in it than could be found in any other town
in Massachusetts, which was saying a good deal. The brothers and
sisters, for such they called themselves, got to quarrelling among
themselves on matters of politics and religion, though charity was a
thing they made no account of. In truth, there was more politics than
religion in their preaching.

Chapman constituted himself treasurer of the community, and some little
private speculations of his led to a belief among the brothers and
sisters that his mind was not solely occupied with schemes for reforming
the world. To tell the truth, Bigelow Chapman was not so great a fool as
his followers. He had intended, when Dogtown got thoroughly under way,
to sell out, put the money in his pocket, and employ his genius
somewhere else. He, however, undertook the enterprise of building a
church on speculation, being persuaded to do so by an outside Christian.

The church was to be a large, handsome building, with a butcher's shop
and a grocery, a shoe store and a confectionery in the basement, and a
school and a dancing academy up stairs; so that the brothers and
sisters could get everything they wanted, religion included, in one
locality. But the enterprise failed for want of funds to finish it, and
Dogtown went to the dogs, and the Chapman family to Nyack. Report has it
that the church was afterwards finished and converted into an insane
asylum, where several of the brothers and sisters lived for the rest of
their lives.

It was hinted that Chapman had brought some money to Nyack with him, but
exactly how much no one knew. The only thing positively known about him
at that time was that he had a great number of new ideas, all of which
he was in great haste to develope. Indeed, he soon had Nyack in a state
of continual agitation. He declared it his first duty to open the eyes
of the Dutch settlers to truth and right; then to get them to thinking;
and finally to make fortunes for all of them. He begun business,
however, by quarrelling with nearly everybody in the village, and
asserting that he knew more than all of them.

Twice he had Titus Bright, the inn-keeper, up before the magistrate and
fined for selling liquor in opposition to law. He proclaimed it highly
immoral to sell liquor at all, and told Bright to his teeth that no
honest man would do it. For this he had been twice kicked out of the inn
by Bright, who damned him as a meddling varlet, not to be tolerated in a
peaceable