ar--and a lonely French Mercereau; the
rest are unmixed English.

Not unnaturally you look next for an Episcopalian Church, finding none in
Abingdon; Abingdon is given over to fiery Dissenters--the Old-World word
comes unbidden into your mouth. But you were not so far wrong; in
prosperous Vesper, to westward, every one who pretends to be any one
attends services at Saint Adalbert's, a church noted for its gracious
and satisfying architecture. In Vesper the name of Henry VIII is revered
and his example followed.

But the inquiring mind, seeking among the living bearers of these old
names, suffers check and disillusion. There are no traditions. Their
title deeds trace back to Coxe's Manor, Nichols Patent, the Barton Tract,
the Flint Purchase, Boston Ten Townships; but in-dwellers of the land
know nothing of who or why was Coxe, or where stood his Manor House; have
no memory of the Bostonians.

In Vesper there are genealogists who might tell you such things; old
records that might prove them; old families, enjoying wealth and
distinction without perceptible cause, with others of the ruling caste
who may have some knowledge of these matters. Such grants were not
uncommon in the Duke of York, his Province. In that good duke's day, and
later, following the pleasant fashion set by that Pope who divided his
world equally between Spain and Portugal, valleys and mountains were
tossed to supple courtiers by men named Charles, James, William, or
George, kings by the grace of God; the goodly land, the common wealth and
birth-right of the unborn, was granted in princedom parcels to king's
favorites, king's minions, to favorites of king's minions, for services
often enough unspecified.

The toilers of Abingdon--of other Abingdons, perhaps--know none of these
things. Winter has pushed them hard, summer been all too brief; life has
been crowded with a feverish instancy of work. There is a vague memory
of the Sullivan Expedition; once a year the early settlers, as a
community enterprise, had brought salt from Syracuse; the forest had
been rafted down the river; the rest is silence.

Perhaps this good old English stock, familiar for a thousand years with
oppression and gentility, wonted to immemorial fraud, schooled by
generations of cheerful teachers to speak no evil of dignities, to see
everything for the best in the best of possible worlds, found no
injustice in the granting of these broad manors--or, at least, no novelty
worthy