174 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



outside world, the human instinct is to get upon a hill. 

 How else, at any rate, can we explain so many of our 

 New England hamlets which were founded and flour- 

 ished more than a century ago, and with the growth of 

 modern transportation and industrialism have grad- 

 ually been slipping down to the valleys, or dying of 

 dry rot, yielding up their hard-won fields to the read- 

 vancing waves of the forest? 



In this hill town where the stage driver brought me 

 there was a notable fire in 1795, or thereabouts. It 

 burned the church to the ground, and with the church it 

 destroyed the Covenant. The minister at that time 

 was the Reverend Preserved Smith, a man of liberal 

 mind and warm heart, who at once set about rebuilding 

 his sheepfold. But he did not attempt to restore the 

 Covenant. It is said that neither he nor his congrega- 

 tion could recall definitely all its Calvinistic ramifica- 

 tions, and quite evidently they were not desirous of 

 sending away to the orthodox lowlands for aid. There- 

 fore the new church had no Covenant, and for a genera- 

 tion the Reverend Preserved Smith preached liberal 

 religion to his flock, up here on the windy hilltops, and 

 not a soul from the outside world interfered. Of course, 

 he was at last discovered in his heinous offence, and the 

 governing body of the New England church took drastic 

 action; but it was too late. A generation without a 

 Covenant and a creed had set the village on the liberal 

 path, and to this day the church remains Unitarian, 



