Two Books About New England

WE do well to cherish the remains, whether recorded or legendary, of our Colonial phase. It is pleasant to feel that, with all our youthfulness as a nation, we have a local past of some venerableness. It did not express itself in any form of art, but we have ceased to take for granted on this account that Virginian life was all laxity and unintelligence, or Puritan life all primness and fanaticism. Fiction has done much of late to invest the Colonial period with a romantic glamour ; but our new sense of its mellowness and completeness we owe rather to the diligence which keeps unearthing and classifying old chronicles, town records, legal documents, journals, and letters.

To this useful order belong our two books.¹ The reader who has an eye for suchchronicles will remember Miss Crawford’s recent Romance of Old New England Roof-Trees. It was a much less sentimental book than its title led one to suppose, a piece of simple, clear, readable annal-writing. The present book is of the same sort. In this case, also, the title fails to suggest the exact nature of the contents. The narrative concerns itself little with the history of churches, though here and there interesting data are presented in compact form, in connection, for instance, with King’s Chapel, the Old South Church, Old Trinity, and other churches as old though less widely known. But the book will not be mainly acceptable for its data. The chapters, most of them, chronicle the varied lives of certain members of the old ecclesiastical aristocracy of New England. It is pleasant to note how much more satisfaction the writer takes in dealing with the experiences of Elizabeth Whitman or Esther Edwards or Samuel Sewall, than in recording the history of church organizations, sites, and edifices. Her treatment of these themes is historical rather than literary. She does not fail to suggest her interpretation of the incidents which she records, but her main purpose is to make the record ; yet, as is not uncommonly the reward of such an effort, the literary quality of her work is the sounder for being less fanciful.

Old Paths and Legends of New England is a much more bulky and compendious book. It is, indeed, a little too bulky and heavy to serve, as it might otherwise admirably serve, as a waybook for Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. The large number of illustrations are responsible for its size and weight ; but they need not be ashamed of the responsibility. They are as good pictures as can be made by the reproduction of good photographs, and are really a valuable supplement to the text. Each chapter deals with some historic town, concisely, yet not mechanically, matters of guidebook information being relegated to a separate note under the heading “ Landmarks.” The text is spirited and intelligent. It contrives, in presenting many facts, to preserve their value in perspective, and, a more difficult thing, to suggest the emotion inherent in old places and structures which, only less convincingly than the written word, embody the past for us. A New Englander may harbor a prejudice against sightseeing and still be unable to lay down this book without an impulse to look up some of the ancient haunts, which, it reminds one, lie well within a Sabbath day’s trolley of the home-spot. This is to say that the volume is particularly worth the care of the pilgrim from Chicago or Oklahoma who wishes to do the East and not be done by it.

The reasonable and sympathetic spirit in which the author has undertaken her task is well suggested by the opening sentences of her Preface: “ Once upon a time it might have been said, ' Who knows an American town ? ’ . . . Some travellers thought we were too young to be interesting; others, in the words of the Old Play, directed their search ' to farthest Ind in search of novelties,’ blinking owl-like at ' ten thousand objects of int’rest wonderful ’ before their very thresholds, and even the most indefatigable lovers of America became discouraged by difficulties in the way of travelling almost insurmountable. The American found it a far more simple affair to journey with the immortals from Loch Katrine to Mont Blanc than to follow the course of Whittier’s Merrimack with its sheaf of legends from source to sea. To-day . . . our historyloving countryman, with his favorite volume in his pocket, may step down by the wayside from the wheel, the electric car, or automobile, and explore some little stream to the spot where the grist-mill’s wheel turns still, and, in the hand-made nails of a primitive garrison, live over again, as it were, his great-great-greatgrandfather’s experiences.”

With such a traveler this volume might well be a chosen favorite. It will not go into his pocket, but perhaps a lighter and more compact edition may follow.

H. W. B.