Henry W. Paine

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THE BAY STATE MONTHLY.

A Massachusetts Magazine.

VOL. III. NOVEMBER, 1885. NO. VI.

Contents

HENRY W. PAINE.

PICKETT’S CHARGE.

THE PATRIOT, SAMUEL ADAMS.

AUTHORITATIVE LITERATURE OF THE CIVIL WAR.

ASSESSMENT LIFE INSURANCE.

THE OLD STATE HOUSE.

THE PRECIOUS METALS.

AMESBURY: THE HOME OF WHITTIER.

KATE FIELD’S NEW DEPARTURE.

THE MONUMENT AND HOMESTEAD OF REBECCA NURSE.

THE PRESENT RESOURCES OF MASSACHUSETTS.

ELIZABETH.

EDITOR’S TABLE.

HISTORICAL RECORD.

OBITUARY.

AMONG THE BOOKS.

NOTES AND QUERIES.

PUBLISHER’S DEPARTMENT.

HENRY W. PAINE.

By Prof. William Mathews, LL.D.

Among the callings acknowledged to be not only useful, but indispensable
to society, there is no one, except the medical, which has been oftener
the butt of vulgar ridicule and abuse than the legal. “Lawyers and
doctors,” says a writer on Wit and Humor in the British Quarterly
Review, “are the chief objects of ridicule in the jest-books of all
ages.” But whatever may be the disadvantages of the Law as a profession,
in spite of the aspersions cast upon it by disappointed suitors,
over-nice moralists, and malicious wits, it can boast of one signal
advantage over all other business callings,—that eminence in it is
always a test of ability and acquirement. While in every other
profession quackery and pretension may gain for men wealth and honor,
forensic renown can be won only by rare natural powers aided by profound
learning and varied experience in trying causes. The trickster and the
charlatan, who in medicine and even in the pulpit find it easy to dupe
their fellow-men, find at the bar that all attempts to make shallowness
pass for depth, impudence for wit, and fatal for wisdom, are instantly
baffled. Not only is an acute, sagacious, and austere bench a perilous
foe to the trickery of the ignorant or half-prepared advocate, but the
veteran practitioners around him are quick to detect every sign of
mental weakness, disingenuous artifice, or disposition to substitute
sham for reality. Forensic life is, to a large extent, life in the broad
glare of day, under the scrutiny of keen-eyed observers and merciless
critics. In every cause there are two attorneys engaged, of whom one is
a sentinel upon the other; and a blunder, a slip, an exaggeration, or a
misrepresentation, never escapes without instant exposure. The popular
reputation of a lawyer, it has been well said, is but the winnowed and
sifted judgment which reaches the world through the bar, and is
therefore made up after severe ordeal and upon standard proof.

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These observations are deemed not inappropriate as an introduction to a
sketch of the life of one of the most eminent lawyers of New England,
whose career may be regarded as signally worthy of imitation.

Henry William Paine was born August 30th, 1810, in Winslow,
Maine. His father, Lemuel Paine, a native of Foxborough, Mass., was a
graduate of Brown University, and a lawyer by profession, who began
practice in Winslow, Maine, in partnership with Gen. Ripley, afterwards
the hero of Lundy’s Lane. Owing to poor health, Mr. Paine, sen., soon
abandoned the law for other pursuits. He was familiar with the
representative English authors, and specially fond of the Greek language
and literature, which he cultivated during his life. He had a tenacious
memory, and could quote Homer by the page. Henry Paine’s mother, Jane
Thomson Warren, was the daughter of Ebenezer T. Warren, of Foxborough,
the brother of General Joseph Warren, who fell at Bunker Hill. Of the
three children of Lemuel and Jane T. (Warren) Paine, Henry William was
the second.

After the usual preparatory education, Mr. Paine entered Waterville
College (now Colby University) in 1826, and graduated in 1830, at the
age of twenty, with the highest honor of his class. During the last year
of the college course, he was principal of Waterville Academy, then just
founded for the preparation of young men for college. He spent eight
hours a day in charge of his pupils, of whom there were eighty-two, and
at the same time kept up with his class in the college studies. As a
teacher he was greatly beloved and respected by his pupils, whose
affection was won by no lack of discipline, but by his kindly sympathy,
encouragement, and watchful aid in their studies. He had an eye that
could beam with tenderness, or dart lightnings; and it was a fine moral
spectacle, illustrating the superiority of mental over physical force,
to see a bully of the school, almost twice his size, and who,
apparently, could have crushed him if he chose, quail under his eagle
gaze, when arraigned at the principal’s desk for a misdemeanor. It is
doubtful if ever he flogged a scholar; but he sometimes brought the
ruler down upon the desk with a force that made the schoolroom ring, and
inspired the lawless with a very wholesome respect for his authority.
The fact that from that day to this his office has always been a kind of
Mecca, to which his old pupils, whether dwellers in “Araby the Blest” or
in the sandy wastes of life, have made pious pilgrimages, shows how
deeply he was loved and how highly he was honored as a teacher.

Immediately after graduation Mr. Paine was appointed a Tutor of
Waterville College, and discharged the duties of that office for a year.
He then began the study of law in the office of his uncle, the late
Samuel S. Warren, of China, Maine, and continued the study in the office
of William Clark, a noted lawyer in Hallowell, Maine, and, for a year,
in the Law School of Harvard University, where he was the classmate of
Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips and B.F. Thomas. In the autumn of 1834,
he was admitted to the bar of Kennebec County, Maine. Beginning his
professional career at Hallowell, he prosecuted it there with signal
success till the summer of 1854, having for twenty years a practice not
surpassed by that of any member of the Maine bar. During the sessions of
1836, 1837, and again in that of 1853, he represented the citizens of

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Hallowell in the lower house of the State Legislature. He was also for
five years Attorney for Kennebec County. During his stay in Maine, he
was repeatedly offered a seat on the bench of the Supreme Judicial Court
of that State; but, having an unconquerable aversion to office of every
kind, civil or political, he declined to accept the honor pressed upon
him. In 1853 he was offered by his political friends, then the dominant
party in the Legislature, a seat in the United States Senate; but he
refused to be nominated. In the summer of 1854, in accordance with a
long cherished resolve, which he had been prevented from executing
before by a promise to his father that he would not leave Maine during
that parent’s lifetime, he removed to Cambridge, Mass., and opened a
law-office in Boston. Here he at once entered upon a large and lucrative
practice, both in the State and Federal courts, which kept steadily
increasing for over twenty years, till declining health and partial
deafness compelled him to withdraw from the courts of justice, and
confine himself to office business. During this period, his opinion on
abstruse and knotty points of law was often solicited by eminent counsel
living outside of Massachusetts, and he sent written opinions to
attorneys in nine different states. As Referee and Master in Chancery,
he was called upon to arbitrate in a great number of difficult and
complicated cases, involving the ownership and disposition of large
amounts of property. His decisions in these vexed cases, which often
involved the unravelling of tangled webs of testimony, and the
consideration of the nicest and most delicate questions of law, were
luminous and masterly, and so impartial withal, that the litigants must
have often been convinced of their justness, if not contented,—etaim
contra quos statuit, aequos placatosque dimisit.

In 1863 and 1864 Mr. Paine was nominated, without his consent, by the
Democratic party of Massachusetts, a candidate for the office of
Governor. With much reluctance he accepted the nomination, but, as he
expected, and doubtless to his joy, failed of an election. In 1867, on
the resignation of Chief Justice Bigelow, the office of Chief Justice of
the Supreme Court of Massachusetts was offered by Governor Bullock to
Mr. Paine, who, not wishing to give up his large and profitable practice
at the bar, declined to accept. This decision, though a natural one, is
much to be regretted by the citizens of this state. Coming from an
eminently judicial mind, his decisions, had he sat on the bench, would
have been models of close, cogent reasoning, clearness, and brevity,
worthy of the best days of the Massachusetts judiciary.

Shortly after his removal to this State Mr. Paine was associated with
Rufus Choate and F.O.J. Smith in the defence of Judge Woodbury Davis, of
Portland, Maine, who had been impeached by the Legislature of that State
for misconduct in his judicial office. In an editorial article upon the
trial, which appeared after its termination, in the Kennebec Journal,
published at Augusta, the Hon. James G. Blaine, the writer, declared
epigrammatically that, in the defence of Judge Chase, “Paine furnished
the logic, Choate the rhetoric, and Smith the slang.”

From 1872 to 1883 Mr. Paine was Lecturer on the Law of Real Property at
the Law School of the Boston University, an office whose duties he
performed

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with great credit to himself, and profit to those whom he addressed. So
thoroughly was he master of his subject, difficult and intricate as it
confessedly is, that in not a single instance, except during the
lectures of the last year, did he take a note or scrap of memoranda into
the class room.

While he has always been a close and devoted student of the law, Mr.
Paine has yet found time for general reading, and has hung for many an
hour over the pages of the English classics with keen delight. For Homer
and Virgil he still retains the relish of his early days, and, in the
intervals of professional toil, has often slaked his thirst for the
waters of Helicon in long and copious draughts. How well he appreciated
the advantages of an acquaintance with literature, he showed early in a
suggestive and instructive lecture on “Reading,” which we heard him
deliver before the Lyceum at Hallowell more than forty years ago. With
his lamented friend Judge B.F. Thomas, he believes that a man cannot be
a great lawyer who is nothing else,—that exclusive devotion to the
study and practice of the law tends to acumen rather than to breadth, to
subtlety rather than to strength. “The air is thin among the apices of
the law, as on the granite needles of the Alps. Men must find
refreshment and strength in the quiet valleys at their feet.”

With his brethren of the bar Mr. Paine has always held the friendliest
relations, and he has enjoyed their highest esteem. To none, even the
humblest of his fellow advocates, has he ever manifested any of the
haughtiness of a Pinkney, or any of that ruggedness and asperity which
gained for the morose and sullen Thurlow the nickname of the
tiger. Amid the fiercest janglings and hottest contentions of the
bar, he has never forgotten that courtesy which should mark the
collision, not less than the friendly intercourse, of cultivated and
polished minds. His victories, won easily by argumentative ability,
tact, and intellectual keenness, unaided by passion, have strikingly
contrasted with the costly victories of advocates less self-restrained.
Though naturally witty and quick at retort, he has never used the weapon
in a way to wound the feelings of an adversary. In examining and
cross-examining witnesses, he has assumed their veracity, whenever it
has been possible to do so; and though he has had the eye of a lynx and
the scent of a hound for prevarication in all its forms, yet he has
never sought by browbeating and other arts of the pettifogger, to
confuse, baffle, and bewilder a witness, or involve him in
self-contradiction. Adopting a quiet, gentle, and straightforward,
though full and careful examination, winning the good-will of the
witness, and inspiring confidence in the questioner, Mr. Paine has been
far more successful in extracting the truth, even from reluctant lips,
than the most artful legal bully. He knows that the manoeuvres and
devices which are best adapted to confuse an honest witness, are just
what the dishonest one is best prepared for. It was not for all the
blustering violence of the tempest, that the traveler would lay aside
his cloak. The result was brought about by the mild and genial warmth of
the sun.

Few advocates have had more success with juries than the subject of this
sketch. The secret of this success has been, not more the admirable
lucidity and cogency of his addresses, than the confidence and trust
with which his

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reputation for fairness and truthfulness, and his evident abhorrence of
exaggeration, have inspired his hearers. Another explanation is, that he
has avoided that rock on which so many advocates wreck their
cases,—prolixity. Knowing that, as Sir James Scarlett once said, when a
lawyer exceeds a certain length of time, he is always doing mischief to
his client,—that, if he drives into the heads of the jury unimportant
matter, he drives out matter more important that he had previously
lodged there,—Mr. Paine has taken care to press home the leading points
of his case, giving slight attention to the others.

That Mr. Paine has been animated in the pursuit of his profession by
higher motives than those which fire the zeal of the mere “hired master
of tongue-fence,” is shown by the comparative smallness of his fees,
especially in cases exacting great labor. Great as has been his success
in winning verdicts, and sound as have been his opinions, it is doubtful
whether there is another lawyer living of equal eminence, whose charges
for legal service have been so uniformly moderate.

Reference has been made to Mr. Paine’s wit. Several striking examples
might be cited; but two must suffice. Some years ago, when he was County
Attorney, a man who had been indicted in Kennebec County for arson, was
tried, and acquitted by the jury on the ground that he was an idiot.
After the trial, the Judge before whom the case had been tried, sought
to reconcile Mr. Paine to the verdict by some explanatory remarks. “Oh,
I’m quite satisfied, your Honor,” said Mr. Paine, “with the defendant’s
acquittal. He has been tried by a jury of his peers“—On another
occasion, Mr. Paine was making a legal argument before an eminent judge,
when he was interrupted by the latter, who said: “Mr. Paine, you know
that that is not law.” “I know it, your Honor,” replied the advocate,
with a deferential bow; “but it was law till your Honor just spoke.”

From 1849 to 1862, Mr. Paine was a member of the Board of Trustees of
Waterville College. In 1851, he was elected member of the Maine
Historical Society, and also of the American Academy. In 1854, his Alma
Mater conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws.

In the relation of marriage, Mr. Paine has been very happy. In May.
1837, he was united to Miss Lucy E. Coffin, of Newburyport, a lady of
rare endowments, both of head and heart.

Few men have started in a professional career with a more vigorous and
elastic constitution than Mr. Paine’s. Endowed with an iron frame and
nerves of lignum vitae, he very naturally felt in youth that his
fund of physical energy was inexhaustible; but, like thousands of other
professional men in this fiery and impatient age, he finds himself in
the autumn of his life afflicted with bodily ills, which he feels that
with reasonable care he might have escaped. Toiling in his profession
year after year from January to December, with no recreation, no summer
vacation, no disposition to follow the wise advice of Horace to
Torquatus,—

—working double tides, and crowding the work of eighty years into
forty, Mr. Paine finds that, large as was his bank account with Nature,
he has been overdrawing it for years, and that he has now to repay these
drafts with compound interest. The lesson he would have young
professional men learn from his experience, is, that they should account
no time or money wasted, that contributes in any way to their physical
health,—that gives tone to the stomach, or development to the muscles.
Let them understand that, though suffering does not follow instantly
upon the heels of transgression, yet Nature cannot be outraged with
impunity. Though a generous giver she is a hard bargainer, and a most
accurate bookkeeper, whose notice not the eighth part of a cent escapes;
and though the items with which she debits one, taken singly are
seemingly insignificant, and she seldom brings in “that little bill”
till a late day, yet, added up at the end of three score years and ten,
they may show a frightful balance against him, which can have no result
but physical bankruptcy.

In Mr. Paine’s physiognomy the most noticeable features are the broad,
massive, Websterian forehead, and the sparkling eyes.

In summing up the characteristics of Mr. Paine as a lawyer and as a man,
the writer, who was his pupil at Waterville Academy, and has enjoyed his
friendship to this day, cannot do better than to cite the words of an
acute observer who has known him intimately for many years. Chief
Justice Appleton, of Maine, did not exaggerate, when he said: “He is a
gentleman of a high order of intellect; of superior culture; in private
life, one of the most genial of companions; in his profession, a
profound and learned lawyer, as well as an accomplished advocate.”

To conclude,—if the subject of this imperfect sketch has occasion to
regret his excessive devotion to his calling, he can have no other
regrets. At the close of a long, most useful, and most honorable career,
which has been marked throughout by the severest conscientiousness and
the most scrupulous discharge of every professional duty, he is happily
realizing that blessedness which Sir William Blackstone, when exchanging
the worship of the Muses for that of Themis, prayed might crown the
evening of his days:—

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PICKETT’S CHARGE.

By Charles A. Patch, Mass., Vols.

In all great wars involving the destinies of nations, it is neither the
number of battles, nor the names, nor the loss of life, that remain
fixed in the mind of the masses; but simply the one decisive struggle
which either in its immediate or remote sequence closes the conflict. Of
the hundred battles of the great Napoleon, Waterloo alone lingers in the
memory. The Franco-Prussian War, so fraught with changes to Europe,
presents but one name that will never fade,—Sedan. Even in our own
country, how few battles of the Revolution can we enumerate; but is
there a child who does not know that Bunker Hill sounded the death-knell
of English rule in the land? And now, but twenty years since the
greatest conflict of modern times was closed at Appomattox, how few can
we readily recall of the scores of blood-stained battle-fields on which
our friends and neighbors fought and fell; but is there one, old or
young, cultured or ignorant, of the North or of the South, that cannot
speak of Gettysburg? But what is Gettysburg either in its first day’s
Federal defeat, or its second day’s terrible slaughter around Little
Round Top, without the third day’s immortal charge by Pickett and
his brave Virginians. In it we have the culmination of the Rebellion. It
took long years after to drain all the life-blood from the foe,
but never again did the wave of Rebellion rise so gallantly high as when
it beat upon the crest of Cemetery Ridge.

The storming of the heights of Inkerman, the charge of the noble Six
Hundred, the fearful onslaught of the Guards at Waterloo, the scaling of
Lookout Mountain,—have all been sung in story, and perhaps always will
be; but they all pale beside the glory that will ever enshroud the
heroes who, with perhaps not literally “cannon to right of them” and
“cannon to left of them,” but with a hundred cannon belching forth death
in front of them, hurled themselves into the centre of a great
army and had victory almost within their grasp.

To describe this charge, we will go back to the evening of the 2nd of
July, and recall upon what basis the cautious Lee could undertake so
fearful a responsibility. The victorious Southrons fresh from their
triumphs at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville had entered the North
carrying consternation and dismay to every hamlet, with none to oppose;
their forward march was one of spoil, and it was not till the 1st of
July that they met their old foemen, the Army of the Potomac, in the
streets of Gettysburg, and after a fierce conflict drove them back. The
second day’s conflict was a terrible slaughter, and at its close the
Federal Army, although holding its position, was to a certain extent
disheartened. Many of our best generals and commanding officers were
killed or wounded, scores of regiments and batteries were nearly wiped
out, Sickles’ line was broken and driven in and its position was held by
Longstreet. Little Round Top,

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the key of the position, was held only at a frightful loss of life, and
Ewell upon the right had gained a footing upon the Ridge. The Rebel army
was joyful and expectant of victory. The morning of the 3rd of July
opened clear and bright, and one hundred thousand men faced each other
awaiting the signal of conflict; but, except the pushing of Ewell from
his position, the hours passed on relieved only by the rumbling of
artillery carriages as they were massed by Lee upon Seminary Ridge, and
by Meade upon Cemetery Ridge. At twelve o’clock Lee ascended the cupola
of the Pennsylvania College, in quiet surveyed the Union lines, and
decided to strike for Hancock’s Centre. Meanwhile, Pickett with his
three Virginia brigades had arrived from Chambersburg and taken cover in
the woods of Seminary Ridge. What Lee’s feelings must have been, as he
looked at the hundred death-dealing cannon massed on Cemetery Hill, and
the fifty thousand men waiting patiently in front and behind them, men
whose valor he knew well in many a bitter struggle—and then looked at
his handful of brave Virginians, three, small, decimated brigades which
he was about to hurl into that vortex of death,—no one will ever know.
The blunder that sent the Light Brigade to death at Balaklava was bad
enough, but here were five thousand men waiting to seek victory where,
only the day before ten thousand had lost their lives or their limbs in
the same futile endeavor. Leaving the college, Lee called a council of
his generals at Longstreet’s headquarters, and the plan of attack was
formed. It is said that the level-headed Longstreet opposed the plan,
and if so it was but in keeping with his remarkable generalship. The
attack was to be opened with artillery fire to demoralize and batter the
Federal line, and was to be opened by a signal of two shots from the
Washington Artillery. At half-past one the report of the first gun rang
out on the still, summer air, followed a minute later by the second, and
then came the roar and flash of one hundred and thirty-eight rebel
cannon. Almost immediately one hundred Federal guns responded and the
battle had begun. Shot and shell tore through the air, crashing through
batteries, tearing men and horses to pieces; the very earth seemed to
shake and the hills to reel as the terrible thunders re-echoed amongst
them. For nearly an hour every conceivable form of ordnance known to
modern gunnery hissed and shrieked, whistled and screamed, as it went
forth on its death-mission till exhausted by excitement and heat the
gunners slackened their fire and silence reigned again.

Then Pickett and his brave legion stood up and formed for the
death-struggle; three remnants of brigades consisting of Garnett’s
brigade:—the 8th, 18th, 19th, 28th, 56th Virginia; Armistead’s
brigade:—the 9th, 14th, 38th, 53rd, 57th Virginia; Kempers’s
brigade:—the 1st, 3rd, 7th, 11th, 24th Virginia. Their tattered flags
bore the scars of a score of battles and from their ranks the merciless
bullet had already taken two-thirds their number. In compact ranks,
their front scarcely covering two of Hancock’s brigades, with flags
waving as if for a gala-day, Gen. Pickett saluted Longstreet and asked,
“Shall I go forward, sir?” but it was not in Longstreet’s heart to send
those heroes of so many battles to certain death; and he turned away his
head,—when Pickett with that proud, impetuous air which has earned him
the title of the “Ney” of the Rebel army, exclaimed, “Sir! I
shall lead my division forward!” The orders now

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rang out, “Attention! Attention!” and the men, realizing
the end was near, cried out to their comrades, “Good-by, boys! good-by!”
Suddenly rang on the air the final order from Pickett himself, as his
sabre flashed from its scabbard,—”column forward! guide centre!”
And the brigades of Kemper, Garnett and Armistead moved towards Cemetery
Ridge as one man. Soon Pettigrew’s division emerged from the woods and
followed in echelon on Pickett’s left flank, and Wilcox with his Alabama
division moved out to support his right flank—in all about fifteen
thousand men. The selection of these supports shows a lack of judgment
which it would almost seem impossible for Lee to have made. Pettigrew’s
division was composed mostly of new troops from North Carolina, and had
been terribly used up in the first day’s fight, and were in no condition
to form part of a forlorn hope. Wilcox’s troops had also received very
severe punishment in the second day’s engagement in his attack on the
Ridge and should have been replaced by fresh well-tried brigades. But
the movement had now begun and Lee with his generals about him watched
anxiously for the result.

MAJ. GEN. GEORGE E. PICKETT

It was nearly a mile to the Union lines, and as they advanced over the
open plain the Federal artillery opened again, ploughing great lanes
through their solid ranks, but they closed up to ‘guide centre‘
as if upon dress-parade; when half way over Pickett halted his division
amidst a terrible fire of shot and shell, and changed his direction by
an oblique movement coolly and beautifully made. But here occurred the
greatest mistake of all. Wilcox paid no attention to this change of
movement, but kept straight on to the front, thus opening a tremendous
gap between the two columns and exposing Pickett’s right to all the
mishaps that afterwards overtook it. To those who have ever faced
artillery fire it is marvellous and unexplainable how human beings could
have advanced a mile under the terrific fire of a hundred cannon, every
inch of air being laden with the missiles of death; but in splendid
formation they still came bravely on till within range of the musketry;
then the blue line of Hancock’s corps arose and poured into their

[pg 400]

ranks a murderous fire. With a wild yell the rebels pushed on,
unfalteringly crossed the Federal line and laid hands upon eleven
cannon.

Men fired in each others faces; there were bayonet thrusts, cutting with
sabres, hand to hand contests, oaths, curses, yells and hurrahs. The
second corps fell back behind the guns to allow the use of grape and
double canister, and as it tore through the rebel ranks at only a few
paces distant the dead and wounded were piled in ghastly heaps. Still on
they came up to the very muzzles of the guns; they were blown away from
the cannon’s mouth but yet they did not waver. Pickett had taken the key
to the position and the glad shout of victory was heard, as, the very
impersonation of a soldier, he still forced his troops to the crest of
Cemetery Ridge. Kemper and Armistead broke through Hancock’s line,
scaled the hill and planted their flags on its crest. Just before
Armistead was shot, he placed his flag upon a captured cannon and cried
“Give them the cold steel, boys!”; but valor could do no more,
the handful of braves had won immortality but could not conquer an army.
Pettigrew’s weak division was broken fleeing and almost annihilated.
Wilcox, owing to his great mistake in separating his column was easily
routed, and Stannard’s Vermonters thrown into the gap were creating
havoc on Pickett’s flank. Pickett, seeing his supports gone, his
generals, Kemper, Armistead and Garnett killed or wounded, every field
officer of three brigades gone, three-fourths of his men killed or
captured, himself untouched but broken-hearted, gave the order for
retreat, but band of heroes as they were they fled not; but amidst that
still continuous, terrible fire they slowly, sullenly, recrossed the
plain,—all that was left of them, but few of five thousand.

Position of troops at time of attack on left centre on 3rd day of battle of Gettysburg.

Thus ended the greatest charge known to modern warfare. Made in a most
unequal manner against a great army and amidst the most terrific
cannonade known in wars, and yet so perfect was the discipline, so
audacious the valor that had this handful of Virginians been properly
supported they would perhaps

[pg 401]

have rendered the Federal position untenable, and possibly have
established the Southern Confederacy. While other battle-fields are
upturned by the plough and covered with waving grain, Cemetery Ridge
will forever proudly uphold its monuments telling of glory both to the
Blue and the Gray, and our children’s children while standing upon its
crest will rehearse again of Pickett’s wonderful charge.

THE PATRIOT, SAMUEL ADAMS.

By Edward P. Guild.

SAMUEL ADAMS. FROM COPLEY’S PAINTING.1

Three years ago the old State House in Boston was restored to its
original architectural appearance. After having fallen a prey to the
ruthless hand of commerce, been surmounted with a “Mansard roof,”
disfigured by a legion of business signs, made a hitching place for
scores of telegraph wires, and lastly been

[pg 402]

threatened with entire demolition by the ever arrogant spirit of
“business enterprise”; the sentiment of patriotic veneration asserted
itself and came to the rescue. With an appropriation of $35,000 from the
city, work was begun in the fall of 1881, and by the following July the
ancient building had been restored to almost exactly its appearance in
the last century. As the Old State House now stands, it is identical
with the Town House which Boston first used for its town meeting May 13,
1713. This was nine years before the birth of the man destined to become
the foremost character in the Boston town meeting of the eighteenth
century—Samuel Adams. Probably no other man who ever lived has been so
identified with the history of the Old State House as was he. The town
meetings were held in Faneuil Hall after 1742, but through the stormy
years when the Assembly met in the old building, Samuel Adams was in
constant attendance as clerk. His desk, on which he wrote the first
sentences ever ventured for American independence, and by which he
arose, and, with hands often tremulous with nervous energy, directed the
exciting debates, is to-day in the old Assembly chamber in the western
end of the building. In 1774 he went to Congress, but for a long period
afterward the Old State House was again his field of labor, as senator,
as lieutenant governor and then as governor.

The life of Samuel Adams ought to be more familiar than it is to the
patriotic young men of to-day, but some excuse is found in the fact that
a popular, concise biography has, until lately, not been written. The
excellent three volume work of Mr. Wells, Adams’ great grandson,
although admirable as an exhaustive biography, is too voluminous for the
common reader; but since the appearance of Prof. Hosmer’s recent book2
there can be no reason why any schoolboy should not have a clear idea of
the life of the man who organized the Revolution.

