54 Thiety-Fifth Annual Report of the 



forests and green mountain boys — the latter always more or less 

 a puzzle to me for I could never settle the question in my mind 

 whether they were green boys off any old mountain, or any old 

 boys off a green mountain. My first school history did much to 

 dispel the idea that all Vermonters were green, and to my certain 

 knowledge all persons who have had dealings with them have 

 ascertained the fact without learning it from a book. 



I have said that my first school history helped me to gain 

 further knowledge of the natives of your State. There was the 

 picture of the taking of Fort Ticonderoga; its central figure 

 was Ethan Allen, tall and gaunt and smooth-shaven, clad in a 

 buckskin hunting shirt and leggings and with a three-cornered 

 hat on his head, brandishing a sword nearly as long as himself 

 while he demanded the surrender of the fortress in the name of 

 the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress; and with him 

 was a score or more of other Vermonters looking just like him, 

 all mightily interested in the proceedings, all pointing their 

 bayoneted flintlocks at the British commander, clad in a single 

 diaphanous garment, and who was evidently dreadfully tickled 

 at the reasonableness of Alien's demand. 



Then a little later came the exciting account of how Gen. 

 Burgoyne with his glittering array of British, Hessians, Tories 

 and Indians came sweeping up Lake Champlain to divide and 

 crush the colonies ; and another picture showed another crowd of 

 long, lean, smooth-shaven buckskin-clad. Vermonters going out to 

 meet the enemy at Bennington. One named John Stark marched 

 at their head, and he proclaimed to all the world as he marched 

 that the British would that day be beaten or Molly Stark would 

 be a widow before the sun set. 



This impression of Vermont and the Vermonters endured 

 in my childish imagination during the dark days of the civil war 

 when 35,242 tall, sinewy, smooth-shaven men out of a total of 

 60,719 men of your State subject to military duty donned Uncle 

 Sam's blue instead of the traditional buckskin, and, turning their 

 faces toward the front marched southward to the tune of : "We 

 are coming Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more." 



In addition to these early impressions the people of the 

 Mohawk valley were possessed of traditional knowledge that all 

 Vermonters inherited great business acumen and corresponding 

 thrift, that they invariably spoke in a sort of Yankee dialect and 

 that they were greatly given to driving peddler's carts. I am 

 to be pardoned then when I say that in the days that followed, 

 if a tall, lean,, smooth-shaven stranger drove a tin peddler's cart 

 into our yard and proclaimed in a nasal voice that he "Guessed 

 he had abaout th' best goods there was t' be faound, and if we 

 had any rags in th' haouse, he was ready for a trade," we 



