_Sterling_. The next seceder ambitiously chose the name
of a Prussian city--_Berlin_. The sixth perpetuated its early admiration
of the great small-pox inoculator, _Boylston_; and the last was
named--for a hotel. None so poor as to do Prescott reverence. But
surely, it would be thought, banks and manufactories, halls or at least
a fire engine, might with tardy respect have paid cheap tribute to his
name by bearing it. Is there any example! Yes, at last a short street
having little connection sentimental or real with the pioneer, bears his
name--this only in the aspiring town, almost a city, of which John
Prescott's old millstone is the visible foundation! _Clinton_.

I have stated that Prescott was an ideal pioneer. Not that there was in
him anything of kinship to that race of frontiersmen now deployed along
the outer verge of American civilization, like the thread of froth
stranded along a beach outlining the extreme advance made by the last
wave of the tide. The frontiersmen of to-day, bibulous gamblers,
reckless duelists, blasphemous savages of mixed blood, had no prototype
in Colonial days, for even the human harvest then gathered to the
stocks, the whipping-post and the gallows, was of a far less obtrusive
class of offenders against morals and social decency. Prescott was a
Puritan soldier, a seeker of liberty not license; fiercely rebellious
against tyranny, but no contemner of moral law. It was no accident that
put him in the advance guard of Anglo-Saxon civilization, then just
starting on its westward march from the shores of Massachusetts Bay. The
position had awaited the man. When he set up his anvil and with skilful
blows hammered out the first plough-shares to compel the virgin soil of
the Nashaway valley to its proper fruitfulness, he was all unwittingly
helping to forge the destinies of this great republic;--was in his
humble sphere a true builder of the nation. His neighbors and friends,
John Tinker, Ralph Houghton, and Major Simon Willard, doubtless excelled
him in culture, but no neighbor surpassed him in natural personal force,
whether physical, mental or moral. Not only was he of commanding
stature, stern of mien and strong of limb, but he had a heart devoid of
fear, great physical endurance and an unbending will. These qualities
his savage neighbors early recognized and bowed before in deep respect,
and because of these no Lancaster enterprise but claimed him as its
leader. His manual skill and dexter