T HE affairs of a small pioneer settlement, usually of little interest to an outsider, are occasionally punctuated by some incident which touches upon the larger circles of human thought. Such an incident apparently occurred in the village of Brookfield, Vermont, a century and a half ago. The event was recorded many years later by the Reverend E. P. Wild, a man of education and the first and most trustworthy historian of the town. In his sketch of Brookfield, published in Miss Hemenway's Gazetteer of Vermont in 1871,1 Mr. Wild asserted that soon after the close of the Revolution-