12 



the coast line became dotted with parishes, a minister of 

 the Gospel led a little flock inland and obtained a grant 

 for a new plantation. Where else could this sturdy 

 stock have found elements so adapted to founding a new 

 civilization and a better home? 



The people who^ pity us say that our soil is rocky — 

 with swamps and forests — that our climate is bleak. 

 They forget that Christ was born in a cave in rocky 

 Judea — that the crags of bonny Scotland gave voice to 

 the genius of Eobert Burns and AValter Scott — that ro- 

 mance, chivalry and prowess in all eras have come down 

 out of the hill countries. What would have become of 

 the song of our Whittier if he had been shut up inside 

 city walls or on a dull, endless flat land? 



The fathers appreciated the woods, even if the age did 

 people them with demons. With the town lot and the 

 tillage land each householder had set apart to him a 

 wood lot. This wood lot furnished materials to build the 

 house that has sheltered the planter's children even to 

 this day. And it, by the kindness of Nature, renews it- 

 self every generation, so that the same wood keeps his 

 children's children warm and happy which sparkled and 

 blazed in the original fire-place. 



The great salt marshes were awaiting the Englishman's 

 scythe and his cattle, as they have every fall from that 

 day to this. Frost and snow mantled the earth in win- 

 ter, but both, as we know, are agencies under a benign 

 Providence working for the tiller of the soil. The snow 

 has as necessary a place in the economy of Nature in the 

 night of the year, as the sun, in the day of the year. 

 Even the loose stones in the earth, that others would 



