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*** Start of this project gutenberg EBOOK the Bay state monthly ***
Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, David Garcia and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by Cornell University Digital Collections)
[Illustration: William W. Crapo]
A Massachusetts Magazine.
Vol. III. October, 1885. No. V.
* * * * *
By Edward P. Guild.
A citizen of Massachusetts, eminent in public and private life, and now in the prime of manhood, is the Hon. William W. Crapo, of New Bedford. He is the son of Henry Howland Crapo, a man of marked abilities and with a distinguished career, whose father was a farmer in humble circumstances in Dartmouth, the parent town of New Bedford, and able to give but meagre opportunities for education to his son. Henry had, however, a thirst for knowledge, and his determination in providing himself with the means of study affords a parallel to the early life of Lincoln. It is told of him, that having no dictionary in his father’s house, he undertook to be his own lexicographer in the task of preparing one. He soon fitted himself as a school teacher and afterwards became a land surveyor in New Bedford. As a man of ability and integrity, he at once began to rise to positions of trust, and among the offices he held were those of City Treasurer and Trustee of the Public Library. He was interested in the whale fisheries, then the great enterprise of this famous seaport, and was a successful business man.
In 1857, having made extensive timber purchases in Michigan, he removed to that state, where he took an active part in political affairs. In 1865, he was elected Governor of that State and held the office for four years. He was a lover of books all his life, and was the author of articles on horticulture in which subject he was an enthusiastic amateur.
William Wallace Crapo was born in Dartmouth, May 16, 1830, and was the only son in a family of ten children. He inherited his father’s passion for learning and knowledge, and although his father’s means were limited, he was given all possible opportunity for study. He was first in the New Bedford public schools, then at Phillips Academy in Andover, where he prepared for college. He graduated at Yale—which has since conferred upon him the Degree of Doctor of Laws,—in the class of 1852. Deciding on the study of law, he attended the Dane law school at Cambridge, and subsequently entered the office of Governor Clifford in New Bedford. In February 1855, he was admitted to the Bristol bar, and in the following April was elected City Solicitor, an office which he continued to hold for twelve consecutive years.
Mr. Crapo’s first active part in politics was about a year after his admission to the bar. Fremont and Dayton were in 1856 nominated as the Republican candidates for the Presidency and Vice Presidency. Mr. Crapo was an earnest surporter of the candidates and made very effective speeches in their behalf in his section of the state. In the same year he was chosen to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and the following year, when only twenty-seven years of age, was tendered a seat in the Massachusetts Senate, but declined the honor. His father this year removed to Michigan, and the son who remained became a worthy successor to the confidence and respect of his fellow-citizens. He was actively interested in the establishment of the New Bedford Water-works, and from 1865 to 1875 held the office of Chairman of the board of Water Commissioners. As Bank President, as director in extensive manufacturing corporations, and in other similar positions of trust and responsibility he acquired the reputation of being a sound business man, and an able financial manager. In all of these positions he has ever enjoyed the complete confidence and respect of his associates.
Mr. Crapo has been a diligent student of the history of the Old Colony and especially of the early settlement of Dartmouth, and he has rendered valuable contributions to the historical literature of the State. The address delivered by him at the Bi-Centennial Anniversary of the town of Dartmouth in 1864 and his address at the Centennial Celebration in New Bedford in 1876 exhibit his accurate research and his facility of clear and forcible expression. The closing sentences of the latter address were as follows:—–
“We must preserve the results of the past. But this is not our whole duty. The work of our fathers is not completed. Our honor and safety is in still further achievements of public justice and orderly freedom, and to the advancement of the common welfare. Our mission is a continuous and steady development of conscientiousness, a moral and religious growth, keeping pace with advancing intelligence, science and liberty. We attain to it by those common virtues which our fathers exercised: honesty, frugality, integrity and unfaltering devotion to duty. We need but follow the old plain paths, and, undazzled by the superficial glitter and pretentious show of ambitious self-seekers, march steadily forward to the attainments of a trained and vigorous virtue, to purity, strength and solidity. Thus will we keep unsoiled our inheritance, and transmit it, beautified and glorified, to those who come after us.
“We have seen the forest fall before the strong arm of the pioneer; we have seen the shores lined with masts, and the waters white with sails; we have seen the triumphs of restless, cunning labor; but not in physical power nor in populous cities, not in factories nor palaces, nor richly laden fleets, are the elements of natural greatness, nor its safety, but in the courage, integrity, self-denial and temperance of the people, and the spirit of mental enterprise and moral freedom which inspires them.”
But the reputation of Mr. Crapo in Massachusetts and the country at large rests preeminently upon his services in the National House of Representatives. He was elected to fill a vacancy in the Forty-fourth Congress and was returned at three successive elections, enjoying to an unusual degree the favor and approbation of his constituents. In the Forty-fifth Congress he was a member of the committee on Foreign Affairs. In the Forty-sixth he served on the committee on Banking and Currency, and was chairman of this important committee in the next Congress. He introduced the bill to extend the charters of the National Banks, and by his skillful and persistent efforts the bill became a law to the satisfaction of all sound business men. In his connection with this bill, Mr. Crapo added to his reputation as an able lawyer, that of a sound financier and a judicious statesman.
Representing a constituency whose interests are largely identified with the fishing industries, Mr. Crapo has naturally been considered a champion of the fishermen. A strong speech was made by him on the resolution recommending the abrogation of the fishing articles of the Treaty of Washington, of which the following is an example:—
“For seventy years this Government, and prior to that the Colonies, paid liberal bounties to aid the development and increase of our fishing marine. These bounties have been abandoned, and the New England fishermen, relying upon their energy and enterprise do not ask a renewal of them. But they do ask that the United States shall not offer a bounty to build up this industry in the hands of rivals. When we are confronted with a declining merchant marine, when the carrying trade is passing into the hands of foreigners, when we remember that our whaling fleet, which twenty years ago numbered 600 ships with 18,000 sailors, the best sailors on the globe, disciplined and educated in voyages of three and four year’s duration—is now reduced to 163 vessels with less than 5,000 men, we may well inquire, where are we to look for experienced seamen to man our navy in case of foreign war? We can build vessels of war in a few weeks when the emergency arises. With our resources of timber, and iron and copper, and every material entering into the construction of our vessels, we can build ships at short notice in our private shipyards, even if we cannot in our navy yards, but efficient and hardy sailors come only from the training and experience of years of toil and danger upon the sea.”
This brief extract illustrates Mr. Crapo’s logical, direct method of making an argument. When occasion presents itself, he is capable of rising to heights of eloquence equalled by few who sit in the National Capitol. The following passage is from a brief speech occasioned by the presentation to the United States, April 22, 1880, of Thomas Jefferson’s writing desk on which was written the original draft of the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Crapo offered a joint resolution of acceptance and in closing his eloquent remarks said:—
What memories crowd upon us with the mention of these names. Washington, the soldier, whose sword was drawn for the independence of his country; Franklin, the philosopher, the benefactor of his race, who with simple maxims pointed out the road to wealth and who disarmed the lightning and the thunderbolt; Jefferson, the accomplished and enthusiastic scholar, whose marvelous genius and masterly pen gave form to that immortal paper which proclaimed liberty to all mankind. These are names never to be forgotten. These men were the founders of the Republic. Their name and fame are secure, and in the centuries which are to follow will be treasured by a grateful and loving people among their choicest possessions. Mr. Speaker, the nation gladly accepts and will sacredly keep this invaluable relic. The article itself may be inconsiderable, but with this simple desk we associate a grand achievement. Upon it was written the great charter of civil liberty, the Declaration of American Independence. We pay to the heroic hand who signed that wager of battle the honors which are paid to the heroes of the battlefield. It was not valor alone which secured to us self-government. The leaders in the revolt against the tyranny and the established institutions of the old world had courage of opinion and were full of mature wisdom and incorruptible patriotism. The men who signed the paper pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor in support of the Declaration, and who made their fearless appeal to God and the world in behalf of the rights of mankind, were both lion-hearted and noble-minded.
Upon this desk was written in words as pure and true as the word of inspiration that document which opened up ’a new era in the history of the civilized world.’ Its fit resting place is with the nation’s choicest treasures. It is a precious memorial of Jefferson, more eloquent and suggestive than any statue of marble or bronze which may commemorate his deeds. In accepting it in the name of the nation we recognize the elevated private character, the eminent virtue, the profound knowledge, the lofty statesmanship, and the sincere patriotism of Jefferson, and we honor him as the father of popular government and as the great apostle of liberty.
To the pledge of safe custody with which we accept this gift, we join the solemn promise that with still greater fidelity we will guard the inheritance of free institutions which has come to us through the valor of Washington and the wisdom of Jefferson, and that we will faithfully transmit, undimmed and unbroken, their richest legacies—“Liberty and the Union.”
At the Republican State Convention held in Worcester, September 21, 1881, Congressman Crapo was chosen president, and made an address which was regarded as a splendid defence of the Republican Party. In its course he said:
“No occupation is more honorable than the public service. The desire to engage in it is a worthy one. The ambition to hold and properly discharge the duties of a position under the government is creditable to the citizen. The public offices in this country should be as freely open to all as are places in other vocations of life. No man should be debarred by birth, or locality, or race, or religious, or political belief from engaging in the public service. To deserve this he should not be required to render partisan service or personal allegiance to any party leader, nor be compelled to purchase the favor or patronage of any public official. The public offices are a public trust, to be held and administered with the same exact justice and the same conscientious regard for the responsibilities involved as are required in the execution of private trusts. The test for appointments should be superior qualifications, and not partisan attachment nor partisan service; continuance in office should depend upon real merit demonstrated in the actual performance of duties and not upon the urgency of Congressmen or petitions of other citizens.”
Of Mr. Crapo it may justly be said that on every occasion of life in which he has been called upon for any duty, he has always risen adequate to the occasion, and even exceeded in his efforts the most sanguine expectations of his friends. He has much of that reserve power which does not manifest itself until it is wanted, and then the supply is equal to the demand.
* * * * *
By George Lowell Austin.
At the present time, everything bearing upon the history of the American civil war has special interest. Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since the struggle began, and during the interval asperities have died away and peace and harmony hover over a united people.
During the war and in the years immediately following its cessation, a number of soldiers and civilians wrote histories, on the Union side, some of these being careful and exhaustive studies of limited fields of action, and others of the entire field of operations. It necessarily happened, however, that, owing to misconceptions arising from their opposite points of view, their lack of personal knowledge, and the absence of authentic documentary evidence, these writers were not always able to penetrate the plans and purposes of the Confederate leaders, or even to describe with entire accuracy the part borne by the Confederate troops in particular engagements.
As time goes on, the deficiency is being met, and the memoirs of those Confederate soldiers and civilians who bore a prominent part in the struggle, either in the field or the council chamber, and who had a full knowledge of the facts, are fast coming to light, and are perused with more than common interest by military actors and students. The true and exhaustive history of the civil war cannot be written until all the facts shall have been made known. Even then, the reader must always bear in mind who states the facts, and also that the truth is oftener found in the memoir of some gallant and straightforward soldier than in that of a politician.
Of the myriad of bound volumes and pamphlets called forth by the war, a very large number have long since been consigned to oblivion. Many of these were written to bolster up personal ambitions, interests, rivalries and jealousies, while as many more were composed, without regard to facts, to gain dollars and cents. Of none of these productions need anything further be said.
Comparatively speaking, there were but few books relating to the war and published during the war that deserve to be recalled. After the war, quite a number were issued, and, within the last ten years, a large number have appeared, all destined to rank as “authorities” for the future historian. The purpose of the present series of articles is, to give such information in regard to these publications, as shall guide students in mapping out a course of reading, and shall assist persons entrusted with the selection of standard books on war history for use in city and town libraries.
The suggestions and information herein offered are, at their best, only random notes. No special plan, or classification, will be followed by the writer; his sole aim being to include only what is absolutely worthy and “authoritative.”
The American conflict:—A History of the Great Rebellion in the United States of America, 1860-64: Its Causes, Incidents, and Results. Intended to exhibit especially its Moral and Political Phases, with the Drift and Progress of American opinion respecting Human Slavery, from 1776 to the close of the War for the Union. By Horace Greeley. Illustrated, 2 volumes. pp. 648, 679. Hartford: O.D. Case and Company.
This work was composed, with the aid of an amanuensis, in the early hours of the morning, before the beginning of the editorial tasks of each day. Mr. Greeley’s long connection with the Tribune, as its editor-in-chief, tended to make him more familiar with American politics from 1830 to 1860 than almost any other of his contemporaries, and when he proposed to himself to write the history of the American civil war, he could justly claim to have full knowledge of the causes which had led to it. In the preface to his first volume (1864) he stated frankly that “the History of the civil war will not and cannot now be written.” All that he hoped to accomplish, then, was to write a political rather than a military history of the great struggle. He succeeded, and his work deserves to rank as one of the most valuable, and, so far as it goes, accurate and impartial narratives of the contest.
The first volume treats chiefly of the causes and events which culminated in secession, while the second volume (1866) depicts, without embellishment, the military and political victories which ended in the restoration of peace. The author cherished the belief that the war was “the unavoidable result of antagonisms imbedded in the very nature of our heterogeneous institutions: that ours was indeed an ’irrepressible conflict,’ which might have been prevented.”
In its military portions the work is decidedly weak, and much of interest and value is omitted. For facts, the author relied chiefly on Moore’s Rebellion Record, Victor’s History of the Southern Rebellion, (embracing important data not found in the Record) and Pollard’s Southern History of the War. After a later survey of the war-literature, Mr. Greeley felt justified in the candid claim that his work “is one of the clearest statements yet made of the long chain of causes which led irresistibly to the war for the Union, showing why that war was the righteous and natural consequence of the American people’s general and guilty compliance in the crime of upholding and diffusing Human Slavery.”
This work won such popular favor that it soon reached a sale of one hundred thousand copies. But when, in 1867, its distinguished author signed the bail-bond of Jefferson Davis, its sale was suddenly checked. The act was an unselfish one; its propriety, however, was questioned by many persons. Whether, on account of it, Mr. Greeley be blamed or applauded, his work merits commendation as a valuable authority on the political history of the American civil war, and ought always, as such, to be consulted.
The history of the civil war in America:—Comprising a full and impartial account of the Origin and Progress of the Rebellion, of the various Naval and Military Engagements, of the Heroic Deeds performed by Armies and Individuals, and of Touching scenes in the Field, the Camp, the Hospital, and the Cabin. By John S.C. Abbott. Illustrated. 2 vols. pp. 507, 629. Norwich. Conn: The Henry Bill Publishing Company.
The author of the Life of Napoleon Bonaparte was never too particular in regard to his facts, but those which he made use of he could array with such skill as to completely captivate the judgment of the unwary. In his History of the Civil War, all the enthusiasm of the writer, his easy flow of rhetoric, his vast fund of anecdote, and his characteristic inability to discriminate between truth and falsity, assert themselves. The chief importance of the work consists in its treatment of events, as army-correspondents saw them, and, hence, it comprises many minor features, usually omitted by more sober historians. As a political history, it is almost worthless; as a military history, it is even worse. Still, it possesses a marked value, for the reason already stated, and is attractive by reason of its numerous illustrations, all engraved on steel from original designs,—comprising portraits, battle-scenes, diagrams and maps. The first volume was printed in 1863; the second in 1865.
A HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR IN AMERICA:—By
The Comte de Paris.
Translated with the approval of the author.
Edited by Henry Coppee,
LL.D. 3 volumes. 8vo, pp. 640, 820, 954.
Philadelphia: Porter and
Coates.
The first volume of this work was published in 1875, the second in 1876, and the third in 1883. A fourth volume is now in course of preparation, and will conclude the series.
The prime qualifications of a historian, dispassionateness and thoroughness, are everywhere manifest in the splendid work of the Count of Paris. His is the first attempt to produce a full and complete history of the civil war, based upon official records both of the North and of the South. The whole narrative exhibits unsparing and successful research, calm judgment, temperance alike in praise and censure, and an earnest endeavor to deal justly and fairly with both sides of the great conflict and the actors in each. There are chapters in the work which will always provoke discussion, and some of the author’s conclusions in special instances may be controverted; still, the great merits of the work, as a whole, cannot but be generally and cordially recognized.
The work is distinctly a military history, without, however, ignoring purely civil transactions when an account of them is needed to throw light on the military movements. The author’s theory, relative to the origin of the war may be stated thus:—The South saw that, as the North increased in prosperity, it was decreasing, and was losing the balance of power which it had always held since the adoption of the Constitution. It determined, therefore, to force slavery into the new States and Territories; and, failing in this, it foresaw but two alternatives,—either to give up the cause as lost, or to initiate a conflict and a satisfactory peace from its opponents. It chose the latter, and was thwarted.
The first volume treats of the American army, past and present, of Secession, and the events of the war to the Spring of 1862; the second volume continues the narrative of events from Gen. McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign to the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The author, in considering the relations of the commanding general to the administration, praises the former and blames the latter; and, in commending the campaign, shows himself a poor master of the art of war, and in some respects an indifferent critic of practical military operations. The Count of Paris wrote these chapters in 1874.—twelve years after the events, and with ample testimony at his command. It is strange that he could not reach the conclusion, then and now commonly held, that McClellan’s treatment of President Lincoln throughout his entire career seems to have been highly insubordinate and apparently based upon the idea that he regarded himself as the nation’s only hope, forgetting that to a free people no man has ever become indispensable, however powerful his intellect or exalted his virtues. Barring certain conclusions which are open to easy controversion, the narrative is exceedingly careful, graphic, and in the main truthful.
The third volume (1883) is translated and edited by Col. John S. Nicholson of Philadelphia, and covers the eventful year 1863,—the operations and movements on the Rapidan and the disaster to the union arms at Chancellorsville,—the movements upon Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and the retreat of Lee’s array to Virginia. Closer attention is paid, in this volume, to the legislation, administration, finances, resources, temper, and condition generally of the North and the South, and valuable accounts are given of the organization at the North of the signal corps, the medical and hospital service, the military telegraph, the system of railroad transportation for military purposes, the soldiers’ homes, and the sanitary and other commissions.
As a whole, and so far as published, the work purports to give an accurate account of what took place in all quarters of the theatre of war, and is generally successful. It never errs on the side of partisanship, but occasionally through ignorance or misapplication of facts. From first to last, it is an honest and straightforward narrative, at times eloquent and at times vivacious. The reader is bored by no flights of rhetoric; but students will always lament a lack of philosophical tone and critical appreciation of men and events. The maps and plans, which are numerous and are furnished from official sources, are all that could be desired.
REMINISCENCES OF FORTS SUMTER AND MOULTRIE
IN 1860-61. By Abner
Doubleday, Brevet Major General, U.S.A.
1 vol. 12mo pp. 184. New York,
Harper & Brothers.
The author bore an honorable and responsible part in the actual outbreak of hostilities between the national government and the revolted states, and in this book he gives a simple and faithful recital of some of the more important facts. Though so misrepresented by certain critics, the book is not an attack on Major Anderson’s character; on the contrary, it clearly shows, and attempts to show, that that commander firmly subdued all considerations and devices which seemed inconsistent with his duty as a soldier of the United States, and held himself ready to be sacrificed to the trust given him. General (then Captain, 1st artillery U.S.A.) Doubleday was at Fort Sumter during the bombardment, and, as might be expected, his volume gives many incidents of the life of the little besieged band, and of the siege itself, which appear here for the first time, and which throw fresh light upon the conduct and principles of both parties to the conflict. As a personal narrative, it is one of the most charming and instructive relating to the war. The book was published in 1876.
* * * * *
By G.A. Litchfield.
It is the purpose of this article to fairly treat the subject under consideration and to set forth such claims only as can be sustained to the satisfaction of candid and unprejudiced minds. It will not be assumed that the science of Assessment Insurance is perfected; on the contrary, our most advanced thinkers upon the subject are those who see most clearly its defects, and are laboring most assiduously to correct them. Grave obstacles have been encountered in their endeavors to perfect the system. Those who have written upon the subject in the public press have been largely such as have given it but a cursory study, or such as have been totally unfit to discuss it from an impartial standpoint by reason of preconceived notions or prejudices in favor of the level premium system of insurance, if, indeed, they have not been retained for a consideration by that gigantic moneyed monopoly.
So largely has prejudice controlled in the consideration of the subject, that those who have sought judicious and stringent legislation to correct abuses, and to bring the business under equally careful and official supervision as that given other forms of insurance, with a view to making it permanently subserve public interests, have been more than once defeated in their laudable endeavors, because they insisted that no legislation could meet the necessities of the case that did not contemplate it as a permanent institution. Great advances have been made however in the last three or four years, and much that was objectionable has been corrected. Wise legislation has been secured in many States. At the last session of her legislature, Massachusetts signalized an important step in advance, by enacting a law whose provisions indicate an intelligent comprehension of the subject on the part of her legislators, unsurpassed by those of any other State. It has already begun to correct existing evils, as its advocates foresaw it would do.
Several companies dishonestly and incompetently conducted have found it impossible to longer prey upon a too confiding public.
The collapse of fraudulent concerns has furnished an occasion for the enemies of the system to cry out against the system itself, but thinking men are not deceived thereby. As was recently remarked by a distinguished ex-insurance Commissioner of Massachusetts, “Assessment Insurance has come to stay.” There is not, as has been claimed by its opponents, anything inherent in the system that fore-dooms it to early and inevitable collapse.
Assessment insurance is natural insurance as against artificial. In the early establishment of life insurance companies, everything was assumption, there was little or no experience to guide in formulating the principles upon which the business should be conducted. There was partial information, it is true, upon certain general facts pertaining to longevity or to mortality laws, under certain conditions, but nothing that could give substantial data upon which to base mathematical calculations for the establishment of a science. Under those conditions, rates of premium were fixed for insurance at the different ages which the experience of many years has shown to be very much higher than is required to meet reasonable expenses, and losses occurring from policies maturing by death.
