 would supply them with the materials
 for shelter and fuel and to some ex-
 tent with food and clothing. All the rest must depend upon their own ex- ertions. There was a pleasure in fac ing and overcoming the perils and diff | faculties which they encountered which those, more dellcately reared, who live here now can never know
 Their individual helplessness in the
 face of appalling obstacles to me met
 but bound them closer together in mu-
 tual helpfulness. Accordingly we find
 that their social faculties were highly developed. It may we'll be doubted whether the sum total of human pleas
 lure among the whole 5000 inhabitants
 of the town to-day is any greater thar
 it was among the few hundred whC settled it. Probably our own super. abundance of good things has actual.
 lily lessened our capacity to enjoy, 1T comparison with theirs. Their simple
 tastes and homely joys amid their rudt
 surroundings were probably more pro ductive of positive pleasure and req
 happiness, thap~all the refinement anC
 culture of eur twentieth century civil ization.
 l It would be a pleasing and instruc' tive task to trace the progress of thi old town, from those rude beginnings
 to it's present strength and wealth But the limits of the time and subjec lallotted to me on this occasion for
 bid. It Is the product of the labors o
 eight generations, who now sleep be
 meath it's soil. They never could hay