“The inhabitants of New Providence all sleep in a little graveyard under the hill,” said the stranger, filling his pipe. “That was once New Providence Purchase, and was settled from Providence Plantations. It is now called Stafford Hill. “Old Captain Joab Stafford, the hero of Bennington, is buried in the old graveyard, near the road. You can see his grave as you pass by.” New Providence began in a pleasant joke. Old generous Captain Stafford, who was brought wounded at last from Bennington to his pleasant home and tavern, built his house in New Providence Purchase before he brought his wife from Rhode Island. When his fine house was completed, he went after Mrs. Stafford, but refused to give her any description of his new place. Across the Connecticut on horseback they hastened toward the mountains. “Now as we ride along,” said he, “and notice the new settlements, tell me when we come to just such a house as you would like.” They rode through Cheshire, once called the Kitchen, and at last the good woman lifted her eyes to a bowery hill almost in the shadow of Greylock. “How beautiful!” said she. “There is just such a home and place as I should like to have. If I could only live there, I would be perfectly satisfied.” “You shall live there,” said her gallant husband. “That is our home.” Out of that vanished house he was borne down the hill to his last resting-place in the valley below, and poets and orators spoke his praise. Elder John Leland, born in Grafton, Massachusetts, in 1754, came to Cheshire when quite a young man. He was on one occasion called upon to speak from the pulpit, when the pastor was absent. There came to him a flow of words and ideas which astonished his hearers much and himself more, and he felt that he was allotted to be a preacher. He was a Baptist-Quaker, like Roger Williams. [Illustration: INTERIOR VIEW, MANUFACTURES BUILDING.] It has been asserted that his influence made Madison President. He travelled to a distance of many thousand miles, preaching; crowds followed him everywhere, and queer stories of his eccentricities were repeated by every fireside. Among the old Cheshire humorists and the old story-tellers of the tavern at New Providence, and the half-way inn at Cheshire on the old Boston and Albany stage-route, were gallant Captain Stafford, the Bennington hero, Freelove Mason, the jolly mistress of the first regular stage-route hostelry, William Brown, or “Sweet Billy,”—the “Artemas Ward” of Berkshire,—Elder John Leland, whose jokes were echoed ever by the sounding-board over his tall pulpit, and the rich old farmers by the name of Mason, Brown, Wood, and Cole, and the stage-drivers.