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such that its people proportionately get more patents than those of any other, one to every eight hundred inhabitants being annually granted. Such is the diversified genius that has made Connecticut the "Wooden Nutmeg State," and De Tocqueville rightly called it the "leetle yellow spot dat make de clock-peddler," for Connecticut has almost monopolized clock-making for all the world. It leads in the production of India-rubber and elastic goods, in hardware and in myriads of ingenious "Yankee notions," and is also very near the front rank in making sewing-machines and arms and war material. Its name comes from the chief New England river-Connecticut meaning the "Long River". flowing down from the White Mountains to the sound. Its rugged surface is diversified by long ridges of hills and deep valleys, generally running from north to south, the prolongation of mountain-ranges beyond the northern border. Through the western counties the picturesque Housatonic comes down from the Massachusetts Berkshire hills; the centre is crossed by the Connecticut Valley, a region of beautiful scenery and great fertility; while in Eastern Connecticut the Quinnebaug makes a deep valley, and, finally flowing into the Thames, seeks the sea at New London. The many hills make many streams, and wherever one is large enough to make a water-powcr, there clusters a nest of busy factories.

SOME ATTRACTIVE CONNECTICUT TOWNS.

Our train glides through Greenwich, the south-western town of New England, and as we enter the Yankee-land on a high hill stands the Puritan outpost-the stately graystone Congregational church with its tall spire. The town stretches up to the wooded slopes north of the railway and away to the edge of the sound on the south. It was here that General Putnam in 1779, to get away from the British dragoons, swiftly galloped down the rude rocky stairway leading from the old church, while their bullets rattled

around him. "Old Put's Hill" is there, looking much as it did in his day. The train rolls along past attractive inlets and harbors, one of the prettiest being Mianus River, with Cos Cob on its bank just beyond Greenwich. The railway winds among more rocky regions with their brilliant adornments of foliage, and soon passes picturesque Stamford, where twelve thousand people are gathered upon the hills and vales covered with the homes of New York business-men who come out to this lovely place to live. Their dwellings show good taste in architecture and embellishment, and the busy factories reflect the prevalent phase of Connecticut life. Here in the last century lived Colonel Davenport, whom the poet Whittier immortalized. He was a legislator and described as a man of stern integrity and generous benevolence." When, in 1780, the memorable "Dark Day" came in New England, some one, fearing it was the day of judgment, proposed that the House adjourn. He opposed it, saying, "The day of judgment is either approaching or it is not; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish, therefore, that candles may be brought." South Norwalk is another nest of busy mills, within an outer setting of wooden houses that spreads up into Norwalk beyond. The thrifty settlers hereabout originally bought a tract which extended one day's "north walk" from the sound, and hence the name. Fine oysters are gathered in its spacious bay, and the white sails of the pungies add charms to the harbor view. There are ten thousand people in these twin factory-towns, who make shoes and hats and door-knobs and locks, and when the day's labor is ended enjoy the attractive land- and water-views that are all about. On the lowlands to the eastward the noted Pequot Indian nation, once ruling this region, was finally overpowered by the colonial troops, and the Sasco Swamp, in which they were captured, now has cattle grazing and oxen plodding upon almost the only good land seen on the route. Thus we come to tranquil old Fairfield, introduced

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by a rubber-factory and embowered in trees. Its greenbordered streets are lined with cottages, and the churchspires rise among the groves, while along the shore it has the finest beach on Long Island Sound.

The Pequannock River is crossed a few miles farther on, with the busy city of Bridgeport on its banks. The train runs in among the enormous mills that have gathered forty thousand people here—a hive containing some of the greatest establishments in the world for making sewing-machines and firearms. Here are the huge factories of the Wheeler & Wilson and Howe Sewing-Machine Companies, Sharp's Rifle Company, and the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, with some of the greatest carriage-building shops in the country. Cutlery and corsets, carpets, organs, and soap also occupy attention. The esplanade of Seaside Park overlooks the harbor and sound beyond, and toward the north the city stretches up the slopes into Golden Hill, named from its glittering mica deposits, where magnificent streets display splendid dwellings. But the lion of Bridgeport is P. T. Barnum, who is passing his ripe old age in the stately villa of Waldemere. The veteran showman first developed the financial advantages of amusing, and possibly humbugging, the public on a great scale, and also (with Jenny Lind) started the American fashion of paying extravagant sums to opera-singers, giving her one thousand dollars for each of one hundred and fifty nights of concert-singing. He introduced Tom Thumb, who was born in Bridgeport, to an admiring world, and his "great moral shows" are familiar travelling caravans through the country. But Bridgeport is left behind, and then in quiet old Stratford, in marked contrast, it is seen that the new and active order of things has not yet wholly disturbed the old, and that neither hotel nor factory encumbers the greensward or encroaches upon its sleepy houses, where one may dream away a sweet twilight under the shade of grand trees even more ancient than the village. Beyond we cross the broad bosom

of the placid Housatonic, and over patches of marshland come to Milford, with its long stretch of village green neatly enclosed, and its houses upon the bank of the silvery Wap-o-wang, back of which spread the wide streets lined by rows of overarching elms. A colony from Milford in England settled this place two hundred and fifty years ago, and, managing to crowd the Indians off the land, established the primitive church, this being the usual beginning of all New England settlements. Then, true to the American instinct, they at once proceeded to hold a convention, the result being the unanimous adoption of the following: "Voted, That the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.

"Voted, That the earth is given to the saints.

"Voted, That we are the saints."

The descendants of these pioneer saints of Milford now make straw hats for the country. Beyond the town the railway crosses a broad expanse of salt-marshes, and the train soon halts at New Haven.

XVI.

THE CITY OF ELMS.

THE magnificent elms of the city of New Haven, arching over the streets and the Public Green and grandly rising in stately rows, make the earliest and the deepest impression upon the visitor. In one of his most eloquent passages the late Henry Ward Beecher said the elms of New England are as much a part of her beauty as the columns of the Parthenon were the glory of its architecture. Sharing this feeling, one goes about the Academic City, and can readily appreciate the admiration all true New Englanders have for their favorite tree. The grand foliage-arched

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avenues of New Haven are unsurpassed elsewhere, so that they are the crowning glory as well as the constant care of the town. Among the finest of these avenues is the one separating the grounds of Yale College from the beautiful Public Green of the city-a magnificent Gothic aisle of rich green foliage-covered interlacing boughs. While these trees contribute so much to the beauty and notoriety of New Haven, its greatest fame comes from the possession of Yale College, one of the most extensive and comprehensive universities in the world. For almost two centuries this noble foundation has exerted a widely-diffused and advantageous influence upon the American intellectual character, and around it and its multitude of buildings of every kind now clusters New Haven town. This college began in a very small way at Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut River, in 1701, and had only one student during its first year. Subsequently, for a more convenient location, it was removed to New Haven, the first commencement there being in 1718, and its first college building was then named Yale College-a name afterward adopted in the incorporation of the university, and given in honor of Elihu Yale, a native of the town, who went abroad and afterward became governor of the East India Company. He made at different times gifts of books and money amounting to about five hundred pounds sterling, his benefactions being of much greater value on account of their timeliness.

Yale is the orthodox Congregationalist college of New England, usually having over one hundred instructors in the various departments, and about eleven hundred students. Its buildings are of various ages and styles of architecture, the original ones being the plain-looking “Old Brick Row," north-west of the New Haven Public Green, behind which what was formerly an open space has become gradually covered with more modern structures, while various others, such as the Peabody Museum, the Sheffield Scientific School, and the Divinity Halls, are located on