ew England boy. The simplicity of life which characterized a
province so uniform in its character was especially evident in the
Connecticut Valley. Here, longer than in the cities and on the
sea-board, native English and Puritan stock retained the form and power
which an unbroken succession in blood and a freedom from external
pressure had made possible. The families known by Webster in his
boyhood, among whom he lived, and whose lives passed into his character,
were a part of the great migration which founded a new England between
1630 and 1640, and from a basis of English law and custom, modified by
theocratic doctrines, and partially shaped by a struggle with the
wilderness, built a state which was to be one of the great forces in
American history. The agricultural life, which was more productive in
the valley of the Connecticut than elsewhere, determined largely the
social life of the colony, made Connecticut the most serenely democratic
of the New England States, emphasized the individual worth, and allowed
free play in self-government. The church held its own for a longer
period than in Massachusetts; the inevitable surrender of the
ecclesiastical power of the Congregationalists was deferred until a much
later date; and to-day it is in Hartford that one will find most
distinctly the lines of colonial Congregationalism.

The life of the household in a Connecticut village in the middle of the
eighteenth century was very self-centred. Remote from towns,--for
Hartford was only a village then,--the demands of farming life
determined the round of days. Every one from childhood fell of necessity
into his or her place as one of the workers, out doors and in, and the
simplicity of the social organization made the farmer a mechanic as
well. There was the blacksmith's shop, where a rudely trained skill
supplied the more special needs; but the farmer himself not only used
his tools, but mended and to some extent made them; he was carpenter
also, and shoemaker, and, in general, necessity had taught his hands to
shape and his fingers to be dexterous. The boy made his own traps and
small tools and carts, and early learned that handiness and adaptability
without which he would be likely to go through life in a destitute
condition. There is to be found still, especially in the back country, a
curious survival of this old economy in the hired man, who shines in
literature in the person of Mr. Jacob Abbott's Jonas, the embodiment of