Page:Pioneersorsource01cooprich.djvu/128

 there was no change about him, unless it were from grave to gay. He was serious by months, and jolly by weeks. He had, early in their acquaintance, formed an attachment for Marmaduke Temple, who was the only man, that could not talk High Dutch, that ever gained his entire confidence. Four times in each year, at periods equi-distant, he left his low stone dwelling, on the banks of the Mohawk, and travelled the thirty miles, through the hills, to the door of the mansion-house in Templeton. Here he generally staid a week, and was reputed to spend much of that time in riotous living, countenanced by Mr. Richard Jones. But every one loved him, even to Remarkable Pettibone, to whom he occasioned some additional trouble; he was so frank, so sincere, and, at times, so mirthful. He was now in his regular Christmas visit, and had not been in the village an hour, when Richard summoned him to fill a seat in the sleigh, to meet the landlord and his daughter.

Before explaining the character and situation of Mr. Grant, it will be necessary to recur to times far back in the brief history of the settlement.

There seems to be a tendency in human nature to endeavour to provide for the wants of this world, before our attention is turned to the business of the other. Religion was a quality but little cultivated, amid the stumps of Temple's Patent, for the first few years of its settlement; but as most of its inhabitants were from the moral states of Connecticut and Massachusetts, when the wants of nature were satisfied, they began seriously to turn their attention to the introduction of those customs and observances, which had been the principal care of their forefathers. There was certainly a great variety of opinions, on the