The first log-cabin builders, who had themselves fled from the knife of the law, whetted it to a keen edge and turned it upon their fellow-sufferers, who differed from them in their religious or moral sentiments. Profane swearing, tippling, taking interest on loans of money, and wearing expensive jewelry became legal crimes, among those who had suppressed with Spartan rigor their exercise in themselves and their families. The next generation, in 1658, could not tolerate drab coats or drab principles, and sought to put down the new fashions by hanging up several of their owners in them. The wood-colored styles multiplied of course, notwithstanding the crimson mode of dealing with them,—a mode which, whenever mentioned, brings up a flush on every fair New England cheek to this day. The flush is not likely to be left unsummoned so long as the enemies of New England have any ink left, or so long as her own gifted sons preserve in choicest amber the well-embalmed and dramatic specimens. In 1635 Roger Williams, illuminated by principles of religious toleration, unkindled as yet in the Puritan settlements of Massachusetts Bay, Salem, and Boston, carried his softly burning torch out of the reach of the chill breath of the General Court, which sought in vain to blow out the wavering flame. He pitched his tent on the Blackstone River where it widens into Narragansett Bay, and there grafted such a lovely little bud of religious equality upon the old trunk of settled law, that, swelling under Providence into the State of Rhode Island, it has become one of the finest fruit-trees in our American orchard. Some people, of aquatic notions and learning their geography in the pitching hold of a yacht, have erroneously supposed that Rhode Island was included in the state of Newport. Such notions rest on very sandy foundations, and are no more to be trusted than the speculations of the idly learned about the round tower of that resort for capital sea-bathing. The settlement of Rhode Island, like the other American plantations, was kept alive and stirring by Indian wars; but, aided by the Narragansetts, she succeeded at last, after attempting to bury their hatchets, in burying the Pequods themselves, leaving not one to perpetuate the seed. Meanwhile, the valley of the Connecticut, visited by exploring parties from Plymouth Colony under the younger Winthrop, and by heavy flanked Dutchmen from the island of Manhattan, had also attracted attention to its valuable real estate; and its lots of course were mapped out and deeded in that first-class broker’s office, the Court of Charles I., situated in London. Wethersfield, although it then had no onions to affect their eyes, made the mouths of a party of emigrants, who went there under Hooker in June, 1636, to water pleasantly, as they gaped over its broad meadow-lands, shaded with huge trees, and dipping their heavy grasses into the wide and flowing river.