It is only as a patriot that Samuel Adams claims our attention. Although
college bred he was a man of letters only so far as his pen could write
patriotic resolutions and scathing letters against the government of
King George. These letters were printed for the most part in the “Boston
Gazette,” published by Edes & Gill in Court Street. As a business man he
was never a success. For years he kept the old malt house on Purchase
Street, but he gave the business little thought, for his mind was
constantly engrossed in public matters, and at last he made no pretext
of attending to any matter of private business, depending for support
only upon his small salary as clerk of the assembly. No one will ever
accuse Samuel Adams of any selfish ambition, and, although his every act
will not bear the closest application of the square and rule, yet he
never deceived nor used a doubtful method in the least degree for
personal gain.

Adams did not begin his public career early in life. In 1764 he was
chosen a member of the committee to instruct the representatives just
elected to the General Court, and the paper drafted on that occasion is
the first document from his pen of which we now have any trace, and is
memorable,

[pg 403]

moreover, because it contains the first public denial of the authority
of the Stamp Act. Adams was now forty-two, his hair was already touched
with gray, and “a peculiar tremulousness of the head and hands made it
seem as if he were already on the threshold of old age.” He had,
however, a remarkably sound constitution, a medium sized, muscular
frame, and clear, steel-gray eyes.

OLD STATE HOUSE IN 1793.

Among those closely connected with Adams in the public service, which,
from this time on, became his only thought, were John Hancock and James
Otis. Adams contrasted strongly with both of these men. Hancock was the
richest man in the province and as liberal as he was wealthy. In the
general jubilation that followed the repeal of the Stamp Act, he opened
a pipe of Madeira wine before his elegant mansion opposite the Common,
and so long as it lasted it was freely dispensed to the crowd. The dress
of Hancock when at home is described as a “red velvet cap, within which
was one of fine linen, the edge of this turned up over the velvet one,
two or three inches. He wore a blue damask gown lined with silk, a white
plaited stock, a white silk embroidered waistcoat, black silk
small-clothes, white silk stockings and red morocco slippers.” Adams was
in marked contrast with Otis in temperament. The former, always cool and
collected and his words based on deliberate reason, was the extreme of
the other who carried his arguments in a flood of impetuous eloquence.
“Otis was a flame of fire,” says Sewall. But although Otis was once
almost the ideal of the people, his erratic tendencies at last unfitted
him for a leader.

[pg 404]

One reason of Sam Adams’ prestige with the masses was his common and
familiar intercourse with mechanics and artisans. Hancock, Otis, Bowdoin
and Curtis, on account of their wealth and ideas of aristocracy, kept
more or less aloof from the workmen; while Adams, plainly clad and with
familiar but dignified manner, was often found in the ship yards or at
the rope walks engaged in earnest conversation with the homely
craftsmen. Indeed, nothing pleased him more than to be talking with a
ship carpenter as they sat side by side on a block of oak, or with some
shopkeeper in a sheltered fence corner. Most of his writing was done in
a little room in his Purchase Street house where night after night his
busy mind and quill were kept at work on his trenchant letters for the
“Gazette,” which were signed with significant nom de plumes in Latin.

The year 1768 was made notable by the arrival in Boston from England of
the 14th and the 29th regiments. The main guard was quartered in King
(now State) Street, with the cannon pointed toward the State House, and
the troops occupied various houses in the vicinity. In the next year the
Governor, Bernard, was recalled, and Thomas Hutchinson, although
remaining nominally lieutenant governor, became acting chief magistrate.
He now appeared the most conspicuous figure among the royalists, and
Samuel Adams became more distinctly the leader of the patriots.
Neglecting all other affairs, he was content to live on a pittance,
which he was enabled to do by a frugal and helpful wife.

Affairs were now approaching a crisis. A consignment of goods from
England, sent in defiance of the non-importation agreements, was not
allowed to land and had to be returned. One importer, a Scotchman, would
not sign the agreements, so after much remonstrance, Samuel Adams arose
in town meeting and grimly moved that the number present, about two
thousand, should resolve itself into a committee of the whole, wait upon
the obstinate merchant and use such persuasion as should be necessary to
secure a compliance. But no vote was needed, for the Scotchman was
present, and rushing to the front with knees trembling and in a
squeaking voice, rolling his r’s like a well-played drum, exclaimed:—
“Mr. Mode-r-r-rater, I agr-r-ree, I agr-r-ree!” greatly to the amusement
of the people.

It was early in the next year, 1770, that the hostility between
towns-people and soldiers led for the first time to the shedding of
blood. In February a boy, Christopher Snyder, was shot and killed during
a disturbance, and in March occurred the “Boston Massacre.” The story has
been many times told. Quarrels had grown frequent between the soldiers
and the rope-walk hands, the soldiers usually getting the worst of it.
On the evening of the 5th, an altercation began just below the Old State
House, between the sentinel of the guard and a crowd of townsfolk. An
alarm was rung from one of the steeples, and many citizens hurried to
the place, most of them thinking that a fire had broken out. A sentry
was at the corner of King and Exchange streets, where the Custom House
stood, and he was assaulted by the boys with snowballs. Captain Preston
with seven or eight men rushed to the scene, loaded their muskets and
made ready to fire. The mob hooted, struck their muskets and dared them
to fire. At last a volley came. Three were killed and eight wounded. At
once there was a tumult. The

[pg 405]

bells were all rung and the populace hurried to and fro. The bodies of
the slain lay on the ground which was sprinkled with a light snow,
serving to plainly reveal in the clear moon-light the stains of blood.

OLD STATE HOUSE IN 1801.

The 29th regiment repaired to the spot prepared for firing, and there
would have been a fierce contest but for the excellent conduct of the
acting governor, Hutchinson. He took Captain Preston severely to task
for firing at the people without the orders of a civil magistrate, and
then, quickly working his way to the State House, took his stand in the
balcony of the council-chamber looking down King Street, and made an
address promising that the law should prevail and justice should be done
to all. The next morning Hutchinson was waited upon by the selectmen who
informed him that there would be no peace until the soldiers should
depart. Hutchinson claimed, however, that the regiments were not under
his command.

A mass meeting was soon held in Faneuil Hall, and was addressed by
Samuel Adams. It may readily be believed that he advocated no
compromise, and a committee of fifteen was immediately appointed of
which Adams was a member. According to instructions, they at once
repaired to the council chamber, and demanded the instant removal of the
troops. At three o’clock a regular town meeting assembled in Faneuil
Hall, but, owing to the great number present, adjourned to the Old South
Meeting House. Then the committee of fifteen

[pg 406]

appeared making their way from the council-chamber to the meeting-house.
Samuel Adams was at the head, and as the crowd made way on either hand
he bared his head, and, inclining to the right and left, as he passed
through the line, kept repeating: “Both regiments or none!” “Both
regiments or none!”

STATUE IN ADAMS SQUARE.

In the presence of the dense multitude in the Old South, the governor’s
reply was rendered: the 29th regiment should go to the castle, but the
14th must remain. Then the cry arose, “Both regiments or none!” and as
the shout echoed from every quarter it was plain that the people had
caught the meaning of the watchword, given shortly before by Adams. A
new committee, also including Adams, was appointed and sent back to the
governor, and as they stood in the council chamber the scene was one
that John Adams pronounced long after as worthy a historical painting. A
few sentences from Adams’ address to Hutchinson are clear enough to show
the intense earnestness and patriotism of the man.

“It is well known,” he said, “that acting as governor of the Province,
you are by its charter the commander-in-chief of the military forces
within it; and as such, the troops now in the capital are subject to
your orders. If you, or Colonel Dalrymple under you, have the power to
remove one regiment, you have the power to remove both; and nothing
short of their total removal will satisfy the people or preserve the
peace of the Province. A Multitude highly incensed now wait the result
of this application. The voice of ten thousand freemen demands that
both regiments be forthwith removed. Their voice must be respected,
their demand obeyed. Fail not then at your peril to comply with this
requisition! On you alone rests the responsibility of this decision;
and if the just expectations of the people are disappointed, you must
be answerable to God and your country for the fatal consequences that
must ensue. The committee have discharged their duty, and it is for
you to discharge yours. They wait your final determination.”

Hutchinson for a long time stood firm, but yielded at last and the
troops were removed.

It is not the purpose of this paper to follow Samuel Adams through his
active career in the years of the Revolution and the succeeding period.
It is always Samuel Adams, the unswerving patriot, the adroit leader,
the man of the people. It had long been felt in England that his was the
most active spirit in the cause of the patriots, and there was much talk
of effecting his arrest and bringing him to trial on the charge of
treason, but the move was never made. Adams’ courage never failed. He
had long given up the idea of any compromise between the colonies and
the Crown, and there is nothing conciliatory in his words or acts. When
the tea was emptied into Boston Harbor it was easily

[pg 407]

understood that Adams was the real leader in the action. No one familiar
with the life of the great town meeting man, as Prof. Hosmer likes to
call him, can doubt that he had the essential qualities of an adroit
strategist. Cromwell once locked Parliament out, Adams once locked the
Assembly in. He had secured a majority of the members to vote for a
Continental Congress, but could the resolve be presented and brought to
a final vote before Governor Gage could prorogue the Assembly, as he
would use all speed to do, the instant the first knowledge of the scheme
reached his ears? On the 17th of June, just one year before the Battle
of Bunker Hill, that question was answered. The resolve was offered that
day providing for the appointment of delegates to such a congress. Tory
members at once essayed to leave the hall to dispatch the news to the
governor, but the bolts were fast, and Samuel Adams had the key in his
pocket. Two months later the delegates were on their way to
Philadelphia,—Thomas Cushing, Samuel and John Adams and Robert Treat
Paine.

Events then transpired rapidly. So far, Samuel Adams was almost wholly
alone in the idea of independence, but it was declared by Congress less
than two years later. For more than twenty years longer, Adams continued
in public life, but his greatest work was before the Declaration of
Independence rather than after. There were times when the cause of the
patriots must have fallen through but for the nerve and skill of this
man. Bowdoin, Cushing, Hancock, Otis, and even John Adams could not have
been thoroughly trusted in the last years of the colony to bring affairs
to a successful issue. But Samuel Adams was fitted by intellect and
character, adroitness and courage, tireless energy and by never failing
devotion to the public good, to be the man for the time.

When America had become a Republic, and Adams had returned from Congress
to his native town, he served as presiding officer of the Senate, then
as lieutenant governor, and, upon the death of Hancock, governor, to
which office he was several times chosen by the people. He died in 1803,
and his dust lies to-day in the old Granary Burying Ground, close by the
common grave of the four victims of the Boston Massacre.

The statue in bronze now standing in Adams Square is noble in design,
and appropriate for situation. It is in almost the busiest position of
the great city, and daily across its shadow pass tens of thousands of
mechanics and artisans—the class of men with whom Samuel Adams used to
love to hold intercourse. The Old State House and Faneuil Hall are only
a stone’s-throw distant from the statue, but the face is not looking in
the direction of either; it is turned directly toward the visible shaft
of granite on Bunker Hill—the monument which marks the first great
battle in the struggle for that Independence toward which, in all his
labors for so many years, the eyes of Samuel Adams were ever turned.

1 (return)
For the reproduction of the above portrait and the two
following views of the Old State House, we are indebted to the courtesy
of Messrs. Ticknor & Co., the well-known Boston publishers.—Ed.

2 (return)
Samuel Adams. By James K. Hosmer, 1 vol., 442 pp. American
Statesmen Series. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1883.

[pg 408]

AUTHORITATIVE LITERATURE OF THE CIVIL WAR.

By George Lowell Austin.

II.

The Life and Public Services of Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth
President of the United States: together with His State Papers,
including his Speeches, Addresses, Messages, Letters, and Proclamations,
and the closing Scenes connected with his life and death. By Henry J.
Raymond. To which are added Anecdotes and Personal Reminiscences of
President Lincoln, by Frank B. Carpenter, with a steel portrait, and
other illustrations, 1 vol. octavo, pp. 808. New York: Derby and Miller,
1865.

During the Presidential canvass of 1864, the author of this volume
prepared a work upon the administration of President Lincoln. That
canvass resulted in the re-election of Mr. Lincoln, whose death occurred
soon after his second inauguration. As the editor of the New York
Times, Mr. Raymond possessed at the time ample facilities to prepare
such a book as was needed to interest the public in the life of one
whose work was at once as great as it was successful. Up to the day of
its publication, this book was the best and most authoritative that had
been published. Twenty years have since elapsed, and in many respects it
still maintains a just superiority and a historical value that cannot be
questioned. Its errors are of omission, rather than of commission; while
its merits are so great as to render it indispensable to all future
writers on the subject. Every public speech, message, letter, or
document of any sort of Mr. Lincoln’s, so far as accessible in 1865,
will be found included in the volume. The rapidly occuring events of
the civil war, with much of their secret history, are tersely and
graphically described. The “Reminiscences” of Mr. Carpenter, covering
about thirty pages, add interest to the volume.

Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life. Showing the
inner growth, special training and peculiar fitness of the Man for his
work. By William O. Stoddard. Illustrated. 1 vol. octavo, pp. 508. New
York: Fords, Howard & Hurlbert, 1884.

Mr. Stoddard was one of President Lincoln’s secretaries during the civil
war, and very naturally his work ought to have strong claims upon the
interest and attention of American readers. His book is not of a
profound or critical character; but a singularly honest and candid and
strictly personal biography, simply written for readers of all ages and
degrees of intelligence. It sheds considerable light on the political
history of the civil war and on the events which led to it. With the
military history, it deals but little. Still its brief, vigorous and
vivid sketches furnish an exceedingly fascinating bird’s eye view of the
great struggle. But its most valuable feature is the clearness with
which it depicts Lincoln, the man,—his sagacity and patience at
critical moments, his keen perception of “popular” sentiment and
disposition, his individuality, his distinctive fitness for the
tasks and burdens which fell upon him. This work, at once so accurate,
so comprehensive, so discriminating and so well written, is one for all
Americans,

[pg 409]

and particularly for younger readers. It has in it a charm possessed but
by very few biographies, and a fascination that but few novels can
surpass. To enjoy it and to profit by it, one need not always coincide
with the author’s judgments of men and measures, or his criticisms of
military leaders and policies.

The Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Isaac N. Arnold. 1 vol. octavo,
pp. 462. Chicago: Jansen, McClurg & Co., 1885.

This work also possesses strong claims upon our attention. It was
completed only a few days before the death of its eminent author.
Furthermore, Mr. Arnold knew President Lincoln better than almost any
other man; they had been intimate friends for more than a quarter of a
century, thinking, conversing and working together during all that time.
When the civil war broke out, Mr. Arnold entered Congress; became one of
the most trusted advisers of the President; and no one better than he
knew and comprehended the latter’s thoughts and intentions; even the
cabinet officers and the private secretaries never approached so near to
the heart and mind of President Lincoln as did his life long, trusted
and admired friend. In 1867, Mr. Arnold published a “History of Abraham
Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery” which is a work of rare interest
and of exceptional historic value. But this work, in the judgment of the
author, was unsatisfactory from the fact that, while it depicted well
enough the times, it failed to portray the life of President
Lincoln. The later volume meets the deficiency, and in fact leaves
absolutely nothing to be desired. The spirit of tenderness broods over
its charmful pages. Singularly unpretentious, its very simplicity is
eloquent and inspiring, and makes the heart of the reader blend with the
grand and noble heart of its subject. Its accuracy is unmarred; it
explains all doubts that have ever existed in regard to Mr. Lincoln’s
motives and acts; it asserts nothing without proving it; it tells the
plain, straightforward story, and leaves criticism to others. As a
personal biography of Mr. Lincoln’s life and character, this book
is not only unsurpassed, but it deserves to rank as one of the classics
in our native literature.

The Political Conspiracies Preceding the Rebellion; or the True
Story of Sumter and Pickens, By Thomas M. Anderson, Lieut. Col. U.S.A. 1
vol. quarto, pp. 100. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1883.

The author assumes that there were “a number of conspiracies” antedating
the immediate outbreak of the civil war, but makes no claim that the war
was the result of such conspiracies. His narrative, then, is merely
descriptive of the events which took place in the period between October
1860 and April 1861, purely resume in character and wholly based
upon the disclosures of the Official Records. The author allows himself
to criticise men and acts rather freely, and at times captiously; and
has evidently intended his book to be a defence of his brother, the hero
of Sumter, against certain charges which were once made against him. The
old hero needs no defender, even if we suppose that he ever merited
criticism. The volume is a small one,—trustworthy as regards its
statements and valuable for reference. It may profitably be read in
conjunction with the second volume of Mr. Curtis’s Life of James
Buchanan, also with the small volume, by General Doubleday, entitled
The Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Pickens in 1860-61.

The Peninsular Campaign of General McClellan in 1862. Papers read
before the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts in 1876-77-78
and 80. Printed for the Society. Vol. I, octavo, pp. 249. Boston: James
R. Osgood and Company, 1881.

The Military Society of Massachusetts was organized in 1876, with the
object of investigating questions relating to the civil war. Up to the
date of the publication of this volume, about forty papers were read,
six of them being devoted to the Peninsular Campaign of 1862, eleven
to General Pope’s campaign of 1862, three to the campaign of
Chancellorsville, three to the Antietam campaign, sixteen to the
campaign of 1864, and one each to the battle of Mobile Bay and Grouchy
controversy,—all, with the exception of the last two, bearing upon the
operations of the Army of the Potomac in 1862 and 1864, and including
discussions from different standpoints of the objects and general plans
of the several campaigns and battles in which it participated, and of
the controverted questions that have arisen concerning them. The first
printed volume of the Society contains the following papers:—”General
McClellan’s Plans for the campaign of 1862, and the Alleged Interference
of the Government with them,” by John C. Ropes, Esq: “The Siege of
Yorktown,” by Bvt.-Brig.-Gen. John C. Palfrey, U.S.A.: “The Period
which elapsed between the Fall of Yorktown and the Beginning of the
Seven-Days-Battles,” by Bvt.-Brig.-Gen. Francis W. Palfrey, U.S.V. “The
Seven-Days Battles—to Malvern Hill,” by same author. “The Battle of
Malvern Hill,” by same author; “Comments on the Peninsular Campaign,”
by Bvt.-Brig.-Gen. Charles A. Whittier, U.S.V. All of these are earnest
discussions,—but of unequal worth—of the various merits or demerits
of General McClellan in the Peninsular campaign, or the attitude of the
government toward him at that time. The ground is traversed as often
before; all the old arguments are again brought into comparison, and
a very small amount of new evidence is discovered. What has
previously been said in many books and pamphlets and by a score of
writers, is here said in one volume by three writers. But nothing
appears to be freshly said, and, as usual, the conclusions
reached are colored by the political likes or dislikes of their several
writers. The sole merit of the volume lies in the fact that its papers
embody a mass of very valuable material, gleaned from trustworthy
sources, for the future historian. It is very safe to assume, however,
that the future historian while expressing gratitude for their
investigations, will not be tempted to place much weight upon the
conclusions of the gentlemen who hold the monopoly of this volume but
have not solved a single mooted question.

Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United
States. By George Ticknor Curtis. 2 vols. octavo, pp. 625, 707. New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1883.

The second volume of this exceedingly painstaking and meritorious
biography sheds much light upon the events preceding, and those
transpiring during, the civil war. As another writer has remarked,
“there is something very pitiable, something almost tragic, in the
figure of James Buchanan during the last months of his administration.”
He found himself wavering between two factions, between Right and Wrong.
So long as he wavered, the South stood by him;

[pg 411]

when he ceased to be a wary politician and manifested a decision of
character such as the times demanded, the South turned against him as
one man. His biographer proves conclusively that the weak and
time-serving President was opposed to secession; but as
positively proves without intending to do so, that he favored it by his
singular unfitness and indifference in emergencies. When secession
threatened, Mr. Buchanan took the ground that he would not precipitate
war by applying force to prevent a State from seceding, but that he
would defend the flag and property of the United States. With this
policy in his heart, he permitted public property to be seized, without
striking a blow; he discovered treason in his cabinet, and coolly
allowed the traitors to consummate their work and to depart. The fact
was, that he was a very weak man, and his biographer is the best
authority for the statement. The work is important; it will always, as
it richly merits, be consulted by students, and may be read with
interest and profit by all.

(To be continued.)

ASSESSMENT LIFE INSURANCE.

By Sheppard Romans.

Life insurance, by whatever system, plan or method, has, for its
fundamental basis, the laws governing the rates of mortality at the
different ages. These fundamental laws have been developed and made
clear by a vast amount of statistical data obtained from observations
among persons insured in life insurance companies among annuitants,
among inhabitants of various towns and cities, and among the whole
population in certain countries, notably in England and in Belgium. One
uniform, unvarying, certain law has been thus established, which is that
the rate of mortality, or in other words the cost of insurance,
increases as a man grows older. From this law there is no escape. We
must accept the inevitable. Hence any system of insurance which is not
in accordance with this first principle, this unalterable law of nature,
is unsound, and any company, whether charging level premiums or natural
premiums, which does not recognize and conform to this fundamental law
of nature, is doomed to disaster and wreck, sooner or later.

There are two methods of life insurance worthy of the name, and two
only. The one is by payments accurately adjusted to the cost of
insurance at each actual age, and which inevitably, unavoidably and
inexorably, must increase with the age of the person insured, and the
other is by level, or uniform payments extending over the whole duration
of life or for a stated number of years. The first is the natural system
and has been adopted in part, and imperfectly, by assessment
companies; the second is the artificial system, and is the one which has
been offered exclusively until lately, by all the regular life insurance
companies. Properly carried out, the one is as sound in theory and as
safe in practice as the

[pg 412]

other. In fact, the artificial premiums are the exact mathematical or
commuted equivalents of the natural premiums.

Until within the last decade, the level premium system was practically
the only one in use. Since then there have come into existence hundreds
of co-operative or assessment companies. These institutions have had a
wonderful growth. It is claimed that the number of members and the
amounts insured, double those, respectively, in the old or regular
companies.

Assessment companies do not, strictly speaking, grant insurance. They
are rather agencies, or trust companies, and their functions or
covenants are to make assessments upon survivors when deaths occur, and
to pay over the proceeds of such assessments to the beneficiaries of the
deceased members. There is no definite promise to pay in full, and no
obligation to pay more than the assessments yield. There is no capital,
no risk, no insurance! It is a voluntary association of
individuals. There is usually but little if any penalty for
discontinuance of membership, and the permanence of such institutions
depends mainly upon the volition of their members. They spring into
existence suddenly by the voluntary association of a few individuals
without capital or personal risk, and as suddenly they may go out of
existence by the voluntary act or withdrawal of their members. A breath
may create, a breath destroy.

It must be evident then to the merest tyro, that the permanence and
success of assessment companies depend upon the most rigid observance of
those principles which science and sound business experience have
demonstrated to be fundamental. Among these principles may be mentioned
the following.

1. Rates of assessments or payments adjusted to the cost of insurance at
the actual age of each person. These rates must inevitably and
inexorably increase with the age of the individual.

2. The creation of a guaranty, or emergency fund, available not only to
meet extra mortality, but as a cement to secure cohesion among the
members, and prevent the exodus of the sound lives.

3. An assessment in advance at issue of certificate, otherwise some
persons will be insured for nothing and the cost will fall on the
persistent members.

As was well said by a contributor in your last number, assessment
insurance has its defects, and these are well known to the managers of
these institutions, and that great improvements have been made by the
National Convention of assessment companies, which is composed of
representatives from the best companies organized in almost every state.
They recognize existing defects, they point out the remedies, and yet,
but few seem to have the courage of their convictions. It is a fact
beyond dispute, that with perhaps a half-dozen exceptions, the rates of
assessment in every assessment company in the country remain constant as
at the age of entry. That is to say, a man entering at the age of forty,
pays the rate at forty only, as long as he remains a member. This is a
direct violation of the inexorable law of nature which says, that as a
man grows older the risk of dying, or in other words the cost of
insurance, increases. It is all nonsense to urge that the average
age and the average cost will be kept down by the influx of new members.
The contract is made with the individual,

[pg 413]

and unless each person pays enough to compensate the company for the
indemnity or insurance furnished to him, it follows of necessity, that
others will be overcharged in order to meet the deficiency so
occasioned. And this evil is intensified each year as the company grows
older. When younger and fresher men find that they are overcharged in
order to meet deficiencies arising from the act that older and inferior
risks pay less than cost, they will either not enter, or, if members,
will speedily desert and join an institution which is on a sounder and
more equitable basis. No institution can be permanently successful which
does not observe equity. I have no hesitation in saying that every
assessment or corporation company which violates this fundamental law of
nature by not making its rates of assessment increase with the age of
the individuals insured, is doomed, and that disaster and wreck
is only a question of time. This is not a new opinion. It’s truth is
attested by more than one wreck in this country already.

In every level, or uniform premium, there is a provision for the payment
to the company of the rate of insurance at the actual present age, (no
matter at what age the insurance was affected) on the net amount at
risk.

The great danger for co-oporative or assessment companies lies in the
facility with which such institutions may be organized, and by men
without capital, character, experience or financial ability, who may
thus be ushered into corporate existence by the indulgent laws of
different states.

The members of the National Association of assessment companies should
see to it that the laws of the different states should be so amended as
to require at least a small capital, say $25,000, as a guaranty of good
faith and ability on the part of the promoters, and that no company
should be admitted to membership unless its system was founded on sound
principles as demonstrated by science and business experience.

The managers of assessment companies should be careful lest their claims
should prove to be unfounded. For instance, the writer of the article in
your last number boldly asserts that it “is susceptible of mathematical
demonstration that one or two million 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 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.” On reflection he must
see the absurdity of such statements.

The level premium system is a combination of insurance and investments.
The hundred millions are investments, and are necessary for the
integrity of the level premium contracts. Any assessment company in
which the rates do not increase as the members grow older should be
compelled to have the full premium reserve required by state law and
actuarial science to be held on level premium contracts. This is capable
of mathematical demonstration.

It must be borne in mind that the cost of insurance proper, that
is, the provision to meet current death claims alone, is quite as high
in the best assessment company as in a regular life insurance company,
for this cost depends on the careful

[pg 414]

selection of lives. The difference in the two institutions is that the
former dispenses with the investment element, while the latter exacts it
in connection with all their contracts. Hence the price to be paid is
greater. But is not the guarantee also greater?

The beneficiary under a death claim in an assessment company has for her
security the hope, or promise if you please, that one thousand
men will pay ten dollars each for her account. The beneficiary under a
death claim in a regular life insurance company has for her security not
only the actual payments of ten dollars each by one thousand men, but
the definite promise to pay in full by an institution which has ample
capital, assets, and surplus to back its contracts.

Assessment insurance is yet on trial, and its only hope of permanent
business lies in a rigid compliance with the laws of mortality and of
sound business experience.

THE OLD STATE HOUSE.

By Sidney Maxwell.

3 (return)
The “Boston Massacre,” March 5th, 1770.

[pg 415]

THE PRECIOUS METALS.

By David N. Balfour.

