Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Puritan Influences in the Formative Years of Illinois History
In the north central part of the State of Illinois, a hundred miles above Springfield, lies a little village in the midst of the rich prairie country. The town itself is on a slight rise of land so that it overlooks the country for miles around. On every side stretch the well kept farms. On a bright fall day it is a particularly pleasant scene; everywhere the great fields of corn, golden brown in the sunlight, and moving slowly here and there the huge wagons laden with the golden ears. The expanse of field is broken by orchards, a little woodland where some prairie stream makes its way toward the Illinois river, or a clump of trees or a windmill which indicates the location of some well-kept farm house. There is little going on in the tiny town itself; a few stores, dispersing points for necessary supplies, a large school house with its ebb and flow of noise and silence. The roads are good, the trees abundant and large, the houses neat and comfortable and all pervaded by an air of quiet and repose that calls at once to mind the old New England village off the line of the railroad. Not until 1900 did a railroad reach this village. No mines, no large industries have ever been started in its vicinity. Everything has conspired to keep the community, aside from the slow progress and material improvement that comes with years, in the same social condition with the same ideals and ideas that were stamped on it in the first thirty years of its existence. It is a town typical of many that have arisen in northern Illinois, but owing to its comparative isolation it has preserved longer than many its independence of the bustling activities of the world. Yet this little town and others like it have stood for much in the development of the great State. What has been the central organization, the central force to hold it together and make it count for something both for its own community and the world at large? Where, to borrow a term from silence, has been the dynamic center?
All the week the ordinary busy routine of life goes on, each family working to and for itself. When Sunday comes there is a change.
From practically every house in the village the people take their way to that modest, ample church, so centrally and conspicuously placed. From away out over the prairie the teams come with whole families. About the church the wagons stand thick; and inside, the large and handsome audience room is well filled.
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