A rate of mortality was assumed greater than experience has shown to prevail among well selected lives. The important element of lapses was not considered, an element so considerable in its practical bearing upon the requirements of the company to meet its liabilities, that of one million of assumed liabilities upon say one thousand lives, only about $77.000 become actual liabilities by reason of policies maturing by death of the insured.
Assessment insurance instructed by the experience of life companies, adjusts its plans and methods upon the natural basis of fact, and not the artificial one of supposition. It tabulates its rates according to the combined experience of all American companies, requiring the insured to pay a sum proportionate to the amount assured, and to his life expectancy.
It places its risks upon carefully selected lives only, requiring a competent medical examination of the applicant, having regard to his previous health and habits, his occupation or profession, his family history, and such other circumstances as should properly be considered in calculating probable longevity.
We assert without fear, that we shall be successfully controverted, that there is as great care and discrimination exercised in the placing of risks by our representation assessment companies, as in any other form of insurance. Time was when this claim could not have been supported by facts, but that time is not now. Our conservative assessment companies,—and there are many of them that can be fairly so styled, ignore none of the scientific principles upon which life insurance depends for its permanent success. They do believe however that their methods of conducting the business will conserve the interests of a far greater number, and relieve them of a large proportion of the burdens imposed by the older and more cumbersome form.
Assessment companies call upon their policy-holders for such sums as are required to meet actual losses, together with a small amount for expenses and for an emergency fund. Mortuary assessments are called only when there is an amount in hand on that account, insufficient to meet the maximum sum for which a policy is issued. They may be called at stated periods, or as the exigencies of the case shall require. Objection is made to this method that it is unreliable, and cannot be depended upon when the mortality is from any cause unusual or excessive.
It is not claimed by the best informed advocates of assessment insurance, that direct assessments should be the sole reliance of the company. Some other provision should be made which is referred to later in this article, but the main dependence is upon assessments.
If companies are honestly and capably conducted, and risks judiciously selected, there is nothing in the experience of life companies to indicate that mortality assessments on the average will be sufficiently burdensome to seriously threaten the permanence of the institution. Where disaster has been visited upon assessment companies, the cause has been easily traceable to incompetent or dishonest conduct of the business, and utter disregard of the foundation principles of all insurance. It has in no instance been fairly chargeable to defects in the system. With the record before us of our best assessment companies, faithfully and competently administered, paying their losses promptly, at a cost to the insured for a term of years, of one third to one half only, of that in level premium companies, what reason is there for the insuring public withdrawing their patronage.
But we admit that it is not sound policy to depend upon assessments alone, and this view is held by most if not all, who have studied the subject in its various aspects. While for many years, and perhaps indefinitely, a company might be successfully conducted, if under a competent management, depending solely upon assessments, yet contingencies arc liable to arise in which it will be evident that true conservatism and wise forethought would have held in hand some funds for use without imposing, at that particular time, the burden of an assessment upon the policy holders.
The advocates of such conservatism have been met with the argument that it is contrary to the principle of assessment insurance, and a concession to the theory of the level premium plan. But the reply is that the requirements of an assessment company in the form of an emergency or reserve are in no sense comparable with those of a level premium company, and the application of it is upon an entirely different principle, and for an altogether different purpose.
An assessment company may need funds in hand to relieve its members of an assessment when otherwise they might be overburdened, because the death rate fluctuates in different years. Or again, in case of a depleted membership from any cause, the assessment company would need funds in hand to supply any deficiency in the proceeds of an assessment below the face of the maturing obligation. For either purpose a comparatively small sum is required, while the level premium company must pile up tens of millions of overpayments to cover the requirements of the principle on which it conducts its business. It is susceptible of mathematical demonstration that one or two millions of dollars of reserve is adequate to perpetuate any well conducted assessment company for all time, however large or small it may be, while the spectacle is presented to us of level premium life companies holding fifty to one hundred millions of accumulations belonging to their policy holders, from which no possible benefit, in most cases, will ever accrue to them. We therefore
It is pure insurance as against insurance and banking combined.
It is within the comprehension of ordinary minds. It is adapted to the wants of the people, because they can easily avail themselves of it, and as easily discontinue it without material or considerable loss.
It is within the reach of a much greater proportion of the people on account of its small comparative cost, and the ease with which payments can be made in small amounts. More than sixteen hundred thousand of the citizens of this country are now availing themselves of its advantages, as against about six hundred thousand in level premium companies while the former represent more than thirty-seven hundred millions of insurance, as against about fifteen hundred millions represented by the latter.
The disbursements of assessment companies to families of deceased members reach the munificent sum of more than twenty-two millions of dollars annually. The national organization of Mutual Benefit Assessment Associations of America is exerting a most healthful influence in elevating the standard of those companies that comprise its membership. It embraces organizations from all of the principal States of the Union, and its influence is strongly on the side of scientific and conservative methods and practices.
To be eligible to membership, a company must have its rates of assessment graded according to one, or the combined standard mortality tables, take proper precautions in selection of risks, protect new members at any time in its history against an excessive number of assessments, either by increasing the rate of assessment with advancing years or by accumulating a fund in lieu of advancing rates, will make a full exhibit of its policy data annually to the Convention. This standard upon its publication, compelled favorable recognition upon the part of level premium journals.
Thus assessment insurance has gradually placed itself upon a higher and more scientific basis, until it has commended itself to the most intelligent and thoughtful, and in its wonderful growth outstripped its older and less popular rival, until its obligations to the families of the insured exceed those of level premium insurance to the amount of about two thousand millions of dollars.
A Bureau of Insurance has been established under the auspices of the National Organization whose object is to gather and compile statistics relating to all phases of assessment insurance, such as the experience of companies with agents and medical examiners, the comparative cost of carrying various classes of risks and in short, everything in the practical working of the business by the companies comprising its membership, that may furnish data for a more scientific basis, and more satisfactory results in the future.
Many assessment insurance companies are not what they ought to be, but there are those worthy of confidence and patronage, whose managers are making the business a careful study, and bringing to its administration, honesty of purpose and large executive ability.
If the insuring public will learn to discriminate and place their risks in the best assessment companies, remembering that insurance in any good company must cost a reasonable amount, they need have no apprehension as to the result.
* * * * *
ORATION DELIVERED AT THE UNVEILING OF HIS STATUE AT NEWPORT, R.I., SEPT. 10, 1885.
By Hon. William P. Sheffield.
The battle of Lake Erie was fought seventy-two years ago to-day; and we have convened to dedicate to the public and to posterity a statue in memory of the Commander of the American fleet on that occasion,
Oliver Hazard Perry needs no monument of bronze or marble to commemorate his name, or to illustrate his glory. History has taken these into its keeping and will preserve them for posterity, while genius in battle and heroic valor and unfaltering energy in the performance of high duty, receive the homage of the American people.
Wherever the patriotism of the citizen is the only reliance for the defence of the nation, the people owe it to themselves to show their appreciation of the conduct of those persons who have arisen among them that have been public benefactors, and have conferred distinction upon their localities. They owe it to those who may come after them, that they so manifest their gratitude that it will inspire succeeding generations with a due sense of patriotism, and be an incentive to them to rise above narrow and sinister purposes to the plane of exalted virtues, and be stimulated to the performance of great actions.
Citizens of South Kingstown, the town in which he was born,—of Newport, where he was reared, had his home in mature life, and is buried;—together with the State and people at large, who have participated in his glory, have been impelled by this common sense of obligation to undertake the erection of a memorial statue of Commodore Perry, a task, the execution of which was committed to a native artist, and here is the artist’s finished work.
The statue is designed to represent Perry, not as he was superintending the cutting down of the forest for the construction of his ships; not as he was meditating the plan of the battle of Lake Erie or the order of its execution; not as he appeared the evening previous to the action advising his subordinate commanders in the words of Nelson, “No captain can do wrong if he places his ship alongside of that of an enemy;” nor as he was opening the battle flag which bore upon its folds the dying words of a gallant captain; not as he was leaving his wrecked ship with the deck strewed
In contemplating this statue, we should consider the circumstances in which Perry was placed, and the events impending when the artist has undertaken to represent him, as well as in the light of Perry’s conduct thereafter and the results therefrom, reflected back upon this critical juncture in his career. For the battle of Lake Erie did not create, but illustrated and brought out in bold outline, the real character of the man.
The crews of the American fleet were of a mixed character. Perry sent from Newport one hundred and forty-nine men and three boys in three detachments. Half of one of these detachments was detained by Commodore Chauncey on Lake Ontario; but shortly before the battle Perry received from that officer a considerable accession to his force. Upon his arrival at Lake Erie, Perry found a few men in the service of the Government on the Lake, and the remainder of his men were made up of new recruits, with a contingent taken from the North Western army of men, naturally brave but without experience on ship-board. Perry had arrayed against him skillful officers who had been taught the art of war, and the methods of victory under Nelson. Brave and highly disciplined seamen in whose vocabulary defeat had had no place, with recruits like Perry’s taken from the army, and an auxiliary force of Indian sharp-shooters.
The character of a naval engagement is not to be determined alone by the number of men, the tonnage of the ships, or the weight of the metal involved in the conflict. These are elements to be considered, and in the battle of Lake Erie all of these elements were against the American fleet, but the surrounding and attending circumstances, the conduct of the battle, and the results depending upon its issue are the considerations which go to make the place in the minds of succeeding generations which the event is to occupy. History has not had committed to it for preservation the story of the organization of a fleet, and the conduct of a battle the result of which was more dependent upon the genius, knowledge, energy, and courage of a single individual, than was the battle of Lake Erie.
Other commanders have fought in ships completely equipped for service by other hands, but Perry had to construct, equip, arm and man his ships, and in person to take two of them in succession into action; and it may be well questioned whether he is not entitled to as much credit for his intelligent comprehension of the wants of the occasion, his energy, and perseverance in collecting the materials to supply those wants, and in making up his fleet, as for his genius and courage in action.
Perry, in the beginning, was unfortunate in having succeeded an officer who, in the engagement was his subordinate in command, and in anticipating a ranking officer in bringing on the conflict; but the surrounding circumstances and the positive orders of the Secretary of the Navy made his meeting the enemy a necessity.
The outcome of the attempts which had been made by the Government for the defence of this section of the country had not been such as to inspire sanguine hopes of the result of this action.
The Adams, the only vessel the United States had upon the Lake before the construction of Perry’s ships, had been captured. General Hull had ignobly surrendered his force to the enemy at the head of the Lake, General Winchester’s army had been lost to the Government, and General Van Rensselaer had been defeated at Niagara.
Perry was to act in conjunction with the northwestern army, under General Harrison, then awaiting the result of the battle to be transported across the Lake, in the event of a victory, to operate against the enemy in his own territory.
Perry’s earnest appeal to Chauncey for men, backed by the promise that if he got them he would acquire honor and glory both for Chauncey and himself, or he would perish in the attempt, should be considered in connection with his appeal to the same officer to bring the men, and take command of the fleet. Together they show that the first appeal was not the result of an ambitious desire for vain glory; no mere impulse of emotion or passion; but the outcome of a high resolve wrought in the laboratory of a noble soul, born of that deliberate purpose which permeated his subsequent conduct in the action and which is recorded in the bronze before us.
The men from the army were animated for a desperate exertion; with them the slaughter at the river Raisin was to be redressed, and its repetition in the northwest was to be made impossible. In this disposition for redress the seamen heartily sympathized, for the war was a contest for Sailors’ Rights. The American Flag then trailed in the dust, but it was to be restored to its appropriate place in the esteem of the men in that section of the country. With a crew animated by these motives, Perry went into action with the Lawrence and fought the enemy almost single-handed until all the guns of his ship were dismounted, and all but eight of her gallant crew that he left on board, were either killed or wounded, when with a boat’s crew he left the Lawrence, boarded and took command of the Niagara, and it is at this moment in the conflict the artist has undertaken to represent him.
Barclay said in his report to the British Admiralty, that when Perry boarded the Niagara, that vessel was fresh in action. Up to that time she had been beyond the effective reach of the enemy’s guns, but under her new commander there was no halting in her course as she bore down to break and pass through the enemy’s ranks. Every brace and bowline were taut, and every man on board, apprised of what was expected of him, was soon at his post of duty; each, as he took his position, cast a hasty glance at Perry’s battle flag then flying from the masthead of the Niagara, and as he took in the dying words of the noble Lawrence, formed a solemn resolve to obey their mandate and made that resolve a sacrament.
As she went into action, the Niagara belched forth a broadside at the Detroit and the Queen Charlotte, then a broadside at the Chippawa, the Lady Provost and the Hunter. These broadsides were repeated in rapid succession with terrific effect. The other American vessels, now in action, whose crews were inspired by the daring of their fleet commander, imitated his example and the combined result was such as Britons could not endure. The eagles of victory soon perched in triumph on the mastheads of the American fleet, and Perry had won the battle which James Madison, then President, said “had never been surpassed in lustre, however much it may have been surpassed in magnitude.”
After the action, Perry returned to the Lawrence, changed the dress of a common sailor for an undress uniform, that he might appropriately receive the surrender of the enemy on board the vessel that had been in the hardest of the fight and had suffered most from it; and that the remnant of her gallant crew might witness the submission of the foe which had caused their sufferings.
That relief from apprehension for the safety of the fleet might be given to General Harrison and the settlers on the widely extended domain about the Lake, Perry penned and dispatched to that general a hasty note, in words familiar, and destined to be immortal, telling him “We have met the enemy and they are ours,” and another like hasty note, to the Secretary of the Navy, informing that officer that, “It has pleased the Almighty to give to the arms of the United States a signal victory over their enemies on this lake. The British squadron consisting of two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop, have this moment surrendered to the force under my command after a sharp conflict.” There is nothing of the valor of the pen or of the exaggeration of self from the ink horn in this concise and expressive note.
The enemy’s surrender was gracefully received. Perry soon visited the wounded Barclay, and tendered him every service that it was in his power to render, and every possible attention was given to the wounded of both fleets. Then came the roll-call to see who had answered the final summons to duty on the field of honor, who had received marks of courage in the fight, and who had gone through the dreadful ordeal of battle unscathed. It was then that the tears of sorrow mingled with the exultations of victory which soon were to be shouted along the line of every highway and by-way, from hamlet to village, from village to town, and from town to city, throughout the land.
Perry wrote to Governor Brooks of Massachusetts a letter condoling with him on the fall of his gallant son in action; for while Perry’s brow was laurelled with the wreath of victory, he did not forget that there were mourners weeping for brave hearts which in the fight had been forever put to rest.
The name of Perry was now made a household word from the great Northern Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic Coast to the impenetrated wilderness of the West, often repeated at the baptismal font; and a nation’s gratitude was soon laid at his feet. As humane in victory as he had been brave in action, his generous kindness won the admiration of Barclay, and his dying comrades showered upon him their blessings and remembered him in their final prayers.
Prayers of gratitude to that Almighty Power which had given victory to the American arms went up from every fireside throughout the Northwest; and mothers pressed their children more closely to their breasts as they thought themselves to be henceforth secure from the scalping-knife of Indian barbarity, and that the savage war-whoop would no more break the sleep of the cradle.
At night-fall many of the dead with all due solemnity were tenderly committed to the deep. The wounded had all been visited and their wants attended to; the worn and weary now sought repose, and a solemn oppressive silence soon pervaded the fleet, save here and there a sound of distress from the wounded. The Captain now retired for reflection, for his mind and heart were too full for rest. He then thought of his young devoted wife whose prayers he believed had been his shield in battle; that his work was yet incomplete while the British had an army on the borders of the Lake, or in Upper Canada,—how he could best aid General Harrison’s army; and then resolved on the work of the morrow; when, soothed by reflection, his tired nature gave out, and he, too, sank into a fitful slumber.
The mind of Barclay, relieved of present responsibility, evolved other less pressing but more pensive thoughts. He thought not of himself or his bleeding wound, for he had bled before for his country, when he earned his stars and made his fame secure at Trafalgar; but as the sun went down that night he thought that no more in the evening twilight would the mariners of England standing under the cross of St. George, on that great inland water, sing their national song, “Brittania rules the waves;” no more the echoes of that stirring air rolling over the silver surface of the Lake to its islands and shores would arouse the sturdy dwellers there to join in glad unison in those lofty strains which everywhere, the world over, melt into one every true and loyal British heart. He then was moved by the sadder thought, that on that night the sun of British power which had hitherto dominated the great Northern Lakes of America had gone down forever.
Perry’s available vessels were now taken to transport General Harrison’s army across the Lake, and up the Detroit river. The Lawrence, as soon as she was put into condition took on board the wounded of both fleets, and under the command of the gallant but wounded Yarnell carried them to Erie. The other vessels were repaired and fitted for other duties, or were to return to Erie.
Perry accompanied General Harrison as a volunteer aid, and participated and bore an honorable part in the battle of the Thames, as he had done in the battle of Fort George, under Chauncey, before the engagement on the Lake.
Upon his return to Detroit, he found a letter from the Secretary of Navy thanking and congratulating him for the eminent services he had rendered his country; and, as he had performed the duty committed to him, granting him leave to visit his family at Newport.
But Perry was first to return to Erie, which he had left the 12th of August. The news of the result of the battle had long preceded his arrival and the people had there been watching and waiting his coming. On the 23d of October, the Aerial, the last vessel of the fleet to leave the head of the lake, came within sight of Erie. She had on board General Harrison, who had then lately defeated General Procter at the Thames, the wounded Barclay, and Commodore Perry. The people from the surrounding country crowded into Erie to welcome the arrival of the victors. Barclay was taken to Perry’s quarters and there properly cared for by Harrison and Perry.
The Lawrence was anchored in Misery Bay, in the harbor of Erie, maimed and battered and scarcely able to float, yet having on board her precious freight brought across the lake; Perry now visited this ship, and as he reached her blood-stained deck and beheld his surviving comrades and thought of those who had been in the fight, that were not then on board, he reverently raised his hands in fervent supplication to Him who giveth the victory not always to the strong, to heal the wounds, and bless, and raise up, the sufferers around him; and to sustain and help the widows and orphans the battle had made; and in thanksgiving for the preservation of those who had survived the conflict unhurt. He then returned to the shore to meet the vast concourse of people awaiting his arrival. The dead and the disabled men, the dismounted guns and the broken and tattered ships, told the story of the battle and the price of the victory with more eloquence than the most brilliant imagination could compass. These visible evidences of the strife for the mastery indicated the valor and the woe, incident to the ordeal which had been passed, with an energy and pathos which overpowered the most obdurate will; and the multitude greeted Harrison and Perry with tears and smiles,—rain in sunshine with a heartiness that language is too poor and barren to describe. The living had earned their title to everlasting gratitude, and the dead had fallen as the brave desire to fall, at the post of duty and on the field of victory.
Perry now procured the parole and release of Barclay, and after arranging for his absence started eastward on his journey home; but his progress was everywhere obstructed by evidences of the gratitude of his countymen for his great action. On Monday, the 15th of November, attended by the faithful crew that rowed him to the Niagara, he arrived in Newport, by way of the south-ferry. Here, he was received upon his arrival in a manner alike worthy of his neighbors and friends and of himself.
August 23d, 1819, at the age of thirty-four, he died of yellow fever, at Port Spain in the Island of Trinidad. His remains were brought to Newport in a government ship, and were interred December 4th. 1826. They were conducted to their final resting place by a funeral cortege such as up to that time had never been equalled and since that time has here never been surpassed.
This is but a glance at the man, and the event to which we are here to-day to rear this tribute of our gratitude. There are other names and other figures that come up to view in the memory and gather around the name of Perry, of men who were efficient auxiliaries in the conflict, shared the dangers, and participated in the glory of the battle of Lake Erie, and who are inseparably connected with that event.
Turner, Taylor, Champlin, Almy, Breese, Brownell, and the acting fleet surgeon Parsons were from Rhode Island; Forest, Brook, Stevens, Hambleton, Yarnell and others not less distinguished, were from other states; and the gallant commander of the northwest-army, and his comrades in arms, whom Perry accompanied to the field on the 5th of October, in the battle of the Thames, where Perry’s victory was made complete by driving the organized forces of the enemy from upper Canada, are deserving of our remembrance to-day.
[Illustration: THE NEW STATUE OF COMMODORE PERRY.]
To your Excellency the Governor, representing the
people of Rhode
Island; To your Honor, the Mayor, representing the
people of Newport:—
The Committee charged with the duty of providing and erecting this statue of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, has performed the work committed to it, and through you dedicate it to the people of the State, and of this city you represent, as the result of its labors. It is not for the committee to comment upon the statue which has been formed and erected under its direction, but with great satisfaction the artist’s finished work is submitted to the candid criticism of all who are capable of forming an intelligent judgment upon its merits. Take the statue for those whom you represent, let it be kept as a cherished treasure by the people of the State at large, and especially by the people of the city of Newport. Let no vandal hand deface the monumental bronze. Let it stand defying the wastes of time and the power of the elements, keeping pace with history in its march through coming ages in recalling to each succeeding generation the man and the event which this statue is designed to commemorate, ever inspiring ihe young to patriotism, and solacing the aged with the reflection that a grateful people properly appreciate and appropriately reward their benefactors. Let the ideal Perry shadow the passer by and from its high pedestal apparently cast a glance at each beholder, which shall penetrate and permeate his mind and heart, and possess him completely with the noble and generous purpose, and lofty soul which animated Perry on the occasion which the artist has undertaken to represent him.
* * * * *
By Fanny M. Johnson.
[Illustration: CONN. RIVER RAILROAD STATION.]
On a sweeping curve of the Connecticut river, about twelve miles north of the Massachusetts and Connecticut boundary line, is the modern manufacturing city of Holyoke, with a present population of 30,000. It is the most extensive paper making city in the world, and the manufacture of paper is but one of many enterprises. The ceaseless water-power of the great river turns the wheels of numerous industries which, within the third of a century, have been located here and have transformed a sparsely settled rural parish into a busy and populous city.