From the earliest times to the commencement of the Christian Era, the
amount of the gold and silver obtained from the surface and mines of the
earth is estimated to be $5,084,000,000; from the latter event to the
epoch of the discovery of America, $4,363,374,000 were obtained; from
the date of the last event to the end of 1842, an addition of
$8,500,000,000 was made; the extensive working of the Russian gold mines
in 1843, and subsequent years, added to the close of 1852,
$1,400,000,000 more; the quadruple discovery of the California gold
mines in 1848, those of Australia in 1851, of New Zealand in 1861, and
the silver mines of Nevada and other countries bordering upon the
Pacific slope of the United States, added, at the close of 1884,
$7,093,626,000, making a grand total at the present time of
$26,441,000,000.

The average loss by the attrition of coin is estimated by Prof. Bowen
at one-fortieth of one per cent, per annum; and the average loss by
consumption in the arts, and destruction by fire and shipwreck, at
$9,000,000 per annum. The amount of the precious metals in existence is
estimated to be $13,670,000,000, of which gold furnishes $8,166,000,000,
and silver $5,504,000,000. Of the amount now in existence,
$10,500,000,000 are estimated to be in coin and bullion, $2,000,000,000
in watches, and the remainder in plate, jewelry, and ornaments. Of the
amount now in existence, $9,448,000,000 is estimated to have been
obtained from America, $1,908,000,000 from Asia (including Australia,
New Zealand, and Oceanica); $1,004,000,000 from Europe, and
$1,310,000,000 from Africa.

The following statement will exhibit the product of the precious metals
throughout the world in 1884:—

The following statement will exhibit the annual product of the precious
metals at different periods:—

[pg 417]

The following statement will exhibit the amount of the precious metals
estimated to be in existence at different periods:

The following statement will exhibit the amount of the precious metals
estimated to have been obtained from the surface and mines of the earth,
from the earliest times to the close of 1884:—

During the first period (prior to the commencement of the Christian
Era,) the annual product of the precious metals was $2,000,000; during
the second period (prior to the discovery of America,) it was
$3,000,000; during the third period (prior to the extensive working of
the Russian gold mines, in 1843,) it was $26,000,000; during the fourth
period (prior to the double discovery of the California gold mines in
1858, and the Australia gold mines in 1851,) it was $140,000,000; during
the fifth period (which immediately succeeded afore-mentioned
discoveries,) it was $243,000,000; during the sixth period (immediately
succeeding the double discovery of the New Zealand gold mines in 1861,
and the silver mines of Nevada and other countries bordering on the
Pacific slope of the United States,) it was $212,000,000. The annual
products of the precious metals attained its acme in 1853, when it was
$285,000,000. The increase in the amount of the precious metals in
existence has been greater during the last forty-years than during the
previous two hundred and ninety-four. Of the amount ($6,441,000,000) of
the precious metals estimated to have been obtained from the surface and
mines of the earth, from the earliest times to the close of 1884,
$12,100,000,000 are estimated to have been obtained from America
$6,724,000,000 from Asia (including Australia, New Zealand and
Oceanica), $3,751,000,000 from Europe, and $2,866,000,000 from Africa.

[pg 418]

AMESBURY: THE HOME OF WHITTIER.

By Frances C. Sparhawk.

Amesbury is only a town. It has defects that would strike a stranger,
and beauties that one who has learned to love them never forgets; they
linger in glimpses of wood and hill and river and lake, and often rise
unbidden before the mind’s eye. The poet Whittier says that those who
are born under the shadow of Powow Hill always return sometime, no
matter how far they may have wandered. He himself, though not Amesbury
born, has found it impossible to desert the old home, full of
associations and surrounded by old friends. He always votes in Amesbury,
and he often spends weeks at a time in his old home. The river that he
has sung, the lake that he has re-christened, the walks and drives with
which he is so familiar, all exercise their spell upon him; he loves
them, just as he loves the warm hearts that he has found there and
helped to make warm and true.

But what a stranger would first notice in coming into town is, that the
houses, instead of being on land regularly laid out for building, seem
to have grown up here and there and everywhere, a good deal in
accordance with their own sweet wills, and without the smallest regard
to surroundings.

But there are handsome houses in Amesbury, and these are growing more
numerous every year. The people themselves would assert that the walks
and drives about the village, the hills and the river are the things to
be longest remembered about the place. If they were inclined to
boasting, they might say also that they had as good a right as any
people in America to be considered of ancient stock, for some of the
names of the earliest settlers are the familiar names in the town
to-day, and few towns in America are older than Amesbury. The names
Barnard, Challis, Weed, Jones, and Hoyt, appear on the first board of
“Prudenshall,” and that of Richard Currier as town clerk. This was in
April, 1668, the year after the new town was named.

Early in 1735 the settlement of Newbury (then spelled Newberry) was
begun. In a little over three years a colony was sent out across the
Merrimac. The plantation was at first called merely from the name of the
river. In 1639 it was named Colchester by the General Court; but October
7, 1640, this name was changed to Salisbury, so that in 1638, almost two
hundred and fifty years ago, Salisbury began to be settled. It seemed as
if there was need of new settlements at that time to counteract the
depletions in the Old World, for the Thirty Years’ War was still
impoverishing Germany; Richelieu was living to rule France in the name
of his royal master, Louis XIII; England was gathering up those forces
of good and evil which from resisting tyranny at last grew intoxicated
with power, and so came to play the tyrant and regicide. For it was
about that time that Charles I had disbanded his army, trusting to the
divinity that, in the eyes of the Stuarts, did ever hedge a king, and at
the same time thrown away his honor by

[pg 419]

pledging himself to what he never meant to perform. While this farce,
which preceded the tragedy, was being set upon the stage of history,
here, three thousand miles away, nature had begun to build up the waste,
and to prophesy growth.

Salisbury, and afterwards Amesbury, were named from the two towns so
famous in England, the Salisbury Plain of Druidical memory, on which is
the celebrated Stonehenge, and near by, the Amesbury where was one of
the oldest monasteries in England. It is supposed that the towns were so
named because many of the new settlers came from those old English
towns. The latter name used to be spelled Ambresbury, and Tennyson in
his “Idylls of the King” spells Almesbury. After the discovery by Modred
of the guilt of King Arthur’s fair and false wife, he says:—

Describing her flight, he tells us that she sent Lancelot

There Arthur sees her for the last time and mourns over her before he
goes forth to his last battle with Modred.

On the whole, it is not strange, considering its associations, and
moreover the fact that this town in Massachusetts is the only Amesbury
in America while so many other names are duplicated, that the people of
Amesbury are not willing to merge the name of their town into that of
the elder sister, even when those parts called in each “the Mills” are
so closely united in interests and in appearance that no stranger could
recognize them as two towns. It is only the Powow that makes the
dividing line here. Blocks of offices and stores on both sides of the
street, among them the post-office, common to both towns, hide the
narrow stream at that point, and further up and down the towering walls
of the factories make it unobserved. It is not here that one sees the
Powow. But there is, or a little time ago there was, a place not far off
from this main street where the river is still harassed, yet as it slips
past in its silent toil with a few trees hanging low on the right, it
has a fascination in spite of its prosaic surroundings; it takes
naturally to picturesqueness and freedom.

One of Whittier’s early poems speaks of an Indian re-visiting the stream
that his forefathers loved, and standing on Powow Hill, where the chiefs
of the Naumkeaks, and of the other tribes held their powows. Here for a
moment, says the poem, a gleam of gladness came to him as he stooped to
drink of the fountain and seated himself under an oak.

[pg 420]

The Indian’s feeling about “These bare hills, this conquered river,” was
not strange. But to us it naturally occurs that we are more likely to
wake up with our scalps on our heads, instead of sleeping our last
sleep, while they dangle at a red man’s girdle. Yet the very state of
warfare that at that time existed between the races showed that in the
settlers themselves was an element of savagery not yet eliminated. For
in all this fierce strife of the tomahawk and the gun, the Quaker
ancestors of the poet Whittier who met the Indians, armed only with
kindness and the high courage of their peaceful convictions, were
treated by the red men as friends and superiors. In the raids of general
devastation they were unmolested. Their descendant has a natural right
to express the pathos of the Indian’s lot.

There is a fine exhibition of human nature in the records of the first
settlement of Amesbury. The place was called “Salisbury new-town” until
1669, and was merely an offshoot of the latter, though much larger in
extent than it is today, for now it is only about six miles by three.
Then it reached up into what is now Newton, N.H. But why should not the
people of those days have been generous as to the size of townships, for
as to land, they had the continent before them where to choose?

But in regard to the human nature. The settlers of Salisbury went at
first only beyond the salt marshes, their town being what is now East
Salisbury. The forests beyond had a threatening look, and were much
too near. It was determined, therefore, to drive them back by having
clearings and settlements across the Powow. So, December 26, 1642, about
three years after this little colony had crossed the Merrimack, a town
meeting was held in which it was voted:—”Yere shall thirtie families
remove to the west side of ye Powowas river.” This motion was very easy
to carry. But it had not been voted what families were to move on beyond
the immediate protection of the small colony at East Salisbury. Who was
to go? Every man sat still in his place and nodded to his neighbor with
a “Thou art the man,” in manner if not in words. It seems to us a very
little thing to give or take the advice, “Go West young man,—or woman.”
But it was very different then. To do it meant, besides living encircled
by forests, to be obliged to go on Sunday through these forests, worse
than lonely, to the meeting-house at East Salisbury, and always with the
possibility of being at any moment obliged to flee all the distance to
that town for comparative safety, perhaps of being obliged to flee in
the night. Signals of alarm were arranged by the General Court. Alarm
was to be given “by distinctly discharging three muskets, or by
continual beat of the drum, or firing the beacon, or discharging a pesse
of ordnance, and every trained soldier is to take the alarm immediately
on paine of five pound.” It was also ordered, “That every town provide a
sufficient place for retreat for their wives and children to repaire to,
as likewise to keepe safe the ammunition thereof.” And also, “That all
watches throughout this country bee set at sunset at the beat of the
drums, & not bee discharged till the beate of the drum at sunne rising.”

But those old Puritans were not men to be bundled by any of the
weaknesses of human nature. In ten days, when it was found that nobody
had

[pg 421]

started “westward, ho!” another town-meeting was held, in which, in
spite of the dangers to be encountered by the new colony, the first vote
was re-affirmed, and it was decided that “the thirtie families be chosen
by ye seven men,” probably the selectmen. And to ensure the matter, it
was determined that this vote should not be repealed except by the
consent of every freeman in the town. So, in the spring, this tiny
colony went out to Salisbury new-town.

In 1647, a law was passed requiring every township of fifty families to
maintain a school. This is the way that the preamble reads:—

“It being one chiefe pr’ject of y’t ould deluder, Satan, to keepe men
from ye knowledge of ye Scriptures, as in former times by keeping ym in
an unknown tongue, so in these latt’r times by pr’suading from ye use of
tongues yt so at least ye true sense & meaning of ye original might be
clouded by false glosses of saint-seeming deceivers, yt learning may not
be buried in ye grave of o’r fath’rs in ye church & commonwealth, the
Lord assisting our endeavor. It is therefore resolved,” &c.

It seems overturning the cornerstone of our forefathers’ intentions to
banish from our schools the Scriptures, those finest examples of the
strength and beauty of the English language, to say nothing of their
lessons in individual self-government, which is the only foundation that
a republic can be built upon.

From this old law have grown up all the public schools of Amesbury.
There is now a high school, and there are, of course, the required
number of small schools; some of these in the outlying districts having
very few scholars.

Several years ago Mr. Whittier, who has the keenest sense of humor, told
a friend that in one of these the whole number of pupils was three,
average attendance one and a half! He was deeply interested in that half
child.

Amesbury has among its attractions a Lion’s Mouth! In the old days of
Indian ambushes it must have earned its right to the name. But now the
only existing danger is lest one should be eaten up—with kindness.
It is a short mile from the mills, and a pleasant walk in spite of its
ending! At last there comes a little hollow with a large farm-house on
the left, and a grass road winding past it at right angles with the main
road and leading into beautiful woods. These woods are the very jaws of
the lion; and it is very hard, on a hot summer’s day, for those who go
into them to come out again. A few rods up the road from the hollow are
other houses. People bearing some of the earliest recorded names in
Amesbury, descendants of the brave pioneers, are to be found here, or
having departed this life, have left good records behind them. One of
these latter lived here in the pleasantest way. He and his wife carried
on their large farm in an ideal manner; everything was upon a generous
scale. There was money enough not to wear out life in petty economies,
and largeness of soul enough not to put the length of a bank account
against the beauties and refinements of life. The loss of their only
child, and a few years afterward of their grand-daughter, one of the
loveliest children earth ever held, was—not compensated for, that
can never be, but made much less dreary by a friendship of many years’
standing between them and their summer neighbors. In this case, too, the
gentleman is a native of Amesbury, proud and fond of his birthplace.
Every

[pg 422]

summer he comes to the cottage of this friend, a charming little house
only a few rods from the larger one, and spends the summer here with his
family and servants. He has made a great deal of money in New York, but
fortunately, not too much, for it has not built up a Chinese wall around
his heart; his new friends are dear, but his early friends are still the
dearest.

Between the Mills and this formidable Mouth of the Lion, is the Quaker
Meeting House, a modest, sober-hued building on a triangular green, on
which, before it was fenced in, the boys delighted to play ball on the
days and at the hours (for the Quakers have meeting Thursday also) on
which the grave worshippers were not filing into what cannot fairly be
called the house of silence, because it has been known to echo to
exhortations as earnest, if not as vehement as one may hear from any
pulpit. Still, there are sometimes long intervals of silence, and then
the consciousness that silent self-examination is one purpose of the
coming together, gives an impressiveness to the simple surroundings. It
must have been here that Mr. Whittier learned to interpret so
wonderfully that silent prayer of Agassiz for guidance when he opened
his famous school from which he was so soon called to a higher life.

Mr. Whittier always goes to this meeting when he is well enough. The May
Quarterly Meetings of the Society of Friends are held at Amesbury. There
are a good many members of this Society in the town, and there is among
them a hospitality, a kindness, and a cordiality that added to their
quiet ways and the refined dress of the women makes them interesting.

It goes without saying that Amesbury has also the allotment of churches
of other denominations usual to New England towns.

Thirty years ago and more, the Amesbury and Salisbury Mills were two
distinct companies. The agent of the former mills, Mr. Joshua Aubin, was
a gentleman of fine presence. After he left Amesbury, he sent to the
town as a gift the nucleus of its present Public Library, which,
although not absolutely free

[pg 423]

has only a nominal subscription to pay the services of the librarian,
and for keeping the books in order.

John G. Whittier

Mr. James Horton, agent of the Salisbury mills, was more of the
rough-and-ready type of man, a little bluff, but frank and kind-hearted.
Both gentlemen as it happened, lived in Amesbury and were of one mind in
regard to the character of their operatives. It was before the influx
of foreign labor, and the men and women in the mills belonged to
respectable, often well-to-do American families. Rowdyism was a thing
unknown to them, and as to drunkenness, if that fault was found once in
an operative, he was reprimanded; if it occurred again, he was at once
discharged. And so Amesbury, though a manufacturing town, was in its
neatness and orderliness an exquisite little village with the Powow Hill
at its back and the hem of its robe laved by two beautiful rivers. After
Mr. Aubin’s ill health had made him resign his place, the father of
Prof. Langley, well-known to science, was agent for a time, and carried
on matters in the spirit of his predecessors. But there came a change,
the mills were united under one control, and an agent was sent to
Amesbury for the purpose of forcibly illustrating the fact that
corporations have no souls. He did it admirably. Work was started at
high pressure, there came a rush of foreigners into the place, many of
the old towns people moved away in disgust, and the new took the place
of the old as suddenly as if an evil magician had waved his wand
and cried: “Presto!” But this agent soon gave evidence that great
unscrupulousness doesn’t pay, even as a financial investment. After
several other short regimes the present agent, Mr. Steere, came to
Amesbury, and the corporation has found it worth while to keep him.
The effect of the sudden influx of foreign population into Amesbury
has never done away with; it has its “Dublin” in a valley where the
corporation built houses for its operatives. And with what indifference
to cleanliness, or health these were built! The poor operatives were
crowded together in a way that would make neatness difficult to the most
fastidious. A physician in Amesbury

[pg 424]

who considered the poor, presented this state of things so strongly and
so persistently to the agent, spoke so forcibly of the moral degradation
that such herding increased, or induced, that when it became necessary
to build new tenements they were much better arranged. Every
manufacturing town in New England has now its unwholesome because
untaught population, a danger signal on the line of progress of the
republic. It is only popular education that can remove this obstruction
of ignorance. The foreign population of Amesbury today is large, and
although it gives hands to the mills, it adds neither to the beauty nor
the interest of the town. But it gives a mission to those who believe in
the possibilities of human nature, and the right of every man to have a
chance at life, even if the way he takes it be not agreeable to his
cultivated neighbor.

The mills in the days of their greatest prosperity were all woolen mills:
now a part of them are cotton mills. They are all running, and,
although not with the remarkable success of a score of years ago, have a
future before them.

The making of felt hats, now so important a business, was started here
a number of years ago by a gentleman who built a hat factory near his
house at the Ferry. He was a gentleman in that true sense in which,
added to his nerve and will (and he had abundance of both) were those
knightly qualities of generosity and kindliness that have made his
memory dear, while the Bayley Hat Company, called after him as its
founder, bears witness to his business ability.

The great, oblong, many-windowed carriage manufactories meet one at
every turn, and often the smithy stands near with its clangor. This
business used to be confined to West Amesbury, now Merrimac. At the
beginning of the century it was started on an humble scale by two young
men, one a wood-worker, the other a plater, while another young man was
trimmer for them. One of the firm lived in West Amesbury, the other in
South Amesbury, now Merrimac Port, and after each had built his share of
the carriage, it was found a little difficult to bring the different
parts together. This was the beginning, and now Amesbury ships its
carriages over the world. One of the first to bring this business from
what was then West Amesbury to the Mills was a young man who in the
beginning of the war had been unfortunate in business. He gave his
creditors all he had, and went to the front. After serving his time
there he came home, went into the carriage business, made money this
time instead of losing it, and paid up his old creditors one hundred
cents on the dollar. He deserves a big factory and success. And he has
both. And he is not the only one of whom good things could be said.

They have a Wallace G.A.R. Post in Amesbury, not in commemoration of the
Wallace of old Scottish fame, but of a man no less patriotic and brave
who lived among themselves, an Englishman, a shoemaker. He was lame, but
so anxious during the Rebellion to have his share in the struggle for
the Union that he tried to get a place on board a gunboat, saying that
he could “sit and shoot.” As this was impossible, the town sent him to
Boston as its representative, and he was in the Legislature when the
members voted themselves an increase of pay. Mr. Wallace believed the
thing illegal. He took the money in trust. One day after his return to
Amesbury he limped up to his physician (the same one who

[pg 425]

had brought about the better construction of the new corporation houses)
and handed him fifty dollars of this over pay, to be used at his
discretion among the poor, explaining as he did so where the money came
from, that he felt that it belonged to Amesbury, and that he returned a
part through this channel.

Half way between the Mills and the Ferry stands an old well that a
native of Amesbury dug by the roadside for the benefit of travellers
because he had once been a captive in Arabian deserts, and had known the
torments of thirst. Here was a man to whom the uses of adversity had
been sweet, for they had taught him humanity. Mrs. Spofford has written
an appropriate poem upon this incident.

The elms in Amesbury are very beautiful, and they are found everywhere;
but on the ferry road there are magnificent ones not far from the river.
They are growing on each side of the road, arching it over with their
graceful boughs.

WHITTIER’S HOME, AMESBURY.

The Ferry proper near which was born Josiah Bartlett, one of the signers
of the Declaration of Independence, is at the foot of the street that
runs from the Mills down to the river. In old times there was a
veritable ferry here a few rods above where the Powow empties into the
Merrimack. This ferry is mentioned in the records, two years after the
town had been set upon its feet. In a book written about Amesbury by Mr.
Joseph Merrill, a native of the town, it is stated that the town
petitioned the general Court for leave to keep a Ferry over the river at
this place. This is the record from the same source:—

“The County Court held at Hampton, ye 13th of ye 8th month 1668, Mr.
Edward Goodwin being presented by ye Selectmen of ye town of Amesbury to
Court to keep ye Ferry over Merrimac river about ye mouth of ye Powow
river

[pg 426]

where ye said Goodwin now dwelleth, the Court do allow and approve of ye
sd person for one year next following and until ye Court shall take
further orders therein, and ye prices to be as followeth so, for every
single passenger two pence, for a horse and man six pence, and for all
great cattle four pence, for sheep and other small cattle under two
years old two pence per head.”

In 1791 there came up a question of a bridge being built across the
Merrimac. A town meeting was called to oppose the measure, and in this
it was argued that a bridge would throw into disuse the ferry with which
much pains had been taken. Precious old fogies! In those days, too, they
lived, for they were as old as the centuries. Nothing of the mushroom
about them. There is a tradition that once in Revolutionary days,
Washington was carried across this ferry. But it is impossible to say
what the tradition is founded upon, and how much it is worth.

As to the river, there are rivers and rivers, as the saying is; at some
we marvel, some we fear and to some we make pilgrimages as to the Mecca
of the faithful. But the Merrimac is a river to be loved, and to be
loved the better the more familiar it is. What its poet, Whittier, says
about it must be literally true:

It is worth while to try to imagine it as he writes it in “Cobbler
Keezer’s Vision” two hundred and more years ago, when that old fellow
was so amazed at the prospect of mirth and pleasure among the
descendants of the stern Puritans that he dropped his lapstone into the
water in bewilderment.

This was the time when

What a picture that is! And then behind these tree-stumps, the great
forest with its possibilities of comfort and even of competence in its
giant timbers,—when they were fairly floored, but; as it stood, a
threatening foe with a worse enemy in its depths than the darkness of
its shadows, or the wild beasts.

Several of Mr. Whittier’s songs of the Merrimac were written for
picnics, given at the Laurels on the Newbury side of the river by a
gentlemen and his wife from Newburyport. They were early abolitionists,
friends and hosts of Garrison,

[pg 427]

of George Thompson and others of that brave band, and of course friends
of the poet. This hospitable couple gave a picnic here every June for
twenty years. The first was a little party of perhaps half-a-dozen
people, the twenty-first was a large assembly. Mr. Whittier was present
at these picnics whenever able, and, as has been said, sometimes wrote a
poem to be read there. He never reads in public himself.

Although the Powow river has been made so emphatically a stream of use,
there are glimpses of a native beauty in it that its hard fate has never
obliterated; these are still there, as one stands upon the little bridge
that spans its last few rods of individual life and looks up the stream
upon a wintry landscape, or upon summer fields, and longingly toward the
bend.

Whether the Powow has any power to set in motion the wheels of fancy as
it does the wheels of the factories it is impossible to say, but this
much is certain; on its banks was born an artist who has made his name
known on the banks of the Seine. The father of Mr. Charles Davis, our
young artist of great promise and of no mean performance, was for years
a teacher in Amesbury, and the garden of the house where this son was
born bordered upon the Powow.

THE OLD SANDY HILL MEETING HOUSE

At Pond Hills, between Amesbury and Merrimac, is lake Attitash, which,
before Mr. Whittier took pity upon it, rejoiced in the name of Kimball’s
Pond. There is a slight suspicion that it is still occasionally called
by its old name. In dry seasons the water is used by the mills. But the
blue lake is as beautiful as if it were never useful. On its shore
enough grand old pines are left to dream under of forests primeval, of
Indian wigwams, and of canoes on the bright water; for the red men knew
very well the hiding places of the perch and of the pickerel. So did the
white men who chose the region of the Merrimac for their new home. In
the “Maids of Attitash” is described the lake where

[pg 428]

All these are still here, but one misses the maidens who ought to be
sitting there

No doubt they are about here somewhere, only it takes a poet’s eye to
find them. And yet it was not very far from here that there lived a few
years ago a young girl, a descendant of one of the early settlers of
Amesbury, who on her engagement said to a friend proudly:—”I am going
to marry a poor man, and I am going to help him.” And so she always
nobly did, in ways different from tawdry ambition. The courage of the
old Puritans has not died out here any more than the old beauty has
deserted the land.

KATE FIELD’S NEW DEPARTURE.

By Edward Increase Mather.

Miss Kate Field has been so exclusively identified with artistic and
literary success that her new departure as a lecturer on existing
political evils has excited no little surprise and comment. An
exceptional degree of public interest as well as of purely private and
personal regard has followed her almost, indeed, from childhood; partly
due, it may be, to a certain indefinable magnetism of temperament which
always makes the place where she chances to be at the time seem a social
centre, and somewhat, too, from a life that has not been without its
picturesque setting of scenery and circumstance. “Kate Field was started
right,”—remarked Miss Frances E. Willard of her one day. “As a child
Walter Savage Landor held her on his knee and taught her, and she grew
up in the atmosphere of Art.” The chance observation made only en
passant, never the less touched a salient truth in that vital manner
in which Miss Willard’s words are accustomed to touch truth. She was,
indeed, “started right.” The only child of gifted parents, endowed with
a rare combination of intellectual and artistic talent; with a nobility
and genuineness of nature that has ever been one of her most marked
characteristics; attuned by temperament to all that is fine, and high,
and beautiful,—it is little wonder that her life has presented a series
of advancing achievements. She has studied, and read, and thought; she
has travelled, and “sipped the foam of many lives;” and a polished and
many-sided culture has added its charm to a woman singularly charming by
nature and possessed of the subtle gift of fascination. When very young
she studied music and modern languages abroad in Florence, and in
London. To music she especially devoted herself studying under Garcia
and under William Shakespeare, the great English tenor, whose favorite
pupil she is said to have been. Walter Savage Landor conceived a great
fondness for her, gave her lessons in Latin, and left her at his death a
valuable portfolio of old drawings. In some verses addressed “To K.F.”
he alludes to her as:—

[pg 429]

MISS KATE FIELD.

His interest was richly repaid by the young girl who, after his death,
wrote reminiscences of Landor in a manner whose sympathetic brilliancy
of interpretation added an enduring lustre to his life and achievement.
In her early girlhood as, indeed, in her womanhood, her brilliancy and
charm won all hearts. It was in Florence that she met George Eliot, and
a moon-light evening at the Trollope villa, where Marion Lewes led the
girl, dream-enchanted, out on the fragrant and flowery terrace, left its
picture in her memory, and exquisitely did she portray it in a paper on
George Eliot at the time of her death. By temperament and cultivation
Miss Field is admirably adapted to interpret to the world its masters,
its artists. Her dramatic criticism on Ristori ranks among the finest
ever written of the stage; her “Pen Photographs of Dickens’s Readings”
have permanently recorded that memorable tour. Her Life of Fechter wins
its praise from the highest literary authorities in our own country and
London. She has published a few books, made up from her fugitive
articles in the Tribune, the London Times, the Athenæum, and
the magazines, and more of this literature would be eminently refreshing
and acceptable. It is no exaggeration to say that among the American
writers of to-day no one has greater breadth, vigor, originality
and power than Kate Field. She is by virtue of wide outlook and
comprehension of important matters, entirely free from the tendency to
petty detail and trivial common-place that clogs the minds and pens of
many women-writers. Her foreign letters to the Tribune discussed
questions of political significance and international interest. Miss
Field is a woman of so many resources that she has never made of her
writing a trade, but has used it as an art; and she never writes unless
she has something to say. This fact teaches a moral that the woman of
the period may do well to contemplate.

