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 over looks 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 in dustries 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 con dition 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? About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.