Holyoke is a New England growth. It does not resemble the smoky cities of the iron regions, nor the languid towns of the South. The swift, powerful current of water does its work without confusion, smoke or waste. Pure breezes sweep along the valley through the mountain rifts, and the mountains serve as barriers to ward off heavy gales and destructive tempests. The slope of the land toward the river gives opportunity for healthful drainage and the vicinity of mountain springs and reservoirs supplies a great requisite for a thickly settled city.
[Illustration: THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH.]
The impression which Holyoke makes upon its visitors is of modern thrift and growth. Travellers by railway who enter the city from the north, look with interest at the great dam, crossing the river from the Holyoke to the South Hadley Falls shore. Rounding the curve, the large brick buildings, spires and chimneys of the city come suddenly into view, the tall tower of the granite city hall rising high above the rest. The buildings are modern in structure and architecture. Little is found here that bears the moss and rime of age.
Less than forty years ago, when the railroad was still a novelty in the Connecticut Valley, a party of capitalists came to view the water-power along the rocky bed of the Connecticut River at the point called the Great Rapids, or Falls of South Hadley, which extended over a mile and a half and had a total fall of 60 feet. The volume of water was gauged and found to aggregate a power equal to 30,000 horse-power. This was in 1847. The next Legislature was petitioned by Thomas H. Perkins, Geo. W. Lyman, Edmund Dwight and others for an act of incorporation as the Hadley Falls Company, “for the purpose of constructing and maintaining a dam across the Connecticut River, and one or more locks and canals in connection with said dam; and of creating a water power to be used by the said corporation for manufacturing articles from cotton, wood, iron, wool and other materials, and to be sold to other persons and corporations, to be used for manufacturing or mechanical purposes and also for the purposes of navigation.” The capital stock was fixed at $4,000.000. The Hadley Falls Company purchased the property and franchise of the South Hadley Falls Locks and Canal Company, and extinguished the fishing rights existing above the location of the dam.
In the year 1847, this territory embraced by the river-curve had fourteen houses, a grist-mill and one little shop. There was also a small cotton-mill. From the river, the land rises to the westward, and a mile or more back, on the highway leading from Northampton to Springfield, were two hamlets of farmhouses. Many of these are still standing and are all that this very modern city can show as memorials of a past generation. From the year 1786 the section had been known as “Ireland or Third Parish of West Springfield.” It had its two little white meeting-houses, Baptist and Congregational, a modest academy of learning, a country tavern, and its full quota of New England customs, traditions and ideas. Nine daily stages passed over this highway. Families moving from one river-town to another usually transported their goods by the flat-boats on the river.
Many of the homesteads had been in the same family name for generations. Ely, Chapin, Day, Hall, Rand, Humeston and Street were some of the names of early settlers handed down with the family acres from father to son, and their graves crowd the rural cemetery beyond the Baptist Village in the southern outskirts of Holyoke. The name of Chapin abounded most on the East side of the river along the fair meadows of “Chicopee Street.” In the first church built there all but eleven of the forty-three original members bore the name of Chapin.
On the A Vest side of the river the Elys were most numerous. The oldest house now standing in Holyoke was an Ely homestead. The farm was held in the family for generations and was the home of Enocn Ely, a revolutionary soldier. He fought in the war of the Colonies against Great Britain, and afterwards took a part in the short-lived Shay’s Rebellion to resist the taxes imposed after the war. Party spirit was hot and high, and in the rout of the insurgents Ely took to the woods and remained in hiding while the commander of the pursuing party, gratified his feelings by firing bullets into the front doors of Ely’s house. These old double-doors with the bullet marks showing in them were replaced by new ones some years ago, but the original doors still exist in a small dwelling-house on the Plains.
[Illustration: THE DAM AS IT APPEARED IN 1843.]
The last of the Elys to occupy this stout-built old house were four spinster and bachelor brothers and sisters. After their death the homestead went to a relative and eventually was bought by its present occupant, Mr. Horace Brown. Long before this change took place, Whig, Federal and Tory had gone to their last rest, and they sleep peacefully together in the old burial-ground overlooking the river; their differences ended, their feuds forgotten.
When the Hadley Falls Company began to plan the New City, as for a few years it was called, negotiations were opened with the farmers living along the river-bend and occupying the lands which the new company wished to own. Mr. Geo. C. Ewing was the company’s agent, and one after another the land-owners were persuaded to sell their acres. Samuel Ely was an exception. He held fast to his land property, but some twenty years later, when the sandy acres had become a valuable possession, Samuel Ely sold his farm-lands to Messrs. Bowers and Mosher who surveyed and sold it as building lots and it is now known as Depot Hill. Mr. Ely retained through life the old farmhouse where he was born and reared and where he died in 1879.
[Illustration: THE SOLDIERS’ MONUMENT.]
In the Summer of 1848, a dam was constructed across the Connecticut river by the Hadley Falls Company. It was finished on the morning of Nov. 16, 1848. A great crowd of ten thousand people collected on the river-bank to witness the filling of the pond and closing of the gates. At ten o’clock the gates were let down and the pond began to fill. The massive foundation stones of the bulk-head at the west end began to move under the great pressure. The water had risen to within two feet of the top of the dam when the break began at about one hundred feet from the east end and the structure tipped over and gave way. A massive wall of water and moving timbers rose high in air, (a sight terrific to remember by those who saw it), and with a mighty roar and sweep the great structure went down the stream in ruins.
Great as this disaster was to the Company, there was no yielding to discouragement. The work of reconstruction was begun at once and a second dam of improved pattern was built upon the site and so strongly constructed that it remains a part of the present dam. Eighteen years later it was improved and strengthened by building a front extension, in such a manner that the dam now has a sloping front, giving it the form of a roof, both the old and the new structure being made absolutely solid. The original cost of the structure in 1849 was $150,000. The cost of the extension finished in 1870, was $350,000. By that time the town of Holyoke and its water-power were rapidly realizing the anticipations of its projectors.
The water of the river is distributed through a series of three canals aggregating three and a half miles in length, the power being repeatedly utilized, as after leaving the first level canal, the water flows from the wheels into the canal of the second level, from the second level into the third level, and thence to the river, which completes its perfect curve to the south of the city.
[Illustration: THE HOLYOKE DAM.]
Among the first colonists of the New City were an army of laborers who came to dig and wall the canals. These settled in shanties and cabins near the river-bank. When the great factories were built, a corps of operatives came to work in the mills. As in Lowell, Manchester and other manufacturing towns, many of the factory-girls came from New England homes, and were distinguished for their independence and thrift. A little later, ship-loads of expert weavers were brought from England and Scotland to work in the cotton-mills. A ship called the “North America” brought a load of 130 young Scotch people who shipped from Broomielaw Quay, in April, 1854. They were induced to come by the superior inducements offered here, and some of the best weavers ever employed in the mills came from Scotland. Later there was a large immigration from the Canadas, and from Ireland.
The entire population by the census of 1850 was 3,715. March 14th of that year the town was incorporated, bearing the name of Holyoke, Governor Briggs approving the bill.
The name selected was historical, from Mt. Holyoke, christened some two hundred years before, but its origin was from Elizur Holyoke, one of the early residents of this section.
The town of Holyoke was formerly a portion of Springfield of which Elizur Holyoke was among the early settlers, coming from England when a youth; and his name is identified with its early records. In 1640 he married Mary Pynchon. the tradition of whose grace and loveliness comes down with the musty records of the past, and lingers like a bright, sweet touch of romance among the historical pages of the grim colonial days.
[Illustration: SECTION OF THE DAM.]
A notable man of his time was Elizur Holyoke, and he was of a committee chosen to explore and ascertain the precise extent of Springfield, which then extended to Northampton and Hadley. A pretty legend of the valley is Dr. J.C. Holland’s story, told in most musical verse of the Mountain Christening.
“On a beautiful morning in June,
they say,
Two hundred and twenty years ago.”
Captain Holyoke and Captain Thomas with a little company of stanch followers started out on a survey of the country.
“Holyoke, the gentle and daring,
stood
On the Eastern bank, with
his trusty four,
And Rowland Thomas, the gallant and good,
Headed the band on the other
shore.
The women ran weeping to bid them good-bye,
And sweet Mary Pynchon was
there (I guess)
With a sigh in her throat, and a tear
in her eye
As Holyoke marched into the
wilderness.”
The melodious rhyme goes on to describe the journey up the valley and the night camp, where:
“The great falls roared in their
ears all night,
And the sturgeon splashed,
and the wild-cat screamed,
And they did not wake till the morning
light
Red through the willowy branches
streamed.”
The story of the naming of Mt. Holyoke is told as follows:
“The morning dawned on the double
group,
Facing each other on opposite
shores,
Where years ago with a mighty swoop
The waters parted the mountain
doors.”
“Let us christen the mountains!”
said Holyoke in glee,
“Let us christen the
mountains!” said Thomas again,
“This mountain for you, and that
mountain for me,”
And their trusty fellows responded
“Amen!”
Then Holyoke buried his palm in the stream,
And tossed the pure spray
toward the mountain brow
And said, while it shone in the sun’s
fierce beam,
“Fair mountain, thou
art Mt. Holyoke now!”
How much of this rhythmic legend is true and how much imaginary is uncertain; but it is quite probable that in the course of this survey Holyoke’s name was given to the mountain, of which Holyoke city is a namesake.
[Illustration: THE SECOND CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.]
The town so originated and named grew gradually until the breaking out of the civil war, but its most rapid growth has been since 1865. In 1857 the water-power and property were purchased by a company which organized as the Holyoke Water Power Company, and which has fostered and developed the natural advantages of the place as a manufacturing centre to a wonderful degree.
[Illustration: THE CITY HALL.]
In the first twenty years of its existence the town acquired a population of about 11,000 and a valuation of nearly $10,000,000. In the sixteen years that have succeeded, the population has almost trebled and the valuation this year is nearly $16,000,000.
There is not another city in the east that can show such swift and at the same time substantial growth as Holyoke has enjoyed during the two decades succeeding the war. In a few years it became the greatest paper-making centre of the country. It has now twenty-four large paper-making corporations, one having the largest paper-mill in the world. A long established cotton mannfacturing company employs one thousand and three hundred operatives. A company manufacturing worsted goods employs one thousand persons, the two mammoth thread-mills have some one thousand names on the pay-rolls. The Unquomonk silk works, which were destroyed by the great Mill River flood of 1874 were re-located in this city, where was found a safe, reliable water-power. There are woolen factories, including a company for manufacturing imitation seal-skin goods and a large blanket mill. The manufacture of Blank books and Envelopes, Steam-pumps, Wire, Machinery, Cutlery, Screws, Fire-hydrants and Steam-boilers, Cement works, Spindles and Reeds, Fourdrinier wire and Rubber-goods are among the city’s greatly diversified industries. There are extensive brickyards and stone quarries near at hand and the lumbering business is an important industry.
[Illustration: OPERA HOUSE.]
The building growth of the city has kept pace with the manufacturing. Where a few years ago were acres of woodland, swamps or brambly pastures, are now well-graded streets lined with pleasant houses. Hills have been leveled, ponds and ravines filled and made into valuable real estate. From the highlands in the western part of the city, there are river and mountain views of surpassing beauty. Gradually the building centre is moving westward and many charming homes have been created on the suburban streets. The old stage-road which led from Springfield to Northampton is now a wide, well-graded highway with handsome villas surrounded by spacious grounds. Here are the fine residences of Treasurer R.B. Johnson of the Holyoke Savings Bank, G.W. Prentiss of the wire-mills, Westover, the residence of E.J. Pomeroy, Lawnfield, the house of R.M. Fairfield, “The Knolls” the fine residence of Mr. C.H. Heywood, and on the higest point of all is Rus-in-Urbe, the lookout point of Mr. Foster Wilson. Farther south on the same street are the residencies of Mr. Timothy Merrick, Donald Mackintosh, Oscar Ely, John Cleary and others. The residence streets of Ward six are pleasant with shade trees, blooming gardens and lovely houses. From the most sightly eminence of the ward, the house of William Skinner of the silk-mill overlooks the city. A central and pleasant square encloses the home of W.A. Chase, the agent of the Water Power Company, and houses with all the appointments of elegance and luxury are owned by Messrs. Whiting, Dillon, Farr, Metcalf, Mackintosh, W.A. Prentiss Clark, E.W. Chapin, Ramage, Newton, Corser and many others. Fairmount Square is a new section just opened for good residences. In the southerly part of the city is the farm of Congressman Wm. Whiting with its herds of beautiful Jerseys, and on the Springfield road is the model Brightside farm, the pet life-project of W.H. Wilkinson, blanket manufacturer. This farm is also the home of splendid specimens of the Jersey cow. A majority of the principal streets of Holyoke bear the names that were given them when the town was first mapped out by its prophetic founders, At first Holyoke was chiefly a cotton manufacturing town and of the streets laid out from east to west the names of prominent cotton manufacturing companies of the state alternated with the names of Massachusetts counties. There are Franklin, Hampshire, Essex, Suffolk, and Hampden streets, alternated with Jackson, Sargeant, Cabot, Appleton, Dwight and Lyman, named for noted cotton manufacturing firms. Main street is a long thoroughfare extending north and south and terminating at the river. Canal, Race, and Bridge streets were named from their location. Bowers, Mosher and Ely from former landowners of Depot Hill. John street and Oliver street perpetuate the name of John Oliver; High street was named for its sightly location. West of, and parallel with, High, the streets have the names of woods, Maple, Chestnut, Elm, Walnut, Pine, Beach, Oak, Linden and Sycamore. Many of the streets in Ward seven were named for persons first owning and or building upon them. Northampton street, is the county highway from Springfield to Northampton.
[Illustration: WINDSOR HOTEL.]
The total area of Holyoke is about fourteen square miles. The first city government was organized in January 1874, and the first Mayor of the city was Hon. Wm. B.C. Pearsons, now judge of the Police court, who held the office three years. The succeeding mayors have been Hon. William Whiting, at present a Congressman from the 11th District, R.P. Crafts, William Ruddy, F.P. Goodall, and James E. Delaney, the present Executive. The city offices and the public library are located in the city hall, a fine granite building which was completed in 1876 at a cost of nearly $400.000. In the same year the city erected a monument on Hampden Square in memory of the soldiers who died in the war of the Rebellion. The handsome open house, where the best of theatrical and musical talent appears during the entertainment season, was built by Messrs Whiting & Brown and was completed in 1878.
The city has four National Banks, and three Savings Banks. It has a daily newspaper, the Transcript, which is the direct successor of the first newspaper printed in Holyoke, in 1849. Under its present title the Transcript has been published since the year 1863.
The water supply for the city is derived from the Ashley and Wright ponds, the water-works having been completed in 1873. Since then, other mountain streams and reservoirs have been united with the water supply of the ponds, to make it adequate for the growing city’s needs. The ponds from which the pipes are laid are located some four miles from the City hall.
Holyoke pays liberally to support its public schools. There are eight brick school buildings with all the modern improvements and conveniences for the graded schools, besides suburban school houses and a High school with 160 pupils. The Catholic parishes in the city also support flourishing parochial schools, St. Jerome parish having just completed a huge brick building for a girl’s school.
The city has a wealth of new churches. The first little square white church which the Baptists built in the beginning of the century was removed in 1880 and a modern brick church now occupies the site. The Second Baptist Church society in the central part of the city has just completed a fine church edifice. The Second Congregational society, two years ago, dedicated a splendid granite building which cost nearly $100,000, the successor of the plain brick meeting-house which in 1853 was erected at the corner of High and Dwight streets. The city has a large Catholic population and three extensive Catholic parishes each having a capacious church of fitting architecture. The Episcopal people worship in a picturesque stone church on Maple street, and near it is the cozy little Unitarian church. The Methodists built a church of brick on Main street about the year 1870. The First Congregational society has a wooden edifice on Northampton street—the oldest church building in the city since the primitive First Baptist meeting-house was taken down—and the church at South Holyoke where the German residents listen to the services of their faith in the language of the fatherland.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF THE PRECIOUS BLOOD (FRENCH CATHOLIC)]
* * * * *
The many who cherish the memory of DANIEL WEBSTER with more than common interest and veneration, are fortunate, in that the records of his life, his habits and his appearance are so complete. The portraits of Webster, now extant, represent the great statesman at numerous periods of his life.
[Illustration]
In July, 1852, Mr. Webster was in Franklin, N.H., and there sat for his picture to the local artist of the town, who finished an excellent daguerrotype. The picture was given by Mr. Webster to the Hon. Stephen M. Allen, who now has it in his possession at the rooms of the Webster Historical Society, in the Old South Meeting House, and by whose courtesy it is here reproduced.
In October of the same year, three months after the picture was made, Daniel Webster at his Marshfield home, breathed his last; leaving this portrait the last ever taken of him from life.
* * * * *
By Prof. A.L. Perry of Williams College.
The recent centennial celebration in the town of Heath, Franklin County, Massachusetts, has freshened up an interest in the history of the old fort that was built within its borders, at the opening of the Old French War in 1744, by the State of Massachusetts. The present writer, however, has made a study for many years of that and its kindred forts, has repeatedly visited and critically examined its site, and has in his possession the chief movable memorials of what was indeed a small, yet in its historical connections a deeply interesting, military outpost.
The first white men known or supposed to have ever penetrated the original forests in the town of Heath were Richard Hazen and six others, the surveyor and chain-men and their assistants, who ran the official northern line of Massachusetts in the early spring of 1741. Besides the surveyor himself, who was then a prominent citizen of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, and his son of the same name, then nineteen years old, the party consisted of Caleb Swan, Benjamin Smith, Zachariah Hildrith, Ebenezer Shaw and William Richardson. Under an imperative order from the Privy Council in England, Governor Belcher, who at that time administered government over both Massachusetts and New Hampshire, commissioned Hazen to run the ultimate line between the two, beginning at a point three miles north of Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimac (now Lowell), and extending on a due west course till it should meet His Majesty’s other Governments. This arbitrary decision of the Privy Council in selecting the very southernmost point in the whole course of the Merrimac, as the place meant in in the old Charter of Massachusetts
Hazen began his survey March 21, 1741. The English instructions required a course due west, and Governor Belcher and his Council ordered ten degrees for the then variation of the needle, which was not quite enough, so that the line actually ran slightly north of due west, and saved to Massachusetts at the west end of the line (in Williamstown) about 1 deg. and 50 min. After the party left the Connecticut river on April 6, they slept on snow at a depth of two or three feet every night till they crossed the Hoosac river in Williamstown on April 12. “It clouded over before Night and rained sometime before day which caused us to stretch Our blankets and lye under them on ye bare Ground, which was the first bare ground we laid on after we left Northfield.” It was on April 9 that they measured the present north line of Heath. Let the clear-eyed surveyor describe in his own words the general situation of the future Fort Shirley.
“At the End of three miles we came to a large brook running Southeasterly and at the End of this days measure to another large brook running Southerly, by which we took Our lodging. Here we tract a Bear and therefore named it Bear brook, both these brooks being branches of Deerfield River. The land this day was some of the best of Land and for three miles together. The last year Pigeons’ nests were so thick that 500 might have been told on the beech trees at One time, and they could have been counted on the Hemlocks as well, I believe three thousand at one turn Round. The snow was for ye most part three feet deep, the weather was fair and wind Northwest.”
Although Hazen named the last mountain on his line where he supposed the eastern line of New York, would ultimately run “Mount Belcher,” in honor of the Governor who had commissioned him to lay it, the just unpopularity of the line itself and Belcher’s connection with it immediately caused his recall from his government, and the appointment of William Shirley in his stead. Belcher was Massachusetts born; while Shirley, though British born, became one of the ablest and most successful of all the colonial governors of Massachusetts. The building of Fort Shirley in 1744 and the naming it after the new Governor, as well as the building a little later of the two forts to the westward,—Fort Pelham in Rowe and Fort Massachusetts in what is now North Adams,—all within a couple of miles of the new boundary line, showed a concern of the colony for its now greatly curtailed northern limits, as well as a much greater concern for the defence of the scattered settlements west of the Connecticut river from the French and Indians, who had several well-trod war-paths to the English settlements on the Connecticut and the Deerfield.
But, after all, the route by the Hoosac River had been and continued the main path from Canada to New England for the French and their savage Indian allies. Whether they came down the Hudson to the mouth of the Hoosac at Schaghticoke, or struck that river on the flank at Eagle Bridge, there was a well-beaten trail—the old Mohawk trail—along the north bank of that river all the way from Schaghticoke to what is now North Adams; and, in continuation of that river trail, the “old Indian path” over the Hoosac Mountain, directly over the line of the present Hoosac Tunnel, led down to the upper reaches of the Deerfield river and so down to the Connecticut at old Deerfield. It became, therefore, of great moment to Massachusetts to defend the line of the Deerfield in the French and Indian war of 1744-48. A few private houses were fortified in what is now Bernardston, and two or three more further west in Coleraine, particularly Fort Lucas and Fort Morrison, the owners being assisted by grants of men and supplies from the General Court; and during this war and more especially the next and last French war, the Indians often lurked with hostile intent in the vicinity of these extemporized forts, and not infrequently surprised and killed and scalped men from the little garrisons, and carried women and children into captivity to Canada.
But the first regular fort built to protect the valley of the Deerfield and incidentally also the line of the Connecticut, was placed by Massachusetts in the present town of Heath. It was built wholly at the public expense, and garrisoned by regularly enlisted or impressed soldiers, and named Fort Shirley from the enterprising Governor of the Province. John Stoddard of Northampton was then Colonel of the militia of Hampshire, a designation at that time including all of Massachusetts west of the Connecticut River; he was Shirley’s right-hand man for this end of the Province, and it was under his general direction that Forts Shirley and Pelham and Massachusetts were erected.