Yet with all the varied charms of foreign life, passed in the most
cultivated

[pg 430]

and refined social circles of Europe, Kate Field never forgot that she
was an American, and patriotism grew to be a passion with her. She
became a student of English and American politics, and her revelations
of the ponderous machinery of the British Parliament, in a series of
strong and brilliant press letters, now collected into the little volume
called “Hap-Hazzard,” was as fine and impressive in its way as is her
dramatic criticism or literary papers. All this, perhaps, had paved the
way for her to enter into a close and comprehensive study of the subject
which she is now so ably discussing in her notable lectures on the
social and the political crimes of Utah. The profound and serious
attention which she is now giving to this problem stamps her lectures as
among the most potent political influences of the time. Miss Field’s
discussion of Mormonism is one of those events which seem pre-determined
by the law of the unconscious, and which seem to choose the individual
rather than to be chosen by him. In the summer of 1883, by way of a
change from continental travel, Miss Field determined to hitch her wagon
to a star and journey westward. She lingered for a month in Denver where
she received distinguished social attention and where, by special
request, she gave her lecture on an “Evening with Dickens” and her
charming “Musical Monologue.” Of this Dickens’ lecture a western journal
said:—

“Charles Dickens was the novelist of humanity, and Kate Field is,
to-day, his most sympathetic and intelligent interpreter. Those who
were so fortunate as to attend her reading last evening enjoyed an
intellectual pleasure not soon forgotten. They saw a slender, graceful
woman, dressed in creamy white, with soft laces falling about her; with
low, broad brow, and earnest, sympathetic eyes, under a cloud of soft
dark hair. With a rich and finely modulated voice of remarkable power
of expression, she held her audience for two hours spellbound by the
magic of her genius.”

In Colorado Miss Field enjoyed an unique and picturesque holiday.
Picnics and excursions were gotten up in her honor; special trains were
run; she rode on horseback with gay parties of friends twenty-five miles
a day; she joined friends from New York who were camping out on “The
Needles,” and she made a visit to the San Juan Silver-mining district.
Among other diversions she had the honor of naming a new watering place,
located on “The Divide,” an hour by rail from Denver, to which, in honor
of General Palmer who has practically “made” that region, Miss Field
gave the name of Palmero, the Spanish for Palmer.

How unconsciously Miss Field came to study the problem presented by the
peculiar institutions of Utah is curiously indicated in a letter from
Salt Lake City, under date of Jan. 16, 1884, which she wrote to the
Boston Herald, and which opens thus:—

“I know of nothing that would do Bostonians so much good as a prolonged
trip across this continent, giving themselves sufficient time to tarry
at different points and study the people. For myself—about half a
Bostonian—I became so ashamed of sailing east year after year, that
last summer I made up my mind to hitch my wagon to the star of empire
and learn as much of my own country as I knew of Europe. I started from
New York in July, expecting to be absent three months, and in that
period obtain an intelligent idea of the far West. After passing two
months and a half in wonderful Colorado and only seeing a fraction of
the Centennial state, I began to realize that in two years I might,
with diligence, get a tolerable idea of this republic

[pg 431]

west of the Mississippi. Cold weather setting in, and the fall of snow
rendering mountain travelling in Colorado neither safe nor agreeable, I
came to Utah over the wonderful Denver & Rio Grande railroad, intending
to pass a week prior to visiting New Mexico and Arizona. My
week expired on the 22nd day of October and still I linger among the
‘saints.’ I am regarded as more or less demented by eastern friends. If
becoming interested in a most extraordinary anomaly to such an extent
as to desire to study it and to be able to form an intelligent opinion
therein is being demented, then I am mad indeed, for I’ve not yet got
to the bottom of the Utah problem, and if I lived here years, there
would still be much to learn. Despite this last discouraging fact,
I have improved my opportunities and am able to paragraph what has come
under my own observation or been acquired by absorption of Mormon and
Gentile literature. If the commissioners sent here by Congress to
investigate the Mormon question, at an annual expense of forty thousand
dollars per annum, had studied this question as earnestly as I have,
they never would have told the country that polygamy is dying out. One
or two members of that commission know better, and sooner or later they
must tell the truth or stultify their own souls.”

This extract reveals how deeply the anomaly of Mormon life had at once
impressed her. Miss Field was too keen and cultivated an observer not to
see beneath the surface of this phase of living a problem whose roots
struck deep into national prosperity and safety. The distinguished
essayist and critic, Mr. Edwin P. Whipple, said of her study of
Mormonism:—

She undertook a perfectly original method of arriving at the truth, by
intimate conversations with Mormon husbands and wives, as well as with
the most intelligent of the “Gentiles.” She discarded from her mind
pre-conceptions and all prejudices which discolor and distort objects
which should be rigidly investigated, and looked at the mass of facts
before her in what Bacon calls “dry light.” Cornelius Vanderbilt, the
elder, was accustomed to account for the failures and ruin of the
brilliant young brokers who tried to corner the stocks in which he had
an interest, by declaring that “these dashing young fellars didn’t see
things as they be.” Miss Field saw things in Utah “as they be.” She
collected facts of personal observation, analyzed and generalized them,
and, by degrees, her sight became insight, and the passage from insight
to foresight is rapid. After thorough investigation, her insight
enabled her to penetrate into the secret of that “mystery of iniquity”
which Mormonism really is; while her foresight showed her what would
be the inevitable result of the growth and diffusion of such a horrible
creed.

The winter lapsed into spring and still she lingered in Salt Lake City.
She relinquished all pleasure for the real work of studying deeply the
anomaly of a Polygamous hierarchy thriving in the heart of the Republic.
Every facility was accorded to her by United States officials, military
officers, leading Gentiles and Apostates. Prominent “Latter Day Saints”
offered her marked courtesy. She pursued this research unremittingly for
eight months and when, at last, she left Salt Lake City, the leading
Gentile paper, the Tribune, devoted a leading editorial to Miss Field’s
marvellously thorough study of Mormon conditions, and, on her departure,
said:—

“Miss Field is probably the best posted person, outside the high
Mormon church officials, and others who have been in the church, on
this institution, in the world, and its effects upon men, women and
governments. With a fixedness of purpose which nothing could swerve,
and with an energy which neither storm, mud, snow, cold looks, the
persuasions or even the loss of friends, could for a moment dampen, she
has held on her course. In the tabernacle, in the ward meeting house,
in the homes of high Mormons, and, when these were closed to her, in
the homes of the poor, she has worked upon the theme, while every scrap
of history which offered

[pg 432]

to give any light upon the Mormon organization she has devoured.
Mormonism has been to her like a fever. It has run its course and now
she is going away. If she proposes to lecture, she ought to be able to
prepare a better lecture on Mormonism than she has ever yet delivered;
if a book is in process of incubation it ought to be of more value than
any former book on this subject. Lecture or book will be intense enough
to satisfy all demands. The ‘Tribune’ gives the world notice in advance
that Miss Field has a most intimate knowledge of the Mormon kingdom.”

Returning to the East she stopped on the way in Missouri and at Nauvoo,
Illinois, looking up all the old camping-grounds of Mormonism, and
meeting and interviewing people who had been connected with it,
including two sons of Joseph Smith, Miss Field opened her course of
lectures on this subject in Boston last November, before a brilliant and
distinguished audience, including the Governor and other officials of
state, Harvard University professors, and men and women eminent in art,
literature and society. She dealt with the political crimes of the
Mormons, arguing that the great wrong was not, as many had believed,
polygamy, but treason! Polygamy, though “the cornerstone of the Mormon
church,” was not inserted in its printed articles of faith and was not
taught until the unwary had been “gathered to Zion.” The monstrosity of
the “revelation” on celestial marriage; the tragic unhappiness of Mormon
women; the elastic conscience of John Taylor, “prophet, seer and
revelator” to God’s chosen people, were vividly depicted. Her extracts
from Brigham Young’s sermons, and from those of his counsellors, are
forcible arguments on the Gentile side. Indeed, throughout her entire
discourse, Miss Field clinches every statement with Mormon proof, rarely
going to Gentile authorities for vital facts connected with her subject.
The lecturer’s sense of humor betrayed itself now and then, when, with
fervor, she related an incident in her own experience, or quoted a “Song
of Zion.” The refrain of one of these songs still rings in our ears:

The prodigious contrast between the preaching and practice of polygamy
was fully displayed. Mormons claim that there is a vast difference
between bigamy and polygamy; that only good men are allowed to take
plural wives; that no saint takes more wives than he can support, and
that a muchly married “man of God” exercises the most rigid impartiality
in the bestowal of his affections upon his various women. Miss Field
upsets these beautiful theories by graphic pictures drawn from life, and
cited Brigham Young himself as “a bright and shining lie to the boast of
impartiality.” Brigham Young’s coup d’etat in granting woman suffrage in
1871 was illuminated, and emphasized by the assertions:—”A territory
that has abolished the right of dower, that proclaims polygamy to be
divine, that has no laws against bigamy and kindred crimes, that has no
just appreciation of woman, is unworthy of self-respecting humanity,
woman suffrage or no woman suffrage.” Miss Field makes in these lectures
a telling exposition of the doctrine of

[pg 433]

blood atonement, passing on to these Mormon missionaries and their
methods, and the people who become “fascinated with the idea of direct
communication with heaven through the medium of a prophet,” and to whom
the missionary brethren prudently “leave the mysteries of polygamy to
the imagination,” while they inculcate the importance of “gathering to
Zion.” She outlined the educational status and the discouragement given
by Brigham Young to all educational progress. Of Mormon treason she
says:—

“Five years after the United States had established the Territory of
Utah its people were in armed rebellion because the government dared to
send a Gentile governor and national troops to Utah.”

Nor does she spare the United States in its responsibility for these
crimes. “The United States to-day,” said Miss Field, “is responsible for
thirty years’ growth of polygamy, with its attendant degradation of
woman and brutalization of man.” As an illustration of this conclusion,
she told a most interesting story of which Governor Harding of Utah,
Brigham Young, Benjamin Halliday, Postmaster General Blair, Abraham
Lincoln and William H. Seward were the characters. The story is a
dramatic and significant bit of Mormon history, related for the first
time. It led up to an earnest and eloquent peroration of which the final
words were: “‘I’ll believe polygamy is wrong when Congress breaks it up;
not before!’ exclaims a plural wife. Men and women of New England! You
who forge public opinion; you who sounded the death knell of slavery,
what are you going to do about it!”

William Lloyd Garrison used to tell his friends that it was worth an
admission fee just to see Kate Field on the platform, as she made so
lovely a picture. Her attitudes—for they are too spontaneous and
unconscious to be termed poses—are the impersonation of grace, and,
aside from the enjoyment of the intellectual quality and searching
political analysis of her lectures, is that of the artistic effect.
She gave a course of three lectures on this “Mormon Monster.” They were
efforts whose invincible logic, graphic presentation and thrilling power
held spellbound her audience. They were a drama of social and political
life, and almost unprecedented on the lyceum platform was this eloquence
and splendor of oratory, combined with the trained thought, the
scholarly acquirement, and the finished eloquence of its delivery. This
course of lectures finished there was a popular call for Miss Field to
repeat one at Tremont Temple which, by invitation of Governor Robinson,
the Mayor and a number of distinguished citizens, she consented to do.
The triumph was repeated. From Boston she was invited to lecture in
Brooklyn, Philadelphia and Washington. Press and people were alike
enthusiastic. It is to the work of Miss Kate Field more than to any
other cause, that the present disintegration of Mormon treason is due.
Other travellers in Utah have made but the briefest stays, and have been
ready to gloss over the tale. Miss Field is telling the truth about it,
and she does it with a courage, a vigor, an honesty, and a power that
renders it one of the most potent influences in the national life of the
times. Kate Field holds to-day the first place on the Lyceum platform of
America. She has a rare combination of judicial and executive qualities.
She is singularly free from exaggeration, and her

[pg 434]

sense of justice is never deflected by personal feeling or emotional
impulse. She has that exceptional balance of the intellectual and
artistic forces that enables her to give to her lecture a superb
literary quality, and to deliver it with faultless grace of manner and
an impressiveness of presence rarely equalled. In Kate Field America has
a woman worthy to be called an orator.

THE MONUMENT AND HOMESTEAD OF REBECCA NURSE.

By Elizabeth Porter Gould.

Perhaps the greatest incentive to ideal living in a changing world is
the firmly held conviction that truth will finally vindicate itself.
When this vindication is made apparent, as in the case of Rebecca
Nurse, one of the most striking martyrs of the Salem witchcraft days of
1692, the cause of human progress seems assured. For it is thus seen
that truth has within itself a living seed which in its development
is destined to become man’s guide to further knowledge and growth.
This idea was impressed upon me anew as I stood before the granite
monument, some eight and a half feet high, erected this past summer in
Danvers,—originally Salem,—to the memory of Mrs. Rebecca Nurse, by
her descendants. A carpet of green grass surrounded it, and a circle of
nearly twenty pine trees guarded it as sentinels. The pines were singing
their summer requiem as I read on the front of the monument these
words:—

I lingered a moment over these fitting lines of Whittier, whose charming
home, “Oak Knoll,” a short distance off, had just given me a restful
pleasure. Then I walked around to the other side of the monument, where
I read, with mingled feelings, the following words:—

These last lines reminded me of the fact that the paper with its forty
signatures, testifying to the forty years’ acquaintance of the good
character of Rebecca Nurse, was still in existence. Alas! why couldn’t
such a testimony of neighbors and friends have saved her? But it was not
so to be. The government of the colony, the influence of the magistracy,
and public opinion elsewhere, overpowered all friendly and family help;
and on the 19th July, 1692, at the advanced age of seventy-one years,
Rebecca Nurse was hung on Gallows hill.

As I left the monument, which is in the old family burying-ground, and
wandered up the time-honored lane towards the homestead where she was
living when arrested, the March before, my thoughts would go back to
those dreadful days. I thought of this venerable mother’s surprise and
wonder, as she learned of the several distinct indictments against her,
four of which, for having practised “certain detestable acts called
witchcraft” upon Ann Putnam, Mary Walcot, Elizabeth Hubbard, and Abigail
Williams, were still to be found in the Salem records. I thought of the
feelings of this old and feeble woman as she was borne to the Salem
jail, then a month later sent off, with other prisoners, to the jail
in Boston (then a whole day’s journey), to be sent back to Salem for
her final doom. I pictured her on trial, when, in the presence of her
accusers, the “afflicted girls,” and the assembled crowd, she constantly
declared her innocence (“I am innocent, and God will clear my
innocency”), and showed a remarkable power in refuting the questions of
the magistrate. I thought of her Christian faith and courage, when, upon
seeing all the assembly, and even the magistrate, putting faith in the
“afflicted girls'” diabolical tantrums (what else can I call them?) as
there enacted, and now preserved in the records of the trial, she calmiy
said, “I have got nobody to look to but God.” I again pictured her, as,
just before the horrors of execution, she was taken from the prison to
the meeting-house, by the sheriff and his men, to receive before a great
crowd of spectators the added disgrace of excommunication from the
Church.

But I could picture no more. My heart rebelled. And as I had now reached
the old homestead on the hill I paused a moment, before entering, to
rest under the shade of the trees and to enjoy the extensive views of
the surrounding country. This comforted my troubled feelings, and
suggested the thought that in the fourteen years that Rebecca Nurse had
lived there she must have often come under the shade of the trees,
perhaps after hours of hard work and care, to commune alone with her
God. How could I help

[pg 436]

thinking so when there came up before me her answer to the magistrate’s
question, “Have you familiarity with these spirits?”—”No, I have none
but with God alone.” Surely, to one who knew Him as she did, who in calm
strength could declare her innocence when many around her, as innocent
as she, were frightened into doubt and denial, the quiet and rest of
nature must have been a necessary means of courage and strength.

Then what did not the old house, with its sloping roof, tell me, as it
still stood where Townsend Bishop had built it in 1636, upon receiving a
grant of three hundred acres? Yes, this old “Bishop’s mansion,” as the
deed calls it, had felt the joys and sorrows of our common human life
for almost two hundred and fifty years. It had known the friends whom
Townsend Bishop, as one of the accomplished men of Salem village, had
gathered about him in the few years that he had lived there. It must
have heard some of Hugh Peters’ interesting experiences, since, as
pastor of the First Church those very years (1636-1641), he was a
frequent visitor. Why couldn’t one think that Roger Williams had often
come to compare notes on house-building, since he owned the “old witch
house” (still standing on the corner of Essex and North streets) at the
same time that Mr. Bishop was building his house? It certainly was a
pleasure to remember that Governor Endicott once owned and lived on this
farm. He bought it in 1648, for one hundred and sixty pounds, of Henry
Checkering, to whom Mr. Bishop had sold it seven years before.

I recalled many other things, that summer day, concerning this ancient
place. Shall I not tell them? While the Governor lived on it he
continued his good work for the general opening of the country around
about. Among other things he laid out the road that passes its
entrance-gate to-day.

Here his son John brought his youthful Boston bride, and gave to her the
place as a “marriage-gift.” Then, some years later, she, the widow of
John, having become the bride of a Mr. James Allen, gave it to him as a
“marriage-gift;” and upon her death, in 1673, he became the possessor.
Five years later he sold it to Francis Nurse, the husband of Rebecca,
for four hundred pounds. Mr. Nurse was an early settler of Salem, a
“tray-maker,” whose articles were much used. He was a man of good
judgment, and respected by his neighbors. He was then fifty-eight years
of age, and his wife fifty-seven. They had four sons and four daughters.
The peculiar terms of the purchase had always seemed interesting to me;
for the purchase-money of four hundred pounds was not required to be
paid until the expiration of twenty-one years. In the meantime a
moderate rent of seven pounds a year for the first twelve years, and ten
pounds for each of the remaining nine years, was determined upon.
Suitable men were appointed to estimate the value of what Mr. Nurse
should add to the estate while living upon it, by clearing meadows,
erecting buildings, or making other improvements. This value over one
hundred and fifty pounds was to be paid to him. These various sums, if
paid over to Mr. Allen before the twenty-one years had expired, would
make a proportionate part of the farm at Mr. Nurse’s disposal.

[pg 437]

The low rent and the industrious, frugal habits of Mr. Nurse and his
family, added to the fact that not a dollar was required to be paid down
at first, led to the making of such good improvements that before half
the time had elapsed a value was created large enough to pay the whole
four hundred pounds to Mr. Allen. When Mr. Nurse thus became owner of
this estate he gave to his children, who had already good homes within
its boundaries, the larger half of the farm, while he reserved for
himself the homestead and the rest of the land. By the deeds he gave
them, they were required to maintain a roadway to connect with the old
homestead and with the homes of each other.

While the different members of the Nurse family were thus working hard
for the money to buy the place there was hanging over its owner the
shadow of litigation for its possession. But this was Mr. Allen’s
affair, not theirs, so they went on their way in peace. Indeed, it has
been thought that their steady success in life was one cause of their
future trouble. They became objects of envy to those restless ones less
favored. And so, when the opportunity came to merely whisper a name for
the “afflicted girls” to take up, Rebecca Nurse’s fate was in the hands
of an enemy. A striking example of the innocent suffering for the
guilty. Does not vicarious suffering seem to be an important factor in
the development of the race? Two years after, this faithful wife and
mother had been led from her peaceful home to suffer the agonies of
prisons, trials, and hanging. When the children had all married, the
father gave up the homestead to his son Samuel, and divided his
remaining property among his sons and daughters. He died soon after,
in 1695. He was a kind, true father, whose requests after death were
heeded. This homestead was in the Nurse name as late as 1784, when it
was owned by a great-grandson of Rebecca. He sold it to Phineas Putnam,
a descendant of old Nathaniel Putnam, who, in the hour of need, wrote
the paper for the forty signatures above mentioned. The estate descended
to the great-grandson of Phineas, Orin Putnam, who, in 1836, married the
daughter of Allen Nurse. And thus a direct descendant of Rebecca Nurse
was again placed to preside over the ancestral farm, and to their
descendants it belongs to-day.

After thus thinking over this interesting history of the old place,
as I reclined under the shade of its trees, I was better prepared to
enjoy the kind hospitality which it then offered me. I felt a peculiar
pleasure in stepping into the same little front porch which Townsend
Bishop had built so many years ago. And upon ascending the stairs I
found myself lingering a while by the old original balusters, the
building of which Roger Williams had perhaps viewed with interest. Upon
reaching the attic it was a pleasure, indeed, to see in this new world
the frame-work of a house which for two hundred and fifty years had
stood so well the test of nature in all her moods. No saw was used in
shaping those oaken timbers. They knew only the broad-axe. From this
attic I descended to the sitting-room, to spend a while under the same
low beams which had greeted the first visitors of the house. Here I
imagined the Nurse family living in quiet and peace. Here I

[pg 438]

pictured the son Samuel, as, later, he wondered over and over again how
he could remove the reproach which was on his mother’s name. And I
thought that to him his descendants owed much, for it was mainly to his
pleadings that the General Court exonerated her in 1710, and the Church
in 1712.

While sitting there I learned of some alterations which had been made
from time to time: how the front of the house, before which the old
roadway used to be, had been widened by extending the western end beyond
the porch.

As I came out of the house upon the green grass around it, I enjoyed
again the grand outlook over the surrounding country,—the same which in
the days of agony had strengthened human souls,—and then walked down
the hill, by the family burying-ground, out through the entrance-gate
into Collins street, the public thoroughfare.

I left the monument and its interesting associations that August day of
1885 (it was dedicated only the July 30 before) with the feeling that as
the present descendants of Rebecca Nurse owe much to her son Samuel, so
their future descendants will be indebted to them for the appropriate
manner in which they have still further striven to vindicate before the
world the innocence of a much-wronged ancestor.

[pg 439]

THE PRESENT RESOURCES OF MASSACHUSETTS.

By H.K.M.

Massachusetts is a busy state. The old time factory bell has not
entirely given way to the steam whistle, nor the simple village spire to
the more pretentious ecclesiastical tower of to-day, yet the energizing
force of material prosperity has quickened the blood in nearly every
hamlet, modernized the old, or built up a new, so that throughout the
state there is a substantial freshness indicative of progressive thrift.

The Tenth Census of the United States classifies the entire
working population of the state in four divisions of labor as
follows:—Agriculture, 64,973; Professional and Personal services,
170,160; Trade and Transportation, 115,376; Mechanical, 370,265; with a
total population of 1,941,465.4 The aggregate steam and water power in
1880 was 309,759 horse power; the motive power of 14,352 manufacturing
establishments having an invested capital of $303,806,185; paying
$128,315,362 in wages to 370,265 persons who produced a product value of
$631,135,284. These results, in proportion to area and population, place
Massachusetts first in the Union as a manufacturing state. In mechanical
science a complete cotton mill has been considered the cap stone of
human ingenuity. In 1790 Mr. Samuel Slater established in Pawtucket,
R.I., the first successful cotton mill in the United States, but the
saw gin, a Massachusetts invention of Mr. Eli Whitney in 1793, laid the
foundation of the cotton industry throughout the world.

There are 956 cotton mills in the United States with an invested capital
of $208,280,346, with a wage account of $42,040,510. The relative
importance of the four leading states in the manufacture of cotton goods
is shown as follows:—

As in cotton, so also in the manufacture of woolen goods has
Massachusetts maintained from the first the leading position. In 1794
in Byfield parish, Newbury, Mass., the first woolen mill went into
successful operation. In 1804 a good quality of gray mixed broadcloth
was made at Pittsfield, Mass., and it is said that in 1808 President
Madison’s inaugural suit of black broadcloth was made there.

The five leading states in the production of woolen goods are thus
classified:—

[pg 440]

In its kindred industry, dyeing and finishing textiles, Massachusetts is
a controlling force; as seen in the classification of the three leading
states in this department of labor:—

Nearly one half of the entire American production of felt goods comes
from her, as indicated in the classification of the four leading
states:—

Massachusetts is also an all-important factor in the total production of
American carpets. The 59 mills in the United States made in 1880 a
wholesale product valued at $31,792,802. Massachusetts made the most
Brussels, 1,884,723 yards; Pennsylvania came next with 919,476 yards.
She came next to New York in yards of Tapestry, and next to Connecticut
in Wiltons, a good second in these important grades. The three leading
carpet states are thus classified:—

In the manufacture of Boots and Shoes Massachusetts stands conspicuously
at the front; her position in this great industry is clearly seen in the
three states controlling this special product:—

One evidence that Massachusetts is not sitting down all the time is the
fact that she stands up to manufacture so many chairs. From a small
beginning of wood and flag seated chairs, Mr. James M. Comee in 1805,
with his foot lathe, in one room of his dwelling in Gardner. Mass., laid
the foundation of this important industry, which has given the town of
Gardner, where over 1,000,000 of chairs are annually made, a world wide
reputation.

The relative positions of the five leading chair states:—

[pg 441]

In the currying of leather Massachusetts is a notable leader:—

Her position in the manufacturing of worsted goods is also an all
important one:—

Again we find her at the head of another very important industry, the
manufacture of paper.

The five leading states in production are given their relative positions.

In 1880 Massachusetts manufactured 27,638 tons of printing paper, 24,746
tons of writing paper, 10,255 tons of wrapping paper, 945 tons of wall
paper, 3,706,010 pounds of colored paper, 255,000 pounds of bank note
paper, 878,000 pounds of tissue paper, and 27,607,706 pounds of all
other kinds of paper.

She manufactures more shovels than any other state, about 120,000 dozen
annually. Rhode Island comes next with about one-half the quantity, and
Ohio stands third, her product being about 7,000 dozen annually.

It also falls to her lot to manufacture more Hay and Straw cutters,
about 6,000 annually. In the manufacture of hard soap Massachusetts
falls a little behind some of her sister states, but she comes smilingly
to the front with her 16,000,000 pounds of soft soap, about one half of
the total production. New York brings her annual offering of about 5,000
pounds.

The 4,000 boats she annually builds constitute nearly one half of the
number built in the United States.

There are 131,426 persons in the United States engaged in the fisheries.

The prominent share of Massachusetts in this industry is seen in the
classification of the five leading states.

She has invested:—Over $1,000,000 in the manufacture of Baskets and
Rattan goods; over $1,600,000 in the manufacture of Brick and Tile; over

[pg 442]

$2,000,000 in the manufacture of Wagons and Carriages; over $5,000,000
in the manufacture of Men’s Clothing; over $1,500,000 in the manufacture
of Cordage and Twine; over $2,000,000 in the manufacture of Cutlery;
over $3,000,000 in the manufacture of Fire Arms; over $16,000,000 in the
Foundries and Machine Shops; over $2,000,000 in the manufacture of
Furniture; over $2,000,000 in the manufacture of Iron Nails and Spikes;
over $6,000,000 in the manufacture of Iron and Steel; over $1,500,000 in
the manufacture of Jewelry; over $3,000,000 in the manufacture of
Liquors, Malt; over $3,000,000 in Slaughtering and Packing; over
$2,000,000 in Straw goods; over $2,000,000 in Sugar and Molasses,
refined; over $2,000,000 in the manufacture of Watches; over $2,000,000
in the manufacture of Wire, and over $11,000,000 in unclassified
industries.

