CONTRARY COUNTRY

by Ralph NadingHill '39, Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1950;309 pp., $3.75.

In the compass of one volume Ralph Hill has told a lot of stories about Vermont, and discussed a great many famous figures in Vermont history. He very wisely has been objective in his studies and does not reflect the sentimental twaddle about Vermont so dear to a certain cult of Vermont worshippers.

The theme which runs through his book is that Vermonters are congenitally unable to take the popular view. He writes: "Rebellion runs through the entire fabric of the lives of this resistant people whose ancestors first came to till a resistant soil." It seems that this is so even to this day. As Maine goes so goes Vermont, etc.

Here you will find succinctly told the story of Eleazar Wheelock and Dartmouth on the Hanover Plain (which was once claimed by Vermont); of Charles Phelps, described by Vermont's first governor Chittenden as "a notorious cheat and nuisance to mankind": of Joseph Smith and John Noyes who had somewhat curious ideas about women and religion; of Emma (Hart) Willard, a pioneer in female education; of Samuel Morey, Thaddeus Stevens, Stephen Douglas, Horace Greeley, the amazing Hetty Green, who in spite of a hundred million dollars used newspapers under her clothes to keep out the winter blasts, and Calvin Coolidge, about whom there is a legend which Mr. Hill's admirable account helps to dispel.

You will read about the Gargantuan labors of" one Seth Hubbell in Vermont's early days, of how Russell Colvin became the murdered man who returns to the scene of the crime, of the Confederate raid on St. Albans, of the Vershire riots (and where is Vershire today?), of Dickens and Kipling in Vermont history, of a cross-continent trip in a Winton in 1903 by a Vermonter, and other tales dear to a New Englander and a Vermonter especially.

Mr. Hill loves and knows Vermont and has marshalled his facts, checked them with experts, and told his story without fanfare or the beating of drums. I think you will find all his chapters instructive, many of them amusing, and most of them shrewdly revealing of Vermont character.

He writes clearly and his simple style fits the text perfectly.

The illustrations by George Daly are most appropriate. All in all this is a book for Dartmouth men and their wives.