Dubois on the occasion just mentioned was the 137th in the Dutch collection, which is translated thus:

By Babel's stream the captives sate And wept for Zion's hapless fate; Useless their harps on willows hung While foes required a sacred song.

The village of New Paltz is a delightful reminiscence, a legacy of old habitations and simple customs, bequeathed by generations of God-fearing folk to our restless time as a salutary reminder of pristine peace

Rondout and Kingston 455

and contentment. But about the c^ld Huguenot village, especially since the establishment of the vState Normal School, there has grown a modern town, with modern houses and modern wa}^s. We admiie the sagacity of the French exiles who discovered and appreciated the rare desiraljihty of the Wallkill valle\-. It is still a region of dairy farms and vine^'ards -- a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of corn and wine. Old Louis Dubois and his compatriots were the fathers of a race that still retain many of the distinguishing characteristics of the exiles who for conscience ' sake sought in the wilderness their ])romised land of liljerty. It is said that so fine and free from animosity and greed has been the life of the people of New Paltz that i)revious to 1873 no lawyer ever found a permanent residence there. Johannes Nevius and others, in a report to the States-General in 1663, spoke feelingly of

the deplorable massacre and slaughter of the good people of the beautiful and fruitful country of Esopus, recently committed by the barbarians after the premature and, for this state, in this conjuncture of time, wholly unpractical reduction of the military force of this province, which was notoriously and very urgently required to be completed and reinforced.