The limitations of this article will only allow brief reference to a few
of the leading industries of Massachusetts. The facts presented give her
a commanding position in the sisterhood of manufacturing States, while
the condition of her operatives, their moral and intellectual character,
has no parallel in any other manufacturing district in the world.

On her well known but dangerous coast special provisions are made to aid
the mariner; so likewise upon her more dangerous coast of sin we find
2,397 ministerial light houses whose concentrated spiritual lens-power
upon an area of 8,040 square miles, make the rocks of total depravity
loom up far above the white capped waves of theological doubt. The lower
law being less important than the higher, it takes but 1,984 lawyers to
successfully mystify the juries of the Commonwealth. Of physicians and
surgeons there are 2,845. It requires the constant services of 2,463
persons to entertain us with music, and just one less, 2,462 barbers,
who are in daily tonsorial conflict with our hair, either rebuking it
where it does grow, or teasing it to come forth where heretofore the
dome has been hairless.

Of the 4,000,000 farms of 536,081,835 acres in the United States, 38,406
farms of 3,359,097 acres valued at $146,197,415 yielding an annual
income of $24,160,881 lie within the borders of the state. Her 150,435
cows produce 29,662,953 gallons of milk, which is the foundation of her
annual product of 9,655,587 pounds of butter, and 829,528 pounds of
cheese. She would be unjust to her traditional sense of justice were she
to send her beans out into the world single handed, with true paternal
solicitude she provides them with the charmed society of 80,123 swine,
thus hand in hand Massachusetts’ pork and beans stride up and down the
earth, supremely content in the joyous ecstasy of their Puritan conceit.
While Massachusetts has well known agricultural tendencies, and her
Agricultural college is one of the most important factors in her system
of practical instruction, it cannot be claimed that she is a controlling
element in the agricultural interests of the country. Of all her
influences for good, perhaps her educational interests would command the
greater prominence. She has ever regarded the instruction of her youth
as one of her most sacred trusts, and in all the details of her public
school system she ranks second to no state in the Union.

In the various departments of technical instruction, she has a national
reputation. Her colleges and universities so richly endowed secure the
highest

[pg 443]

attainable advantages. These privileges supplemented by the free public
libraries of the state, place possibilities within the reach of every
young man or young woman, the value of which cannot be approximated by
human estimate.

Six of the leading states are thus classified:—

The following institutions for higher education have about $5,000,000
invested in grounds and buildings, about $9,000,000 in endowments,
yielding an annual income of about $1,000,000, having about 4,000
students and about 400,000 volumes in libraries, Universities and
Colleges.

While Massachusetts is a model state in all her educational interests,
we do not forget that there are 75,635 persons in the state who cannot
read, and 92,980 persons who cannot write, but of the 990,160 native
white persons of ten years and upwards only 6,933 are unable to write,
being seven-tenths of one per cent., the lowest ratio of any state.
Arkansas, per cent, being 25.0; Alabama, 24.7; Georgia, 22.9; Kentucky,
22.0; No. Carolina, 31.0; So. Carolina, 21.9; Tenn., 27.3; West
Virginia, 18.2; Connecticut, 5.5; Illinois, 5.9; New Hampshire 5;
Pennsylvania, 6.7; New York, 5.3.

There are 15,416 colored persons in the state, of 10 years and upwards;
of this number 2,322 are unable to write, but from 10 to 14 years of
age, both inclusive, these being 1,504, but 31 persons are reported as
unable to write, or 2.1 per cent. South Carolina out of a colored
population of 75,981 between the same ages, reports 57,072 persons as
unable to write or 74.1 per cent. There are 1,886 colored persons in the
state between the ages of 15 and 20, and only 70 are reported as unable
to write, or 3.7 per cent.; we find this also the lowest ratio of any
state.

South Carolina’s per cent. being 71.9; Alabama, 64.9; Georgia, 76.4;
Texas, 69.2; and North Carolina, 68.5.

Her density of population makes it exceedingly convenient for her 52,799
domestic servants to compose notes over neighborly fences. Her 281,188
dwelling houses house 379,710 families, placing 6.34 persons to the
credit of each dwelling, and 4.70 persons to each family. This density
gives her 221.78 persons to a square mile, a far greater ratio than any
state except Rhode Island. This neighborly proximity has its social
tendencies, which may account in part for the hospitable amenities which
are a rightful part of Massachusetts’ well known loyalty to a higher
regard for the purest type of home, a comparative statement of the
density of population of a few states.

As inseparable as night is from day, so also are the ills of life from
life itself. Massachusetts is no exception to the inexorable law which
defines the conditions

[pg 445]

of human society; but through her public and private charities so wisely
administered, she humanely softens the asperities which shadow the life
of her unfortunates. To her lot fall 1,733 idiotic persons, 978 deaf
mutes, 5,127 insane, 1,500 of whom are cared for at home, and 3,659
prisoners, 1,484 of whom are of foreign birth. Human life teaches that
the boundary lines of a smile and tear are the same, for where happiness
is, there sorrow dwells. In the general estimate of 391,960 annual
deaths in the United States, about 33,000 occur in Massachusetts.

One evidence of her unswerving faith in the national credit is seen by
her holdings in U.S. registered bonds. The four leading states are
reported as follows:—

In the classification of the four leading states, of assessed valuation
and taxation, it appears that the assessed valuation of her personal
property exceeds that of any state.

The four leading states are thus classified:—

The grandest monument of human skill in modern railway science is
unquestionably the St. Gothard Tunnel which connects the valley of the
Reuss with the valley of the Ticino, which is from 5,000 to 6,500 feet
below the Alpine peaks of St. Gothard, being a little over 9-¼ miles
in length, costing over $47,000,000, one-half of which was paid by the
governments of Italy, Germany, and Switzerland. Until its completion in
1880, there was but one railway tunnel, Mont Cenis, that outranked our
own Hoosac Tunnel of nearly 5 miles in length and costing about
$10,000,000.

The service, equipment, and management of Massachusetts’ railway system
is well nigh perfect. Out of 4,100 miles of track in the state, 2,453
are laid with the steel rail. Including the 1,150 engines, 1,554
passenger cars, 394 baggage cars, and 24,418 freight cars, the total
cost of railroad equipment in the state has been $178,862,870; from this
investment the total earnings in 1884 reached $33,020,816 from which
$4,568,274 were paid in dividends. The number of passengers carried were
57,589,200 and 17,258,726 tons of freight moved. One of the most
important elements in her system is the Boston and Albany. Its engine
service the past year was 5,680,060 miles, the company carried 94,721
through passengers and 8,699,691 way, whose total earnings were
$8,148,713.34 and total expenses were $5,785,876.98.

In this connection we would refer to the city and suburban tramway
service, which has taken an important part in the development of the
state. The total

[pg 446]

cost of the 336 miles of road and equipment, including 8,987 horses and
1,918 passenger cars is stated at $9,093,935. Number of passengers
carried in 1884 was 94,894,259, gross earnings $4,788,096, operating
expenses $3,985,617, total available income $924,440. When we consider
that the street railway service carried more than 37,000,000 passengers
in excess of the steam railways, we realize its importance.

While there are 66,205 more females than males in the state, in the
wider distribution of the sexes their equality indicates that it could
not happen by chance, and that marriage of one man to one woman was
intended.

An authentic estimate of the numerical proportions of the sexes is as
follows:—

United States, 983 women to 1,000 men; America, (at large) 980 women to
1,000 men; Scotland, 1,096 women to 1,000 men; Ireland, 1,050 women to
1,000 men; England and Wales, 1,054 women to 1,000 men; France, 1,007
women to 1,000 men; Prussia, 1,030 women to 1,000 men; Greece, 940 women
to 1,000 men; Europe, (at large) 1,021 women to 1,000 men; Africa,
(estimated) 975 women to 1,000 men; Asia, 940 women to 1,000 men;
Australia, 985 women to 1,000 men. In an aggregate of 12,000 men there
is a surplus of about 161 women.

Massachusetts has been making notable history ever since 1620, and in
picking out here and there a few of the influences which have tended to
develope her material resources, we would not be unmindful of those
Christian influences which are also a part of her imperishable history.

To the lover of nature, perhaps no state in range of rugged coast and
water views blended with mountainous background, can offer more pleasing
bits of picturesque scenery. The historic hills of Berkshire and the
beautiful Connecticut River, with its 50 miles of sweep through the
state, ever hurrying on to the sea, have inspired the tireless shuttles
of descriptive imagery to weave some of the finest threads in American
thought.

Nowhere within the range of human vision can the eye find a more
restful scene of quiet simplicity and softer blending of river, hill and
foliage, than in the valley of the Deerfield on any sunny summer day.
Let him who would have a sterner scene of majestic grandeur stand upon
the storm-beaten cliffs of some rock-fringed coast, while the
silver-crested sea and the dark, deep toned clouds, like mercy and
righteousness, kiss each other.

To us who love Massachusetts, her principles, her institutions, her
hills, valleys and rocks, her future is but the lengthening out of a
perfect present; and at last, when the scroll of states is finally
rolled up, may her eternal record stand for the highest type of
Christian citizenship.

4 (return)
Census of 1885.

[pg 447]

ELIZABETH.5

A ROMANCE OF COLONIAL DAYS.

By Frances C. Sparhawk, Author of “A Lazy Man’s Work.”

CHAPTER XXVI.

A GRAVE DECISION.

After the greetings were over, Elizabeth, looking at Stephen Archdale,
realized fully the difficulties of her task. She was to go through with
it alone she perceived, for her father had turned away and taken up a
spyglass that had been brought him at the moment, and was absorbed in
looking through it at the new fascine battery. Evidently he expected her
to give Captain Archdale the history of the facts and conclusions that
had brought her father and herself to Louisburg. As she looked at the
young man in his strength, she felt more than ever the necessity for
speaking. He knew well enough that Mr. Edmonson hated him, and that was
necessary to be known. And yet, speech was hard, for even though he
could never imagine Edmonson’s contemptible insinuations, still before
he believed in his own danger he might have to learn his enemy’s foiled
purpose toward herself; and to be sought for her fortune was not a thing
that Elizabeth felt proud of. Her head drooped a little as the young man
stood watching her, and the color began to come into her face. Then the
courage that was in her, and the power that she had of rising above
petty considerations into grandeur, came upon her like an access of
physical strength. The strong necessity filled her, and the thought that
she might be bringing life where she had almost brought death, at least
death of joy, lighted her face. Still she hesitated for a moment, but it
was only to study how she should begin. Shall she give him Katie’s
letter at once, and in her name warn him to take care of the life that
was of so much value to his betrothed? No, for with Katie’s letter in
his hand, he could not listen carefully to Elizabeth’s words, he could
think only of what was within. His thoughts would refuse to have to do
with danger; they would be busy with joy. That must wait.

“We have come here, my father and I,” she began, “to say one word to
you, Captain Archdale. We talked it over, and we saw no other way.”

“You are pale,” cried Stephen suddenly. “You must be very tired. Let us
sit down here while you tell me.” And he pointed to a coil of rope at
hand. But she shook her head.

“I am not tired, thank you; I am disappointed that I can’t go back
immediately, that I must wait until to-morrow, when the dispatches will
be ready.”

“You need not,” he cried. “The General shall let you go if you wish it.
I will insist upon it. The dispatches can go some other way. If the
Governor

[pg 448]

wants news in such haste, he would do better to send us some powder to
make them out of. He was enough in a hurry to get us off, to give us
something to do after we are here.”

“I should think you had something to do,” she said pointing to the
battlements of Louisburg which at that distance and from that angle
looked as if no shot had ever been fired against them. “But don’t on any
account speak to the General. We are glad to do even so little for the
cause. And perhaps it’s not that that makes me pale. I don’t know. I
have a warning hard to deliver to you. I have come hundreds of miles to
do it. I will give it to you immediately, for you may need it at any
moment.” She drew closer to him, and laid one hand upon his arm as if to
prevent his losing by any chance the words she had to say. Her gesture
had an impressiveness that made him realize as much as her face did how
terribly in earnest she was.

“It must be something about Katie,” he thought. And the vision of Lord
Bulchester rose before him clearly.

“Listen,” said Elizabeth absorbed in her attempt to make him feel what
she feared would seem incredible to him. “Stray shots have picked off
many superfluous kings in the world—and men and the world not been the
wiser. This is what some one said when the war was being talked of, said
at your house, and said in speaking of you.”

“Said it to you?” interposed Archdale with a quick breath.

“Oh, no, but about you, I am sure, sure, though it has taken me
all this time to find it out. And,—oh, wait a moment,—the man who said
it was your guest then, and he is here now, else we should not have
come; he is here, perhaps he is close by you every day, and he,—he is
meaning the shot for you.” She waited a moment drawing a breath of
relief that she had begun. “You know he is your enemy?” she went on with
a longing to be spared explanations.

She was spared them.

“I do know it,” said Archdale looking at her, and as she met his eyes a
great relief swept over her. Her warning had been heard and believed,
she was sure of that. She heard Archdale thanking her, and assuring her
that he would give good heed to her warning. And she had not had to tell
why Edmonson hated him, she had not even been obliged to utter the name
that she was coming to hate. “Do you know?” she had asked wonderingly,
and he had told it to her. Did he know the man so thoroughly, then? And
were there other causes of hatred, possibly money causes, that had
spared her?

She had told her listener more than she dreamed, far more than her
words. She had stood before him in the noblest guise a human being can
wear, that of a preserver from evil fate; she had looked at him out of
holy depths in her clear eyes, she had turned upon him a face in which
expression had marvellously brought out physical beauty. Also, in her
unconsciousness that he knew the reason of his danger, she had looked at
him with a wonder at his ready credulity before there had come her smile
of relief that she need speak no more. He knew Edmonson’s story, knew
how this play at marriage between Elizabeth and himself had interfered
with the other’s plans, guessed the further truth, looked at

[pg 449]

her, and muttered under his breath:—”Poor fellow!” It was with his own
eyes, and not another man’s that Archdale saw Elizabeth. Yet, it was not
in human nature that she should not seem the more interesting as she
stood there, since he had learned his own life to be in danger because
another man had found her so desirable, and so unapproachable. Watching
Elizabeth, he acquitted Edmonson of mercenary motives, whatever they
might once have been. His appreciation had no thought of appropriation
in it. Katie was his love. But comprehension of Elizabeth made him glad
that their mistake had saved her from Edmonson. And then again after a
moment he muttered under his breath:—”Poor fellow!”

“You are very, very kind,” he said to her.

“Don’t think me rude,” she answered with a smile. “But, you know we must
have done this for any one. Only,”—and her voice became earnest again,
“I was very grateful that the least thing came to me for you and Katie.
I have not done with Katie yet” she added, “here is something that I
have brought you from her.” And she handed him a letter. “She gave me
this as I was leaving,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said again, and holding it clasped in his hand, stood
not looking at it, but as if he still had something to say. “Has
Bulchester gone yet, Mistress Royal?” he asked abruptly at last.

“No. But I think that he must be very hard to send away, and Katie you
know hates to say anything unkind. She doesn’t see that it is the
kindest way in the end. We shall not go until to-morrow, you know. If
you have any letters, we shall be so glad to take them.”

“Thank you once more.” He stood still a moment. “The earl may be wise to
stay on the field,” he said. “I may be swept off conveniently. Yes, he
is wise to wait and see what the fortunes of war will do for him.”

“Oh! Mr. Archdale,” cried Elizabeth, between indignation and tears at
his want of faith. “How can you not trust her? Your letter that she was
so eager to send will prove how wrong you are.” Here Mr. Royal sauntered
up, and the conversation turned upon the scene before them.

But in the midst of Archdale’s description of one of their skirmishes a
signal was given from the new battery. “They are signalling for me,” he
said. “My place is in command of those guns. I am sorry to leave my
story half told, but I must go. I shall try to see you to-morrow.” And
with a hasty farewell he sprang into the boat. As he was rowed away,
Elizabeth saw him put his hand into the pocket where he had slipped
Katie’s letter, and draw this out.

She sat down again in her favorite place on deck, laid her arms on the
railing of the schooner and her face upon them. Now that her errand was
done, she became aware that she was very tired. She sat so quiet that
she seemed to be asleep. But she was only in a day-dream in which the
thought of which she was most conscious was wonder that Archdale could
doubt Katie. Had she not always been a coquette? And had she not always
loved him? Yet Elizabeth wished that she could have said that Lord
Bulchester had gone, wished that she could have seen Stephen Archdale’s
face brighten a little before he left them, perhaps forever; she had not
forgotten the danger of his post. Nancy softly drew

[pg 450]

her chair close. But Elizabeth made no movement. She sat with her face
still buried, thinking, remembering, longing to be at home again,
counting the hours until they should probably sail.

Suddenly she started up. For there had come light that she saw through
the dark folds that she had been pressing her eyes against. To her there
was a sound as if the heavens were being rent, and she felt a trembling
of the earth, as if it shook with terror at the spectacle. She stood a
moment bewildered. It seemed as if the light never paled at all, but
only changed its place sometimes; the roar was terrific, it never
ceased, or lulled, and the water beneath them tossed and hissed in rage
at its bed being so shaken. Nancy’s hand sought her companion’s with a
reassuring pressure, for speech was impossible. But Elizabeth had only
been unprepared. She recovered herself and smiled her thanks. Then she
sat down again with her face toward the city and watched this cannonade,
terrible to men grown grey in the service, as officers from the fleet
bore witness, and to the enemy deadly.

For the fascine battery had opened fire.

At midnight General Pepperell sent for Archdale to detail him for
special service the next day.

“Why! what’s the matter?” he cried, looking at the young man as he came
into the tent.

“Nothing, General Pepperell. I am quite ready for service,” replied
Stephen haughtily.

“Ah!—Yes. Glad of that,” returned the General, and he went on to give
his orders, watching the other’s pale face as he did so, and reading
there strong emotion of some kind.

When he was alone, and his dispatches had all been written, he sat
musing for a time, as little disturbed by the glare and the thunder
about him as if stillness were an unknown thing. His cogitations did not
seem satisfactory, for he frowned more than once. “What’s the matter
with the fellow?” he muttered. “Something has gone wrong. I’ve seen an
uneasiness for a long time. Now the blow has fallen. Poor fellow! he
doesn’t take life easy. The news is it, I wonder? or the letter?” He sat
for a while carefully nursing his left knee, while his thoughts
gradually went back to military matters, and worked there diligently. At
last he straightened himself, clapped this same knee with vigor, put
both feet to the ground and, rising, took up from his improvised
table—a log turned endwise,—a paper upon which he made a note with a
worn pencil from his pocket. “Yes,” he cried, “I can do that. It’s the
only thing I can do. And I need it so much they will not mind.” He
finished by a smile. “Strange I hadn’t thought of it before,” he said.

Then he threw himself down upon his bed of boughs and moss, and with the
terrific din about him slept the sleep of weariness. At sunrise,
according to his directions, an orderly roused him.

Archdale had already gone with his reconnoitering party. His heart was
bitter against the conditions of his life, and he felt that it would be
no misfortune, perhaps quite the contrary, if Edmonson’s plan were not
interfered with. “It’s

[pg 451]

beyond her comprehension,” he said to himself. “How confident she was.
What will she say when she knows?”

In the morning, Elizabeth standing beside her father turned a tired face
toward the shore as she watched General Pepperell’s approach. Sleep had
been impossible to her in the strangeness and terror of her surroundings.

“You are very thoughtful to come to bid us good-bye,” she said, giving
him her hand as he stepped on board.

He smiled, and still holding it, asked after a moment’s hesitation,
“Should you be very much disappointed if I begged you not to return this
morning?”

She certainly looked so for a moment, before she answered: “If it will
help, if I can be of any use, I am ready to stay. Are there soldiers in
the hospitals? Can we do anything for them, Nancy and I?”

He caught at the diversion readily. “The hospitals? Yes, I should be
very glad, infinitely obliged to you, if you would pay them a visit.
I’ve not a doubt that your suggestions would make the poor fellows more
comfortable, and there are a number of new ones there this morning.
I’m sorry to say our health record is discouraging. Not that I’m
discouraged, but I want to put this business through as quickly as
possible.” Then he turned to Mr. Royal. “I must tell you both,” he said,
“that I came to you this morning bent upon purposes of destruction,
(though, happily, not to yourselves,) and not purposes of health, except
of saving lives by making the work as short as possible. I should like
this schooner. I have an immediate use for it, and in two days, or, at
the outside, three, I’m going to send to Boston. Will you permit me to
take this as a fire-ship, and will you remain under my especial care
until this other vessel sails?” He turned to Elizabeth as he spoke. “If
you consent,” he said to her, “I am quite sure your father will. It will
be a great favor to me, and I hope to the cause, if you do. But I won’t
insist upon it. If you say so you shall go this morning.”

Elizabeth glanced at her father, “But I don’t say so,” she answered.
“I am compelled to stay if my father consents. It’s not you that make
me but a stronger power. You won’t be offended if I call patriotism a
stronger power?” And she smiled at him.

“Thank you, my dear,” he said with a gravity which showed that she had
touched him. “You shall not regret your sacrifice.”

In the course of conversation he told Mr. Royal that Archdale had been
sent off at dawn upon an exploring expedition. “I want to find out how
near to us the Indians are,” he said, “they are hanging about somewhere.
You will not see him to-day.”

That morning, Elizabeth was rowed ashore with Nancy, and under an escort
they went to the hospitals; not for a visit of inspection, as it turned
out, but as workers. Nancy had had experience in illness, and Elizabeth
was an apt pupil. Before the day was over the poor fellows lying there
felt a change. There were no luxuries to be had for them, but their beds
were made a little softer with added moss and leaves, the relays of
fresh water from the brook running through the encampment were
increased. One dying man had closed his eyes in the

[pg 452]

conviction that the last words he had sent to his mother would reach
her; he had watched Elizabeth write them down, and she had promised to
put a lock of his hair into the letter. He was sure that she would do
it, and he died happier for the thought. Altogether, in many ways the
comfortless tents grew less comfortless, for Elizabeth interpreted
literally the general’s permission to do here what she chose. The eyes
of the soldiers followed both women with delight, and one rugged fellow,
a backwoods man, whose cheerfulness not even a broken leg and a great
gash in his forehead could destroy, volunteered the statement: “By
George! whether in peace or war we need our women.” This was responded
to by a cheer from the inmates of his tent. The demonstration was all
the more touching, because its endeavor to be rousing was marred in the
execution by the physical weakness of the cheerers.

They spent that night on shore. Elizabeth’s tent was next her father’s
and a few rods from the general quarters. As Mr. Royal left her, she
stood a moment at the swinging door of her strange room, and looked at
the stars and at the scene so new to her on which they were shining.
Then leaving it reluctantly, for it fascinated her, she laid down upon
the woodland couch prepared for her, and was soon as soundly asleep as
her maid near by, while around the tent patrolled the special guard set
by General Pepperell.

The next day also was spent in the hospital. In the course of the
afternoon, Nancy, looking over the Bay in a vain search for the schooner
which had brought them, said; “I wonder how we really shall get home,
and when?”

“As General Pepperell promised us,” answered her mistress. “And probably
we shall leave to-morrow. I expect to hear from him about it then. So
does my father; he was speaking of it this morning.”

They were right; the next day the General told them that the
“Smithhurst” would sail that afternoon with prisoners of war from the
“Vigilant,” a captured French vessel. “She is one of the ships that
Governor Shirley has sent for to guard the coast,” he said to Elizabeth
speaking of the “Smithhurst.” “She goes to Boston first to report and
discharge her prisoners. Be ready at four o’clock. If I can, I will take
you to the vessel myself; but if that is impossible, everything is
arranged for your comfort. Your father is at the battery, I have just
left him there. He is undeniably fond of powder. I’ve told him about
this.” Elizabeth was in one of the hospital tents when Pepperell came to
her with this news. She staid there with Nancy all the morning, and at
noon when her father came and took her away for awhile to rest, she had
an earnest talk with him upon some subject that left her grave and
pleased.

After a time she went back to the hospitals again. At the last moment
the General sent an escort with word that he had been detained. Just
before this message arrived, Elizabeth called her maid aside.

“Nancy,” she said, “you see how many of our soldiers are here, hundreds
of them, almost thousands. They are fighting for our homes, even if the
battle-ground is so far away. And see how many have been sent in, in the
short time we have been here. Do you want to desert them? Tell me how
you feel? Shall we go back to our comfortable home, and leave all this
suffering behind us,

[pg 453]

when we might do our little to help? Shall we, Nancy? I have no right to
insist upon your staying; but don’t you think we ought to stay? and
won’t you stay with me?”

“Indeed I will,” was the quick answer. “I hated to leave the poor
fellows, but I did not see what else to do. The General won’t like it
one bit though. And your father, Mistress Elizabeth?”

“The General has no authority over me. I’m not one of his soldiers. And
as to my father, it’s all right with him.”

Yet she felt very desolate when the ship which was to have carried them
had gone with its companion vessel, and from the door of one of the
hospital tents she stood watching the white sails in the distance. But
it was not that resolution had failed her; for she would have made the
same decision over again if she had been called upon at the moment.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE NIGHT ATTACK.

As Elizabeth stood at the door of the hospital tent looking after the
Smithhurst, General Pepperell came along, alone, in a brown study, his
brows knit and his face troubled. For though the French ship-of-war,
“Vigilant” had been captured, Louisburg had not, and every day was
adding to the list of soldiers in the hospitals. But when he saw her, he
stopped, and his expression, at first of surprise, changed to anger.

“What does this mean?” he said abruptly. “The ship has sailed. I sent
you word in time.”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Then what does it mean?” he reiterated, “Why are you here?”

“It means,” she returned, resenting the authority of his tone, “that
when New England men are fighting and suffering and dying for their
country, New England women have not learned how to leave them in their
need, and sail away to happy homes. That’s what it means, General
Pepperell.” As she spoke she saw Archdale behind the General; he had
come up hastily as Pepperell stood there.

“Thought you were in a desperate hurry to be off,” said Pepperell dryly.

Elizabeth blushed. She was convicted of changeableness, and she felt
that she had been impatient. “Forgive me,” she said. “So I was. But I
did not realize then what I ought to do.”

“Um! Where’s your father?”

“Just gone out in the dispatch boat to the fleet.”

“Does he know of this—this enterprise? Of course, though,” he corrected
himself, “since he has not sailed.”

“Yes, of course,” she said. “He stays with me. But,” she added, “I
suppose he expected me to ask you about it first.”

“And you knew I wouldn’t consent—hey?”

The girl smiled without speaking. “Mr. Royal is over-indulgent,” he went
on decidedly.