The letter is still extant in Stoddard’s own hand, dated July 20, 1744, in which Capt. William Williams is ordered by him “to erect as soon as may be” a block-house sixty feet square “about five miles and a half from Hugh Morrison’s house in Colrain in or near the line run last week under the direction of Col. Timo. Dwight by our order.” In the same letter, Williams is directed to employ soldiers in the construction of the fort, carpenters to be allowed “nine shillings, others six shillings a day old Tenor.” Several other directions are given, and the main outlines of the fort are prescribed; some bills are still extant giving items of money paid out for many different parts of the work; six of the original hewn timbers of the building are in good preservation today in the barn of Orsamus Maxwell in Heath, each stick telling some tale of the original mode of construction; so that, from all these sources of information, a pretty accurate idea of the old fort can be made out to-day, 141 years after it was built.
For the outside, white pine logs were scored down, and then hewn to six inches thick and fourteen inches high; and the scores worked 48 days on these, receiving L14, 8s. for their work, and the hewers 24 days, receiving L10, 16s. The walls of the fort were twelve feet high, thus requiring nine courses of these timbers laid edgewise one above another, each being doweled to the one below by red oak dowel-pins, two of which were pulled out of their quiet resting places of 141 years’ duration, in a good state of preservation, by Mr. Maxwell and the writer, Sept. 5, 1885. Those ends of these timbers that came to the four corners of the fort were dove-tailed into each other in the well known manner, so that there were straight lines and strong locking at the corners; and it so happens, that three of the six timbers preserved are corner timbers, and show at one end the exact mode of locking.
There were two mounts on two corners of the fort 12 feet square and 7 feet high; and the houses and barracks within the fort were 11 feet wide with shingled roofs; and the mount-timber, the insides of the houses, and the floors, were all hewn, presumably of the same width and thickness as the wall-timbers. Undoubtedly the whole parade in the middle of the fort was also floored in the same way, as the site of the fort was and is low and wet.
The fort was built in this manner during the months of August, September, and October, 1744; and on the 30th of the last mentioned month, Capt. Williams commenced to billet himself and the soldiers under his command at the fort. He remained there all the winter and spring; about the 1st of March he enlisted 14 of his men for the Louisburg Expedition, at Col. Stoddard’s request, whom he took to Boston; but was not himself allowed to embark, and returned to his fort; while later in the season, under a strong call for reinforcements for Louisburg by Gov. Shirley, Williams took 74 able bodied men to Boston, recruited by himself in less than six days mostly in the Connecticut valley, and was given a Lieutenant colonel’s commission in the regiment destined for Louisburg commanded by Col. John Choate. They sailed in June, 1745, but the fortress had been taken before they arrived, and the regiment with Williams as acting Colonel was detained there to do garrison duty.
Fort Pelham in Rowe was built by Williams before he left for Louisburg, that is, in the spring of 1745; and in the autumn of that year we find Capt. Ephraim Williams, a kinsman of the other, afterwards founder of Williams College, in command of Fort Shirley and of the line of forts. It is fair to presume that he was appointed to the command on the withdrawal of the other in June; but which of the two built Fort Massachusetts along the same line, or whether either of them, can not now be stated with absolute certainty. It is probable that Ephraim Williams saw to its construction under the Committee of the General Court, of which
Because it was the first fort built by the Colony in that region, and especially because Fort Massachusetts was captured and burnt by the French and Indians in August, 1746, Shirley became very prominent in that war, and was the headquarters of the successive commanders of the line of forts. Massachusetts was rebuilt early in 1747, and thereafter became the chief work; for both before and after the Peace of Aix la Chapelle in 1748, it was perceived that the sites of Shirley and Pelham had been ill-chosen, and that the route by the Hoosac was the one to be kept open for hostile demonstration towards Crown Point, and the one to be defended against hostile demonstration from all that quarter. Forts Shirley and Pelham, accordingly, which were very differently constructed, ceased to be of much military significance after the Peace, though both were slightly garrisoned for several years after. In 1749 and a part certainly of the next year, there were five men only in Fort Shirley, namely, Lieutenant William Lyman, Gershom Hawks, John Powell, Samuel Stebbins, and Peter Bove. From June, 1725 till the end of May, 1754, one man in each constituted the garrison of Shirley and Pelham. Archibald Powell held watch and ward on the heights of Heath and George Hall on the lofty meadow in Rowe. Each drew his pay from the treasury of the colony; and each had a magnificent lookout from his solitary sentry-box. Monadnock is in plain sight to the east, and Haystack to the north from the site of Fort Shirley and the Hoosacs to the west and Greylock overtopping them greeted the roving gaze of George Hall from the picketed enclosure of Fort Pelham.
There was but one chaplain to the line of forts, Rev. John Norton, appointed from Falltown in 1745, who passed from one to the other as his sense of duty to each garrison might prompt; and Mrs. Norton with one or two children lived in Fort Shirley for more than a year while her husband was in captivity in Canada. Scouting parties of the soldiers were kept constantly passing from fort to fort when not employed in garrison or other duty; their allowance on the march was for each soldier per day one pound of bread, one pound of pork, and one gill of rum; while in garrison each man was allowed per day one pound of bread, and one-half pint of peas or beans, two pounds of pork for three days, and one gallon of molasses for 42 days. It is certain, that one or more cows were kept by the garrison of Fort Shirley, perhaps on account of Mrs. Norton and her children, for there was a cleared field around the fort, and an old cow-bell half eaten up by rust was found not long ago near its site, which site, it must be remembered, was several miles from any habitation of men at any time in the last century.
After an existence of one hundred and forty-one years, the old well of Fort Shirley, which was undoubtedly within the block-house and probably in one corner of the enclosure away from the “parade,” is able to tell pretty thoroughly to this day the story of its own construction. Four forest staddles about six inches in diameter, one for each comer of the well, were set upright on the ground, and then ash planks rived from a log about five feet long were pinned or spiked on the outside of these staddles, beginning at the bottom; and this frame being placed on the ground where the well was to be, the earth was thrown out over the sides, and so the well was gradually sunk to the required depth, the plank-siding being added gradually as the shaft was lowered. These rived planks and the tops of the four corner-poles, that can now be seen and fingered less than two feet below the surface of the ground, were not very uniform in thickness, and of course have rotted off at the top by time and exposure; but enough of both has been preserved till this time by constant submergence in the water and in the unusually moist soil above it to betray without any serious question the nature of the materials used and the mode of their employment. One of the corner-posts was a black birch and the bark on it is in a good state of preservation at and below the surface of the water.
The last incident to be mentioned at this time in connection with Fort Shirley relates to the Rev. John Norton, his wife and daughter. Norton was born in Berlin, Conn., in 1716; was graduated at Yale College in 1737; was ordained in Fall Town, since Bernardston, Mass., in 1741; he was the first minister in that town, “but owing to the unsettled state of the times,” and to the fact that his people lay right in the angle between the military line of the Connecticut and that of the Deerfield, and had consequently as much as they could do, to maintain their families exposed as they were, he labored there about four years, and was appointed chaplain to the line of forts almost as soon as the men were fairly in garrison. He was in Fort Massachusetts when it was besieged and captured by an army of French and Indians in August, 1746; went captive with the rest of the garrison to Quebec; returned, exchanged, in just a year; and wrote an account of the siege, the journey northwards, the captivity, and the return, a precious little book, which he entitled after a memorable precedent “The Redeemed Captive.” His narrative begins as follows.—“Thursday, August 14, 1746, I left Fort Shirley in company with Dr. Williams and about fourteen of the soldiers; we went to Pelham Fort, and from thence to Captain Rice’s, where we lodged that night. Friday, the 15th, we went from thence to Fort Massachusetts, where I designed to have tarried about a month. Saturday, 16th, the Doctor with fourteen men, went off for Deerfield, and left in the fort Sergeant John Hawks with twenty soldiers, about half of them sick with bloody flux.”
We can not now follow the good chaplain in his deeply interesting narrative. He makes no mention in it of his family, but it is certain from other data that he left Mrs. Norton and his young children in garrison at Fort Shirley, and that just about the time of his return from captivity to Boston, which was August 16, 1747, his little girl, Anna, died at the fort and was buried in the field a little to the west of it. Probably some soldier in the fort chiselled upon the rude stone the inscription as follows:
Hear lys ye body of An’na
D: of ye Rev:
Mr. John Norton. She died
Aug; ye —— aged ——
1747.
This stone stood there in the bleak field exposed to the suns of summer and the storms of winter for more than one hundred and thirty years. The day of August on which she died and the number of years she had lived have become illegible by exposure,—impossible to be deciphered. The stone has lately been removed to Williams College, and with its companion relic, a stick of one of the timbers of Fort Shirley, and a few other memorials of the well and fort, are safe in a fire-proof building.
The tradition is still lively in Heath, and it may well be an historical fact for it has been handed down by an aged citizen there whose life began with the century, that there used to come up from Connecticut on an occasional pilgrimage to the site of Fort Shirley and particularly to the grave of Anna Norton some of her relatives. This is very likely; for John Norton became in 1748 a pastor in the parish of East Hampton, Middlesex Co., Conn., where he died in 1778; and one may still read on his tombstone there the following inscription:
IN MEMORY OF
THE REV. JOHN NORTON
PASTOR OF THE 3D CHURCH IN CHATHAM
WHO DIED WITH SMALL POX
MARCH 24th AD 1778
IN THE 63D YEAR OF HIS AGE.
He left several children. Among them an unmarried daughter, who lived till 1825. It is no mean touch and print of vital human sympathy that is left upon the sod beneath the great tree in Shirley-field by the figure of one who came and came again from a distant place to catch, it may be, a note from the dreary Past and drop a tear upon the grave of a sister whom she never saw.
To his Excellency William Shirley, Esq.
Capt. Gen. and Gov’r in Chief
of this Province, the Hon’ble his
Majesty’s Council & House of
Representatives in Gen. Court assembled—
The Memorial of John Norton of Springfield in the County of Hampshire, Clerk, humbly showeth That in the month of February, 1746, he entered into the Service of the Province as a Chaplain for the Line of Forts on the Western Frontier and continued in that service until the Twentieth day of August following, when he was captivated at Fort Massachusetts and carried to Canada by the enemy, where he was detained a prisoner for the space of twelve months, during which time he constantly officiated as a chaplainPage 35
among his fellow-prisoners in the best manner he was able under the great difficulties and suffering of his imprisonment, and your Humble Petit’r begs leave further to inform your Excell’c. & Honors that besides the great Difficulties and Hardships that your Petit’r indured during his captivity abroad, he and his family by means thereof are reduced to great Straight and Difficulties at home. He therefore prays your Excell’c and Honors would take his distressed Circumstances into your wiser Consideration and grant him such Help and Relief as your Excell’c, and Honors in your Wisdom and Goodness shall deem meet, and your memorialist as in duty bound shall ever pray.
JOHN NORTON.
Springfield, Jan. 25, 1748.
[ENDORSED]
In the House of Representatives, Feb,
23, 1748. Read and Ordered that
the sum of L37, 10s. be allowed the memorialist
in consideration of this
officiating as Chaplain to the Prisoners
whilst in captivity at Canada.
In council read & concurred W. Hutchinson,
Speaker
J. Willard
Sec’y
Consented to
W. SHIRLEY.
* * * * *
By Victoria Reed.
On the 24th of July, 1847, Brigham Young and a few followers pitched their tents at the base of the Wasatch Range—a spur of the Rocky Mountains. This was the nucleus of what is now known as the flourishing city of Salt Lake. These pioneers came across the vast plains, over the desolate mountains and entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake through Emigration Canon. Their first view of the locality was from the mouth of the canon which is at an elevation of seven hundred feet above the city, and from this eminence the clearness of the atmosphere enabled them to see mountain ranges ninety miles distant.
The wide valley, the broad expanse of the lake with its mountainous islands, miles in extent, and the encircling ranges, formed an amphitheatre of unexampled grandeur and rugged beauty. The valley itself at that time was a vast desert without tree or shrub, nothing but the wild sage-brush and the white alkali soil could be seen, if we except the scrub-oaks and lebanon cedars that covered the mountain sides and the emerald colored waters of the lake. Utah was then Mexican Territory, and this fact, as much perhaps as any other, determined Brigham Young to settle there. When the exodus from Nauvoo took place, the Mormons were roughly estimated at four thousand souls and probably about that number made the first settlement in Utah; but they have increased now to over two hundred and fifty thousand in the United States with societies in England, Wales and Scandinavia, all flourishing and sending yearly to Salt Lake as many as they can find means to transport. The history of this people will probably never be fully written, but they
To one acquainted with the country, knowing the obstacles they overcame, it is a matter of wonder that women and children were ever able to perform it. It must be remembered that their destination reached, their trials had only fairly begun. They were surrounded by savages, they were over a thousand miles from the habitation of a white man. They had pitched their tents on an alkali plain that had never been tilled; not a blade of grass grew in the soil and this in a climate where not a drop of rain or even a cloud appeared for six months in the year. Irrigation had never been tried, and the whole scheme was an experiment, the failure of which would have been fatal to the settlement. The first winter was spent in their wagons and in tents, while their subsistence was upon a scanty supply of vegetables. It is no more than common justice to accord to this people a great undertaking in founding the settlements of the territory, and a great triumph in their complete success; but above and beyond this, very little can be said in their favor.
The legal title of the Mormon church is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and in the church parlance, Salt Lake city is a state of Zion and the real Zion is at Jackson, Missouri, to which place the Mormons claim they are some day to return. The Mormon church is a very complicated institution, but as perfect in its organization and operations as the Catholic church. Church and State are inseparable and the main complications are in the priesthood which extends to nearly every male member of the church who has a family, thus making them all more or less responsible for the proceedings of their leaders. This priesthood is composed of a president, in whom is combined prophet, seer or revelator of the church. There have been only three men to fill that office, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and John Taylor who now
The ordinance that has given so much unpleasant notoriety to this church is that of polygamy, or plural marriage as the Mormons designate it. There are three kinds of marriage; the marriage for this world as in other churches, “till death do us part;” the marriage for this world and for eternity combined; and the marriage for eternity alone, independent and separate from this world’s relationship.
The Mormon woman has no place in the future state excepting as she enters under the protection of her husband, so this last marriage or sealing for eternity was instituted to enable all unmarried women, or those who were only married for this world, to gain a foothold in the life to come. The motto of the Mormon church is, the greater the family, the greater the reward. Brigham Young with his nineteen families excelled in this respect, and he will be awarded the highest seat in Heaven. His sealed wives are said to number two hundred and fifty.
Joseph Smith has also been very popular and has had scores sealed to him.
To uphold this peculiarly constituted church, various crimes have been committed, varying in hue, but the Mountain Meadow Massacre, when one hundred and nineteen men, women and children were butchered in cold blood under a flag of truce, surpasses in atrocity any act of the savage tribes by whom they are surrounded, and has stained indelibly the Mormon church. Before the advent of the Union Pacific Railroad, to breath a word against the church organization or any of its acts or resist one of their tenets or accumulate more wealth than was acceptable to the leaders, has always brought down instant and the severest punishment, and the perpetrators could never be brought to justice as they were emissaries of Brigham Young and his councillors.
It is polygamy, however, more than all their other deeds and revelations that has entailed misery, suffering and degradation. It has been the parent of more crime, more disloyalty, more deceit and sin generally than all the other causes combined. It is claimed that the revelation of polygamy came to the prophet Joseph Smith in 1843 at Nauvoo, and it was secretly practised by him and by other members of his church; but it was not published to the world until 1852, when Brigham Young made it known in Utah, thinking no doubt that he was beyond the pale of civilization and the terrors of the law. It was not made obligatory, but those who practised it were to have greater exaltation in the next world. A woman conforming in other respects is entitled to a seat in Heaven, but it is reserved for the polygamist to be one with the Father. Of course there is no room for Gentiles in the Mormon Heaven, excepting as hewers of wood and drawers of water to some Mormon saint.
The fanatical followers of the priesthood are filled with the superstitions of the old world, coming, as so many do from the lowest classes of Great Britain and Scandinavia, fit subjects for all the mummery imposed upon them in the name of religion. Brigham Young is often quoted as saying, that he had gathered around him a set of people that his satanic majesty himself would not have. Even after polygamy had been openly proclaimed in Utah, their missionaries utterly repudiated it, and in pursuance of private orders of the prophet they positively asserted that it was not a tenet of the church. They were afraid of bringing upon themselves the condemnation of foreign governments; but the ignorant offshoots of European Monarchies openly commit acts here, that they boast if perpetrated in their own land, would bring down upon them the severest penalties of the law. The perfect indifference and apathy of our government for so many years, however, has given the Mormons sufficient justification for their attitude. Abroad, not only their own security, but the large emigration which they sought and do secure yearly, rendered necessary a great deal of deceit. Men honest and fair-dealing in other respects have a twisted conscience in regard
The Miles case which attained such notoriety in Utah a short time ago was one not altogether uncommon, in which a young girl engaged to a Mormon Elder in London accompanied him to this country to have the marriage ceremony performed by the fathers of the church. On their way thither the elder felt constrained to tell this young convert that he had already made promises of marriage to two Danish sisters who were awaiting him in Zion; but he assured her that though he felt obliged to fulfil all his vows yet she should be his first and only legal wife. She reluctantly consented to this humiliating compromise and on his arrival in Salt Lake he took the three maidens to the Endowment House and they were in turn married to him. Unfortunately for conjugal felicity, the English girl was made second in order on account of priority of age of one of the Danish sisters. Terrible scenes ensued and in her indignation this girl denounced her husband and he was brought into court on the charge of bigamy. Only once before in the whole history of Mormonism has the court gained evidence of these plural marriages. Wives are bound by such terrible oaths at the marriage
They have often left their husbands and even their children behind them in foreign lands or in our own, to gain the coveted privilege of passing the remnant of their days in communion with the Latter Day Saints in the glorious State of Zion. These deluded women get their deserved punishment for deserting the highest and acknowledged duties of life, by the ignominy and contempt heaped upon them by those who allured them from their homes. Contact with this institution has in a few cases not only deadened all finer sensibilities, but has trampled upon instinct, when mothers coming with grown daughters to Utah not only marry Mormons themselves, but urge their girls to become polygamic wives to their own husbands. Very few probably are of this character, and the majority are mere tools in the hands of a tyrannical priesthood.
A gentleman well versed in the history of the church in Utah writes “that after a thousand years of Christianity and civilization, Mormons have stripped woman of all her rights, have trampled her in the dust, have sworn her on her life to obey her jailor husband, then have given her the ballot and boast of their liberality.”
Suffrage under a theocratic government is a farce for both man or woman and, in the latter case, a pure mockery, as the Mormon woman has apparently a privilege which is denied to woman elsewhere, but this privilege is entirely out of her power to use excepting as ordered by the church that controls her. Suffrage given to the women of Utah has had two results; first, to increase greatly the vote for the church and its institutions, and secondly, to make woman herself the champion of her own degradation. Brigham Young gave the suffrage to Morman women, and he was confident that he could manipulate this element as he had all others in behalf of his own aggrandizement, both spiritual and temporal. Our government and Gentile residents hoped that the franchise would be productive of great good in opening the eyes of these women to the knowledge of the power invested in them, to free themselves from the superstitious obedience with which their vicegerent had enchained them; but the folly of endowing them with our privilege so long as theocracy exists, has been fully demonstrated. To ask for rights which are cheerfully conceded to woman in every other section of the country, would be utterly useless in Utah. The law of suffrage like all other laws in Utah have been made for the sole protection of their divine institution; so these Mormon women have only raised their voices to uphold polygamy which they have been forced to do on all occasions when it would benefit their church. They assembled in Mass-meeting and petitioned Congress to propose an amendment to the constitution sanctioning polygamy, and they have waved banners in the streets of Salt Lake on which were inscribed “The women of Utah believe in polygamy.” The brutal teachings of Brigham Young and his councillors and all the laws and institutions of Utah are intended to reduce woman to utter and abject servitude, and to resist this power in the earlier days when they were sensitive to the touch of the tyrant’s will would have been a very dangerous experiment; but now, with help stretching towards them, they seem to be too throughly paralyzed by years of total submission to be able to avail themselves of it.
The numbering of the vote is a very essential element in the ballot, as by that means the priesthood has knowledge of the failure of any man or woman to vote as they have been ordered. The Edmunds commission reports as follows in regard to Woman’s suffrage: “We are satisfied that owing to the peculiar state of affairs in Utah—this law is an obstruction to the speedy solution of the vexed question.”
There are many laws on the statute books detrimental to women. No right of dower exists in the territory, and the legislators at their last session wholly refused to provide for it. There are no marriage laws—as the Mormons hold the ordinance as strictly a Latter Day Church prerogative. There are no laws forbidding immorality such as are found in all other states and territories.
A prominent Mormon bishop lately asserted in the eastern press “that the Mormon women are happy,” a statement entirely contrary to that of the women themselves who declare their state to be purgatorial.
The Anti-polygamy Standard says:—“A wife lately thwarted her husband in his attempt to enter polygamy, threatening to expose him in court; the true spirit of Mormonism was exhibited in his reply, that the laws of God would soon be in full force in Utah—we shall get rid of the Gentiles, and all such Mormon women as you will be blood-atoned.” This atonement is one of the tenets of the church. Any act committed against it has in the past been punished by death, the shedding of the guilty persons, blood being necessary for the atonement of the sin.
A band of men called destroying angels, has committed these murderous deeds under the guidance of the priesthood. This doctrine is no longer in force and could not stand in the face of federal officials and a Gentile population.
It was for many years the desire of the church to prevent any expanding of the intellect on the part of their followers, and any casual observer at the Tabernacle would be convinced that this and their divine institution had done their thorough work in stamping ignorance and misery upon a large number of the faces gathered there.
