clude New England's domestication of itself on the Bosphorus, under the shadow of the Alhambra, on the banks of the Euphrates and Ganges, in the midst of the shrines and temples of Japan, upon the lofty steppes of China and beneath the Southern Cross.

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That all this should have come to pass despite unfavorable external conditions is even more markable. The New England soil, broadly speaking, is rocky and barren. The New England climate is a standing joke. Today may be enchanting, but tomorrow is as likely as not to be execrable. New Englanders as a rule throughout these three centuries have not been surfeited with creature comforts. It would be reasonable to infer that lacking a climate and a soil conducive to the best physical conditions, they would have had enough to do to provide for their own material welfare without giving much attention to the higher concerns of life and without indulging in much constructive thought touching the welfare of others.

But the contrary is true. It has been the plain people of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut who have been the bulwark against oppression and injustice and the backbone of every movement that sought to make men happier, wiser and better.

Nothing but the working of a powerful inner

dynamic could have thus broadened the vision and touched the heart of those who as they tilled their stony fields could at the same time see beyond their own doorsills and pasture bars.

The Pilgrims themselves were responsible for the placing of this dynamic in the New England heart. They brought it with them to Plymouth. In Bradford's own words:

Lastly, (and which was not least,) a great hope & inward zeall they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for ye propagating & advancing ye gospell of ye kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of ye world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for ye performing of so great a work.

Undoubtedly the Pilgrims wished to better their own lot, material and spiritual, but as some one has well said, there was never a migration in history in which the almighty dollar played so small a part. From the time they sailed from the old world on through all the vicissitudes of the first hard years, the Pilgrims never forgot one of the chief objects in behalf of which they made their memorable venture, and they never ceased striving to attain it.

The Pilgrims passed on this dynamic to their successors. Many, perhaps the majority of their descendants, and of those who came later to dwell in

New England, refused to be energized by the same master passion and lapsed into inertia and inaction. But there have always been enough persons who have felt the glow of the inner fires to maintain the sacred calling.

In their case also, as in that of the original Pilgrims, motives were undoubtedly mixed. This blending of the desire to better oneself and to serve others comes out quite naively in the constitution drawn by those sturdy Vermonters who in 1836 established themselves in Southern Michigan. They brought into close juxtaposition their two dominant motives, expressing the one in this language:

We believe that a pious and devoted emigration is to be one of the most efficient means, in the hands of God, in removing the moral darkness which hangs over a great portion of the valley of the Mississippi;

and saying with reference to the other:

We believe that a removal to the west may be a means of promoting our temporal interest, and we trust be made subservient to the advancement of Christ's kingdom..

That little Massachusetts lad whom his father discovered weeping one day because he could not find dirt enough to cover his seeds proved the first link

in the chain of events that led the entire family westward to more fertile fields. But why should we expect New Englanders to be immune from the influence of all materialistic considerations? Why not, in situations when a variety of motives are at work, as in the case of the two million American soldiers who went overseas, interpret the action taken on its highest side? The crucial question always is what motive is dominant enough to bring all the other motives into line with itself.

As for the New Englanders who have been going Westward and Southward through these centuries, and particularly during the last century and a half, allowance should be frankly made for the ne'er-dowells, who having failed in one place, thought they could retrieve their fortunes somewhere else, and for the adventurers who were prompted chiefly by the sporting instinct, and for those who had no other end in view than the acquisition of a competence or a fortune. After all the emigrants of their type have been winnowed out, a host remains among the outgoing sons and daughters of New England, whose chief reason for cutting the home ties was the hope that they could do more for their fellow men in some new location than they could if they stayed where they were. For the true New Englander, the New Englander built on the Brewster-Bradford

Winslow pattern, is never content to sit at ease in his own chimney corner when ignorance and vice are clamoring on the streets.

Sometimes it is true that in his zeal he seems to others nothing but a busybody and a meddler. When Dwight L. Moody returned to his native town of Northfield in the Connecticut Valley after the meetings which with Mr. Sankey's aid he had held in England, he looked about for ways in which he might serve the community in which he grew up. To his quick-seeing eye many local conditions revealed themselves which he thought might be improved. Meeting one morning one of the old farmers whom he had known from boyhood, he suggested ways in which he might make his farm more productive. "D-D-Dwight," said the farmer, who like most stutterers was a good deal of a wag, "D-D-Dwight, y-y-you have been all over the w-w-world and people th-think y-y-you're a great m-man, but there's one thing that you c-c-can't do, D-D-Dwight."

"Oh," said Mr. Moody, pleasantly, "I guess there are a good many things I can't do, but what special thing are you thinking of?"

"You c-c-can't m-m-mind your own business."

The farmer was right. Dwight Moody never could be content with the limitations of the shoe business