[pg 454]

“Perhaps,” answered Elizabeth, “He thinks that a little over-indulgence
in being useful will not be bad for me. You assured both Nancy and me
that we were doing good service, real service, and that you should be
sorry to lose us.”

“So you have done, and I shall be sorry to lose you, both personally and
for the cause. Nevertheless, I shall send you home at once. Your father
would never have consented to your staying if he had realized the
danger. I never know where the shells will burst. I’ll stop work upon
that schooner that you came in, and send you home again in it. It’s
fitting up now as a fire-ship, but it can be made fairly comfortable.
Your safety must be considered.”

“Why is my safety of any more importance than the soldiers’? No,
General, you have no right to send me away. I refuse to go. I am not
speaking of military right, understand, but of moral right.”

Pepperell gave a low whistle.

“That’s it, is it?” he said. “One thing, however; if you stay, you must
submit to my orders. You are under military law.”

“I surely will. And now thank you,” she returned with a smile so winning
that, although for her own sake Pepperell had been angry, he relented.

“Oh, of course, it’s very good in you, my dear,” he said. “Don’t think I
forget that.”

Capt. Archdale had been standing a little apart looking out to sea
during a conversation in which he had no place. Now as he perceived the
General about to move on, he came forward and spoke to Elizabeth. “You
know that you are running a great risk?” he said to her gravely.

“Yes,” she answered him, “or at least somewhat of a risk. When did you
come back from your reconnoitering party?”

“The night before last,” he said, not pursuing a subject that she did
not wish to discuss with him. Elizabeth heard something hard in his
voice, and saw a new sternness in his face that made her wonder suddenly
if Katie’s letter had lacked any kindness that Stephen deserved from her
as he stood in the midst of danger and death. Could she have shown
coquetry, or in any way teased him now?

“Well, good-by for the present, my dear, and Heaven keep you,” said the
General, giving her hand a cordial pressure. Archdale bowed, and the two
went on, Pepperell at first full of praises of Elizabeth’s courage,
though he regretted her decision. But life and death hung upon his skill
and promptness, and he had little time for thoughts of anything but his
task. Henceforth he only took care that Mr. Royal and his daughter were
as well protected, and as well cared for as circumstances permitted.

Yet, one evening soon afterward, he saw something which for the moment
interested him very much. Elizabeth, with Nancy Foster who was now more
companion than maid, was walking slowly toward her tent. Both were
looking at the gorgeous sunset. Its brilliancy, vying with that of the
deadly fireworks, offered a contrast all the more striking in its
restfulness and happy promise. The two women had grown somewhat
accustomed to the cannonade, and as they went on they seemed to be
talking without noticing it. Just then a figure in captain’s

[pg 455]

uniform came quickly up the slope toward them, and with a most
respectful salute, stood bare-headed before Elizabeth.

“Edmonson,” commented the General even before he caught sight of
his face. “Nobody else has that perfection of manner. Stephen won’t
condescend to it. Edmonson is the most graceful fellow I know. And, upon
honor, I believe he is the most graceless. But his theories can’t harm
that woman.” Yet as Pepperell stood watching the young man’s expression
now that it was turned toward him, and understood by his gestures the
eager flow of words that was greeting Elizabeth, he held his breath a
moment with a new perception, muttered a little, and stood staring with
the frown deepening on his face. He wanted to catch her answering look,
but she had turned about in speaking and her back was toward him. In an
impatient movement at this, he changed his own range of vision somewhat,
and all at once caught sight of another face, also bent upon Elizabeth
with eager curiosity to catch her expression. Pepperell turned away
delighted. “After all, he’s not too much of a grand seigneur to have
a little human curiosity,” he chuckled, watching the new figure. “Yes,
we’ll do very well to go on a reconnoitering expedition together, you
and I, Captain Archdale!” And he laughed to himself as he slipped
quietly away, without having been perceived. “More news to write to
pretty Mistress Katie,” he commented, still full of amusement. Then
his thoughts went back again to the problem that was growing daily
more perplexing. And as he was again becoming absorbed in it, he was
conscious of an undercurrent of wonder that he could ever have laughed.
The thing next to be done was to make an attack up Island Battery, the
one most serviceable to the enemy, most annoying to themselves. So long
as that belched forth its fires against them, Warren’s fleet must remain
outside, and there could be no combined attack upon the city, and
Louisburg was still unconquerable. Any day might bring a French fleet to
its rescue, and then the game was up. Beyond question, Island Battery
must be attacked, but it was a difficult and dangerous attempt, and
Pepperell sat with his head upon his hand, thinking of the men that must
fall even if it were successful. Still, every day now some among the
soldiers were smitten down by disease and the French ships were nearer.
It was only a question of sacrificing a part of his army or the whole of
it. Warren was right to urge the measure, and it must be pressed upon
his Council. But Pepperell felt as if he were being asked to sign a
hundred death-warrants.

It was not quite time for the members of his Council to assemble. He
went to the nearest battery where the firing was hottest, sighted the
direction of the guns, examined the state of the city walls where these
had been played upon by them, cheered the gunners with his praise, even
jested with one of them, and left the men more full of confidence in
him, more desirous than ever to please him, and, if possible, more
resolved to win the day. Not a trace of anxiety in his face or his tones
had betrayed the weight that was upon him. Then he went back to his
tent. The Council had assembled. When he took his place at the head,
he had forgotten the incident that a few minutes before had moved him
to laughter.

[pg 456]

Archdale stood motionless. The underbrush hid him from the speakers, and
he was too far off to hear a word. It seemed to him that Elizabeth
wished to shorten the interview, for soon Edmonson with another of his
inimitable bows retired and she passed on. As Stephen caught sight of
her face he saw that it was troubled. “He shall not persecute her,” he
said to himself. Nancy had gone on while Edmonson was speaking to her
mistress, and now Elizabeth following was almost at the door of her
temporary home, when a hand was laid heavily upon Archdale’s shoulder,
and Vaughan’s hearty voice cried;—

“Come on! I’m going to speak to our charming, brave young lady there.
I want to tell her how proud of her courage I am. Come on! he repeated.
Stephen followed. He had not taken her determination in this way. He
thought her unwise and rash, and hated to have her there. And yet he
could not deny that the camp had seemed a different place since she had
entered it.

“You take it that way,” he said to Vaughan. “But I think we should be
feeling that she may get hit some of these days, or be down with fever.”

“We’ll hope not,” returned the other cheerfully. “Let us look on the
bright side. She is doing a work of mercy, and we will trust that a
merciful Providence will protect her. We were just talking about you,
Mistress Royal,” he continued, striding up to Elizabeth and grasping her
hand warmly. “Stephen, here, says he’s always thinking you’ll get hit
somehow, or get a fever. I say, look on the bright side of things,
‘trust in the Lord,’ as old Cromwell used to put it.”

“‘And keep your powder dry,'” finished Archdale. “It’s not safe to quote
things by halves. Decidedly, this staying is not a prudent thing.”

“I didn’t know that beseiging Louisburg could be called a prudent
thing,” she returned. “And so we’re all in the same boat.”

“Ha! ha!” laughed Vaughan. “You have him there, Mistress Royal. He’s
always in the hottest places himself; he likes them best.”

“Somebody else likes them, too; somebody else who can capture Royal
Battery with thirteen men,” said Elizabeth. “I knew long ago that you
were a genuine war-horse, Colonel Vaughan. Give me credit for my
discernment.”

“Yes, yes, I remember,” assented the other with the embarrassment of
courage at finding itself commended. “But, really, against such a
cowardly crew as those fellows were, there’s no credit at all to be
gained.”

She made him a bright reply, and Archdale listened in silence as they
talked. But she noticed his gloomy face, and secretly wondered if it
was anxiety about Edmonson that troubled him, or if possibly, he was
displeased with Katie. But she put away for the second time the latter
suggestion. The girl had never looked prettier or been more affectionate
than when she had said good-by to her and given her the letter for
“poor, brave Stephen,” as she had tearfully called him. Archdale could
not help listening to Elizabeth; there seemed to be a witchery about her
whenever she opened her lips. It was probable that Edmonson felt it, he
thought. And he began to wonder how things would all end. Perhaps they
should all be shot and the affair wind up like some old tragedy where
the board is swept clean for the next players. For his part, too much
had

[pg 457]

gone from his life to make the rest of it of interest. Elizabeth turned
to him.

“Are you busy?” she asked. “I mean are you on duty?”

“No,” he answered, wondering what was coming, and noticing that her
tall, slight figure seemed all the more elegant for the simplicity of
her dress. “Can I do anything for you?” he added.

“Yes, thank you,” she answered, “You can, if you are willing. I am going
to get some medicine that the doctors have asked me to keep, because it
is very powerful, and they were afraid lest some of the men would be
careless with it. Nancy is bringing the bandages. Here she is now. Thank
you,” as the girl put a phial into her hand. “There is extra work to be
done to-day,” she went on, turning again to Archdale, “and we are short
of hands. If you don’t mind, and will come, we shall be glad of your
help.”

Captain Archdale playing at nurse with private soldiers! The young man
did not fancy the idea at all; he would much rather have led a forlorn
hope.

But no forlorn hope offered, and this did. Of course he would do
anything for Mistress Royal, but this was not for her at all. He had
half a mind to excuse himself. As the suggestion came to him, he looked
into the steady eyes that were watching him fathoming his reluctance,
ready for approval or for scorning as the answer might be. His look took
in her whole appearance, and set him wondering if the privates, some of
whom had been even his neighbors and his boyish playfellows, could
offend his dignity more than hers? He began to wonder how her eyes would
change if they looked at him approvingly.

“I will go with pleasure, if you’ll put up with an awkward fellow,” he
answered. And Colonel Vaughan who was looking on was not aware that he
had hesitated.

Elizabeth’s eyes darkened. She smiled and nodded her head slightly, as
if to say, “I knew you would do it.” But after this the trace of a smile
lurked for a moment in the corners of her mouth, as if she might have
added: “I know, too, what it has cost you.” But she said nothing at all
to Archdale. She bade good-by to Colonel Vaughan who protested that he
wished he was not upon duty, and turned again toward the hospital.
Suddenly Archdale thought that she might have been asking the same thing
of Edmonson when she had been talking with him just before. If she had,
it was very certain that Edmonson had found an engagement immediately.
Upon the whole, Archdale was satisfied to have done what the other would
not do. So that it was just as well he did not know that that other had
not been asked.

Was there ever another woman in the world like this one, he asked
himself late that night, recalling that she had been for hours beside
him, treating him just as if he were a crook to raise a soldier’s head,
if she wanted to rearrange his pillow, or a machine to reel off bandages
round that poor Melvin’s shattered arm, or to do any other trying
service, and never even imagine that he would like to be thanked or
treated humanely, while every look and word and thought of hers was for
the soldiers. It was so different from what he had always found, and yet
there was the nobleness of self-forgetfulness in the difference. But for
all this vivid memory of those hours, it was imagination rather than
recollection that

[pg 458]

occupied him most with her when she had left him. For he was picturing
how she would look, and what she would say, when she read the letter
that he had slipped into her hand as she was going away. He recalled her
look of amazement, her beginning:—”Why, it’s—” and then breaking off
abruptly, perceiving that only peculiar circumstances could have made
him give her Katie’s letter to read, and perhaps divining the truth. For
she had suddenly became very grave and had replied absently to his
good-night, as on her father’s she had turned from the hospital. The
young man, wondering how she would receive the news of Katie’s
treachery, asked himself what she could find now in excuse for the girl
who had used her faithful friend as the unconscious messenger of her
broken plight? Stephen knew well enough that the old glamour would come
back, but to-night he was full only of indignation against Katie. To
have used Elizabeth as she had done was an added sin.

“I wish Bulchester joy of her,” he muttered, then with a sharp breath
recollected that this was only a respite, that he should not always feel
too scornful for pain.

Three nights after this there was a silent and solemn procession down to
the shore. Island Battery was to be attacked. Here was Archdale’s
forlorn hope ready for him, if he wanted it now. Every chance of success
depended upon secrecy. The venture was so desperate that the General
could not make up his mind to pick out the men himself, he called for
volunteers. They came forward readily, incited, not only by courage and
the desire to end the siege, but by ambition to be distinguished among
their comrades who stood about them in hushed expectation. Every soldier
off duty and able to crawl to the shore, and some who should not have
attempted it were there. Among this crowd stood two women, scarcely
apart from the others, and yet everywhere that they moved, given place
to with the unobtrusive courtesy that has always marked American men, so
that one woman in a host of them feels herself, should danger come, in
an army of protectors, and otherwise alone. Elizabeth had meant to be
here earlier, and to put herself by the General’s side, for her father
had gone with dispatches to the fleet, but her duties had detained her,
and now she was separated from him by nearly a regiment. She stood
silent in an anxiety that did not lessen because she told herself that
it was foolish.

Captain Brooks was to command the expedition, and the number of men
needed to accompany him was fast being made up from the eager
volunteers. In the dimness she recognized Archdale by an unconscious
haughtiness of bearing, and Edmonson’s voice, though lowered to suit the
demands of the hour, made her shiver. Yet why? Of course they both were
here; volunteers were stepping out from the ranks of their companies.
But they themselves were not going, neither would they be left here
alone together. Boat after boat with scaling ladders was filled with
soldiers and shoved off, some of them out of sight in the dimness where
the men, lying on their oars, waited for their comrades. In this way one
after another disappeared. Things went on well. Elizabeth began to be
reassured, to be occupied with the scene about her, to remember the
importance of the expedition and how many times it had been
unsuccessfully

[pg 459]

attempted. She began to think of the attack, of the result, and of the
soldiers, to rejoice in them, to be proud of them, and to tremble for
them, as one who has no individual interest at stake.

It was only at night that the attempt could be made, only in certain
states of the tide, and still at the best time it was a terrible
venture; the work was new for the troops; the walls were high, the enemy
was vigilant. With a sigh she saw another boat shove off to its fate.

The volunteering slackened, either because so many of the men left were
aware that fatigue and illness had undermined their strength, or because
the night had grown lowering and the ominous roar of breakers reached
them from their landing place. Finally a distinct pause came in answer
to the call: “Who next?”—a pause that lasted a minute, and that, had it
lasted another, would have meant discouragement, and perhaps despair.

“I,” said a firm voice, and Elizabeth saw Stephen Archdale step into the
boat. A strange feeling came over her for a moment, then a wave of
admiration for his heroism. If he were to die, it would be a soldier’s
death. Yet, there would be so many to mourn him. If he went to his death
in this way, how would Katie feel? General Pepperell started forward, as
if to prevent his embarking, then restrained himself. The men responded
rapidly after this example, until the boat needed only one more. Then
there fell upon Elizabeth’s ears, a name more frightful to her than the
boom of the surf or the roar of cannon, and Edmonson stepped in and
seated himself opposite Archdale.

“Two captains in one boat!” she heard a soldier remonstrate.

“Nonsense! we’re full. Shove off instantly, you laggards. Every minute
tells,” said the newcomer in a hoarse undertone.

Elizabeth sprang forward. “No, no,” she cried impetuously, forgetting
everything but the terror.

But the calling of the names was going on again, and her voice was
unheard, except by a few who stood near her. Before she could make her
way up to the General, the boat pulled by the vigorous strokes of the
men who had been taunted as laggards, had shot out of sight. “Oh! bring
them back, bring back that last boat,” she implored Pepperell in such
distress that he, knowing her a woman not given to idle fears, felt a
sense of impending evil as he answered:

“My dear, I cannot. No boat is sure of meeting it in the dark, and to
call would endanger the expedition.”

There was no use in explaining now. She would have occasion enough to do
it sometime, she feared; and then it would be useless. To-night she
could say nothing. All these days she had dreaded what might come, for
it did not seem to her that Captain Archdale took any care at all.
Still, in the camp, out of general action, and surrounded by others,
there had been comparative safety.

Now the hour, the place, and the purpose had met. Through the darkness
Stephen Archdale was going to his doom.

[pg 460]

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A WOUNDED MAN.

The General sent Elizabeth away very kindly. She sent the weary Nancy to
bed and went back to the hospital. But anxiety mastered her so that she
could not keep her hands from trembling or her voice from faltering when
there was most need for steadiness.

“You are exhausted, Mistress Royal, you ought not to be here,” said one
of the surgeons sternly. “Go and rest.”

“Oh, please let me stay,” she pleaded with a humility so new that he
looked at her with curiosity.

“Hush!” said his assistant making an excuse to draw him aside. “Don’t
you know she’s been watching the men set out for the Fort?”

Elizabeth found words of comfort for a soldier who was mourning because
his wife would have no one to look after her, if he died. “I will help
her,” she said. And then, by the light of the flaring candle, she wrote
down the woman’s address. She repeated verses of Scripture for some who
asked her for them, and found a little steadiness of voice in doing it.
But through everything she saw Archdale’s vigorous form and heard
Edmonson’s passionate voice and his words. With such a marksman, and at
such range, how could a shot stray!

But she dreaded still more the time when the expedition should return.
To-night she bitterly regretted that the General had not been told her
errand, and saw that when Mr. Royal urged it, it had been the wish to
save her that had made Stephen Archdale ask him not to do it.

Three hours after the start she heard that the expedition had failed.
All that was left was returning, the wounded would soon be brought in.
Her little strength deserted her for the moment She sank down helpless
in the shadow. Then she rose and went forward.

As the boat lay rocking on the waves waiting for the others, Archdale
took his bearings. Leaning towards the stern, he said to one of his
men:—

“Greene will you change places with me?” If the man had thought the
request more than a whim, he would have supposed it to be because the
captain considered his new choice a more dangerous post. Archdale
seating himself again glanced toward the bow. He was now on the same
side with Edmonson and the fourth man from him. It would be somewhat
difficult to have the latter’s gun go off by accident and be sure of its
mark, and Greene was safe so far as exemption from an enemy at hand was
concerned. Archdale would have preferred Edmonson’s left hand but when
it came to disembarking, his enemy should precede him.

“Better cushions?” asked Edmonson with a sneering laugh under which he
tried to hide his anger. “Can’t see any other motive for your running
the risk of capsizing us.”

[pg 461]

“It is very presumptuous to do anything for which Captain Edmonson
cannot see the motive,” returned Archdale haughtily.

“By Heavens!” cried Edmonson in another moment “You’re bound to die in
character if it come to a question of dying and of course it will with
some of us.”

Stephen made no answer. He felt more strongly than ever that he needed
good eyes and firm nerves. To be killed like a rat in a trap! His blood
ran too warm in his veins to submit tamely to this. When the struggle
should come yonder it mattered little whether it was by Edmonson’s shot
or another’s, for if he fell in the heat of the conflict it would always
be said that he died a soldier’s death. And if he lived to come back
Edmonson, should take boat first. He turned himself slightly toward his
foe, and sat silent and observant.

Had Elizabeth noticed them enter the boat together? He had thought of
saying good-by, for his volunteering was no sudden resolve, but had been
his determination from the first. But if he died, what real difference
would that make to her? And if he came back, the leave taking would seem
an absurdity. He seemed still to see the outline of her slender figure,
as with her shawl wrapped about her like a mantle she had stood
bare-headed in the cold May evening.

Had he dreamed that Edmonson had learned of Katie’s desertion, and was
full of rage at every word of courtesy or interest that he spoke to
Elizabeth, he would have felt his chance of life still less.

“Can’t you hitch along, you fellow next me?” cried Edmonson. “I’m so
cramped here I can’t move a muscle, and I suspect we shall want them all
in good order pretty soon. We are coming up to the old walls. Swift and
steady, boys. Every man be ready with his muskets.”

As he spoke, he took up his own weapon and examined it in the dimness.
Then, still holding it in his right hand, he laid that arm along the
edge of the boat as if to relieve it from the cramped position he had
complained of. Archdale saw that the muzzle was pointed directly at him
and that the hand which held it in apparent carelessness was working
almost imperceptibly towards the trigger. That would not be touched
quite yet, however, a shot now would alarm the garrison and be
inexcusable. The accident would happen in the excitement of landing.
Archdale’s left hand that he with as great indifference as Edmonson’s
laid upon the boat’s edge was steady. He leaned forward a little to be
out of range, and they went on in silence.

The clouds grew denser, the waves swelled more and more at the violence
of the wind, and the storm, nearer every minute, seemed about to unite
with the fiery storm that awaited the devoted band.

“Look,” said Archdale suddenly, “I believe they have discovered us.” He
raised his left hand as he spoke, and pointed to the Battery. Lights
were glancing there, and something had given it an air of ponderous
observation, as if eyes were looking through the walls and movements
going on behind them. All the men scanned the battery earnestly except
the speaker whose eyes were watchfully turned upon his neighbor, and who
for reward saw Edmonson’s fingers covertly placing themselves on the
trigger, while his face was still toward the fortifications.

[pg 462]

“Yes, it’s all up with us,” cried the latter, “we are discovered,”
In the movement of speech he was turning to Archdale, preparatory to
dropping measuring eyes upon the musket, when the latter called out:—

“See! they are going to fire.” And with the words he dropped his left
arm with a swift and accidental sweep by which his hand hitting forcibly
against Edmonson’s which was unprepared, struck it off the boat into the
water. The pistol sent its ball spinning into the sea, running along
Archdale’s sleeve as it passed. The pistol itself lay under the water
for the instant that Edmonson’s hand rested there. The flintlock was
wet, the weapon was useless.

Its owner turned upon his clumsy companion in a rage. But before he
could speak the guns of the battery blazed out, and in the iron shower
that followed there was no thought for anything but that of saving
themselves as much as possible.

Round shot would have danced over the water and left them comparatively
safe; but in the deadly hail of langrage such escape was impossible.
Every moment of it inflicted torturing wounds or death. The boats were
beeched with all speed at the foot of the monster which belched forth
this red hot torrent wounding wherever it fell. But they had been thrown
into confusion, and while some of them struggled to the shore, the
occupants of others in their terror drew back out of harm’s way, and
left their comrades to their fate. Edmonson’s was not the only flintlock
wet, as the soldiers, weary and dispirited, toiled up from the surf.
They tried their scaling ladders, they fought for a time with that
desperate courage which never forsook them. Their captain cheered them
with his bravest words and deeds, and Archdale and Edmonson were
foremost in every post of danger until one fell badly wounded.

But from the first the expedition was doomed. After an hour’s conflict
the recall was sounded, and the remnant of the scaling party straggled
and staggered to their boats, some carrying wounded comrades, some
themselves wounded and faint. But many had been taken prisoners by the
French, and many lay dead and dying. Elizabeth stood waiting for the
wounded to be brought in, and for the roll of the dead. The first man
who came walking steadily toward her, turning about at every few steps
to see that the men behind him were carrying their burden on their
stretchers carefully, was Archdale.

“You?” she said wonderingly. “I thought—I was afraid—.”

“Yes, I have come back,” he answered; “and it is through your warning.
Such as my life is, you have saved it.”

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

5 (return)
Copyright, 1884, by Frances C. Sparhawk.

[pg 463]

EDITOR’S TABLE.

It is surprising how few people, comparatively speaking, are aware of
the fact, that the history of Boston has been treated as the history of
no other city in this country has been. The year 1880 was the two
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its founding, and, commemorative of
that year, a work, in four beautiful quarto volumes, has been issued in
this city by Messrs. Ticknor and Company. The object of this work, and
the importance attached to it is what leads us to speak of it in this
place and at this time. This object is primarily to present the leading
historical phases of the town’s and city’s life and developement,
together with the traces of previous occupation, and the natural history
of the locality. To accomplish this almost herculean task, the sections
were assigned to writers well-known in their respective spheres,—many
of them of national reputation,—who from study and associations were
in a measure identified with their subjects. The entire work was
critically edited by Mr. Justin Winsor, Librarian of Harvard University,
with the co-operation of a committee appointed at a meeting of the
gentlemen interested, consisting of the Rev. Edward Everett Hale,
D.D., Samuel A. Green, M.D. and Charles Deane, LL.D. Now, it is not
our purpose to enter into any description of this carefully planned,
skilfully written, beautifully illustrated, printed and bound specimen
of the art of book-making; but rather, again to call attention to its
great merits and claims upon the interested public. The work deals
almost exclusively with facts, and impartially also, and these facts are
alike valuable to the man of letters, the man of science, the historian,
the student, and the vast public whose patriotism invites them to
seek the story of their city. A better conceived work has never been
published on this continent; but it is unnecessary to commend what
easily commends itself to the eye, the mind, and the purse of well-to-do
people.

There is need of a more careful study of politics on the part of the
people of this country. The recent elections in this State and in other
States again recalls this need, and have again shown that altogether too
many men cast their ballots, not in accordance with their intelligence
or with their convictions, but as they are told to cast them. The first
duty of an American citizen should be a thorough acquaintance with
American political institutions, their origin, their growth and
progress, their utility or their worthlessness. The right of suffrage is
one of the inalienable rights of the people. It is one of their most
sacred rights also, and ought not to be exercised except under most
careful, candid and conscientious conditions.

One cannot suppose, even for a moment, that our people are not aware of
the accuracy of these assertions. We are not advocates of property
ownership as a qualification of voting, nor would we seek to lay down
any arbitrary sine qua non, to be rigidly adhered to in our
system of voting. But, is it enough that a man should know how to read
and write before he can cast a ballot? Do these qualifications comprise
everything that is necessary to a proper and safe exercise of the right
of suffrage? If so, then politics can never be formulated as a science,
and politicians can never be regarded other than what many of them seem
to be,—tricksters trading on the incredulity and ignorance of the
masses. It is only when people understand how and why they
vote, that they can vote intelligently.

It may not be generally known that we have in this state, with allied
organizations in other states, a Society for “Political Education,”
carrying on its work by furnishing and circulating at a low price sound
economic and political literature. Its aim is to publish at least four
pamphlets a year on subjects of vital importance. During the present
year, the “Standard Silver Dollar and the Coinage Law of 1878” has been
treated by Mr. Worthington C. Ford, secretary of the society; “Civil
Service Reform in Cities and States,” by Edward M. Shepard; “What makes
the Rate of Wages,” by Edward Atkinson, and others have also been
published,—in all sixteen pamphlets since the foundation of the
Society.

The first Secretary of the Society was Richard L. Dugdale, the author of
the remarkable

[pg 464]

social study called “The Jukes.” The twelfth number of the Economic
Tracts of the Society gives a sketch of his life, and from it the
following quotation is pertinent:—

“The education of the people in true politics, it seemed to Mr. Dugdale
and his associates, would not only greatly aid popular judgment on
political questions, but would be a necessary preliminary to the
election of public representatives and officers upon real issues. If
elections were so held, successful candidates would come generally to be
men competent to consider and expert in dealing with questions of state
and administration. And if legislators and executives were so competent
and expert, and were not merely men accomplished in intrigue or active
in party contests, we should have from them conscientious and
intelligent social reforms. Legislative committees, governors, mayors,
commissioners of charities and corrections, superintendents of prisons,
reformatories, almshouses, and hospitals, would then patiently listen
and intelligently act upon discussions and of the condition of the
extremely poor and the vicious, and especially of children and young men
and women not yet hopelessly hardened.”

