Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1910-12-23
FOREFATHERS' IN NEW
YORK.
CONTINUED from page u

the death to the little island as it in its
inexhaustible fertility is loyal and true
to them.
1.-THE Lord God formed man out of
the dust of the ground, and the earth
from which he came transfuses its
qualities into his mind. That text is
still good psychology, however hard
shedding it may have in other depart
ments of the curriculum.
1.-The Pilgrim in the cabin of the
Mayhower was not the Yankee who has
put his stamp on every worthy Ameri-
can institution. The New Highlander
who has given his character to Ameri-
can life is the result of the evolution of
the pilgrim colonist through long pro-
cess of adaptation to New England soil.
The great pines of the forest nourished
his stature. The stony fields bred his
endurance and grit. The red man
taught him cunning, strategy, the
shrewd use of rude means to accom-
plish a needed end. The cold winds of
the mountains bronzed his cheek. The
hills over which he followed trails and
built roads gave his a heart like lions.
The exigencies of pioneer life taught
his inventiveness and patience.
what a difference between the
pictures of the Departure and Landing
of the Pilgrim Fathers. which hung on
the parlors of our childhood and the
conventional Uncle Sam! Both are
only mildly guilty of exaggeration. The
The New Highlander who sowed the town
meeting over the prairies and plains
was not a psalm-singing deacon. 1t
took more than Calvinism to make
Yankee. The New England sod had
somewhat to do with that product.
"This is the man, Puritan in blood
but reared and nourshed by the harsh
soil of the six Yankee commonwealths
who has taught industry and thrift,
free government and reasonable re-
ligion, to the American nation. In
rural New England the manhood has
been forged which has furnished the
states of the north with those elements
which have brought stability to their
institutions and worth to their man
hood.
Cup in the northland, in the narrow
valleys by the torrent rivers and be-
meath the shaggy hills, we guard the
fre-side of the American home. There
American manhood came to self-con-
seriousness. There the nation learned
the resolute independence and self
reliance, the habit of reasoning about
things, the knack of doing things in the
easiest way, the love of justice for
others as well as for ourselves, that
stand before the world as American
traits.
1T is a sad day for any man when
the old homestead no longer shelters
the piety and worth which gave it
standing in the neighborhood. The
gods have ever been attached to locali-
ties. Spiritual treasures are not the
land which gave them birth. Kansas
may be Gods country in time, but never
in all the milenniums will she be Massa-
chusetts. Every faith reckons beyond
price the possession of its shrine, and it
is no mistaken instinct.
at were sad day for America when
New England, rural New England, the
shrine of American worth, loses the
manhood it has furnished as the symbol
of the national character. The nation
needs the men who will go forth from
those valleys still. She needs yet more
the spirit that will abide there as long
as the smoke curls upward of an autumn
morning from the little white houses on
the hillside. Old New England, with
her rocks and rills, is the nations treas
ure STILL"