There was now a demand for many perishable products which had previously found only a limited home market, and a host of middlemen arose in eager competition for the farmer's eggs, poultry, butter, veal calves, potatoes, and fruit, as well as for hay, for which until now there had been only a local demand.
The luxuries and fashions of the cities were in some degree introduced by the more rapid and easy intercourse with the outer world; for many strove to make display beyond their means, to the loss of content and comfort. With homespun wear and simple ways of life, the old-time social equality became less general, and neighborly interdependence slackened its generous hold.
FOOTNOTE:
[98] Chancellor Livingston brought merinos to this country as early as 1802. In 1809 William Jarvis, our consul at Lisbon, brought a considerable number of merinos to Vermont, and from his famous Weathersfield flocks most of the Vermont merinos are descended.
CHAPTER XXI.
RELIGION, EDUCATION, AND TEMPERANCE.
Being almost wholly of New England origin, the settlers of Vermont and their descendants were in the main a religious people, and held to church-going when there was no place for public worship but the schoolhouse and the barn. In such places the members of the poorer and weaker sects held their meetings till within the memory of men now living. This was particularly the case of the Baptists and Methodists, who were viewed with slight favor by the predominant Congregationalists. This sect organized the first religious society in Vermont at Bennington in 1762, and first erected houses of worship. These structures were unpretentious except in size, and for years were unprovided with means of warming. When the bitter chill of winter pervaded them, the congregation kept itself from freezing with thick garments and little foot-stoves of sheet-iron; the minister, with the fervor of his exhortations. Folks went to church with no display of apparel or equipage. Homespun was the wear, till some ambitious woman aroused the envy of her kind by appearing in a gown of calico, or some gay gallant displayed his many-caped drab surtout of foreign cloth. The sled or wagon that served for week days on the farm was good enough for Sunday use, when its jolting was softened with a generous cushioning of buffalo robes for such as did not go to church on horseback, or on foot across lots.
Late in summer, after the earlier crops were gathered, the Methodists were wont to congregate in the woods at camp-meetings. These meetings were celebrated with a fervor of religious warmth, and whether by day the white tents and enthusiastic worshipers were splashed and sprinkled with sunlight shot through the canopy of leaves, or lit at night by the lateral glare of the pine-knot torches flaring from a score of scaffolds set on the tree-trunks, the scene was weird and picturesque beyond what the fancy can conjure from the modern fashionable camp-meeting, with its trim cottages and steadily burning lamps and unmoved throng, and one can but think that another fire than that of the old pine torches burned out with them.