THE LITTLE TOWN ON THE HILL 181 



which has already devoured the barn; and stalking it 

 from behind are the young pines and birches, yearly 

 advancing up the slope of the garden. You may look 

 out across the tops of those birches mile upon mile to the 

 far blue hills of Connecticut. It is a lovely and a peace- 

 ful and a fertile spot, where once the traffic passed 

 hourly, gossip was exchanged at the gate, and the 

 fields were animate with cattle. There is no life now 

 but the birds and the squirrels, and a woodchuck which 

 last year had made his hole beneath the kitchen door 

 sill. This beautiful dwelling is a ruin in the wilderness. 

 Beartown is no more. The hilltop that man conquered 

 a brief century ago has been captured by a counter 

 charge, and the wilderness once more holds possession. 

 There has been much talk in recent years about 

 "redeeming" our western Massachusetts hill towns. 

 From time to time agitations have been started to 

 persuade the legislature to grant trolley franchises, 

 which, in some mysterious way, the New Haven Rail- 

 road was going altruistically to use in the process of 

 redemption. More promising have been the move- 

 ments to bring state highways a little closer to these 

 isolated communities. But I sometimes wonder if 

 there is much use in all this effort. Our hill towns, ex- 

 cept in such rare instances as Litchfield, Connecticut, 

 were pioneer communities, even though they carried 

 with them up the cascades of thank-you-marms cer- 

 tain architectural graces and theological formulae of 