Few persons will deny that such a work as this needs everywhere to be
done so that the charities of the country shall no longer be
administered in the interests of a party.

The Society has been in active operation about four years, and its
success has thus far been most gratifying. It has already induced
hundreds of people to make a careful study of American history and
politics, and its influence is now felt throughout the length and
breadth of this land. The very fact of such an effort is one of the
encouraging signs of the times, and should be encouraged by all who aim
for the welfare of the Republic.

But there is still another open field for work in this direction, and
this perhaps lies more in the power of the people themselves. We allude
to the necessity of public lectures, in every community, on the great
themes pertaining to American politics and history. It must be evident
to every observer that our so-called “Lyceum Courses” are to-day sadly
deficient in efforts to educate the people. There is a perfect craze
at the present time for concerts, readings, and a similar order of
entertainments,—all of which are doubtless good enough of their kind
and are capable of exerting a certain moral influence that cannot be
questioned. But is it plausible that such pabulum meets all the needs of
those people who frequent these entertainments? If it does, the fault
lies with the people and not with those who are capable of amusing them.

We would suggest to the public-spirited ladies and gentlemen living in
our towns and cities to try the following experiment;—Plan a lecture
course, to be filled by public speakers residing in your own
communities. Establish a course of say four, six, eight, or a dozen
evenings, and let only those questions be discussed which pertain to
history, political economy, and politics. We venture the assertion that
such a course, conducted thoroughly in an unpartisan spirit, would be
well patronized, and would exert an influence for good. Never was there
a better time to try the experiment than now.

The death of General George B. McClellan at Newark, N.J.,
October 29, reminds us how narrow is becoming the circle of living
generals who took part in the great Civil War. It is two decades only
since the struggle ceased; but, one by one, the famous leaders have
passed away, and now McClellan has gone—the first to follow his great
commander, Grant.

It is not easy to comment upon the career of General McClellan without
evoking, either from his admirers or his censors, the criticism of being
unfair. To many, especially to the soldiers who fought under his
leadership, he became an ideal of soldierly virtue, and has always held
a warm place in their hearts; while to many others his military and
civil career alike have seemed worthy only of disapprobation.

It was natural that General McClellan should have a large and devoted
following, for he was a man gifted with those personal qualities that
always win popularity to their possessor, so that among the soldiers of
the Army of the Potomac, and among those in civil life with whom he came
in contact, he was usually regarded with admiration. As a military
commander, it must be conceded by his most determined critics, even,
that he possessed certain qualities unsurpassed by

[pg 465]

those of any other general in the war. This was true of his ability as
an organizer of volunteer troups, in which capacity he probably rendered
more effectual service than any other man in the Union army. He was also
well versed in the science of war, and was a strategist of a higher
order than has generally been conceded. As is often the case, he failed
to receive just recognition of his really great abilities, because he
lacked the needed complementary qualities. McClellan could admirably
plan a campaign, and could perhaps have carried it to a brilliant issue,
had all the circumstances conformed to his plan, but this not happening,
he seemed unable to adapt his plan to the circumstances. Other generals
with inferior plans would succeed by taking some sudden advantage at a
critical time; McClellan on the contrary must either carry out his
carefully arranged programme, or acknowledge himself foiled.

That General McClellan was not a firm patriot is an assertion not
entitled to any weight whatever. He was devoted to the cause of the
Union, and in his career as a general we believe he should be given the
credit of performing his duty to the best of his ability. That he could
not triumph over unexpected obstacles was doubtless a cause of regret to
him more than to any one else.

General McClellan has been accused of an undue ambition for political
preferment, and it must be admitted that he would have succeeded better
in those positions to which he attained, had he been less solicitous for
the future; but it is not yet proved that he ever enlisted unworthy or
dishonorable means in the cause of his personal advancement.

[pg 466]

HISTORICAL RECORD.

September 30.—Republican State Convention held in Springfield. The
following ticket was nominated: Governor, Geo. D. Robinson of Chicopee;
Lieut. Governor, Oliver Ames of Easton; Secretary of State, Henry B.
Pierce of Abington; Treasurer, A.W. Beard of Boston; Auditor, Chas. R.
Ladd of Springfield; Attorney General, Edgar J. Sherman of Lawrence.
With the exception of the office of treasurer, the ticket is the same as
that of last year.

October 1.—The Converse Memorial library building was formerly
presented to the city of Malden by its donor, Hon. Elisha S. Converse.
Hon. John D. Long made the dedicatory address. The building cost
$100,000, and is one of the finest examples of architecture in the
state.

October 7.—Democratic State Convention at Worcester. The following
ticket was nominated: Governor, Frederick O. Prince of Boston;
Lieutenant-Governor, H.H. Gilmore of Cambridge; Secretary of State,
Jeremiah Crowley of Lowell; Attorney General, Henry K. Braley of Fall
River; Treasurer, Henry M. Cross of Newburyport.

October 8.—Eight monuments were unveiled upon the battle-field of
Gettysburg by Massachusetts veterans. The regiments which have erected
these monuments and the principal speakers upon the occasion, were as
follows:—

The Twelfth Infantry. The monument is on Seminary Ridge. Col. Cook of
Gloucester presided, George Kimball of Boston delivered the principal
address, and comrade Gilman read a poem.

The Eleventh Infantry dedicated its monument on the Emmittsburg Road,
Capt. W.T. Monroe presided, and James H. Croft of Boston made the
address.

The Nineteenth Infantry monument on Cemetery Ridge was dedicated; J.W.
Sawyer, presiding, Lieut. Geo. M. Barry and C.C. Coffin making
addresses.

The Third Battery has erected a monument. Formal exercises were not held
here at this time, but the dedication was made with remarks by comrade
Patch.

The First Battery dedicated a monument in the National Cemetery. Remarks
were made by G.H. Patch and H.I. Hall.

The Eighteenth Infantry. The monument stands near the wheat field, and
was dedicated with an address by Col. Wm. B. White of Quincy.

The Second Sharpshooters. The monument is in the form of a statue and
was dedicated. N.S. Sweet gave the address.

The First Cavalry dedicated a monument near the Round Tops, Major Chas.
G. Davis, delivered the address.

October 13-16.—Seventy-fifth anniversary of the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions observed in Boston. The annual sermon
was preached the 13th in Tremont Temple by Rev. Geo. Leon Walker D.D. of
Hartford. A special discourse was delivered the 14th in the same hall by
Rev. R.S. Storrs, D.D. of Brooklyn. The attendance was the largest in
the history of the Board, taxing the fullest capacity of Tremont Temple,
Music Hall, and various churches simultaneously. Over 10,000 people were
present on one evening and many were turned away. The Rev. Mark Hopkins,
D.D. was re-elected president of the Board.

OBITUARY.

September 26.—Hon. Waldo Colburne, a Justice of the Supreme
Judicial Court of Massachusetts, died at his home in Dedham, at the age
of 60 years.

Judge Colburn was born in Dedham, Nov. 13, 1824, and at 15 years of age
he entered Phillips Academy at Andover, graduating therefrom in 1842 in
the “English Department and

[pg 467]

Teachers’ Seminary,” which at that time was entirely distinct from the
classical course. In the following year he entered the classical
department, where he remained until the summer of 1845, when he left the
academy and for the two years following engaged in various pursuits,
chiefly, however, civil engineering and surveying. On May 13, 1847, he
entered the law office of Ira Cleveland, Esq., at Dedham, and on May 3,
1850, was admitted to the Norfolk County Bar. In the meantime he had
spent some time at the Harvard Law School, and soon took a leading
position in Norfolk county, which he always maintained. On May 27, 1875,
he was appointed one of the Judges of the Superior Court by Gov. Gaston,
and on Nov. 10, 1882, Gov. Long selected him to fill a vacancy existing
in the Supreme Court. Judge Colburn was a Democrat, and had filled
several positions of trust and responsibility in his native town. In
1853 and 1854 he represented Dedham in the Massachusetts House of
Representatives, and as Chairman of the committee on Railroads earnestly
opposed the loaning of the State’s credit to the Hoosac Tunnel scheme.
In 1870 he was a member of the Senate from the Second Norfolk District,
and as a member of the Judiciary Committee drafted the well-known
corporation act. He was Chairman of the Board of Selectmen of Dedham
from 1855 to 1864, and during the war his services were important and
valuable. He was President of the Dedham Institution for Savings and a
director of the Dedham National Bank.

Judge Colburn was naturally a man of robust constitution and excellent
health, and, until his prostration shortly before his death, had never
been obliged to neglect his official duties for a day on account of
sickness.

October 6.—Hon. Thomas Talbot, Ex-Governor of Massachusetts, died at
this home in Billerica at the age of sixty-seven years. He was born at
Cambridge, N.Y. Sept. 7, 1818, and subsequently removed with the family
to Danby, Vt. After the death of the father, the family removed to
Northampton, Mass. and Thomas at the age of thirteen began work in a
woolen factory. In the winters of 1837 and 1838 he attended an academy
at Cummington. Soon after, he joined his father in North Billerica, and
the long manufactoring career of C.P. Talbot & Co. was begun. The firm
still continues in the manufacture of woolen flannels, employing between
two and three hundred hands.

Mr. Talbot’s first public service of note was as Representative from
Billerica in the Legislature of 1852, and he was a member of the
Constitutional Convention the following year. He was elected a member of
the Executive Council in 1864, and served five years in that honorable
capacity in association with Governors Andrew, Bullock and Claflin. In
1872 Mr. Talbot was elected by the Republicans as Lieutenant Governor
upon the same ticket with Hon. William B. Washburn, who was elected as
Governor. Re-elected with Governor Washburn in 1873, he became Acting
Governor when, during the legislative session of 1874, Governor Washburn
was elected as United States Senator to fill the vacancy caused by the
death of Hon. Charles Sumner. One of the first important acts of his
official life after this event was the approval of the “Ten-Hour bill.”

In the same year Mr. Talbot received the Republican nomination for
Governor but was defeated by Hon. William Gaston. In 1878 he again had
the nomination, and was elected over Gen. Butler, Judge Abbott and A.A.
Miner.

He was presidential elector in 1876 and 1884, and was chairman of the
State Board of Health, Lunacy and Charity from its establishment in 1879
to 1884.

Mr. Talbot was strictly a temperance man and was a professed
Prohibitionist.

[pg 468]

AMONG THE BOOKS.

The preparation of elaborately illustrated editions of standard poems
especially for the holiday trade has become a very prominent feature of
the book publishing business. Every year seems to mark an increased
beauty and variety in the work which the artist contributes to these
holiday books, and many classic works of literature are read with
clearer meaning and vastly greater delight, by reason of the intelligent
interpretations often given in the illustrations of our best artists of
the day.

Among the most tasteful as well as sumptuous art volumes of the last
three years have been James R. Osgood & Co.’s “The Lady of the Lake,”
“The Princess,” and “Marmion.” For a similar book for this season,
Messrs, Ticknor & Co., the successors of the old firm, have taken as a
subject Lord Byron’s Childe Harold.6 Of the poem nothing need
be said here, for it is universally accepted as Byron’s greatest and
best; but of the illustrations, pages of praise could easily be written.
The poem itself has been a fertile theme for the artists, for the scene
is made to shift from one to another of the most beautiful and romantic
localities of the Rhine, of Spain, Italy and Greece, and most of the
illustrations are true representations of castles, ruins, palaces and
natural scenery in these ancient countries.

All of the illustrations in the volume are from wood, in the production
of which the most famous American artists and engravers have given their
best work, all of it having been under the supervision of Mr A.V.S.
Anthony.

Scarcely a year has elapsed since the appearance of the first volume of
Mr. Blaine’s Twenty Years in Congress, which details the
history of our time from the outbreak of Secession to the death of
President Lincoln. To maintain the interest attached to that work, a
second and concluding volume ought to have been published ere this.
Indeed, the public had a right to expect it. But, now, another bid for
public consideration and favor has been put forth under the rather
attractive title of Three Decades of Federal Legislation.7 The
author is the Hon. S.S. Cox of New York, at one time a formidable
opponent of Mr. Blaine in the halls of Congress, and at the
present time American minister to Turkey.

Mr. Cox was a member of Congress for twenty-four years, his
four terms from an Ohio district covering the war and the period
immediately preceding it. As a politician, he was always ranked on the
Democratic side, and was universally regarded as one of the closest,
most competent and most conscientious observer of men and things. His
acknowledged literary skill and his passion for accuracy rendered it
almost certain that his history would be both fascinating and truthful.
Contemporary history is at the present moment in high favor. All
intelligent people realize that the records of the last fifty years are
of more vital importance to living Americans than are the annals of all
previous eras. Hence, when a man so thoroughly equipped with the gifts
of mind and of expression as Mr. Cox has shown himself to be in earlier
books from his pen,—we say when such a man sets out to relate the story
of his time, it follows without further argument that his work will not
only be sought but will be read.

The narrative covers the eventful work of Congress for the past thirty
years, and gives a much fuller inside view of Federal legislation during
this period than can be obtained from Mr. Blaine’s more pretentious
work. No period in our national history is so full of interest as the
times of which our author writes. The revolt from English rule and the
establishment of our national government was one of the grandest epochs
in history. In that period were determined the issue of national
independence; in this epoch of even greater magnitude, the issue of
national existence. Both periods alike witnessed the most terrible
conflicts of armies, of bloodshed and suffering in both periods was
shown the exercise of the

[pg 469]

highest and most brilliant statesmanship; and in both periods the
Federal Legislature was witness to events scarcely less exciting and
decisive than occurred on hundreds of bloody battle-fields. The exciting
period of Secession, the departure of Senators and Representatives from
Congress, the proclamation of war, the call for troops, the great
uprising of the people of all sections, North and South, against each
other, the act of Emancipation, the sanguinary battles of, and the close
of the war, the return of peace, the assassination of President Lincoln,
the election of Grant, the Electoral Commission and the seating of
Hayes, the resumption of specie payments and a host of other equally
impressive episodes and events, find in Mr. Cox an impartial historian.
Of the importance of such a work, there is no need of saying anything,
and it is quite enough to remark that the book taken all in all, is
perhaps the most important, because of its impartiality and accuracy,
that has so far been published during the present year.

We have alluded to the fact that the author was a prominent actor in
nearly all the legislation of this long period, and that he consequently
possesses that personal and absolute knowledge which comes from actual
participation. The following extract which is taken at random from page
117 of the volume discloses something of the author’s happy faculty of
seeing and describing things as they occurred to him. He says:—

“Being upon the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of
Representatives when the Trent affair occurred, the writer attended a
dinner given by the Secretary at this then happy home. This was at a
time when men held their breath in trepidation, lest Great Britain and
the Powers of Europe might make the Trent matter the pretext to
consummate their recognition of Southern independence. Some feared that
a disparted Republic would have to give way before the jealous
encroachments of those who sought to divide our country as they
endeavored to imperialize Mexico.

“The delightful interchanges of thought between the persons at that
dinner are not so important as the fact that transpired toward its
close. After the ceremonies of introduction, and the tenders of
politeness to Mrs. Frederick W. Seward and Miss Olive Risley—the
adopted daughter of the house—the guests who had been received by these
ladies moved to the hospitable dining-hall. On the right of Mr. Seward
was seated burly English heartiness incarnated in Mr. Anthony Trollope,
the novelist. His presence was almost a surprise, if not a satire on the
occasion, as it concluded. At the other end of the table sat John J.
Crittenden. He was then chairman of Foreign Affairs in the House. The
author was on his right, as he was nearer by sympathy to him than others
on the committee. He used to say to the writer: ‘My young friend, when I
was of your age, I did all the work and the older members received the
merit marks. You may do the work, sir, and I will take the credit.’ With
his grave humor and hearty confidence, he was wont to parcel out to the
writer no inconsiderable quantity of the work of this most arduous of
committees. Thus it happened that a bill for the relief of the owners of
the Perthshire, seized by us, came to the hand of the writer for a
report. The chairman was not a little astonished when he found that his
subbordinate, on the 17th of December, 1861, was dilating on the Trent
case, and quoting Robinson’s Reports to justify the detention of the
contraband plenipotentiaries, upon British precedents and conduct.”

From the foregoing selection, it will readily be seen that the author’s
style is strong, clear, rapid, and stimulating, his judgment sound and
unprejudiced, and his materials authentic. His condition, experiences,
and industry combine to throw new light on the events of the most
remarkable epoch in natural history, and the volume, independent of Mr.
Cox’s reputation, is bound to be a success. It is at once the most
picturesque and harmonious political history of our times that has thus
far been written, and will, also, be generally looked upon as a solid
and substantial contribution to American literature. We feel that we
cannot commend it too highly.

In the Century magazine, last spring, Gen. George B. McClellan undertook
to present his explanation of the failure of the Army of the Potomac
while under his command. In his article, he assaulted the memories of
Lincoln and Stanton, and attempted much more than he accomplished,—at
least, so thinks the Hon. William D. Kelley, who examines McClellan’s
statements in a book recently published. It bears the simple title,
Lincoln
[pg 470]
and Stanton.8 Of this volume, which for the first time makes
many fresh disclosures, we hope to have something to say at another
time.

Senator Sumner was once asked by Lord Brougham the origin and
meaning of “caucus,” and he replied: “It is difficult to assign any
elementary to the word, but the most approved one referred its origin to
the very town, and about the time (1772), of his lordship’s birth.”
There is a tradition in Boston that “caucus” was a common word here
before the Revolutionary war broke out, and that it originated in a feud
between the British troops on the one side and the rope-walkers and
calkers on the other. Bloody collisions, it is said, occurred between
them. The latter held meetings in the calkers’ hall in the lower
part of the city, at which resolutions were adopted and speeches made
denouncing the soldiers, who, on their part deriding the wordy war
offered, sneeringly snubbed their opponents “The Calkers,” which by an
easy corruption became “the caucus,” and finally a term to denote the
meetings.

Whether this be the origin or not of the word, one thing is certain—Mr.
George W. Lawton has done a most commendable thing in the
publication of his little book on The American Caucus System.9
It is exceedingly useful, and the wonder is for us why some such work
has not earlier issued from the press, for it meets the requirements of
the multitudinous politicians and others who are never absent on “caucus
nights.” The author begins at the beginning of his theme, and shows how
easily men, that is, mankind in general, choose to be controlled by
political power, and to bear its burdens; he then establishes the axiom
that the direction of political power is with the caucus, and goes on
still further to explain what gives the caucus its authority, to compare
caucus nominations with self-nominations, and then historically to trace
the growth of the caucus, and, lastly, to describe the proceedings of,
and how to conduct, a caucus meeting. From first to last, these pages
are suggestive, timely, and embody a great deal of good sound sense.

The late Mr. Walter Bagehot left behind him some materials for a book
which promised to make a landmark in the history of economics, by
separating the use of the older, or Ricardian, economic reasonings from
their abuse, and freeing them from the discredit into which they had
fallen through being often misapplied. Unfortunately he did not complete
more than the examination of two of their postulates, namely, the
transferability of capital and labor. These were originally published in
the Fortnightly Review, in 1876, and are now republished, with
some other materials for the author’s proposed work, under the title of
The Postulates of English Political Economy.10 These essays,
which emanated from a well-trained, scientific mind, an independent
thinker, and one who was perfectly free in his criticisms, deal almost
exclusively with one side of what the author wished and intended to say;
but as they stand, they prove that had he lived he would have shed much
light on the problem, how the rapid changes of modern city life may help
us to understand, by analogy and indirect inference, the slow changes of
a backward people.

The pathos and humor which have immortalized many of Will
Carleton’s earlier poems enter again into his City
Ballads.11 If ever a poet comprehended the human heart and the
mainspring of its responses, it is he who gave us that
wonderfully-common-place (by reason only of its theme) but delightful
versification, “Betsey and I are out.” His new collection embraces
several pieces almost as striking in their character; and their
wholesomeness and truthfulness of sentiment will win for them many
readers. None of these poems are fanciful pictures of life which does
not exist; but they are, on the

[pg 471]

contrary, faithful to the actualities of the living present. They
portray metropolitan life as in a mirror, and depict the mishaps of the
inexperienced therein in a way that is at once healthful and conducive
to practical morality. Every poem is a story, which carries within
itself a lesson not easily forgotten, and as a poem is almost invariably
characterized by a pleasant rhythm and animation. The illustrations—and
they are numerous—are excellent; indeed, one would not wish them to be
better. These poems and pictures will find entrance into many homes ere
the holiday season is ended.

One of the most astonishing successes, in a literary line, of recent
years is Col. Higginson’s “Young Folks’ History of the United States.”
Published originally as a book for general readers, its superlative
merits commended themselves to teachers, then led to the introduction of
the work, as a text-book of history, into very many schools. No other
work of the kind, we believe, has met with such signal favor or so
richly deserves it. So far as it goes, it is by all odds the ne plus
ultra for school use.

The same author has recently published what he terms A Larger History
of the United States,12 which, however, ends only with the close
of President Jackson’s administration. So far we fail to discover any
raison d’etre of the volume, unless its purpose is distinctly to
bring together in a re-arranged form the series of illustrated papers on
American history contributed by Mr. Higginson to Harper’s Magazine
during the past two years. If such is the author’s purpose, then we have
no fault to find with the work. But the term “Larger History” is,
in this case, a misnomer. The book does not contain as much
matter as the earlier work to which we have alluded, and it is not, so
far as we can make out, written for older readers. It does not strike
one as being a history at all,—that is, a straightforward, logical, and
continuous narrative coinciding with those exemplar types of historical
writing bequeathed to us by Macaulay or by Motley. The book ends, as we
have said, with the close of Jackson’s administration; but we glean very
little concerning the administration and we are told much
relative to “Old Hickory.”

Now, then, this may seem like finding fault with Mr. Higginson’s book.
If so, we have plainly asserted our reasons. But with his subject
matter, and with his manner of treating it, everybody must be pleased.
We have never read more charmful essays on the First Americans, the
Visit of the Vikings, the Spanish Discoverers, the French Voyageurs, the
Dawning of Independence, and the Great Western March, than appear
between the covers of this beautiful volume. They are full of meat, and
have the savor of fresh and studious investigation, and we feel grateful
to their author for having provided so tempting a feast. What he says
and the way he says it make us the more to regret the unfortunate title
of his book.

The illustrations, which are numerous, are veritable works of art, and
we do not believe that any other American book can exhibit a finer or
more valuable series of portraits of American statesmen. This feature
alone should commend it to lovers of fine books, of which the present
issue is decidedly one. We are not informed whether a second volume is
forthcoming.

6 (return)
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. A Romance. By Lord Byron.
Boston: Ticknor & Co. Price, in cloth, $6.00.

7 (return)
Three Decades of Federal Legislation, from 1855 to 1885. By
the Hon. S.S. Cox, 1 vol. 8vo, pp. 726. Illustrated. Providence, R.I.;
J.A. & R.A. Reid, 1885. Price, $5.00, (sold only by subscription.)

8 (return)
Lincoln and Stanton. A study of the war
administration of 1861 and 1862, with special consideration of some
recent statements of Gen. George B. McClellan, By Wm. D. Kelley. 8vo,
pp. 88. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. 1885. Price, $1.00.

9 (return)
The American Caucus System; its origin, purpose, and
utility. By George W. Lawton. 1 vol. pp. 107. New York: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1885. Price, $1.00.

10 (return)
The Postulates of English Political Economy. By the late
Walter Bagehot, with a preface by Alfred Marshall. 1 vol. pp. 114. New
York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. 1885. Price $1.00.

11 (return)
City Ballads. By Will Carleton, author of “Farm
Ballads,” “Farm Legends,” etc. Illustrated. Square 8 vo, pp. 180. New
York: Harper & Brothers. Price $2.00.

12 (return)
A Larger History of the United States of America to the
close of President Jackson’s administration. By Thomas Wentworth
Higginson. Illustrated by Maps, Plans, Portraits, and other Engravings.
1 vol. 8vo, pp. 470. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1886. Price, $3.00.

[pg 472]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

At the request of many of our readers, this new Department is initiated.
Please address all queries and answers simply,—Editor of the Bay State
Monthly, 43 Milk St., Boston.

1.—In one of the old Readers, I find a selection, not credited to any
author, and beginning as follows:—”Born, sir, in a land of liberty;
having early learned its value; having engaged in a perilous conflict
to defend it; having, in a word, devoted the best years of my life to
secure its permanent establishment in my country, my anxious
recollections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes are
irresistibly excited, whensoever in any country, I see an oppressed
nation unfurl the banners of freedom.” Will some one of your readers
inform me who was the author of these words, and what was the occasion
for their utterance?—W.T.D.

2.—Sullivan, in his Familiar Letters, states (p. 26) that:
“General Washington is well known to have expressed his heartfelt
satisfaction that the important State of Massachusetts had acceded to
the Union. There is much secret history as to the efforts made to
procure the rejection (of the constitution) on the one side, and the
adoption on the other.” Where can I find the fullest account of this
“secret history?”—STUDENT.

3.—Who was the first American woman to publicly espouse the cause of
Anti-Slavery? I have lately seen several names mentioned?—M.S.

4.—”Where can I find the best account of the Know-Nothings, that
figured in American politics some years ago?”

5.—The late Epes Sargent, in one of his sketches, says:—

“Semmes took a pinch of snuff, and replied,—’You remember Mrs.
Glasse’s well-known receipt for cooking a hare—First catch your
hare!'”—Who was Mrs Glasse?—LATIN SCHOOL.

6.—Where can I find a full account of the history of the Indian tribes
of early Massachusetts? The various State Histories say but little about
them.—ANTIQUARY.

7.—Has the life of Robert Rantoul Jr. ever been written? If so, by
whom?—H.A.D.

8.—Most of our States have one capital; some have two—Providence and
Newport, in Rhode Island for instance. Why two?

9.—In Chandler Robbins’ “History of the Second Church,” under date of
Oct. 7. 1762, occurs the following: “Voted that the singers sound the
base at the end of the lines whenever they think proper.” What is the
explanation of this custom?

10.—Bartlett does not give this: “To fleet the time carelessly, as they
did in the golden world.” Where is it to be found?—ELHEGOS.

[pg xxx1]

“Undoubtedly the most remarkable series of articles ever published
in a magazine, and their popularity is in, accord with their
merit.”—Brooklyn Eagle.

Of the numbers of The Century from November, 1884 to April
1885, six issues, more than a million and a quarter copies have already
been published.

THE WAR PAPERS

IN

THE CENTURY MAGAZINE.

With the number for November, 1884, the first issue of a new volume,
there began to appear in this magazine a series of separate papers, the
object of which is to tell in clear and graphic manner the stories of
the great battles of the War for the Union; the authors being leading
officers on both the Federal and Confederate sides, often the first in
command, and always a participant in the engagement under consideration.
The extraordinary increase in the circulation of the magazine since
these papers were begun, and the reception by the public and the press
of the material already printed, indicate the wide-spread popular
interest in the plan.

THE NOVEMBER CENTURY

contains the paper by General G.T. Beauregard, of the Confederate
army, describing “The Battle of Bull Run,” with more than twenty
illustrations, including portraits of McDowell, Johnston, “Stonewall”
Jackson, and others. General Beauregard not only describes the battle,
but touches upon his relations with Mr. Jefferson Davis, and the general
conduct of the war.

