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which succeeded the stools and benches of their grandfathers.
In their best rooms were solid chairs and tables, and a few books on shelves.
This growth in comforts we learn from the inventories of the estates of the deceased, preserved in files of the county probate court.
The domination of the godly was disappearing.
The captain or lieutenant of the village was not always the deacon at the meeting house.
With the advent of the province came the officials of royal authority, came commissions to the judiciary and the military, came a larger liberality in the thoughts and views of the population.
The fisheries brought Spanish dollars or an exchange of commodities from foreign markets, in memory of which, to-day, the codfish hangs in front of the speaker in the people's general court.
The settlers were, up to this time, purely
English; so much so that the isolated individual of other British races was dubbed the Scotchman, the Irishman, the Welshman.
Because they were
English, they succeeded.
Our annual orators on Forefathers' Day tell us the colonists succeeded because they were
Puritan.
I crave permission to dissent.
I tell you nay. It was the stubborn nerve and fibre of the Englishman from
Wiltshire, from
Staffordshire, from
Devonshire, from
Yorkshire, from
Essex, and from
Sussex, which earned subsistence out of the hard soil, which on the high sea gathered the abundant fish, and, on shore, won an equal distinction and profit in
New England rum, ships' masts, and hoop poles.
The result is the same in
Canada and in
New Zealand, in
India and in
Cape Colony.
Mark the contrast with the establishment of the
Latin race in the fertile and fruitful zones of the equator.
To-day the descendants of the
English are building the canal, for the commerce of the world and the blessing of mankind, through the territory the others have held in possession four centuries.
During the closing quarter of the first century of Charlestown's history, that portion of her territory now Somerville had sparsely settled on its two highways, the road to Cambridge and Boston, now Washington street in our city, and the road to Medford and Woburn, now Broadway.
A few farmers dwelt on the road to Cambridge, while quite a cluster of dwellings stood
