CONNECTICUT MYTHOLOGY.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 363, 23 April 1903, Page 6

CONNECTICUT MYTHOLOGY.

■«t»«u»r«iii»iT Tblnß» Set Forth ta a Mai i ■lirt~ Boole by a PtctttPtiijuc I'enonoge. Once upon a time;—to be more precis, in the latter pnrtof the eighteenth century—there lived a worthy Connecticut divine named Rev. Samuel Peters, tavs B. J. Henririck. in Leslie's Monthly. Peters was a picturesque personage in his way, but his fame rests entirely upon the fact that he wrote a book. This is one of the most marvelous works ever issued from the press. It waj|Mr. Peters, for example, who first i-!-covered, and made known to til*- world, that the founder of Yals c..;i<ge was a Re*. Thomas Peters, evidently one of his own ancestors; that at Bellows Falls the water flowed so fast that it became as hard as marble, making it possible to float a crowbar up<-n it; that two most marvelous quadrupeds, the "whappermoeker" and the "cuba" (evidently the ancestors of the jabberwock) roamed wild in the Connecticut forests; and it is a'.eo from Mr. Peters that we firsf learn of the famous incursion of the Windham frogs. But it was in the early jurisprudence of Connecticut that this expatriate made his most inters ting discoveries. He informed his English readers—and most of them believe the story devoutly to this day —that the citizens of the state were forbidden by law to make mince pies, to play on any instrument of music ex*sps the drum, trumpet or jewsharp, and that every male must have bis hair cut round, "according to a cap"—the modal preferably being the hard shell of a pumpkin. In other -words, Mr. Fottrs was the original promulgator of the Connecticut "blue laws;" and his; fame a« the inventor of many • of tfeecn ia secure.