46 CENTENNIAL HISTORY superintending the Sunday School, or leading the choir, and when you kindly elected me on the town ticket to the charge of your public schools, you did not unduly press the matter, and I was excused. It is very comforting to know that the work undertaken during those years has been carried forward so many years more with continually increasing interest and power by my successor, the present honored pastor of this Church. The spiritual fruits of his labors are amply and beautifully manifest in many additions to the Church and in the social peace and spiritual prosperity of the community ; and his public spirit and practical wisdom are not without substantial tokens. His resources and rarely fine taste have wrought a bit of landscape gardening in the parsonage grounds of which we are all justly proud ; and the chaste elegance and refinement of this enlarged and beautified temple of worship is a crowning attestation to the rare wisdom and worth of him who, in the kind providence of God, is the leader and commander to this people. We have much reason, as we believe, to rejoice in the past and present and to be very hopeful for the future.