Prayer has always played an important part in both secular as well as religious assemblages, used as a means to impress and overawe these superstitious disciples of an all absorbing faith. Every ball, every party, all social gatherings and even the theatre in the olden time, opened and closed with prayer. In the dedication of a building they bless the different parts even to shingles and nails. A full hour was consumed when the large tabernacle was dedicated, in enumerating and blessing the different materials that made up its construction. One other very peculiar tenet of the church is baptism for the dead. They are women principally who enter with enthusiasm in practising this rite, and they have been immersed as many as twenty times in one day to insure the future of departed friends. It was the boast of one poor simple Scotch woman that she had secured places in Heaven for Sir William Wallace and Robert Bruce. In accordance with a purpose of the priesthood, children bore a prominent part in public affairs. They were called Utah’s best crop—and less than ten years ago—they formed conspicuous portions of the audiences that gathered in the tabernacle and theatre. Their youthful voices in concert rivalled those of the tabernacle choir, the latter no mean institution as it numbered over 300. At the theatre, too young to hold up their heads, their mothers tended them on pillows. This custom has gradually been abolished until now an apostle can harangue by the hour on his favorite topic of “come up and pay your tithing without an infant’s cry to interrupt the monotonus strain.”
This theocratic government, where one man calls himself God’s vicegerent and imposes his revelations on a narrow minded fanatical class of men, carries its own hand into all its branches, nothing being too small or petty for its fingers to grasp, and implicit obedience is to-day, as it always has been, the watch-word of the church. At church conferences there is never a dissenting voice and at the polls always the same unanimous vote. The following quotations give an idea of how the power is placed in Utah and of what theocracy consists:—Brigham Young said in the Tabernacle in 1869, “what is the greatest miracle that can be wrought before God, our Saviour, the angels, the inhabitants of the earth and the infernal regions? Is it raising the dead or healing the sick? No—it is not—it is bringing a people to strict obedience to the rule of the priesthood.”
Orson Pratt, the learned apostle, has always taught that “people cannot govern themselves by laws of their own making or by officers of their own choosing, for that would be in direct rebellion to the law of God. Absolute power vested in one man is the best and most efficient human government. There is one kind of government that will secure permanent prosperity and happiness, and that is theocracy or the government of God through his prophet, seer and revelator.”
President Kimball said in the tabernacle:—“Have not the majority of this congregation made most solemn covenants and vows that they will listen, obey and be subject to the priesthood? Have not the sisters made the same solemn covenant before God, angels and men that they will be subject to their husbands?”
President Taylor says:—“You want to pay your tithing fairly and squarely, or you will find yourselves outside of the pale of the church of the living God. You must also uphold the co-operative institutions.”
Col. Hollister, a gentleman thoroughly acquainted with Mormonism, writes thus:—“There is no rule of the people intended in the Mormon church. There is no state government contemplated because it has every organ of despotic state government in and of itself. It takes no account whatever of the natural right of man to life, liberty, property, freedom of opinion or of conscience. Its bill of rights, its constitution, its laws are the revelations of the prophet. It has not a single idea or institution common to free government or free men. As long as they hold this theocratic idea, to force democratic government upon them, is a farce. Its political party is the church and into that political party no one can enter excepting through the church.”
Polygamy disgraces us in the eyes of the world, and fills the home where it enters with untold misery; but a theocratic government, thoroughly equipped, unanimously responsive in all its branches, far-reaching in its designs and expanding as rapidly as that of the Mormon church, presents a great political enigma to the American people even when shorn of its most obnoxious feature. Congress and the country at large have their attention fixed upon the question of polygamy, and the proposed legislative commission, if endorsed by Congress, would bring the Mormon Church itself face to face with it. It is so embedded in the very roots of their organization that many Mormons insist that it would be utterly impossible for the church to dispense with it; and the Deseret News, the church organ in the issue following the President’s Message, declares that “neither commissions, edicts or armies, or any earthly power can affect plural marriages of the Mormons for they are ‘ecclesiastical, perpetual and eternal.’” No doubt there will be a convulsive effort made to retain the government of the Territory in their own hands, and they might be forced to abandon polygamy to save such a catastrophe, but would they do it in good faith?
What would their fanatical followers say if the “absolute command of God” to Joseph Smith is no longer to be regarded. If polygamy can, however, be happily abolished, there still remains a solid phalanx of determined men and women manipulated by the hand of wily priests and bishops, who do not believe in our institutions, who deny the right of individual feeling or action, who teach the doctrine that the Latter Day Saints will rule eventually the whole country and the world. Such compact power, so guarded, so absolute, is certainly an unparalleled achievement when the few years of its conception and execution in a barren desolate waste is considered. A similar case has never been witnessed before in the heart of any country on the globe, and it is safe to say that no other civilized nation would have tolerated such an anomaly in its midst. Germany even has forbidden Mormon missionaries to come within her borders. England is profuse in condemnation of our Government for permitting such an institution as polygamy, which she fosters however by sending one-half the recruits that come yearly to our shores to practise it. Scandinavia and our own land contribute the balance, and it is confidently asserted that Massachusetts alone gives more converts to Mormonism than are converted from it in Utah, Worthy mechanics and skilled laborers in our manufacturing towns are joining this standard which holds out temptations of temporal prosperity that are difficult to resist.
The Mormon church is fast peopling the immediate surrounding territories. Idaho is dangerously invaded and the balance of power threatened, while Colorado and Arizona have large, growing settlements.
The first train that passed over the new narrow guage road that runs through Colorado, carried a load of foreign emigrants to Utah. Railroads intersect Utah in all directions, and the church is also laying her own peculiar rails throughout the whole region of the Rocky Mountains, and they will give promising dividends in strength and security to the church institutions.
The Edmunds bill is a step towards the abolishment of polygamy. It has disfranchised the law-breakers but has not had the effect of discouraging plural marriages. Some Gentiles maintain that there are as many solemnized now as before the passage of the bill, and the Commission itself acknowledges that the practice still exists, though they think there is a decrease.
However this may be, it is certainly true that strenuous efforts were made immediately upon its adoption to force young people into polygamy; and at the late conferences addresses were delivered enjoining upon the people the fact that, the Kingdom of God could not progress unless they obeyed the revelation given to Joseph Smith at Nauvoo, and God would never forgive his people if they did not obey his commands. While these sentiments were freely expressed in the Tabernacle, a statement is sent to the eastern papers by a prominent member of the church that “the Edmunds Bill has practically abolished polygamy.”
To overthrow this theocratic government and to parry the subtle wiles of the priesthood, more than ordinary attention and wisdom will be required, and it will be a great triumph to our legislators if they can succeed in bringing about a peaceable solution of the greatest problem now before the American people.
* * * * *
A ROMANCE OF COLONIAL DAYS.
By Frances C. Sparhawk, Author of “A Lazy Man’s Work.”
A CASE OF CONSCIENCE.
The stars had not begun to pale in the morning twilight when Elizabeth awakened. The dim outlines of houses and trees could be seen through the window as she looked out against the sky. Within the room the furniture, large and heavy, looked still larger in the darkness. She fixed her eyes upon some point, and followed back the lines that flowed from it until they were lost in the dimness, and this assured her that she was awake. Her writing-table was in part sharply outlined against the window, and part of it was lost in the shadow of the draperies. The bureau seemed only a dark mass among the shadows in force in the corners of the room.
These and the tops of the heavy chairs, as she looked at one and another of them, helped to calm her and give her a sense of reality. But they in no way accounted for the startling suggestion, that whether dream or waking thought had first filled her with fear and then set her heart beating hard as she lay wide awake breathing unevenly and striving to learn if she were still under the influence of a dream, or if the unconscious conviction which had come upon her was the result of dwelling upon what she knew. She could not recall her dreams, but they seemed to her to have had no connection with the sudden sense of danger that had startled her awake. She tried
When the dimness of starlight began to grow into the dawn, she arose. But she delayed at her toilet, standing so long in thought with her brush in her hand, and her dark hair sweeping over her shoulders, that it was six o’clock before she crossed the hall and knocked at her father’s door.
There was no answer. She knocked again, with the same result, and then opening the door, found the room empty. Mr. Royal had gone down stairs. But it was too early for Mrs. Eveleigh, and Elizabeth might still have her talk with him without interruption. With a mixture of relief and dread she went down the broad, low stairs and crossed the hall into the library.
It had always been her favorite room. She had spent so many happy hours here with the books, that the room with its handsome old furniture and sunny windows was full of the memories and day dreams that her reading had conjured up. But not only this; it was here that she had seen most of her father; they had spent hours together here, while Mrs. Eveleigh attended to her household duties, or amused herself with her friends, or retired for her nap. And whether father and daughter talked, or sat, he with his paper or his writing, she with her book, each felt a companionship in the other. Elizabeth often spoke her thoughts freely to any one who happened to be within hearing when the mood for speech came over her; but as to her feelings, her father understood those best. This was partly on account of his quickness of comprehension, which supplied much that she did not utter, and partly because there came to her times when her father seemed like a second self, and silence grew unnatural.
But that morning speech, evidently, was not easy to her. For, although she had gone to him as a matter of course, her perplexity seemed to grow greater as she sat down by the desk at which he was making up some accounts. It seemed to her that her life was no longer free and simple; a dreadful force had come into contact with it and, as she felt, made it more unworthy. Had a mere jest ever before brought such a train of miseries? Her fingers laid restless folds in a piece of paper she took up, and her father after his greeting went on with the accounts. It was his habit to give people time, and he had found that doing it gave him the best opportunity to take his own bearings. His judgments were usually so accurate, and his decisions so wise that a good many people would have been thankful to find the scales by which he weighed the anxiety or the satisfaction that came under his observation. On that morning the rapid pen travelled several times up and down columns of figures and noted down the results before Elizabeth began:
“Father.” It was a small beginning, and followed by silence. But the tone made Mr. Royal push his work aside, and look full into his daughter’s face. “Father,” she repeated, “I want you to advise me.”
“Am I not always ready for that?” returned Mr. Royal, his smile fading before the gravity of her expression.
“There is something so hard to be done,” she answered.
“Then, must it be done?”
“Oh, yes, that’s the only thing about it I am quite sure of. It must be done, and directly, too. It may be too late now, but we must try. What troubles me is how it can be done so that we may be certain.”
“Certain of what?”
“Certain that it reaches him,” answered Elizabeth. Then she looked at her father, and remembered that he could not understand her. “I must tell you,” she said. “It is like a nightmare. It oppresses me to think of it. I feel guilty to believe it, and yet I don’t dare to deny it to myself, for fear of the consequences. It’s about Mr. Edmonson, father.”
“Oh!” said her listener in a tone far from pleased.
“And Mr. Archdale, added Elizabeth. Not that who the people are makes any difference. Our duties would be just the same knowing the,—knowing what I do.” Her father sat watching her in silence with his keenest gaze. “There is no love lost between the two men, as you know,” she went on. “Mr. Archdale is lofty, and wouldn’t condescend to anything more than a dislike that he hasn’t tried to conceal, since Mr. Edmonson ceased being his guest. But with Mr. Edmonson it’s different; when he feels, he acts; and once in a while there is an unrestraint about him which is frightful; it makes me think of lava breaking through the crust of a volcano. I believe there is something volcanic in his nature; you can’t go deep into it without danger. And there is danger now. Father, there is danger now.” As Elizabeth repeated her statement she leaned forward a little and looked at her father, her eyes full of earnestness and dread.
“In what way, and to whom?” asked Mr. Royal.
“To Mr. Archdale,” she answered.
It was not Mr. Royal’s way to protest or deny; he liked to get in his evidence first of all. “What makes you think so?” he asked.
“A good many little things that have come back to me in confirmation, but especially a speech of Mr. Edmonson’s that I overheard one day at Seascape. Stray shots,” he said, “have taken off more superfluous kings and men than the world has any idea of. I did not know at the time whom he had been speaking about, and I forgot the speech; it seemed to me to have no object. But now it does, and now I remember a word or two besides that showed me that he had turned the conversation upon Mr. Archdale.”
“When was this?”
“One morning when I was coming up from the beach, I didn’t feel like talking to anyone, and when I heard voices the other side of the great boulder—you remember it?—I waited a moment, to see if they would pass on, so that I need not go back to the house by the longest way; and it was then that he said it. He was with Lord Bulchester. He was speaking of other things first, and then I missed a few words, and then he said this.”
“So far as he was concerned,” answered Mr. Royal, “that might be as innocent a speech as ever was uttered. Indeed, don’t you see that a man who meditated mischief wouldn’t make such a speech at all?”
“If the man were Mr. Edmonson he might, and to Lord Bulchester who, he knows, never would do anything against him. But Lord Bulchester is uncomfortable. I saw it yesterday; and perhaps wondering over that was what made me put everything together. I don’t know how it was, but I awoke in the night and saw it all. And now they have gone where the will and the opportunity are sure to meet. Mr. Archdale must be warned.”
“But, Elizabeth,” said her father, “why should he want to do it? He succeeded in his designs upon the Archdale property. What malice can he have?” As he spoke, he looked earnestly at his daughter. He had not been blind to things going on about him, and especially things concerning his daughter, but in a case like this no suppositions of his own were to take the place of evidence.
Elizabeth met his eyes for a moment, then her own drooped and she grew pale. It was not that her father’s eyes told her his thoughts, it was at the humiliation of her own position in being the object of mercenary scheming. “He has not enough money,” she said at last distinctly, “and he wants more. That’s what it means. And he dares to think—.” She stopped short, and for a moment it seemed as if it would be impossible for her to go on; a hot flush came to her face and an angry light into her eyes. Then her courage returned, and although she uttered the words with visible effort she went resolutely on. “I know it,” she said, “he dares to think someone else,—Mr. Archdale,—is somewhat like himself, and that he will come to want
At last Elizabeth paused. She drew a little nearer her father, and laid her hand upon the table beside him. “I want you to advise me;” she said; then, “What must I do?”
In the impossibility of any answer he felt a sudden rebound from the force of her words. “I don’t see that there is anything for you to do, or for anybody,” he said. “How can you act upon a thing that is purely an assumption, and not only that, but a thing so wicked that it is a cruelty to a man to imagine it about him? I can’t believe that it’s necessary to do anything, for I can’t bring myself to feel as you do. Are you very sure that you have not fancied a part of this?”
“Father!” cried Elizabeth, “I wish I had, But look at it.” And she went again over the grounds of her suspicions, giving with a clearness that he was proud of, the indications that she had seen of the bent of Edmonson’s will and the evidences of his headstrong character, linking one trifling act or word to another, until she had welded a chain so strong that Mr. Royal felt a thrill run through him as he listened, for she awoke in him her own belief and something of her own anxiety to be doing. So that when she had finished, instead of repeating that it was not necessary to do anything, he asked whom she had thought of as the person to give the warning to Archdale.
She was about to speak, then checked herself, hesitated, and at last said, “I want you to advise me.”
“Um!” said Mr. Royal, and was silent. He was somewhat disappointed that she, so powerful in statement, should have no suggestion to offer in a matter that puzzled him the more, the more he thought of it. Such a warning would not be easy to give under the most favorable circumstances. It would not be a pleasant task to tell a man that another man had designs upon his life, and when such assertion had only the proof of strong conviction and of evidence, trivial in its details, strong only as a whole, it
“No,” she said, “he might never get it.” Mr. Royal looked at her more closely as she fixed her eyes upon him, flushing a little as she spoke with the earnestness of her purpose.
“Well,” he said musingly, “we certainly can’t get at him in any other way, and that one is uncertain and dangerous. Even the dispatches are subject to the fortunes of war. I don’t see what we can do, Elizabeth. Do you?”
But even as he spoke, he refrained from what he was about to add, turning his assertion into a question. For a change was coming over his daughter; the power within her to rise to great occasions was in force now. The conventionalities that were holding him in check were unfelt by her; she had risen above them to that high ground where the intricacies of life are resolved into absolute questions of right and wrong, and where perfect simplicity of intention becomes a divine guide.
“Father, do you remember,” she cried, “what I have cost him and Katie? I must not be silent, and let them be separated more, a great deal, than my foolish speech once seemed to do. He has gone where stray shots are of everyday occurence, and nobody ever inquires into them. Apart from this obligation, if we do nothing we shall be murderers.” She locked her fingers together as she spoke, not in nervous indecision, for her look was full of resolution, but as if the necessity that she was facing disturbed her. Mr. Royal suddenly perceived that his daughter had not finished, that behind that expression there was, not a suggestion, indeed, but a decision. She had come to him, not for advice, but for approval; she knew what to do. Her plan would scarcely be one to meet the approval of people like Mrs. Eveleigh. But he recognized that the soul that was looking out from Elizabeth’s fearless eyes had a high law of its own. And when his daughter spoke in this mood, Mr. Royal was reverent enough to listen.
DUTY.
“How strange it seems here,” said Nancy Foster leaning forward toward Elizabeth, as they sat in the sunshine on the deck of the schooner; and as she spoke she glanced along the horizon.
Elizabeth before answering turned her head in the direction in which the land, had it been in sight, would have appeared; but no vision of shore broke the wide circuit of ocean and sky. Then her eyes came back to the little vessel as if to assure herself that she was not alone in this waste of water. Her father sat on the opposite side reading. With a word of reply to Nancy, she fell into silence again. Only, instead of the vague wonder how she should meet the future, her thoughts now turned to the past. It was nine mornings since that consultation with her father in the library, and they had been only one night at sea. It had taken a week to get off. From the first she had counted upon Mrs. Eveleigh’s remonstrances and vehement reproaches of Mr. Royal’s wrong-doing in taking his daughter into such danger. They were only a little more vehement than she had expected. But Mrs. Eveleigh did not know the errand; if she had, that would have made a difference, or, as Elizabeth reflected, she thought that this would have been treated as the strangest part of the affair. But she had kept her own counsel, saying only that her father and she thought it right. Mrs. Eveleigh had been so exasperated by being kept in the dark that she had retained her anger to the very last day. Then she had drowned her resentment in a flood of tears, and declared between her sobs that, frightful as it all was, for she dreaded the very sight of a gun, she would rather go with Elizabeth than have the dear girl set off without any companion. Elizabeth’s reminder that her father and Nancy were to accompany her only called forth the assertion that a maid was no companion, and a man was nothing at such a time. Elizabeth thought that at the time of sieges and battles a man might be considered of some little consequence. But she never argued with Mrs. Eveleigh, and she had quitted her thankful for the good lady’s affection, and glad that Mrs. Eveleigh was to be left behind on such an expedition.
“You’ll never come back,” Mrs. Eveleigh sobbed. “The French ships of war will be sure to gobble up you and your father, too. I know just how it will be. You are a crazy girl, and I don’t know what is the matter with you,” she had added irrelevantly; “and as to your father, you must have bewitched him; he used to have plenty of common sense.”
The matter with Mr. Royal was, that he knew his daughter well enough to be sure that if Archdale was killed during the siege she would feel always that her silence might have given the opportunity for his death. And he knew that to bring upon Elizabeth the miseries of an uneasy conscience would be to kill her by slow torture. Besides, he himself believed in the danger, his own conscience was aroused, and that was not easily put to sleep. But if he had heard the verdict of Mrs. Eveleigh, who knew nothing of the matter, he would not have blamed her so much.
He had hired this little schooner in which they now were at a ruinous rate, and had not been able to do even that until he had pledged himself to pay all damages in case of loss. Governor Shirley had seized the opportunity to send dispatches several days earlier than he had intended. Mr. Royal went with a picked crew, men both honest and skilful. He knew the dangers of French vessels as well as Mrs. Eveleigh did, but his daughter’s persistent assertion: “We shall be murderers,” had overborne every objection.
Elizabeth sitting on deck that morning, was thinking of these things, and tracing in this danger which she was trying to avert, one of the consequences of her frolic on the river that summer evening. Then she remembered that but for that she would perhaps have been Edmonson’s wife, and she said to herself that the Lord had been very merciful to her, and that she would try not to shrink from her duty.
“How fast we are going,” said Nancy again. It was true that the little vessel before a fair wind was flying over the water at a rate that, if kept up, and in the same direction, would soon bring its passengers to their destination. Elizabeth was glad of speed, already it might be too late. And besides, the sooner her errand was done, the sooner she should return with a mind at rest. She began to reckon how long before she should be at home again. In a week, in less time if they were fortunate, they should reach Louisburg. She should not want more than five minutes’ talk with Mr. Archdale. Then it would be home again immediately. Her father had hired the schooner for the very reason that it should not be detailed for any other service, but should bring them back at once. How strange it was, she thought, to spend fourteen days for only five minutes’ conversation, and that, too, with one who was no especial friend except through his engagement to Katie. But for all the weariness she was thankful to do it, and grateful to her father. She hoped that she should not catch even a glimpse of Edmonson, and it seemed improbable that she would. After the siege was over he would probably go to England again. How she wished he were there now, and she quietly at home, where in that case she might have been now.
The next day there was a head wind, and the day following no wind at all. As time went on, it grew evident that it would be more than a week from their starting before they could drop anchor in Cabanus Bay. Dread lest they should be too late began to harass Elizabeth. But she showed no impatience. Her silence was what Nancy noticed most. But, then, Nancy liked talking, and did not enjoy the books which her Mistress had brought with her and read most persistently, or sometimes tried to read, unsuccessfully. Even then they served as a protection against the maid’s talk when she was in too anxious a mood to endure it.
On the morning of the seventeenth they caught sight of the “Little Gibraltar,” but the wind was against them, and it was the afternoon of the next day before the Captain of the schooner could run into the Bay, and go ashore with his dispatches and Mistress Royal’s message to the General.
Elizabeth looked about her with breathless interest, realizing that here she was to find war. It happened that on her arrival there was a lull in the cannonading. Both sides had paused to draw breath, but the lull was far from perfect silence, and to her inexperience this occasional thunder of bursting shells seemed sharp conflict. She said so to the Captain as they drew toward shore.
“Bless yer!” he answered with a laugh. “This ain’ t no thin’ at all, this is nothin’ but child’s play. Wait till yer see it hot and heavy. I s’pose we shall go back to-morrow, though. I’d like to have yer see some good stout work first.”
“Ain’t we in danger here?” inquired Nancy.
The skipper rolled his quid of tobacco in his cheek reflectively a moment. “Well, no,” he said, “I guess nothin’ to speak of. They’re too busy answering the batteries; it’s only the stray shot that comes our way. There’s a thousand chances to one agin’ its hitting us, and I guess we can stand the one.” He looked at Nancy closely to guage the amount of her courage.
