Excerpt from Colonial Days Ways as Gathered From Family Papers Our national life has not been one of growth from savagery up, through many wars, through centuries of depression and oppression, of slow disintegrations and slower constructions, but is the result of deliberate purpose on the part of the majority of the first colonists, of no matter what creed or nationality, to occupy this wide, wild, new land, free to the first comer, and bring to it all the best of the institutions of the Old World, while leaving behind all that was worn out, all that had served its day. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.