From the time Manson, as a barefooted boy, caught trout in Ragged Brook, until the winter of '62, when, a sturdy young man of eighteen, he had fallen deeply in love with Liddy Camp, a few changes had taken place in Southton. Three different principals had been in charge of the academy, one of these, a Mr. Snow, being very capable and universally popular. Later, when Mr. Webber succeeded to that position, the question of popularity may have been considered an open one. We must do him the justice to say he was efficient, however, and if he had an exaggerated idea of his own importance, it was inherited, and a failing that neither time nor experience could eradicate. The two worthy dominies continued to try to convert sinners by exhaustive arguments on predestination and infant damnation, but strange to say, made little progress. A few of the good townspeople who were not members of either church, as well as some that were, had been for many years reading and thinking for themselves, and had come to realize that the dry bones of Calvinistic argument had lost their force, and that the Supreme Being was not the merciless God the churches had for years depicted him, but rather a Father whose love and mercy was infinite. The then ultra-liberal Unitarian idea had begun to spread and a few who had outgrown the orthodox religion organized a Unitarian Society, and built a modest church to worship in. Among these pioneers in thought were Loring Camp and Jesse Olney, the latter the author of some of the best school-books then used; a deep thinker and a leader in town affairs. There were other thinking men, of course, who were prominent in this new movement, but, as this simple story is not an historical narrative, their names need not be mentioned. This new church and its followers of course incurred the condemnation of the other two, especially the one led by Parson Jotham, who exhausted all argument and invective to convince his hearers that Unitarianism and sin were synonymous terms, and that all the new church followers were surely slated for the fiery furnace. So vigorous were his utterances in this connection, and so explicit his description of the fire that is never quenched and the torture that never ends, that it was said some of his hearers could smell brimstone and discern a blue halo about his venerable white head. One of his favorite arguments was to describe the intense joy those who were saved through his scheme of salvation would feel when they came to look over the heavenly walls and see the writhing agony of all sinners in the burning lake below. When his eloquence reached this climax he would cease pounding his open Bible and glare over the top of his tall pulpit at the assembled congregation, in the hope, perhaps, of discovering among them some Unitarian sinner who could thus be made to realize his doom.