Page:Old ninety-nine's cave.djvu/327

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"Not necessarily so," she returned. "They were thrown together by a common persecution. The first settlements of the town of Wawarsing were made by Huguenots and Hollanders at Nootwyck and 'The Corners.' The ancestors of the persons who made them had passed through fiery persecutions for conscience's sake and had the principles of the early reformers thoroughly ingrained in their constitutions. In France, these reformers were called Huguenots, but all the early Protestants of France and Holland organized churches on similar principles, which generally were called Reformed Churches. The French have always been a people of ardent temperament and decided opinions, and religion expresses the extreme characteristic of a people.

"Discouraged by fruitless efforts to obtain religious liberty at home, the Huguenots fled from their native country in great numbers, estimated at one million of the most industrious, the most intelligent and the most moral of the French nation, who sought safety