Rensselaer Republican, Volume 26, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1893 — The New England Idea. [ARTICLE]

The New England Idea.

Nobody who is anybody cares to deny that the New England of the first, second, even tho present third century, has had her own hands full in wrestling with home infirmities and diabolisms; even that on the whole, a Yankee fool, crank, or devil may honestly claim precedence among his fellows in any part of thisor any land. Certainly the Puritan parson, in humble imitation of his persecutors across the water, did try for fifty years to make the law or Moses the common law of Massachusetts, and the New England colonial soil uninhabitable to anybody but a Calvinistic saint Certainly, the witches were hung; the uncomfortable agitato re, Roger Williams aud Anne Hutchinson, were banished or supressed; negro slaves were bought and sold in Boston and Newportehips; the old Hartford convention was held; and plenty of other unpleasant things were said and done, and all still ventilated and put in experiment which have been justly condemned by the impartial jury of American civilization. But the real glory of New England is that no respect ible class there objects to putting all these things in a common school of history, and"sending the class to the public library to look up the conflicting testimony on any important point in the controversies. The New England idea is that no class that honestly has its face set to the front to-day will be bothered by looking over its shoulders or spending time in trying to cover up the tracks of old mistake* or old sini*. - New Eng. Magazine. 1 igfaium.M *