The love of the things of this life, while it certainly existed, was far
from being predominant in the affections of the Puritan. He was frugal
from habit and principle, more than from an undue longing after worldly
wealth. He contented himself, therefore, with acquiring an estate that
should be valuable, rather from its quality and beauty, than from its
extent. Many such places offered themselves, between the settlements of
Weathersfield and Hartford, and that imaginary line which separated the
possessions of the colony he had quitted, from those of the one he joined.
He made his location, as it is termed in the language of the country, near
the northern boundary of the latter. This spot, by the aid of an
expenditure that might have been considered lavish for the country and the
age, if some lingering of taste, which even the self-denying and subdued
habits of his later life had not entirely extinguished, and of great
natural beauty in the distribution of land, water and wood, the emigrant
contrived to convert into an abode, that was not more desirable for its
retirement from the temptations of the world, than for its rural
loveliness.
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