“I guess we can,” she answered coolly. This reply seemed to please him. He had before considered Nancy “a nice lookin’ girl;” and now, as he put down “grit” in his mental catalogue of her fascinations, he smiled to himself, and thought of a neat little home on the Salem shore where his mother now presided, and where it was not impossible that some day Nancy might be persuaded to reign. But the demands of the hour recalled him from this dream to his usual brisk attention to realities, and as soon as he had cast anchor, he left the ship in charge of the mate, and went in search of the General.
General Pepperell was in his tent, resting after a hard day’s work. Not only had he been through the camp cheering the soldiers, by imparting to them something of his own indomitable resolution and by seeing personally that everything possible was done for the sufferers in the hospital, but he had also been for hours superintending the arrangements on the new battery that was to do such execution upon the granite walls of Louisburg. Now everything was in readiness and he had ordered two hours of rest before the firing from it should begin. Nearly an hour of that had gone by before he entered his tent for the rest he needed, when almost immediately the messenger reached him.
“Mr. Royal and his daughter here!” he cried. “And Mr. Royal requests to see Captain Archdale? I don’t understand. But I shall hear why from them.” He dispatched an orderly for Stephen who was still at the battery, and then went with the skipper to the little vessel that had brought the unexpected guests. Elizabeth never forgot the kindness of his greeting. In the midst of the strange scene and of preparations for work in which women had no part, the friendliness of his face and tones, and his cordial grasp of her hand made her feel almost at home. She had been sure of courtesy, but she had not dared to look for this, and her eyes grew dim for an instant.
“I suppose that we shall return this evening,” she said after the greetings and inquiries were over and Mr. Royal had explained that in a few minutes all that he had come for could be said to Mr. Archdale. Although after thinking the matter over carefully he had decided that it was Elizabeth, filled with the spirit of her warning, who should herself give her message to Archdale yet he spoke to Pepperell as if she had accompanied him. And when the General said that he had already sent for the young man, Mr. Royal told him that his daughter had that in her pocket for him which, if he knew, it would lend wings to his feet.
“A letter from our charming Mistress Katie,” pronounced Pepperell, smiling at Elizabeth.
“Yes,” she said, and after a little repeated her question of their returning that evening.
“Yes, I know,” said the General. He waited a moment, and then added. “But if you come among soldiers, you will feel the exactions of war. There are those dispatches, you remember, not even read yet” and he touched the breast of his coat, “because I was in such haste to pay my respects to you. Now, I should like to send an answer to these, and I am afraid I shall not have it ready before to-morrow morning; the Commodore will probably write me to-night and I want to include whatever news he may have. Will to-morrow do?”
“Oh, yes, I shall be glad to help the cause, even so little as that,” she answered. Pepperell thanked her for her words, and ignored the look of disappointment that he had seen flit across her face before she spoke.
“We have been putting up a fascine battery within two hundred and fifteen yards of the west gate,” he said, “It will open fire in an hour, and then you will see a cannonade! We have two forty-two pounders there, it will be no child’s play.” Nothing had then hinted at the Titanic scale of modern war engines. Elizabeth’s eyes dilated, but she said nothing. The General sat beside her, and asked how things were going on in Boston, asked about his friends, and many trifling details that neither dispatches nor letters would give him, and that she wondered that he had heart for in the scenes going on about him. Then he told them many particulars of the siege and especially of the terrible labor of dragging the heavy guns from the shore into position, interspersing all this narrative of the life-and-death struggles with amusing anecdotes and bright comments, until she was amazed, and in listening found that she had gained a better knowledge of him than in years of ordinary acquaintance. For she could not have realized by that how many-sided the man was, how full of resources, and how indomitable. She noticed how sympathetically he spoke of the brave fellows he was leading. When he said that the hardships of the campaign and the cold of a severer climate than they had been accustomed to had prostrated numbers of them. Elizabeth saw that it was not only soldiers that he felt he was losing when they died, but men from his own home and neighborhood and in whom he had a personal interest. Then as he sat there, she begged him not to think of her if others needed him but to go.
“This time is at my own disposal,” he answered, adding with a smile. “If the struggle had come, Mistress Royal, I should think of you, no doubt, but I should not give you a moment’s attention. The pointing of the smallest cannon would at the moment be of more importance than all your affairs. A besieging army can have no cry of ‘Place aux dames;’ therefore I shall not invite you to stay after to-morrow. I shall even send you home. Or, lest I should hurt your feelings too much, I will put it this way; I shall send your father home, and he will take you with him.”
Elizabeth laughed; and the conversation went on with its interest increasing, when all at once Pepperell rose, and held out his hand to her in farewell. “I may not see you again until we meet in Boston.” he said, “but if I can, I will come for a moment in the morning.”
She was surprised at his going away so soon after his assurance of being at leisure but as after speaking to her father he stepped over the side of the vessel, she perceived the reason for his sudden departure. His trained eye had caught what the distance had hidden from her, the figure of a man coming rapidly toward the shore.
When the General landed, the keel of the little boat he was in grated on the beach at Stephen Archdale’s feet. With a salute to his commander, the latter sprang into it, and before Elizabeth had recovered her breath, was coming over the ship’s side.
The General walked on without turning his head toward the schooner. Nevertheless, it is true that once he said to himself distinctly. “The Yankee in me does clamor to know what they want of that fellow.”
[Footnote 1: Copyright, 1884, by Frances C. Sparhawk.]
* * * * *
Never you mind the crowd, lad,
Or fancy your life won’t
tell;
The work is the work for a’ that
To him that doeth it well.
Fancy the world a hill, lad;
Look where the millions stop;
You’ll find the crowd at the base,
lad;
There’s always room
at the top.
Courage and faith and patience,
There’s space in the
old world, yet;
The better the chance you stand, lad,
The further along you get.
Keep your eye on the goal, lad,
Never despair or drop;
Be sure that your path leads upward;
There’s always room
at the top.
* * * * *
TWO DAYS WITH THE A.M.C.
By Helen M. Winslow.
It is a divine up-reaching instinct in man that forces him to climb the hills of science, unlock the mysteries of ages, and wrest from the natural forces of earth and air, their well-guarded secrets. Is it the subtle workings of this desire for the mastery over mechanical agencies, this prying into Nature’s secrets, that leads us out into the forest primeval and gives zest to mountain climbing?
Fortune is said to favor the brave. It certainly favored the writer of this article when an opportunity was offered for a two days’ trip with the Appalachian Mountain Club up Mounts Kearsarge South and Cardigan in New Hampshire. A few words in regard to this club. Well known as it has come to be, the objects of its existence are scarcely understood by the majority, even, of Bostonians.
“Oh,” said one, referring to this very trip. “They go off somewhere, climb a mountain, have a jolly time and then come home. It’s about the same thing over and over.”
Very true. But they do more. According to the by-laws, “the objects of the club are to explore the mountains of New England and adjacent regions, both for scientific and artistic purposes, and in general to cultivate an interest in geographical studies.”
In addition they do much to open up new mountain resorts to the public and render the old ones more attractive. They construct new and accurate maps. They not only collect scattered scientific information of all kinds but study to make it available. All this they do by combining effort, comparing notes and interchanging ideas. They hold monthly meetings in Boston, publish a magazine, own quite a library, and have established a reputation second to no similar organization in the country. The club was established in 1876, and the membership to-day of over six hundred is ample proof of its popularity. That their researches are really valuable is demonstrated by the fact that Professor Hitchcock in his geological works quotes them frequently in support of his own theories.
On the seventeenth of June some twenty members of the Appalachian Mountain Club gathered at an early hour in the Lowell station at Boston. The party was unusually small for one of their popular excursions. The majority were young and strong and looked amply fitted for mountain climbing. Yet grave men were there whose silver hair told that they had already climbed life’s rounded hill and saw its westering sun; but elderly people are never old, so long as they remain young in heart and spirits, and pleasant anticipation beamed from the faces of all as the train steamed away toward the north, and the two days’ outing was fairly begun.
The morning was cloudy and a possible rain storm threatened the plans of the Appalachians. But the clerk of the weather-bureau evidently understood the necessity for favorable conditions and issued them accordingly. Before we had reached Canaan, N.H., the clouds had broken away and the afternoon promised to be perfect. We had with us a Harvard professor, a topographical surveyor, an amateur photographer, a Concord philosopher and the champion walker of the club. Apropos of some of the feats of the latter a story was told of the man who walked forty miles in two hours. This was putting the Appalachians entirely in the shade, and the story called forth incredulous remarks. Investigation proved, however, that the Appalachian was not outdone, for the hero of the canard accomplished his feat only by taking a Champlain steamer at Burlington, Vt., and walking deck the entire distance to Rouse’s Point!
After passing Concord we advanced through wilder regions where the swiftly changing views of clustering villages and quiet farm-houses alternated with wooded slopes and glimpses of pond or river forming a series of charming pictures. Nature was at her best and the picturesque hills of New Hampshire were beautiful in all their June finery.
At Penacook the granite monument on Dustin Island was pointed out. In 1697 Hannah Dustin, with her six weeks’ old babe and its nurse, were captured by Indians at Haverhill and brought to the wigwam camp on this island. The babe was killed before her eyes but the mother planned an escape. Awaking the nurse and a white lad who had been taken prisoner also, she took the Indians’ own tomahawks and dispatched the men and one woman. The brave white women then spiked all the cannon save one and taking the scalps of their victims with them, they embarked on the Merrimack, then high with the spring floods, and soon reached Haverhill. Afterwards she was called to Boston, publicly thanked by the General Court and received a grant of fifty pounds. Fifty years later the Indians attacked and massacred the settlers in this valley. Today their descendants, the “Kanucks,” cross the country daily in the modern express trains and find employment in our manufacturing cities.
As we go northward Kearsarge may be seen from the back of the train, now sinking behind the green hills, now rising abruptly from the horizon and looming grandly above the surrounding country. Cardigan does not come into view until we have nearly reached Canaan, whose fair and happy land was our destination. On alighting from the train, amid the crowd of assembled villagers, a three seated carriage and two immense Shaker wagons awaited us. The ride of six miles was a welcome change from the preceding railway travel. Coming from a city where the mercury had reached 96 deg. in the shade but the day before, the fresh invigorating mountain air was like a breath from the open doors of Paradise. The stout horses scrambled up the steep hills altogether unmindful of the wagon-loads of people behind. Perhaps the light hearts and buoyant spirits of the party lessened their avoirdupois and the tonnage was actually less than it seemed!
Billowy mountains, charming valleys, winding streams and picturesque bypaths varied our course over the rural highways. The blackberry bushes were white with bloom and the gardens of the farm-houses gay with peonies and flower-de-luce. After passing a small mica quarry, we came suddenly upon a bend of the road where was revealed a grand sweep of the hazy Green Mountains, and a bewildering view of the New Hampshire hill-country. Shortly afterward we passed the little box-like white building, which serves as both church and town house, where the sixty votes of Dorchester are counted. This building constitutes the entire town of Dorchester. Surely, in view of the stony soil, the inhabitants of the place may be said to show great wisdom by not living there!
By three o’clock we found ourselves at the Mountain House, twelve hundred feet below the summit of Mount Cardigan. This house is nothing more or less than a barn, in one end of which an attempt has been made to make a comfortable shelter for the human family. Here the real work of the day began, although we had already come one hundred and four miles by train and six by teams. No enterprising railroad man has set his seal upon this region and we were forced to pursue the journey by means of the conveyances which nature long ago—(how long, thank fortune, we are not obliged to tell)—at our disposal. But faint heart ne’er climbed a high mountain and with the aid of stout walking-sticks we easily climbed the path which led up under sighing spruces and stunted birch, filled with a fine exhilaration.
On each side and under foot was a profusion of wild flowers. Not June flowers, but those found with us in May, so backward was the season at that altitude. The red and white trillium, the sarsaparilla, Solomon’s seal, “moose-missy” and black-berry bushes, and, farther up, the blue-berry bushes, all hung full of blossoms, a small Alpine flower of seven white petals excited much curious comment, for in spite of its resemblance to the wind-flower, no one seemed able to classify it.
Suddenly some six hundred feet below the summit of Cardigan we came out from the stunted under-growth and found ourselves traversing the smooth granite mass which constitutes the entire mountain top. The rock is full of minute particles of mica, which glitter and flash in the sun like “gems of purest ray serene.” A brisk wind was blowing and the rarefied air infused us with new strength to make the remaining ascent.
Some distance from each other, half way up the rounded cone, lie several huge boulders poised in the bed of what was once a glacial drift. They are of entirely different character from the rock on Cardigan and without doubt came from much farther north. Whence, and when? The course of the drift is also very plainly marked from northeast to southwest. From the character of the rock there is reason to believe that when God said, “Let the dry land appear,” Mount Cardigan was the first to show his head and came from the very bowels of the earth. Hitchcock’s “Geology of New Hampshire” states that these White Mountains appeared above the face of the waters as islands at a very early period of the world’s history. “It would not be surprising,” he says, “if this archipelago covered as much area as New Hampshire and Vermont combined.” If these hoary old mountains could tell us their history since creation, how short-lived and insignificant our own little lives would appear!
Professor Hitchcock has also traced the course of glacial drift among the mountains in a most interesting manner. Glacial action, and marks of scarification are numerous on the north and west sides of them while they are entirely wanting on the southeastern slopes. In some instances the general course of the drift from the northwest was changed by the position of the mountains. For instance, Ragged Mountain and Kearsarge, South, rise abruptly from comparatively level regions and from their proximity to each other gave rise to a different motion of the ice, the marks of which still show its course.
The view from this, the oldest of the mountains is scarcely surpassed by any in the state. To the north, Moosilauke, Chocorua, Lafayette, Mount Washington and the main peaks of the principal White Mountain group lie sharply outlined. The Ossipee Mountain toward the east, the Uncanoonacs in the distance, Ragged and Sunapee and Kearsarge, near neighbors, claimed attention. In the far western horizon Ascutney, Camel’s Hump, Mount Mansfield, and Jay Peak showed hazy and indistinct. Below us the broken ranges of green hills surged like immense billows of some Titanic sea. The fresh verdure of every field and tree made up a landscape seldom equalled in tone of color, and one which amply repaid the climber. But while some were content with looking, other true Appalachians remembered the objects of the club. While one took photographs of the surrounding scenery, far and near, another made profile sketches of the distant peaks; while one attempted a bit of topographical work, another took measurements by means of a powerful telescope; and the results of all were put on record for future reference.
A member of the A.M.C. just returned from Florida had been carrying about some strange looking fruit all day, resembling partly an orange but more nearly a small yellow winter squash. Now, he made himself popular by dispensing great pieces of grape-fruit among the thirsty crowd. It is a necessity of perverse humanity to be thirsty wherever there is no water; and but for the Florida fruit and the canteens which had been filled at the spring on the mountain side, we should have suffered.
Mount Cardigan is but 3,156 feet above the sea-level; but as it stands alone the view on all sides is unobstructed and clear. It did not take us an hour to decide that three thousand feet above the sea, under favorable conditions is quite a sightly place. And we took the homeward path, feeling that the view was worth a dozen times its cost. Forty minutes afterward we arrived at the bottom in the condition of the weak-kneed and trembling saints whom the hymn-book denounces.
An hour of rattling down the hills brought us to Canaan depot again where our special train awaited us. After a refreshing draught of milk at the Cardigan House, from the piazzas of which a fine view of the mountain may be had, we were rapidly whirled away toward Patler Place in Andover.
This village was named for the once famous sleight of hand performer Patler. His house is a cozy, pretty affair, freshly painted and nestled under great embowering trees. Close by is his grave.
Here, too, barges were in waiting to take us to the Winslow House, four miles distant on Mount Kearsarge. Before we had left the train the soft rays of the setting sun had changed the hill-sides to amethyst and deepened the purple gloom of the valleys. Now, as we rode in merry groups of six or eight, over the country by-ways, the new moon slowly touched every tree and shrub with her magical wand until the land with its long, weird shadows and silver radiance seemed to belong to another world than that of day-light.
It was nine o’clock when the Winslow House suddenly revealed itself. An open wood fire burned brightly in the brick fireplace, and in that altitude was a comfort indeed. The ample walls seemed to fairly glow with welcome as we entered. Some of us acknowledged that we were tired; others confessed to sleepiness; but one and all openly declared their hunger. We had only to look at each other to madly accept the theory that mankind was created of dust; but we were not long in disposing of a large amount of surplus material. And then the supper bell,—welcome sound! In view of a cherished reputation for veracity, it would not be wise to state the exact amount of sirloin steak and broiled salmon that disappeared from mortal vision that night at ten o’clock, or to tell how the strawberries and boiled lobster were stored safely away by the A.M.C. We are sworn to secrecy, and although the supper hour was not passed over in silence then—far from it! it must be now.
No one need suppose that after the experiences of the day the representative A.M.C’s. were fatigued sufficiently to make them willing to retire at half-past ten. Besides, nightmare has its horrors, and there was that supper!
It is popularly supposed throughout the country, that Bostonians make an annual pilgrimage on the seventeenth of June to Bunker Hill, and devoutly ascend the monument on their hands and knees. Although circumstances had prevented the A.M.C. party from discharging their debt of gratitude to their ancestors in the prescribed method, they could not forget that it was Bunker Hill Day. One of our gallant and patriotic brethren had been carrying a mysterious bundle about and guarding it with jealous care all day. Now, he produced and displayed—sky-rockets! They went off, soon after, with great success, surprising alike the stately mountain behind us and the little country girl who had come up from the valley below, to see the “Boston folks.”
The powerful telescopes were also set up and observations of the heavens occupied the astronomically inclined for an hour or two. Thus the moons of Jupiter were made to contribute to the evening’s entertainment. The piano, too, was not the instrument of torture usually found masquerading in hotel-parlors, and we finally gravitated towards it and made night hideous with our music and college songs until, to pharaphrase the poet, in to-day already walked to-morrow and it was twelve o’clock,
“My friends,” spoke up one of the gentlemen, “I am very sorry to say that we shall not be able to ascend Mount Kearsarge to-morrow.”
“Why?” exclaimed a dozen anxious voices.
“Because,” was the impressive answer, “it is to-day!”
In the laugh which followed the party said good night and retired.
The Winslow House was named for Admiral Winslow, of the war-ship Keasarge, who was present at the opening of the hotel, and gave the owner a stand of colors. On the parlor table lay a Bible presented by him, as stated by a gilt inscription on the cover. When the gallant commander died, a boulder was taken from the side of Mount Kearsarge for his monument, but the controversy in regard to which of the two Kearsarges the ship had been named for arose about that time and the family of the officer finally decided not to use the boulder. It has been pretty well settled, at last, that the mountain in Merrimack County, designated by Superintendent Patterson as Kearsarge South, is the one which gave the famous ship its name. Under the shadow of it, too, was laid the body of the soldier of the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment who fell at Baltimore, exclaiming with his dying breath: “All hail to the Stars and Stripes;” although afterward he was removed to lie near the soldiers’ monument at Lowell. The ancient spelling of this monument was Carasage, and later, Kyar Sarga; but as early as 1804 the laws of New Hampshire give it as Kearsage. The local spelling of Kearsarge North, until a comparatively recent period, was Kiarsarge. It is still called Pequaket.
Early the next morning, two bold Appalachians rose early and took a run up the mountain, getting back to breakfast and making the descent of nearly 1,200 feet in eighteen minutes! The climb was represented as more difficult than that of the day before. We did not find it so, however, as we proceeded with the reinforcements furnished by a hearty breakfast; the clear bracing air of the morning was delightful. The song-sparrows, perched at a safe distance, poured forth floods of melody, the Peabody bird added his high weird note, while other wild birds occasionally chimed in. The path led up through forests of black spruce whose sighing branches whispered softly over our heads. Every one was in excellent humor and had a capital story or a bit of geological scientific or botanical wisdom. The wild-flowers were scarcer than on Cardigan but there was greater variety of ferns. Half way up, a tiny spring welled up in the pathway. Our grave philosopher, as well-versed in mystical wood-craft as metaphysics, cut a strip of birch-bark from one of the over-hanging trees and deftly fashioned an Indian drinking-cup. Working from the idea of a birch-bark canoe somebody offered the cup-full, as a “schooner of water.” On being asked to explain her nautical terms, the joker protested ignorance and entirely disowned her far-fetched joke.
**
As we advanced, here and there, under the white birches or between the dense growth of spruce, broad glimpses were visible of the townships below. Suddenly, vegetation ceased and we were again on the bare rock with several hundred feet between us and the rude structure called, by courtesy, the Summit House. Beside the latter, we already descried our companions, not lost but gone before; and we find ourselves in the awkward predicament of the man with three hands—a right, a left and a little behind-hand.
The top of Kearsarge is composed of andalusite schist. The marks of glacial action are even more distinct than on Cardigan, while the stratification is very curious. When we reached the top, the first-comers were already busy with surveys, profile sketches and photographs. As we looked at Cardigan looming up grandly in the northwest, we were proud of our work of the day before. The view from the two mountains, only twenty miles apart, is of course much the same. Kearsarge is in exact line with Wauchusct, the Pack Monadnocks and Moosilauke. These, except the first, could be plainly seen. Mount Washington, seventy miles distant, Lafayette, Chocorua, Tridyranid, the Twin Mountains, and Franconia Notch formed a sharp, clear picture against the northern sky, and were flanked by scores of smaller mountains. The green rolling country, flecked by numerous ponds and rivers, stretched away for miles at our feet, to a line of blue, hazy mountains. The Black-water hills, Sunapee and dozens of other well-known mountains seemed from our standpoint hardly more than good-sized haystacks. So, perhaps, will our greatest earthly achievements look, when viewed from the heights of eternity.
By noon a blue haze had crept over the horizon and was spreading over the whole landscape. But we had scored a victory over it by coming early.
