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apt to be. The sense of environment entered the brain 

 of the possessor of that old farm as he held the plough or 

 swung the scythe. With such surroundings, with tem- 

 perate life, with the serenity that goes with the owner- 

 ship of the soil, man raises better crops than grass or 

 vegetables, better stock than Holsteins or Jerseys ; he be- 

 gets children of brains. Of such Rufus Choate was a type. 



And the annals of the County are resplendent with 

 like examples of boys and girls born in the low studded 

 comfortable houses that antedated those monstrosities in 

 a northern climate, the — so-called Queen Anne houses — 

 who have gone forth to charm the world and tell whether 

 or not farming pays. 



The Puritan exodus from England to Massachusetts 

 Bay was the most wisely conceived and the most grandly 

 executed scheme of colonization that the annals of the 

 human race relate. The van-guard of the peaceful army 

 of occupation, which Endicott and Winthrop and Salton- 

 stall and Dudley and Dummer led into Essex County, was 

 carefully made up of the flower of the " country party " 

 of England. Men did not come alone. They brought 

 their wives and children with them. They were a select 

 class of God-fearing, thinking men, who made the parish 

 meetinghouse the center of temporal as well as of spiritual 

 affairs, from which everything radiated. No drones and no 

 paupers were allowed to come. The wise heads who di- 

 rected the movement sent out the exact proportion of 

 blacksmiths, weavers, tanners, millers and husbandmen 

 needed to develop the country. 



There was no crowding, no reckless strife to reach the 

 goal of wealth at the expense of one's fellows. When 



