Birth and Childhood. 17 



community did every man in it have a clear percep- 

 tion of his rights and responsibilities as a man and 

 a citizen. No man's vote or influence was indistin- 

 guishably merged with those of thousands of other 

 men. A unit was not so petty a fraction of the so- 

 cial or political total as to be in danger of regarding 

 himself as practically a cipher. There was no local 

 magnate who, by wealth, office, or superior education, 

 could keep any of his neighbours in eclipse, or subdue 

 any of them to be echoes of his mind and will. As 

 appointers of school trustees, of town and county offi- 

 cers, as voters in the State, every man had a " say," 

 which he said, and which he acted upon with clearly 

 perceived effect. Greenfield was a fair sample of 

 thousands of such communities then extant substan- 

 tially American in population, homogeneous, demo- 

 cratic ; communities fast disappearing (alas !) before im- 

 migration of low type, before the disparities of fortune 

 created by steam, electricity, and modern methods of 

 trade and manufacture, most of all, doubtless, by the 

 iniquitous tariff laws of the last thirty years. Whole- 

 some as much of the life in Greenfield was, it had its 

 inevitable little battles between progress and tradition. 

 Of this, let one example suffice. At a certain State 

 election party feeling ran high, and for the first time on 

 record the Congregationalist minister dared to vote. 

 His political opponents, especially those in his own 

 church, were furious, and years passed before the act 

 was forgiven. Edward much admired this plucky 

 clergyman Rev. Mr. Redfield first, because he liked 

 and drove a fast horse ; secondly, because he had the 

 courage of his convictions. 



Small as Greenfield was, it nevertheless contained 

 a freethinker or two, who stayed away from church 



