Templeton was properly in this equivocal condition, for while the third generation of the old settlers were in active life, so many passers-by came and went, that the influence of the latter nearly neutralized that of time and the natural order of things. Its population was pretty equally divided between the descendants of the earlier inhabitants, and those who flitted like swallows and other migratory birds. All of those who had originally entered the region in the pride of manhood, and had been active in converting the wilderness into the abodes of civilized men, if they had not been literally gathered to their fathers, in a physical sense had been laid, the first of their several races, beneath those sods that were to cover the heads of so many of their descendants. A few still remained among those who entered the wilderness in young manhood, but the events of the first period we have designated, and which we have imperfectly recorded in another work, were already passing into tradition. Among these original settlers some portion of the feeling that had distinguished their earliest communion with their neighbours yet continued, and one of their greatest delights was to talk of the hardships and privations of their younger days, as the veteran loves to discourse of his marches, battles, scars, and sieges. It would be too much to say that these persons viewed the more ephemeral part of the population with distrust, for their familiarity with changes accustomed them to new faces; but they had a secret inclination for each other, preferred those who could enter the most sincerely into their own feelings, and naturally loved that communion best, where they found the most sympathy. To this fragment of the community belonged nearly all there was to be found of that sort of sentiment which is connected with locality; adventure, with them, supplying the place of time; while the natives of the spot, wanting in the recollections that had so many charms for their fathers, were not yet brought sufficiently within the influence of traditionary interest, to feel that hallowed sentiment in its proper force. As opposed in feeling to these relics of the olden time, were the birds of passage so often named, a numerous and restless class, that, of themselves, are almost sufficient to destroy whatever there is of poetry, or of local attachment, in any region where they resort.