Memoirs of John Adams Dix; comp. by his son, Morgan Dix.

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MEMOIRS OF JOHN ADAMS DIX.

wholesome her teachings were than those to which she had
been accustomed to listen. I remember asking my father
why our meeting-house was so uncomfortable. I reminded
him that our house had warm rooms, cushioned chairs, and
nicely papered walls; and asked him if we ought not to make
God's house as good as our own. I never could get any satisfactory answers to such inquiries as this last. Indeed, he
evaded them, or told me I would understand these things
better when I grew older.
Such were my early impressions in regard to religious worship; and, but for the remembrance of my mother, I fear a
much longer time would have elapsed before they were supplanted by better ones.
The people of our village, though unsophisticated, were not
wanting in intelligence or in the rudiments of education.
They were entirely ignorant of the world, and heard little of
it except from my father, who made frequent visits to Boston, and who, on his return, always imparted to his wondering
neighbors the knowledge he had there gained. Newspapers
were rare in those days, and the villagers who had not been
born in the place came from equally sequestered districts.
Yet, with the exception of a few laboring men who led unsettled lives, I doubt whether there was a single person in the
village, male or female, who could not read and write. ~ Their
reading was, certainly, confined to a very limited range of
books - the Bible, "Pilgrim's Progress," Baxter's "Saint's
Rest," Fox's "Lives of the Martyrs," and some elementary
works on geography and history. There were a few families,
however, whose field of literary research was wider and more
varied; and I remember that there were books in my father's
library which went the rounds of the more intelligent households. The simplicity of our neighbors was well illustrated
by an incident which occurred in my presence. My father
had brought home a Boston paper, and was reading to a number of them a paragraph which, he said, he believed to be untrue. " Why," said one of his auditors, " do you believe they