Zeph had taken a thirteen acre lot, so rocky that a sheep could scarce find a nibble there, had dug out and blasted and carted the rocks, wrought them into a circumambient fence,—ploughed and planted and raised crop after crop of good rye thereon. He did it with heat, with zeal, with dogged determination; he did it all the more because neighbors said he was a fool for trying, and that he could never raise anything on that lot. There was a stern joy in this hand-to-hand fight with Nature. He got his bread as Samson did his honeycomb out of the carcass of the slain lion. “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.” Even the sharp March wind did not annoy him. It was a controversial wind, and that suited him; it was fighting him all the way, and he enjoyed beating it. Such a human being has his place in the Creator’s scheme. * * * * * [Sidenote: Religious development.] They greatly mistake the New England religious development who suppose that it was a mere culture of the head in dry, metaphysical doctrines. As in the rifts of the granite rocks grow flowers of wonderful beauty and delicacy, so in the secret recesses of Puritan life, by the fireside of the farmhouse, in the contemplative silence of austere care and labor, grew up religious experiences that brought a heavenly brightness down into the poverty of commonplace existence. * * * * * [Sidenote: Family worship.] The custom of family worship was one of the most rigid inculcations of the Puritan order of society, and came down from parent to child with the big family Bible, where the births, deaths, and marriages of the household stood recorded. In Zeph’s case, the custom seemed to be merely an inherited tradition, which had dwindled into a habit purely mechanical. Yet, who shall say?