“To have the great poetic heart,
Is more than all the climber’s art.”
In some sense, we each felt the meaning of the lines, as we turned from Kearsarge top and made the gradual descent. There is a precipitous bridle-path which shortens the distance in proportion as it increases fatigue. The majority of us were unwilling to tempt fate by adopting it, and took the easier way. As we stopped occasionally in a shady nook to rest, we severally confessed that scraps of Lowell’s matchless poem had been floating nebulously in the brain ever since the clouds had disappeared the day before. Two such days as we had been blessed with are rare, even in June. Up there in the forest primeval, in the happy shining weather, we were constantly proving that there was
“Not a leaf or a blade too mean
To be some happy creature’s palace.”
If we waxed sentimental, something must be forgiven the lavish summer.
At the hotel, the bountiful dinner was garnished with the best of all sauces. Then, reluctantly indeed after our two days’ tramping, we started for Boston, arriving there a little past seven the same evening. We had had unprecedented weather, and a well-planned and perfectly executed trip. Never was there a pleasanter excursion or a more successful outing. If the path up the hill of life were no more difficult than that up Cardigan! If all earthly troubles could be as easily surmounted as Kearsarge! Possibly they might be if we went forth to meet them with the same stout heart and determined spirit.
“Daily with souls that cringe and
plot,
We Sinais climb and know it not”
* * * * *
By Rev. Charles Babbidge, Chaplain.
Should a motto ever be needed for some prospective medal commemorative of the “Old Sixth Reg.” none would seem to be more appropriate than a quotation from Virgil,—“Primus tentare viam.” Though but little honor attaches to being first, where all were equally ready to be foremost, still, the “chances of war” gave some little advantage to this fortunate military body. Its ready re-response to the call “To Arms,” served to awaken a similar enthusiasm in all the other military organizations of the Commonwealth. The admirable state of discipline to which the regiment had been brought by its accomplished and efficient commander, Col. Edward F. Jones, and his subordinate officers, was fully competent to secure the respect and confidence of the multitudes of patriotic citizens with whom it came in contact after leaving Massachusetts; and it is only doing justice to the soldiers of this regiment to say, that amid all the excitement of the commencement of a campaign, and all the flattering attentions and entertainments which they received from every quarter, and on all occasions, they maintained the solid, steady deportment of soldiers well trained, of citizens accustomed to good society, and of patriots ready and willing to do whatever these qualities imply and require.
It can hardly be said that “the order to march” came unlooked for, though it most certainly was sudden. The tender of the services of the regiment had long since been in the hands of Gov. Andrew; meetings of the field and staff officers had been held; there was a free and thorough interchange of opinions and sentiments among the line officers; and not a single soldier could be found who had not fully digested all the particulars of a possible future.
The ready response of our citizen-soldiers to the call of the governor furnishes an apt illustration of the peculiar character of our people. Under a government that requires the constant maintenance of a strong military force, “General Orders” would have been issued to the various camps and garrisons scattered throughout the country. When danger threatened us it became manifest at once, that every peaceful village was a garrison, and every city a fortified camp. It was often a subject of merriment while we, like Christopher North were “under canvas,” to relate the particular circumstances of time, place, and occupation at the moment when each of us found himself suddenly transformed into a soldier. Each had his story to tell of his numerous “hair’s breadth escapes,” as through mud, snow and darkness he made his way to the appointed rendezvous, on the morning of April 16th.
In Lowell the regiment paraded in Huntington Hall, and there received a cordial welcome from the people of that city. Taking the cars we arrived in Boston about noon, and were assigned quarters in one of the armories in Faneuil Hall. With a view to better accomodations, the regiment in the afternoon marched to Boylston Hall, and there prepared for as comfortable a bivouac as circumstances permitted.
Up to this time the weather had been as gloomy as war and dripping clouds could make it. Having (figuratively) pitched our tents in Boylston Hall, the discipline of camp-life was at once established, and communication with the world outside, was largely cut off. This however did not interfere with the free admission of many tokens of regard from friends outside, in the form of refreshments of various kinds.
Two memorable incidents of the evening will long be remembered. The pretty and graceful daughter of Col. Jones was adopted, with all the honors, as “Daughter of the Regiment”; and secondly the comfortable and becoming overcoats prepared with wise forethought for the regiment were issued. The motley outer-garments, in which, up to this moment, we had found shelter from the storm, were at once discarded. In our new garments we not only found great comfort;—we also felt that the inner as well as the outer man could boast a resemblance to “regular” troops.
On the morning of the 17th we were marched to the State House, then and there to receive the salutations of the Governor, and also to receive, what at the moment struck some of us as a pretty forcible reminder that we were now occupying positions that were entirely new to us.
Drawn up in military array in Doric Hall we were each of us “donated” two blue flannel shirts and some corresponding under garments. This gratuitous equipment implied service. To those of us who within a twelvemonth had figured in the hall over our heads, as representatives of the sovereign people, it indicated a very marked change of circumstances.
Among other tokens of the confidence reposed in our patriotism and prowess, a heavy cavalry revolver was bestowed upon each of the field and staff officers. As these could not be conveniently carried, on the return march, by those who had been made the happy recipients of these bulky favors, they were bundled together and consigned for safe-keeping to the Chaplain, to be borne on the line of march back to Boylston Hall. Why that functionary should have been chosen to carry a whole armory of weapons, in the sight of the admiring crowds that lined the streets of Boston remains a question. Opinions are equally divided as to whether, as chaplain he would be most likely to prevent a hasty and rash use of fire-arms; or whether, he was de facto a “common carrier,” on the ground that ministers were made and designed for “bearing burdens.”
Early in the afternoon, the regiments entered the cars of the Worcester Railroad, and the march to Washington was fairly begun. So long as daylight permitted, tokens of the uprising of the people of the commonwealth were everywhere visible; and when darkness had settled down around us, we caught glimpses of excited multitudes as the cars dashed on without stopping, by the brilliantly illuminated depots and settlements along the route. Our reception at Springfield was of a truly jubilant character. Refreshments in great profusion, and of the most appetizing kind were furnished and received a most cordial welcome within our hungry ranks. The streets were illuminated, and cannon thundered in every direction. Our stay was a short one; and we rattled on and on until the morning revealed the fact that we were in Connecticut and not far from New York.
It will require a more gifted pen than the one that traces these lines to picture the march of the “Old Sixth” through the city of New York. Never before had so deep because so peculiar an enthusiasm pervaded the people of that vast metropolis. Patriotism, under its normal and customary forms, had, on many previous occasions, been wrought up to an intense height; but now it was not to celebrate their national independence, but to secure their national existence, or rather, to settle the question whether the American people were, or were not a Nation.
At the St. Nicholas and other places, the wants of the regiment were sumptuously provided for. At the Astor House, the field and staff officers were entertained in a manner that left nothing to be desired.
Once more on the march, the regiment passed through the crowded streets, everywhere receiving welcome plaudits until they reached the ferry that conducted them to Hoboken, and the places en route to Baltimore and Washington. As we passed into the ferry boats to cross the river, a voice was heard above the tumult of the place and hour, “Good luck to you, boys, but some of you will never return by this route;” a prediction speedily fulfilled. Within about twenty-four hours, three of our number had been transferred to a higher department.
The passage through Delaware to Philadelphia was not marked by any incidents worthy of notice. Their long and weary pilgrimage had begun to change a brisk, wide-awake regiment into a common-place body of weary pilgrims, glad to find a shelter, without much questioning as to what it might be. Quarters were assigned us in the Gerard House which happened at that time to be unoccupied. For a brief period quiet ruled the hour, and the weary soldier had begun his dreams of home and happiness long before he was ready to stretch his limbs upon the mattresses that covered the floors of the spacious hotel.
Suddenly the “Long-roll” was heard echoing along the streets and through the halls of the Gerard House. The accoutrements and garments that had been doffed in readiness for sleep were hastely resumed; and at the word “Fall in,” every man was in his place.
The “weight of affliction” in this crisis fell upon the field and staff officers. They had but just assembled in the drawing-room of the Continental Hotel, and gone through with those preliminary forms that are quite as indicative of a good appetite as of good manners, and were quiet taking their places at the table, amid the sumptuous surroundings of a dining hall at that time scarcely equalled on the continent, when Col. Jones entered the apartment, with the abrupt salutation, “Gentlemen, to your posts; we start for Baltimore immediately, the regiment awaits the order to march.” “Vae mihi!” the writer of this paper felt that he might, under the circumstances of the moment, appropriate a few minutes of time’s rapid flight to contemplate in sorrow and silence the scene of disappointment and woe. The little he still retained of classic lore brought back images of the Harpies, as he had read of them in Virgil. And even Sancho Panza thrust in his bullet head, with an asinine smile, as the writer recalled poor Sancho’s distress at not sharing the feast so tantalizingly spread before him.
But, “hurry up” became the word when the drums and fifes gave notice that the regiment was on the move, and that somebody would “get left” if they did not practise the “Pas redouble.”
* * * * *
By Teresa Herrick.
I watch the mighty breakers rear, and
dash
Against the shore,
I hear the sad complaining of the sea;
Forevermore
There rises in my soul a ceaseless song,
A lonely wail;
A yearning for the golden days to come,
A craving to be deluged in that Sea
Whose waves are loves
Unutterable.
And now I see the gray mist creeping down
Upon the sea.
The bright blue waves are hidden from
my sight;
Ah me, ah me,
Thou too, O Sea of God’s Immensity
From me art screened;
But till the mists be lifted up I wait,
Wait patiently and long, then will I plunge
Beneath Thy waves
O wondrous Sea!
* * * * *
By Samuel Roads, Jr.
AUTHOR OF “HISTORY AND TRADITIONS OF MARBLEHEAD.”
The news of the fall of Fort Sumter aroused the entire North to action. The great civil war which had so long been threatened could no longer be averted, and in every town and hamlet, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the people rose as one man to defend the integrity of the Union.
On the 15th of April, President Lincoln issued his first proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand militia for a three months’ service. The news was received in Marblehead, Mass., late in the afternoon of that day, and the three militia companies were at once notified by their respective commanders to be in readiness to take the early morning train for Boston. These companies were: The Marblehead Sutton Light Infantry, Company C, Eighth Regiment, commanded by Capt. Knott V. Martin; The Lafayette Guards, Company B, Eighth Regiment, commanded by Capt. Richard Phillips; and the Glover Light Guards, Company H, Eighth Regiment, commanded by Capt. Francis Boardman.
The morning of Tuesday, the 16th of April, broke cold and stormy. Notwithstanding the rain and sleet which rendered the cold weather uncomfortable in the extreme, the streets of Marblehead were filled with an excited throng of people. Wives and mothers and fathers and children were represented there in the dense crowd, all anxious to speak a farewell word to the soldiers on their departure. The first companies to leave town were those commanded by Captains Martin and Boardman, which marched to the depot and took the half-past seven o’clock train for Boston. Captain Phillips’ company took the train which left Marblehead about an hour and a half later.
As the trains slowly left the depot, the cheers of the assembled multitude were re-echoed by the soldiers in the cars. “God bless you!” “Good-by!” resounded on all sides; and it was not until the last car had disappeared in the distance, that the great crowd began to disperse.
Of the arrival of the Marblehead companies in Boston there is little need for me to write. The testimony of such eminent witnesses as Adjutant-general Schouler and General E.W. Hinks cannot be disputed, and we quote it verbatim.
“There has been some controversy in military circles,” wrote General Schouler, “as to which company can claim the honor of first reaching Boston. I can answer, that the first were the three companies of the Eighth Regiment belonging to Marblehead, commanded by Captains Martin, Phillips and Boardman. I had been at the State House all night; and early in the morning, rode to the arsenal at Cambridge, to ascertain whether the orders from headquarters to send in arms, ammunition, overcoats and equipments had been properly attended to. Messengers had also been stationed at the different depots, with orders for the companies, on their arrival, to proceed at once to Faneuil Hall, as a northeasterly storm of sleet and rain had set in during the night, and had not abated in the morning. On my return from Cambridge, I stopped at the Eastern Railroad depot. A large crowd of men and women, notwithstanding the storm, had gathered there, expecting the arrival of troops. Shortly after eight o’clock, the train arrived with the Marblehead companies. They were received with deafening shouts from the excited throng. The companies immediately formed in line, and marched by the flank directly to Faneuil Hall, the fifes and drums playing “Yankee Doodle,” the people following and shouting like madmen, and the rain and sleet falling piteously, as if to abate the ardor of the popular welcome. And thus it was that the Marblehead men entered Faneuil Hall on the morning of the 16th of April.”
The testimony of General Hinks, who at the breaking out of the war was Lieutenant-colonel of the Eighth Regiment, is interesting as an important historical statement, and is as follows:
“On Monday, April 15, 1861, at quarter-past two o’clock, in reply to an offer of my services made in the morning of that day, I received from Governor Andrew a verbal command to summon the companies of the Eighth Regiment, by his authority, to rendezvous at Faneuil Hall at the earliest possible hour. Leaving Boston on the half-past two o’clock train, I proceeded to Lynn, and personally notified the commanding officers of the two companies in that city, and from thence telegraphed to Captain Bartlett at Newburyport, and Captain Centre of Gloucester, and then drove to Beverly and summoned the company there; and from thence hastened to Marblehead, where I personally notified the commanding officers of the three Marblehead companies. I found Captain Martin in his slaughter-house, with the carcass of a hog, just killed, and in readiness for the “scald.” On communicating to the captain my orders, I advised him to immediately cause the bells of the town to be rung, and to get all the recruits he could. Taking his coat from a peg, he seemed for a moment to hesitate about leaving his business unfinished, and then turned to me, and with words of emphatic indifference in regard to it, put the garment on, with his arms yet stained with blood and his shirt-sleeves but half rolled down, and with me left the premises to rally his company.
“On Tuesday, April 16, I was directed to remain on duty at Faneuil Hall, and during the forenoon the following named companies arrived there and reported for duty, to wit;—
“1. Companies C, Eighth Regiment, forty muskets, Capt. Knott V. Martin, and H, Eighth Regiment, Capt. Francis Boardman, both of Marblehead, which place they left at half-past seven o’clock A.M. and arrived in Boston at about nine o’clock.
“2. Company D, Fourth Regiment, thirty-two muskets, Sergt. H.F. Wales, left home about nine o’clock, and arrived at about ten A.M.
“3. Company B, Eighth Regiment, forty muskets, Capt. Richard Phillips, of Marblehead, left home at nine o’clock, and arrived in Faneuil Hall about eleven A.M.
“The above is substantially a true record, as will appear by reference to the files of the “Journal” of that date, and is prompted only by a desire to do justice to Captain Martin and the patriotic men of Marblehead, who, on the outbreak of the Rebellion, were the first to leave home, the first to arrive in Boston, and subsequently, under my command, the first to leave the yard of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, to repair and relay the track in the march through Maryland to relieve the beleaguered capitol of the Nation.”
On the morning after the departure of the companies, thirty more men left Marblehead to join them. The greatest enthusiasm prevailed throughout the town, and men everywhere were ready and anxious to enlist. Of the patriotic spirit of the people, no better evidence can be given than that contained in the reply of Governor Andrew to a gentleman who asked him if any more men would be needed. “For heaven’s sake,” replied the governor, “don’t send any more men from Marblehead, for it is imposing on your goodness to take so many as have already come!”
The citizens were not less prompt to act than those who had rallied for the defence of the nation. On the 20th of April, a town meeting was held to provide for the families of the soldiers, and the old town hall was crowded to repletion. Mr. Adoniram C. Orne was chosen moderator. The venerable town clerk, Capt. Glover Broughton, a veteran of the War of 1812, was there beside the moderator, his hands tremulous with emotion, awaiting the action of his fellow-citizens. “It was voted that the town treasurer be authorized to hire the sum of five thousand dollars, to be distributed for the relief of the families of those who have gone or are going to fight the battles of their country.” A committee of five persons was chosen to repair to the assessors’ room and report the names of ten persons to act as distributors of the fund. The town was divided into districts, and the following gentlemen were chosen as a distributing committee, namely: Messrs, Thomas Main, John J. Lyon, Frederick Robinson, William Courtis, William Litchman, Stephen Hathaway, Jr., James J.H. Gregory, John C. Hamson, Jr., Richard Tutt, Joshua O. Bowden.
No resolutions were adopted. The times called for action, and “Factis non verbis.” was the motto of the hour. But human nature must find some vent for enthusiasm, and we are informed in the records, by the faithful clerk, that “three cheers were then given.” They probably shook the building for genuine Marble-headers are blessed with strong lungs, and can never cheer by rule.
The patriotism of the ladies of Marblehead at this time and throughout the entire period of the war cannot be overestimated. With loving hearts and willing hands, they contributed their time, their labor, and their money for the benefit of those who had gone forth to battle. The work of some was of a public nature, and the deeds of these are recorded; but the only record of hundreds who worked quietly in their own homes was written on the grateful hearts of the soldiers for whom they labored.
On the 22d of April a meeting of the ladies was held at the town hall, and a Soldiers’ Aid Society was organized. The object was to perform such work as was necessary for the comfort of the soldiers, and to furnish articles of clothing, medicines, and delicacies for use in the hospitals. Mrs. Maria L. Williams was elected president. That lady subsequently resigned, and Mrs. Margaret Newhall became president, and Mrs. Mary M. Oliver, secretary.
On the following day, eighteen ladies met at the Sewall Grammar School-house, on Spring Street, and organized a committee to solicit money for the benefit of the soldiers. The following are the names of the ladies who composed this committee:—Miss Mary E. Graves, President; Miss Mary A. Alley, Secretary; Miss Mary L. Pitman, Treasurer; Mrs. Mary Glover, Mrs. Hannah Hidden, Miss Harriet Newhall, Miss Tabitha Trefry, Mrs. Hannah J. Hathaway, Mrs. John F. Harris, Miss Amy K. Prentiss, Miss Sarah E. Sparhawk, Miss Hannah J. Woodfin, Miss Lizzie Cross, Miss Mary A. Cross, Mrs. Hannah Doak, Miss Alicia H. Gilley, Miss Carrie Paine, Miss Mary E. Homan.
In less than one week from the time of their organization the ladies of this committee had collected the sum of $508.17. The teachers of the public schools generously contributed six per cent of their salaries for the year in aid of the object; and there was a disposition manifested by the people generally, to give something, however small the amount.
Stirring reports were now received from the companies at the seat of war. The blockading of the railroad to Baltimore by the Secessionists; the seizure of the steamer Maryland; and the saving of the old frigate Constitution, in which their fathers fought so valiantly, caused the hearts of the people to swell with pride, as they related the story one to another. The men of Captain Boardman’s company were the first to board “Old Ironsides,” and a delegation of them helped to man her on the voyage to New York. The sufferings of their soldier boys, who were obliged
Some of these letters were so full of patriotic sentiment that they should be preserved to testify of the spirit of the men of Marblehead who participated in the struggle for national life. I have space only for one of these, which is quoted in full because it is so characteristic of the heroic old veteran who wrote it.
“HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
WASHINGTON CITY, April 27, 1861.
“Dear Sir: We arrived in Washington yesterday after a great deal of hardship and privation, living for thirty-six hours at a time on one small loaf to a man; water a great part of the time very scarce, and not of a very good quality. But the men bore it almost without a murmur. The Eighth Regiment had the honor of taking the noble old frigate Constitution out of the dock at Annapolis, and placing her out of reach of the Secessionists. The Eighth came from Annapolis to Washington, in company with the New York Seventh,—God bless them. They shared with us their last morsel; and the two regiments together have laid railroad tracks, built bridges, run steam-engines, and contracted an eternal friendship, which has been cemented by deeds of daring for each other. We have encamped in corn-fields, on railroad embankments, with one eye open while sleeping; and have opened R.R. communication between Annapolis and Washington, for all troops which may hereafter want to pass that way.
“Give my love to all friends of
the Stars and Stripes, and my eternal
hatred to its enemies.
“Yours Respectfully,
“KNOTT V. MARTIN. To WM. B. BROWN, Esq.”
During the latter part of April, active measures were taken to recruit another company to join those already in the field. In a few davs the “Mugford Guards,” a full company of fifty-seven men, was organized, and Captain Benjamin Day was commissioned as commander. Every effort was made to get the new company in readiness for departure as soon as possible. The men were without uniforms, and the school teachers at once voted to furnish the materials for making them, at their own expense. Mr. John Marr, the local tailor, offered his services as cutter, and they were gratefully accepted. On Sunday, May 5, the ladies of the Soldiers Aid Society, with a large number of others, assembled at Academy Hall, and industriously worked throughout the entire day and evening to make up the uniforms.
On the following day, the town voted to appropriate the sum of $400 to furnish the company with comfortable and necessary clothing.
On the 7th of June another meeting was held, and the town voted to borrow a sum not exceeding ten thousand dollars, to be applied by the selectmen in aid of the families of volunteers.
On the morning of Monday, June 24, the new company took its departure for the “seat of war.” The soldiers were escorted to the entrance of the town by the Mugford Fire Association and a large concourse of citizens. Almost the entire community assembled in the streets to say “farewell,” and to bid them “God speed.” On arriving at the locality known as the “Work-house Rocks,” the procession halted, and the soldiers were addressed by William B. Brown, Esq., in behalf of the citizens.
The soldiers embarked for Boston in wagons which were in waiting, and departed amid the deafening cheers of the citizens.
On Thursday, August 1, the three Marblehead companies arrived home. Arrangements had been made to give them an enthusiastic welcome. At three o’clock in the afternoon a procession was formed, consisting of the Marblehead Band, the “Home Guards,” the boards of town officers, the entire fire department, and the scholars of the public schools. An interesting feature of the procession was thirteen young ladies, representing the original States, wearing white dresses, and red, white, and blue veils. The arrival of the train bringing the soldiers was announced by the ringing of bells, the firing of guns, and the joyful acclamations of the people. They were received at the depot at about six o’clock P.M., and escorted to the “Town House” where an address of welcome was delivered by Jonathan H. Orne, Esq., a member of the board of selectmen.
