Excerpt from History of Montague: A Typical Puritan Town The tale of human life is enchanting. The life of a community is a beautiful, a divine mystery. In it we have the law, the orderly customs of men, which are a part of nature, akin to those laws which fix the orbits of the stars. In it we have deposits of tradition and ancient lore which spring from the subsoil of the imagination and heart of the childhood of the race. We have manlike loyalties which hold the people true to some polestar of nationality, even to the crack of doom. We have great visions and ideals which beckon them from afar and make the work of their hands, in time if they prevail, to blossom into beauty. And finally we have in the hours of fulfillment the feasting and the song, the joyous contemplation of all the things that God and man have done amongst us. Fellow Citizens: I invite you to the feast and song, to celebrate a stage of this community's life journey, to close the books of two centuries' ideals and deeds, while the twentieth century, on fresh fields and pastures new, is dawning. A former minister in Montague, David Cronyn, was asked what salary he got. "Fifteen hundred dollars," was the reply. Surprise was expressed, whereupon he explained: "I get five hundred dollars in money and a thousand dollars in scenery." The scenery of our banquet house is superb and its walls are frescoed and tapestried with memories. 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.