Memories of Arlington Vermont Author:Dorothy Canfield Fisher Arlington, Vermont, lies in a long valley between two ranges of green mountains. It was settled in 1764, and in the last half of the eighteenth century there were about 1,500 inhabitants, just as there are now, two hundred years later. Many of its institutions have not vanished or changed, though the community has seen a great many changes. A... more »rlington has an American kind of stability, made up of constant rediscovery of stable elements in shifting community life--churches, books, education, civic responsibility, neighborly feeling.
Arlington has seen a lot of living, and remembers it well. Thus, as the author explains, in this small mountain town, as in most small, old, close-knit communities, everyday chat between neighbors is not limited to the present. The past is a part of today. Some happenings of long ago often appear in talk about an event of today, especially if it is, as old stories often are, an explanatory footnote from 1810, or 1799, or 1862, to gossip of the mid-twentieth century.
Memories of Arlington, Vermont is a book difficult to describe or to classify--fact or fiction, history or memoirs--but it is a very easy and wonderfully rewarding book to read.« less