On the afternoon of the following day, the veterans were given a grand reception. The procession was again formed, and they were escorted about town to Fort Sewall, where a dinner was served.
Shortly after the return of the companies, Capt. Knott V. Martin resigned as commander of the Sutton Light Infantry, and recruited a company for the Twenty-third Regiment. More than half the members of this company were enlisted in Marblehead. They left for the seat of war during the month of November.
It does not fall within the province of this article to trace the fortunes of the sons of Marblehead through the long and cruel war. Their experience, however, was not unlike that of thousands who suffered and died for the nation. With patient endurance and the fortitude of martyrs, they drank to the dregs the bitter cup of war. Through the long and fatiguing marches, in the many hard fought battles, and in the hopeless agony of life in the prison-pens, they were manly and true. It is unnecessary to say more. By the self-sacrificing devotion of heroes like these, the nation was saved.
* * * * *
By Sidney Maxwell.
The autumn day is almost spent. And
yet
No length’ ning shadows mark the
sun’s decline,
For all is shadowed by the cold, gray
mist
Which long has driven with the fitful
wind,
And still it is not gone. How chill
the air!
It seems but yesterday that summer’s
breath,
Sultry and dry, distressed the thirsty
fields—
And now the skies, repentant of their
fault,
Will more than make amends. It rains
again,
Beating a doleful measure on the pane,
Sobbing in sad, wild cadence through the
street
While ever ’mid the rising, falling
strains
The eaves drop notes as those of muffled
drum,
Alone in rhythm, save, perchance, the
beat
Of some tired horse’s hoofs, as,
homeward bound,
He treads the flooded pavement stones.
And now
The sun, weary of contest for the day,
Forsakes the scene and sinks away to rest,
Leaving the world to darkness and to rain.
* * * * *
The Democrats of Massachusetts are perplexed in regard to the choice of a candidate for gubernatorial honors. In their dilemma they seem indisposed to heed the counsel of the venerable Dutchman who, on a certain critical occasion, asserted that it was not wise to “swap horses while crossing a stream.”
It so happens that in this present year the Democratic party throughout the country is crossing a stream, a deep and muddy one which divides its former prestige from its future hopes and prospects. The wise and foolish members of the party are at loggerheads. Both have taken into their confidence an anomalous contingent which is neither in sympathy, nor even in alliance with them as regards principles. The Mugwumps, so called, whose only recommendation in politics is, that they have a well-filled purse and know how to use it to bolster up what they are pleased to designate as their “independence,” after having bitterly opposed the Democratic party, in season and out of season, now join hands with their deluded brethren for a grand all hands round. By their help a President of the United States has been elected, by their dictation his policy has been mapped out, and by their threatening attitude the entire administration is controlled. A similar condition of affairs was never before known in the history of American politics.
Now, the Independent Republican will always be a Republican in principles. The same honest motives which impelled him to oppose the chosen candidates of a majority of the Republican party, at the last national canvass, will again and always prompt him to oppose a Simon-pure Democrat of the Democrats. So long as he can have his own way, he will deny an equal right to his political neighbor. One thing is very evident, and that is, in Massachusetts the Independents are bound to rule so long as the Democratic party will continue to let them; and that the administration encourages this state of affairs is alike evident to all careful observers. It would be easy to make some very interesting disclosures on this theme, and it is not improbable that they will be made very shortly.
But we began by asserting that the party in the old Bay State is in a quandary. It has reached a point when one of two alternatives must be chosen,—either to force an issue with its allies, as well as with its Republican opponents, by nominating a downright, old-fashioned Democrat for the governorship; or, acquiescing with the wishes of its allies, to attempt a quasi victory over its opponents. In the former case defeat would be honorable, though defeat is by no means a foregone conclusion; in the latter case a victory is probable which would be worse than a defeat for the Democrats. We may not presume to give any advice in this matter; and yet it would seem that some well-intentioned and honest advice is needed. If there is to-day a true-blue, a frank and out-spoken Democratic newspaper in the city of Boston, we do not know its name. Our esteemed contemporaries of so-called Democratic persuasion, in this cultured city, are either bridled by the administration or are timid in expressing their convictions. Why has it never occurred to any one of them to urge the selection of a candidate that has not allied himself with the new gods in Israel,—a stanch, dyed-in-the-wool, old-fashioned Jackson Democrat, such for example as the HONORABLE CHARLES LEVI WOODBURY? He has always been an ornament to his party, wise and prudent in his counsels, broad in his scholarship and still broader in his views, untrammelled in his profession of honest principles, and true to the faith. He was never known to wander after strange gods: he has never paraded before the eyes of the public, clad in a Joseph’s coat of many colors; he has never sought the emolument or the honor of public office, and yet, if we are not greatly mistaken, his scrupulous fidelity to party principles, his unswerving integrity, and the confidence which men of all parties repose in him, have merited for him as high an honor as lies within the gift of the people. There are but few such men in Massachusetts, and their worth is only comprehended when they are compared with that of the aristocratic dudes whom President Cleveland has thus far smiled upon in this state.
The Massachusetts Democrats have this year a grand opportunity to assert their independence, and to set a wholesome example to the party in other states. They can do no safer, wiser, or more honorable thing than to nominate Judge Woodbury, a Democrat of Democrats, as their standard bearer.
The Boston Evening Record is a sample of daily journalism that is getting to be rather common nowadays. Like many other of its contemporaries, it seems to be impressed with the idea that the province of a newspaper is to coin facts rather than to chronicle them; and that editorial ability consists in getting away from the truth as far as possible.
In a recent issue, it comments on General Butler’s article in the North American Review, and more particularly upon the reason why the General did not desire the Republican nomination for the Vice Presidency in 1864, expressed by him as follows:—
Being made to sit as presiding officer over the senate, to listen for four years to debates more or less stupid, in which I can take no part or say a word, nor even be allowed a vote upon any subject which concerns the welfare of the country, except when my enemies might think my vote would injure me in the estimation of the people, and therefore, by some parliamentary trick, make a tie on such question, so I should be compelled to vote; and then, at the end of four years (as nowadays no Vice President is ever elected President), and because of the dignity of the position I had held, not to be permitted to go on with my profession, and therefore with nothing left for me to do save to ornament my lot in the cemetery tastefully, and get into it gracefully and respectably, as a Vice President should do.
The Record asserts that, “this is about as near the truth as Butler ever gets,” and then goes on to make some additional statements which, to say the least, are exceedingly interesting, and proofs of which the Editor’s Table respectfully requests.
The Record says; “It is true that his (Butler’s) name was proposed for the nomination for Vice President in 1864.”
Upon whose authority does this assertion rest, and by whom was General Butler’s name thus proposed?
The Record says:—“It is also true that he (Butler) heard of it, and objected to the plan not for the reasons he now gives, but because he ‘didn’t want to run on the ticket with Abe Lincoln.’"
Intensely interesting this, an important fact it would seem for the future historian. But,—will the Record please quote its authority?
The Record says:—“That this was the ground for his (Butler’s) refusal to take the nomination, in case it should be offered to him, was well known to those who were informed of the exact state of affairs at the time.”
The historian is still incredulous. All this “was well known to those who were informed,” etc.,—undoubtedly, but who were these persons? Will the Record cite the name of one living man thus informed? Did General George A. Gordon know anything about it: and if not, why not?
The Record says:—“Butler, in the last days of the war, uttered an insult to the President who was shortly to be made a martyr.”
Well, this is really a serious charge, and the public certainly will be interested in knowing what the “insult” was. Will the Record kindly explain? For the present, the subject may rest here. In the name of truth and justice, however, the Editor’s Table humbly requests that the Evening Record will enlighten its contemporaries.
* * * * *
The Republican newspapers have all been pleased to remark that President Cleveland has done a very decent thing by refusing to appoint as post-master at Mr. Blaine’s home, in Augusta, the Democratic editor, who “was virulently active in publishing particularly unclean falsehoods concerning the Republican candidate last fall.” Mr. Blaine had a perfect right to object, and he exercised the right, to the appointment of Morton; and likewise, the President had a perfect right not to heed the objection,—a right, however, which he did not exercise. The action of the President therefore commends itself to the right-thinking men of all parties.
So far as the Editor’s Table can remember, this is the first opportunity that the Republican newspapers have improved to say anything good of President Cleveland, who, it is not forgotten, was a target for as virulent and uncalled for abuse as was ever heaped upon any known American citizen. Magnanimity is always in order even in politics.
* * * * *
Civil Service Reform seems to-day to be the mare of the Mugwumps and the nightmare of everybody else. The eloquence or, if you please, the waste of words which the minority employ in advocating its deceptive principles, is only to be contrasted with the almost ludicrous indifference with which both Republican and Democratic majorities regard it. Thoughtful people are, at this time, more concerned with the prospective treatment of the tariff problem.
Now, it is neither our purpose nor desire to add to the literature of discussion, on this important theme; but one thought which occurs to us may here be submitted in the form of a question. People who talk much on tariff topics are supposed to be interested in the same, and to have some reason, good, bad, or indifferent, for advancing their diverse arguments.
To all such, the inquiry may be addressed:—Are you sure that you believe in a “protective” tariff because you think it is a public benefit, or because you think it is a private benefit?
And again:—Does “protective” tariff protect? If it does,—whom?
Last autumn, the cry arose throughout the land that free trade meant the destruction of home labor, and the “introduction of the pauper labor of Europe,” or at least a competition at home with the pauper labor of Europe. Well, some very dismal pictures have been drawn of the condition of the pauper labor of Europe, and when thinking of them, it must be confessed that one does not like to run any risks.
But suppose that we widen the thought a little. At this very moment, the iron monopoly of this country is raising a fund to head off a tariff revision, or to bring about an increased duty. What can be said of the Iron Monopoly? This, as one fact; that in Pennsylvania, it employs miners at fourteen dollars a month, charges them five dollars a month each for a tenement in which to live, and charges
We assert that this is no fanciful picture. It is the absolute truth, with the worst untold. Monopoly is fond of calling these pitiable men “Molly Maguires,”—“a dangerous class that must be carefully watched!” These men are protected, and their industry and their entire living afford a charming picture of the results of the “protective” system, so far as the Iron Monopoly is concerned. With such facts as these to ponder over, and with the additional knowledge that there is not a single person today employed in a cotton or woolen mill in the United States who is not taxed in the name of protection, to enrich the corporation for whom he labors, it seems almost inexplicable that honest men should neglect one of the greatest and, as God knows, one of the most threatening problems of this age and country, and waste words and precious moments over that most arrant humbug—Civil Service Reform. The People are more important than the Government: for to-day the Government is the politicians.
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September 10.—The seventy-second anniversary of our first great Naval victory was celebrated at Newport, R.I. The most important incident was the unveiling of the statue erected to the honor of its hero. Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. The order of exercises included a brilliant oration by the Hon. William P. Sheffield, chairman of the Perry statue committee, this oration by courtesy of its author being printed in full in this number of the Bay State Monthly; other addresses at the unveiling were made by Governor George Peabody Wetmore and Mayor Robert S. Franklin. At the banquet among the speakers were the Governor, Hon. George Bancroft, the historian, Mayor Franklin, Judge Blatchford, Chief Justice Durfee, Admiral Rodgers, and Admiral Almy. The occasion was an exceedingly notable one.
September 12.—The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Concord, Mass., was celebrated with appropriate military and civic exercises. There was first, a procession, reviewed by the Governor and invited guests. At the town hall an oration was delivered by Senator George F. Hoar, and other interesting literary exercises took place, at the conclusion of which the line was reformed and the march was taken up to the Hall where the dinner was served. Judge John S. Keyes presided, and the principal after dinner speeches were made by William M. Evarts, George William Curtis, George F. Hoar, E. Rockwood Hoar, James Russell Lowell, and others.
September 15.—The town of Hingham, Mass., celebrated the quarter millenial of its incorporation as a town. Business was generally suspended, and all the prominent residences and public buildings were elaborately decorated. There was a procession at 11 A.M. to the “old meeting house.” The order of exercises at this place included an oration by Hon. Solomon Lincoln. A banquet was spread in Agricultural Hail, attended by ex-governor Long and many other notables. The bells on all the churches were rung at sunset and as darkness settled over the town, bonfires were lighted upon Baker’s, Otis, Planter’s, Turkey, Liberty Pole and Prospect Hills. The Hingham band gave an open air concert, and in the evening the citizens and invited guests held a social reunion at the hall.
September 16—The annual Salisbury beach gathering opened and continued through the 17th. About five thousand persons attended. The exercises consisted of band concerts, base ball, illuminations, etc.
September 16.—The great race in New York harbor between the Yankee yacht “Puritan” and the English yacht “Genesta,”—the second in the contest was won by the former, thus deciding that the America’s cup shall remain in America. The sailing tune was: Puritan, 5.03. 14: Genesta, 5.04. 52.
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September 1.—In Cohasset, Mass., Charles Faulkner of the Boston and New York firm of Faulkner, Page & Co.
September 6.—In New Bedford, Mass., William A. Wall, a well known artist.
September 8.—In Hanover, N.H., Edward A. Rollins of Philadelphia, ex-commissioner of internal revenue.
September 8.—In Haverhill, Mass., Rev. Raymond H. Seeley, D.D. a prominent Congregational clergyman.
September 12.—Jonathan Cartland of Lee, Mass, died, aged seventy-six. He was one of the leading old guard of abolitionists, an uncompromising prohibitory advocate, and a bosom friend and co-worker of Wendell Phillips. He held many important town and county offices. He was a warm friend of the fleeing negroes from the South to Canada, his home being the refuge for many, and often piloting them from there by night to the Canadian border.
September 14.—The death of Hon. Oliver Warner occurred at Lynn, Mass. He was the son of Oliver Warner of Northampton, where he was born on April 17, 1818. He was graduated at Williams College in 1842, and subsequently at Gilmanton Theological Seminary. He officiated as a Congregational clergyman at Chesterfield from 1844 to 1846. In 1552 and 1853 he was a tutor at Williston Seminary, Easthampton. In 1854 and 1855 he served in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and in 1856 and 1857 in the Senate. He occupied the position of secretary of state for eighteen years, retiring in 1876. His majority in 1872 was greater than any other on the Republican ticket. In 1875 considerable opposition was made to his election, the effect of which was to lose him the Republican nomination and the office. From 1876 to 1879 he filled the position of librarian of the State Library. In September, 1882, he married Miss Newhall of Lynn, and departed on a six months’ tour in Europe.
September 16.—Rev. Benjamin F. Tefft, D.D., LL.D., a widely known Methodist divine, died, aged seventy two years, from a shock of paralysis received on Friday. He was one of the ablest pulpit orators in the denomination, has been a president of the Genesee College, editor of the Methodist Book concern and author of several works. He was a member of the New York Geographical and Statistical Society, the Society of Arts of London, etc. He was United States consul to Stockholm in 1862, and acting minister to Sweden, and commissioner of emigration from Europe to the state of Maine in 1864. He has been in poor health the past two years. Dr. Tefft was the author of “Evolution and Christianity,” published last Spring, a veritable encyclopaedia of Evolution-lore.
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A very notable contribution to the annals of our times is the publication of the Writings and Speeches of Samuel L. Tilden[2] This contribution is comprised in two volumes, and is so complete in itself as to ensure a welcome from not only a large body of political sympathizers and admirers but also from all students of American political history. Mr. Tilden has the honor of being unquestionably the greatest Democratic leader of recent years, and, in more ways than one, of being a unique figure among the statesmen whom his country has produced.
He was born in New Lebanon, N.Y. 1814, and before he reached his majority he began to discuss political questions in print and on the rostrum. In these early, as well as in later years, he was in his instincts a conservative; as time moved on, he grew more and more fond of the democracy of Jefferson and of Jackson, and their democracy, it may be said, has had, during the past quarter of a century, no more devoted or worthier expounder and representative than Mr. Tilden. No question of paramount interest has arisen that has not, from the Democratic standpoint, received his attention. When the nullifiers assaulted the Union he stood by it; whenever anybody has undertaken to advocate the American “protection” system, he has invariably denounced it as unconstitutional, in this respect differing from another leading Democrat, General Butler. Mr. Tilden also stood by the removal of the deposits from the United States Banks, advocated the establishment of the Sub Treasury, and was the first to contend for free banking. He asserted the supervision of legislatures over charters of their own creation. He protested against the nationalization of slavery in 1848.
These few specifications of a general character, to say nothing of those of special interest, indicate something of the wealth of thought and expression contained within the covers of these volumes. Of the minor themes, one was exceedingly important in its day, and important also as a lesson for future municipalities,—namely, the Tweed charter for New York city and the story of the destruction of the Tweed ring. It is herein presented with the fullest details.
Mr. Bigelow, the editor of the collection, has happily taken the time for publication when Mr. Tilden has retired from active political service; and thus the volumes may now be read with a less prejudiced mind than in a former period of years.
It is impossible not to derive information and suggestions from a careful perusal of these discussions, and inspiration from the dignity with which they are conducted; at the same time the reader is somehow impressed in the perusal that Mr. Tilden is neither a great statesman per se, nor always a safe one to follow. At this hour, it would be difficult to estimate the influence which he has exerted upon the politics of his time. The accident of a political defeat, rather than any extraordinary ability of his own, won for him the remarkable and enthusiastic loyalty of his party, and perhaps also a political immortality. As is still remembered, he bore his defeat manfully and with a dignified grace unexampled in history, when all the circumstances are considered, and this will be to his everlasting honor. During his active participation in politics, Mr. Tilden was a partisan, in the best sense of that word, as every man must be who lives and thinks under our system of government. He cherished principles directly opposed to those of a host of his contemporaries, and this, too, was a prerogative of his citizenship. Nevertheless, the integrity of his character was never questioned, his motives were always honorable, his opinions were generally carefully conceded and candidly asserted, his acts never savored of trickery. We wish as much could be said of many who have professed admiration of the man, as well as of many who have not scrupled to malign him to a merciless degree.
[Footnote 2: The Writings and Speeches of Samuel J. Tilden. Edited by John Bigelow In two volumes. New York: Harper & Brothers. Price $6.00.]
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We have been particularly pleased with the four volumes which are comprised in the “Garnet Series."[3]—They are, to speak first of their mechanical attractions, handsomely made, as regards paper, press-work and binding, and at once tempt the reader to look within. The object of their publication is to furnish in neat but low priced books choice reading to so called Chautauqua circles; and thus far there is a promise of brilliant success.
The character of the contents of these volumes demands neither explanation nor criticism at this time. Readings from Ruskin is edited with a suitable introduction, by Prof. H.A. Beers of Yale College, and the selections are made mostly from the great writer’s chapters pertaining to Italy. The Readings from Macaulay also pertains to Italy, including the remarkable essays on Dante, Petrarch and Machiavelli, and the Lays of Ancient Rome, and is pleasantly “introduced” by Donald G. Mitchell. An exceedingly timely volume
[Footnote 3: THE GARNET SERIES;—Readings from Ruskin—Readings from Macauley—Art and the Formation of Taste—Life and Works of Michel Angelo. 5 vols. Boston; The Chautauqua Press.]
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Dr. George H. Moore is the superintendent of the Lenox Library and a man who is not afraid to dip into old parchments and musty records. We wish that there were more of his kind. Students of our local annals are indebted to him for the preparation and publication of two important and interesting brochures, which have recently appeared. His Notes on the History of the old State House,[4] formerly known as “The Town House in Boston,” “The Court House in Boston,” “The Province Court House,” “The State House,” and “The City Hall” was first read before the Bostonian Society, last May, and was listened to with the closest attention. The second brochure, embracing 120 pages, bears the title: Final notes on Witchcraft in Massachusetts[5] and is a vindication of the laws and liberties concerning attainders with corruptions of Blood, Escheats, forfeitures for crime and pardon of offenders, etc. This is the fifth pamphlet which Dr. Moore has issued on the subject of Witchcraft in Massachusetts, and it concludes the series. We hope, at a future time, to be able to refer to them again, for they shed much light on our colonial history, and to our historical literature constitute very valuable additions.
[Footnote 4: Notes on the History of the Old State House. By George H. Moore, LL. D. Boston: Cupples, Upham & Co. Paper. 50 cents.]
[Footnote 5: Final notes on Witchcraft in Massachusetts. By same author. New York: Printed for the author. Sold in Boston, by Cupples, Upham & Co. Paper, $1.00.]
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Mr. Smith’s recent work on The Science of Business[6] should be read, and its facts and arguments carefully weighed, by all men of business. It professes to be a study of the principles controlling the laws of exchange. Reasoning from analogies existing in the natural world, the author logically deduces his law that civilization moves along lines of least resistance, and contends that this law holds true throughout the phenomena of mind also. The law of the survival of the fittest is but another expression of the subject under discussion. “Do
By reason of a lack of space, we cannot say all that we had wished to say in regard to this work. It is, on the whole, a most ingenious argument, well conceived and brilliantly sustained. We are not sure that Mr. Smith has not explained satisfactorily some of the nuggets of mystery which have so long puzzled the brains of business men.
[Footnote 6: The Science of Business. By Roderick H. Smith, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Price $1.25.]
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An early forthcoming issue of the Bay State Monthly will contain an elaborate article of great value upon the manufactures and various important industries of “A Model Industrial City,” for which fine illustrations are being prepared.
Special invitation is extended to all Public and private Libraries, Historical, Intellectual and Literary Societies, as well as to every lover of New England, to join their efforts with ours to the end that the Bay State Monthly shall be a competent medium of preserving the great and rapidly increasing amount of history pertaining to New England, and no less a worthy representative of its literature and material progress.
We tender our thanks to the Holyoke Transcript for the very courteous aid rendered our management.
We desire to heartily thank the press of the entire country for the cordial and appreciative welcome extended to the Bay State Monthly since it has been published under its new management. On an advertising page in this number are to be found a few comments, selected from hundreds of similar notices given by representative newspapers in nearly every state in the Union.
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