The New England town of the period was made up of a group of houses about an open common. At least, it started thus. As the town grew, a second street or a number of them were laid out parallel or at right angles to the first, or houses were erected along the straggling paths which led to the surrounding fields; and the paths in time grew to the dignity of roads, and linked the scattered houses and hamlets to the parent village. The central village, where the lay of the land permitted, was built on a broad hilltop, partly, as in the case of the older towns, for purposes of defence, partly because here the land was less thickly overgrown with trees and underbrush and was more easily cleared. Another reason was that the Old World towns were built thus, and the emigrants to this country naturally did likewise, even though the Old World life in feudal times which gave reason for this was entirely of the past. [Illustration: A SILHOUETTE PORTRAIT] Here was the meeting-house, a big, quiet building fronted by the spire. A group of weather-worn sheds were close behind it, where parishioners living at a distance might shelter their horses during services. Not far away was the tavern, a substantial and roomy building whose sign swung from the front or dangled from a tree or pole close by. Then there would be four or five little shops and stores among the lines of comfortable two-story dwellings. [Illustration: A RIVER-BOAT BEFORE THE DAYS OF RAILROADS] People in general neglected ornamental trees, though there were before this occasionally persons who had set out shade trees, and places which had started lines of elms along the village streets. About this time Lombardy poplars became fashionable. The poplar was a French tree, and was therefore championed by the Jeffersonian Democrats, who had for France a decided partiality. For the most part these trees have disappeared. Still, here and there their tall, compact, military forms are seen standing dark and stiff, and with a still lingering air about them of foreign strangeness. The appearance of the common or the village in general was little thought of. Sidewalks received almost no attention, and such paths as there were had been made by the wear of travel. [Illustration: REELS] [Illustration: A COMFORTABLE FARMHOUSE] [Illustration: THE FLAX-WHEEL]