THE DECEMBER CENTURY

contains the graphic description of “The Capture of Fort Donelson,” by
General Lew Wallace, with portraits of Buckner, Floyd, Pillow, and
others among the illustrations, and a frontispiece portrait of General
Grant, from a little-known photograph; also an autographic reproduction
of General Grant’s famous “Unconditional Surrender” letter, written to
the Confederate commander at Fort Donelson.

THE JANUARY CENTURY

contains an illustrated article by Rear-Admiral Walke, describing the
“Operations of the Western Flotilla,” including engagements at Belmont,
Fort Henry, Fort Pillow, Fort Donelson, Memphis, and Island No. 10.
Captain James B. Eads (who built the gun-boats) contributes to the same
number a paper on “Recollections of Foote and the Gun-boats.”

New readers of The Century desiring to secure these three
numbers, November, December, and January, and thus begin the War Series
and Mr. Howells’s new novel, “The Rise of Silas Lapham,” can obtain them
for $1.00 of the publishers (who will send them to any address,
post-paid, on receipt of price), or of dealers everywhere. New editions
will be printed as rapidly as the demand requires. November is now in
its sixth edition.

THE FEBRUARY CENTURY,

the Midwinter number, contains a remarkable list of attractions,
including a richly illustrated paper on “Winter Sports in Canada,” an
illustrated story by Mark Twain, entitled “Royalty on the Mississippi,”
etc., etc. In this issue appears

THE FIRST OF GENERAL GRANT’S ARTICLES

in the war series, being his long-looked-for paper on “The Battle of
Shiloh.” For reasons which he recounts in the opening of the article,
general Grant never made to the Government the usual full report
touching this engagement. The paper is a comprehensive treatment of his
relations to the battle, including much of picturesque and personal
interest concerning its progress and a discussion of the main points of
controversy, together with his own estimates of the military character
and services of certain of the leading officers in both the Union and
Confederate sides.

THE CONFEDERATE SIDE AT “SHILOH”

will be described in this February number in two interesting articles,
one by the son of the Confederate leader, General Albert Sidney
Johnston, killed at Shiloh, and the other by Colonel Jordan, of general
Beauregard’s staff. These, with General Grant’s article, are among the
most notable contributions ever made to magazine literature. The
illustrations are more than twenty-five in number.

[pg xxx2]

FURTHER PAPERS BY GENERAL GRANT.

In his second paper General Grant will cover an entire year of his
service in the war, including the different campaigns against Vicksburg,
and its capitulation. In his third paper he will deal with the battle of
Chattanooga, including the strategy of the campaign from the time of his
assumption of the command. A fourth paper, on the Wilderness campaign,
will follow.

While largely engaged with the main features of the campaigns described,
General Grant has not failed to take note of significant and
characteristic details. These papers will be illustrated with the same
regard for thoroughness and accuracy which has characterized the
illustrations of the articles in the war series already published.

THE “MONITOR” AND “MERRIMAC,”

IN

THE MARCH CENTURY.

The story of this famous fight is described in the March Century by Col.
John Taylor Wood, fourth officer of the “Merrimac” in the second day’s
fight, and now the senior surviving officer. Col. Wood was afterward
commander of the privateer “Tallahassee.” The Federal side of the battle
is told by Commander S.D. Greene, U.S.N. (whose death has just
occurred), who was the executive officer of the “Monitor,” and operated
the guns within the turret. General R.E. Colston, commander of the
Confederate forces opposite Newport News, contributes an eyewitness’s
account of the same battle, describing, also, the “Merrimac’s”
engagement with the Federal fleet before the arrival of the “Monitor.”
A paper will soon appear on

“THE MONITOR,” BY CAPTAIN JOHN ERICSSON,

making record of the circumstances attending the invention of that
famous craft, and treating also of the engagement at Hampton Roads.
Readers of the articles in the March number will be especially
interested in the inventor’s story.

In the April Century will be printed two important papers on

THE CAPTURE OF NEW ORLEANS,

BY

ADMIRAL PORTER AND GEORGE W. CABLE.

Admiral Porter, with whom, as he relates, the expedition against New
Orleans originated, and who was in command of the mortar-fleet during
the action, describes the Federal side of “The Opening of the Lower
Mississippi”; while George W. Cable, the novelist, and at the time a
resident of New Orleans, writes of the condition of the city and the
circumstances attending its occupation. The illustrations will include a
number of battle-scenes from sketches made by Admiral Porter.

In the May and June numbers the papers in the War Series will be largely
devoted to

THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN

BY

GEN. G.B. McCLELLAN AND GEN. J.E. JOHNSTON.

General McClellan will contribute two papers, the first of a general
nature on the Peninsular Campaign, and the second (to appear later) on
the battle of Antietam, thus covering the period of his command of the
Army of the Potomac. General Joseph E. Johnston, who commanded the
entire Confederate forces opposed to McClellan in the Peninsular
engagements until the battle of Seven Pines, when in consequence of a
wound he was succeeded by General Lee, will cover, in his papers, the
period from Manassas to Seven Pines, dealing with both battles, and with
his relations and differences with the President of the Confederacy. The
engagements at Gaines’s Mill and Malvern Hill, in this campaign, will be
described in papers by

GEN. FITZ JOHN PORTER AND GEN. D.H. HILL,

who were prominently engaged against each other in both actions. These
will be well supplemented by the “Recollections of a Private.”

OTHER WAR PAPERS

by Generals Longstreet, Pope, Gordon, Rosecrans, Buell, Hunt,
Pleasonton, Newton, and other prominent leaders, will appear in later
numbers.

[pg xxx3]

THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SERIES

will receive the most careful attention, and in this particular it is
thought that the series will possess an unequaled historical interest.
The Century has at its disposal a very large quantity of maps and plans,
portraits of general officers of both sides, authentic paintings and
drawings, and especially photographs of camp scenes, battle-fields,
famous localities, etc. A strict regard for accuracy will guide the
preparation of the illustrations.

In connection with this series is appearing a number of briefer
sketches, entitled

“RECOLLECTIONS OF A PRIVATE,”

reflecting with interesting and life-like details the experiences of the
common soldier from the time of enlistment to the muster-out: the drill,
the march, the bivouac, the skirmish, the charge, the pursuit, the
retreat, etc., etc. Auxiliary branches of the service will also be
treated in this supplementary way, and in several instances briefer
supplementary papers will chronicle special incidents or consider
special phases of an engagement. Personal reminiscences of several of
the most prominent military leaders, now dead, will also give variety to
the scheme.

---

OTHER FEATURES OF “THE CENTURY”

include W.D. Howells’s new novel of an American business man, “The Rise
of Silas Lapham”; a novel, by Henry James, “The Bostonians,” begun in
the February number; a series of papers, by W.D. Howells, descriptive
of some cities of Italy, illustrated with reproductions of etchings,
by Joseph Pennell; a series of brilliantly illustrated articles on
“The New Astronomy” (a paper in this series appears in the March number);
articles on “The New North-west,” on Architecture, History, French and
American Art, etc., etc., and short stories by the best writers—many of
them to be illustrated. The War Series will not be allowed to interfere
in any way with the general features of the magazine.

---

SUBSCRIPTIONS may begin at any time, but in order to get the
first chapters of Mr. W.D. Howells’s novel, “The Rise of Silas Lapham,”
and to commence the War Series, new subscribers should date from the
November number. The subscription price of The Century is $4.00 a year,
and single numbers can be purchased of book-sellers and news-dealers
everywhere at 35 cents each. All dealers receive subscriptions, or
remittance may be made direct to the publishers by postal or express
order, registered letter, bank check, or draft.

THE CENTURY CO. 33 East 17th Street, New-York.

---

FROM ‘RECOLLECTIONS OF A PRIVATE.’

The Century is beyond question the first among magazines in the
English language. The people of the South owe it especial thanks not
only for the fairness of its spirit toward this section, but because it
opened its pages to many of our best writers and made them known to the
world.—THE APPEAL, MEMPHIS, TENN.

The time has now come when this portion of our national history can
be discussed by the actors in it, whether they wore the blue or the
gray, and different versions can be judged without
partiality.—ARGUS, ALBANY, N.Y.

The great captains on both sides will make this series the most
notable historic contribution of the day.—CONSTITUTION, ATLANTA,
GA.

Every soldier should be a subscriber to The Century for the
coming year.—COURIER-GAZETTE, ROCKLAND, MAINE.

In securing these articles from the leading generals of the great
struggle, The Century did the best piece of journalistic work
that has been done in this country for many a year.—THE CHRISTIAN
UNION, N.Y.

The wounds and passions of the late war are rapidly healing, but it
will never lose its interest to the students of history. These articles
cannot fail to be of great interest to all careful readers both North
and South.—PRESS, PARAGOULD, ARK.

A series of important papers, the like of which has never before been
attempted, and which possess the peculiar quality of interesting every
person in the land.—THE BEACON, BOSTON, MASS.

What a vast work for good in these several ways is the great
magazine-publishing house of The Century Co. doing; what an
uplift is it giving to good taste, good morals, good politics, and good
manners, as well as to the dissemination of useful knowledge, to the
culture of “the masses,” to the comfort and peace and pleasure of home,
to the welfare of society in general! No engine of the things that are
true and pure and good is more mighty than a work like this; we ought
all to be thankful that it is in such hands. Making money, of
course, The Century Co. are; we are glad of it; but they are also
making hearts happier, lives better, and homes brighter the world
over.—THE LITERARY WORLD, BOSTON, MASS.

[pg xxx4]

The Century Co. are among the benefactors of the human race. It is
not too much to say that while “The Century” stands at the head of
current magazine literature, in “St. Nicholas” we have the best serial
publication for boys and girls the present generation has
seen.—THE COUNTRY GENTLEMAN, ENGLAND.

“Driven Back to Eden,”

THE NEW
SERIAL
STORY

BY

E.P. ROE

Author of

“Barriers Burned Away,” “Without a Home,”

Etc., Etc.

PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED

NOW APPEARING IN

ST. NICHOLAS.

Showing how a city family, inhabitants of a “flat,” were led to move
into the freedom of a country home, and how the girls and boys all
became farmers on a small scale. This promises to be one of Mr. Roe’s
best stories. It is only one of the many interesting current features of
St. Nicholas, which include:

• “Recollections of a Boy-Page in the U.S. Senate,”
• “Historic Girls,” serial papers by E.S. Brooks,
• “Children of the Cold,” a series by Lieut. Fred’k Schwatka,
• “Ready for Business; Suggestions to Boys about to Choose an Occupation,”
• “Personally Conducted,” by Frank R. Stockton,
• Short Stories by Louisa M. Alcott and others. Etc., Etc.

Numbers issued on the 25th; for sale by all dealers; price 25 cents.
Subscription price, $3.00 a year. Subscriptions are taken by dealers and
postmasters, or remittance may be made direct to the publishers, THE
CENTURY CO. 33 East 17th Street, New-York.

---

A Michigan mother (and competent critic) writes to the Editor of
“St. Nicholas”: “I am convinced that no child who is without ‘St.
Nicholas’ can successfully compete in the race of life with those who
have had the benefit of its wonderful pages.” And a prominent clergyman
of Chicago informs us that one of his parishioners recently said to him:
“‘St. Nicholas’ has saved my boy from ruin.”

[pg xxx5]

COLUMBIA BICYCLES and TRICYCLES:
FOR ROAD USE;

STANCH AND RELIABLE
THE POPULAR STEEDS FOR BUSINESS AND PLEASURE
FINEST MATERIALS, SKILLFUL WORKMANSHIP
STRONG, GRACEFUL—EVERY PART INTERCHANGEABLE

SEND 3 CENT STAMP FOR ILLUSTRATED 36 PAGE CATALOGUE
THE POPE MFG. CO.
597 Washington St. Boston, Mass.

“If I could not get another bicycle I would not give mine for its weight
in solid gold. For fifteen years I lost from three to eight days every
month with stubborn sick headache. Since I have been riding the bicycle
I have lost only two days from that cause, and I haven’t spent a dollar
for a doctor.”
REV. GEO. F. PENTECOST”

---

ECONOMIST SUMMER COOK STOVE

IS SAFE, ODORLESS, CLEANER,
EASIER TO CONTROL,
GIVES LESS HEAT IN ROOM,
& IS CHEAPER TO RUN THAN ANY
OIL, GAS, OR GASOLINE STOVE MADE.
BURNS COAL, WOOD, OR COKE.

SEND FOR CIRCULARS.
MADE ONLY BY HOBBS, GORDON & CO. CONCORD, N.H.
Price $16.

---

BOSTON BRIDGE WORKS, D.H. ANDREWS, Engineer. Builders of Wrought Iron Bridges and Roofs. Office: 13 PEMBERTON SQ., BOSTON. Works: Cambridgeport, Mass.

OWNERS OF HORSES Will find it to their advantage to use Marden’s Worm Destroyer. This medicine not only rids the horse of Worms and Bots, but also acts as a Tonic and Blood Purifyer, improving the condition, and giving the animal a shining coat. Price, $1.00 a Box. W.P. UNDERHILL & CO., No. 132 No. Main St.,—CONCORD, N.H. Wholesale agents for the United States.

---

E.H. ROLLINS & SON,

CONCORD, N.H., OFFER

REGISTERED

10 Per Cent. County Warrants

IN SUMS FROM $100 TO $500.

Municipal Bonds, School, Water, Funding and Public Building, paying
6, 7 and 8 per cent.

Farm Mortgages upon farms in Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and Dakota
paying 8 per cent. Our Company will guarantee any of these loans
at 7 per cent.

We have now on hand some conservative County Bonds in sums of
$100 and $500, which would make a good investment for
those desiring to invest a small sum.

“All our securities are taken and examined by members of our house in
the west. Principal and interest of all we sell payable at our office.
If desired one of our firm will visit you.”

All questions promptly answered and papers sent for inspection.

SEND FOR CIRCULAR

7 BAILEY’S BLOCK, CONCORD, N.H.

FEBRUARY 17, 1875.

[pg xxx6]

[pg xxx7]

[pg xxx8]

BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG

Residents of, and visitors to Boston, should not miss seeing the
wonderful

CYCLORAMA BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG,

now on exhibition at

NO. 541 TREMONT STREET.

The building is large and substantial, built of brick and iron, and is
fire-proof. It is circular in shape and is ornamented by turreted walls
and towers, constructed after the manner of the old feudal castles.

The vestibule, parlors and offices at the entrance are decorated and
furnished in good style and all the appointments and accessories are in
keeping.

The spectator passes through a narrow passage and up a winding stairway
to a circular platform in the centre of the structure, whence the
picture is seen. No words can adequately describe the wonderful effects
of this life-like portrayal of the great battle. It tells in the most
vivid manner possible the whole story of that dreadful afternoon July
3, 1863. All around him are evidences of the terrible battle. Behind
fences, stone walls and trees, in trenches and in open fields are seen
soldiers of the blue and gray engaged in the awful struggle.

The officers who were in command on that day are easily distinguished on
the canvas. Old soldiers who have seen the painting pronounce it as
accurate as if photographed on the field.

Passing down another winding stairway we find ourselves in front of
another painting called the

UPRISING OF THE NORTH,

representing the northern troops passing through Washington on their way
to the front, reviewed by President Lincoln, who stands on a marble
rostrum, surrounded by his associates in office, while the war governor,
John A. Andrew, superintends, the breaking of the fetters from the
slaves and arming them for the country’s service. Near by are seen the
troops from New England, led by General B.F. Butler, while on all sides
mothers, sisters and friends are seen wishing them God speed.

Both of these paintings are the work of the celebrated French artist, M.
Paul Philippoteaux, whose work every visitor to Paris has seen and will
remember.

[pg xxx9]

[pg xxx10]

[pg xxx11]

[pg xxx12]

[pg 1]

PUBLISHER’S DEPARTMENT.

The removal of the general office of the American Express Company to the
corner of Franklin and Hawley Streets, Boston, is an event in the
history of a famous corporation. From very small beginnings, the company
has built up a business which now extends into nearly every section of
the United States and Canada, covering about forty thousand miles of
railroad and having between five thousand and six thousand agencies,
besides interests in, and connections with many other expresses in
various parts of the country.

The American Express Company began business in 1847. The United States
and Canada Express was founded in 1842, and the Eastern Express in 1854.
The American has now absorbed both of the other companies, besides
several smaller ones. The company’s growth in the last few years has
been phenomenally rapid. Only five years ago the company employed only
twenty-four horses in Boston, now they have one hundred and twenty-five.
Boston now has equal express facilities with New York, and similar rates
are established from the two cities to points in the West, a fact which
Boston business men may well appreciate. A fast express is run through
to the West, which is of great value to shippers of goods and other
products requiring speedy delivery in season. Another result of the
efforts of this company is seen in the fact that a package may be sent
from a point in Maine or New Brunswick to Chicago at no higher rate than
was formerly charged to Boston.

The new offices in this city occupy three floors fifty by one hundred
feet each, arranged with every facility for transacting the large
business from this point.

The general offices of the company are in New York City, but among its
prominent directors is B.P. Cheney, Esq., who is well known as one of
New England’s ablest financiers and managers. Many business men in
Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont are shareholders in the
company. The executive departments are ably filled by Mr. James
Eggleston, the General Superintendent for New England, assisted in
Boston by H.W. Dwight, Superintendent, of Boston; J.W. Baldwin, Office
Manager, and O.J. Freeborn, City Superintendent. Outside of Boston, Mr.
G.H. Babbitt of Bellows Falls, Vermont, is Assistant General
Superintendent of the United States and Canada division; Mr. F.W. Carr
of Bangor, Superintendent of Maine and New Brunswick division (Eastern
Express Company); J.G. Towne, Boston, Superintendent of Massachusetts
division; M.J. Pratt, Concord, New Hampshire, Superintendent of New
Hampshire division, and F. Richardson, St. Johnsbury, Vermont,
Superintendent of Vermont division, all of whom are gentlemen well and
favorably known to the public generally and men of long experience in
the express business.

---

JOHN N. McCLINTOCK & CO.,
Publishers, Printers, Stereotypes, and Electrotypers,
31 MILK ST. BOSTON, MASS.

---

FINE BOOK AND JOB PRINTING.
Reasonable Terms.
ESTIMATES CHEERFULLY FURNISHED.

---

PUBLISHERS OF
THE BAY STATE MONTHLY,
A Massachusetts Magazine.

---

WANTED.

Agents to secure subscriptions and advertisements for this magazine.

EXCELLENT TERMS.
ADDRESS
BAY STATE MONTHLY,
31 MILK STREET, BOSTON, MASS.

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FOR SALE.

A few volumes 5, 6, and 7 of Granite Monthly (a New Hampshire
magazine). Bound in Cloth. Price $2.00 each. Early volumes out of print.

JOHN N. McCLINTOCK & CO.,

31 Milk St., Boston, Mass.

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FOR SALE.

Volumes 1 and 2 of BAY STATE MONTHLY bound in cloth. Price, $2.00 each.

JOHN N. McCLINTOCK & CO.,

31 Milk St., Boston, Mass.

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ECONOMIST SUMMER COOK STOVE

IS SAFE, ODORLESS, CLEANER,
EASIER TO CONTROL,
GIVES LESS HEAT IN ROOM,
& IS CHEAPER TO RUN THAN ANY
OIL, GAS, OR GASOLINE STOVE MADE.
BURNS COAL, WOOD, OR COKE.

SEND FOR CIRCULARS.
MADE ONLY BY HOBBS, GORDON & CO. CONCORD, N.H.
Price $16.

[pg 2]

[pg 3]

[pg 4]

Globe Theatre.

MR. JOHN STETSON,—Proprietor and Manager.

THE MODEL THEATRE OF BOSTON.

ALL THE
LEADING
ATTRACTIONS
Presented during the season.

Best Seats, One Dollar.

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“IT IS AN ACKNOWLEDGED FACT”
THAT “THE CONCORD HARNESS,”

MADE BY J.R. HILL & CO.,

Concord N.H., are the best and cheapest harness for the money that are made
in this country. Order a sample and see for yourself.

Correspondence Solicited. J.B. HILL & CO., CONCORD, N.H.

---

Facial Development.

I will mail to you a code of rules for developing the muscles of the
cheeks and neck, making them look plump and rosy; also rules for using
dumb-bells to develop every muscle of arm and body, all for 50 cents. To
avoid mistake mention Bay State Monthly. Prof. E.L. Dowd.

Home School for Physical Culture, 19 East 14th St., N.Y. City.

---

Tailoring

Done as it should be.

H. E. FALES & Co.

375 Washington Street
Boston

---

FOR SALE.

A complete set of the Granite Monthly. Seven volumes, bound in
cloth; price $18.00.

JOHN N. McCLINTOCK & CO.,
31 Milk St., Boston, Mass.

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COLUMBIA BICYCLES and TRICYCLES:
FOR ROAD USE;

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“If I could not get another bicycle I would not give mine for its weight
in solid gold. For fifteen years I lost from three to eight days every
month with stubborn sick headache. Since I have been riding the bicycle
I have lost only two days from that cause, and I haven’t spent a dollar
for a doctor.”
REV. GEO. F. PENTECOST”

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WANTED, New England Town Histories in exchange for volumes I and
II of the “Bay State Monthly.”

---

BOSTON THEATRE.

TOMPKINS & HILL, Proprietors.
EUGENE TOMPKINS, Manager

ALL GREAT ATTRACTIONS,

Dramatic, Lyric, and Minstrelsy,
of the best class offered, in regular succession.

SEE DAILY NEWSPAPERS.

---

ARTHUR P. DODGE

Attorney and Counsellor at Law,
31 MILK ST., ROOM 46,

Notary Public.

Commissioner for New Hampshire.

[pg 5]

Alaska: Its Southern Coast. And the Sitkan Archipelago. By Eliza Ruhamah
Scidmore. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.50. In this well-written and
exceedingly interesting volume the author opens up to us a country which
notwithstanding so much has been said of it, is yet very imperfectly
known. Although it is nine times as large as New England, and twice as
large as Texas, it is the popular impression that it is all a barren,
inhospitable region, wrapped in snow and ice the greater part of the
year, and that a visitor to its settlements must undergo perils almost
equal to those of the Greely relief expedition. Miss Scidmore in her
book dispels this illusion in the most summary manner. She spent two
summers in Alaska, and therefore speaks from personal knowledge. She
tells us that the winters at Sitka are milder than those in New York,
while the summers are delightfully cool and temperate. Some of the
grandest scenery of the continent is to be found along the Alaska coast,
in the region of the Alexander or Sitkan Archipelago, and the monthly
mail steamer is crowded with tourists during the summer season. It is
one of the easiest and most delightful trips to go up the coast by the
inside passage and cruise through the archipelago; and in voyaging past
the unbroken wilderness of the island shores, the tourist feels quite
like an explorer penetrating unknown lands. The mountain range that
walls the Pacific coast from the Antarctic to the Arctic gives a bold
and broken front to the mainland, and every one of the eleven hundred
islands of the archipelago is but a submerged spur or peak of the great
range. Many of the islands are larger than Massachusetts or New Jersey,
but none of them have been wholly explored, nor is the survey of their
shores completed. The Yosemite walls and cascades are repeated in mile
after mile of deep salt water channels, and from the deck of an ocean
steamer one views scenes not paralleled after long rides and climbs in
the heart of the Sierras. The gorges and cañons of Colorado are
surpassed; mountains that tower above Pike’s Peak rise in steep incline
from the still level of the sea; and the shores are clad in forests and
undergrowth dense and impassable as the tangle of a Florida swamp.

On her first visit to Sitka the author spent a week at Victoria,
Vancouver’s Island, a place which she describes as a veritable paradise.
The drives about the town, she says, along the island shores, and
through the woods, are beautiful, and the heavy, London-built carriages
roll over hard and perfect English highways. Ferns were growing ten and
twelve feet high by the roadside. Wild rose-bushes are matted together
by the acre in the clearings about the town, and in June they weight the
air with their perfume, as they did a century ago, when Marchand, the
old French voyager, compared the region to the rose-covered slopes of
Bulgaria. The honeysuckle attains the greatest perfection in this
climate, and covers and smothers the cottages and trellises with
thickly-set blossoms. Even the currant-bushes grow to unusual height,
and in many gardens they are trained on arbors and hang their red, ripe
clusters high overhead.

The old Russian town of Sitka, the most northern on the Pacific coast,
she describes as a straggling, peaceful sort of town, edging along shore
at the foot of high mountains, and sheltered from the surge and turmoil
of the ocean by a sea-wall of rocky, pine-covered islands. The moss has
grown greener and thicker on the roofs of the solid old wooden houses
that are relics of Russian days, the paint has worn thinner everywhere,
and a few more houses tumbling into ruins complete the scenes of
picturesque decay. Twenty years ago there were one hundred and
twenty-five buildings in the town proper, and it is doubtful if a dozen
have been erected since.

Miss Scidmore’s descriptions of the various places she visited and the
curious things she saw are vivid and picturesque, and one can learn more
of both from her pages than from all the official reports that have been
published. It is a book that ought to have a wide popularity. It is well
illustrated and contains a map reduced from the last general chart of
Alaska published by the Coast Survey.

Boy Life in the United States Navy. By a Naval Officer. Boston: D.
Lothrop & Co. Price $1.25. It is difficult to write a book of boy’s
adventures without falling into what is popularly called sensational
writing, that is the description of improbable incidents to arouse and
excite the imagination without any purpose beyond that result. The
writer of the present volume, while making an intensely interesting
story, has avoided this danger, and his narrative gives a not overdrawn
description of the life of a boy on a vessel in the United States Navy.
Joe Bently is the son of a Maine farmer, with a strong distaste for the
life to which he has been brought up and an equally strong love for the
sea. His desire to become a sailor has always been repressed by his
father, who, though loving his son, has no sympathy with him in this one
respect.

Mr. Bently at last gives his consent, and Joe enlists as an apprentice
in the Navy. The story of his journey, his examination, his experiences,
on board ship and his adventures while lying in foreign ports is very
graphically told, and the boy who reads it gets a clear and actual idea
of what a boy must go through on board a man-of-war before he can
graduate as an “able-bodied seaman.” The writer shows a thorough
acquaintance with every thing on board ship, even to the minutest
details. The book ends with the promotion of Joe, and a promise to
continue his adventures in another volume.

[pg 6]

The Evolution of Dodd. By W.H. Smith. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price
$1.00. Here is a book we should rejoice to see in the hands of every
teacher of youth in the country. It is a living, breathing protest
against certain features of the present school systems which obtain in
various parts of the country, from that of the kindergarten to the
grammar school. The points of the author are so well taken, that the
reader is forced not only to admit the reality of the evils he
denounces, but to acknowledge the justice of the conclusions at which he
arrives.

In the evolution of character the public school has come to be a most
important factor. To it has been assigned a task equal to any other
agency that deals with human nature. But in multitudes of cases it has
become a mere mill for grinding out graduates. The “system” has largely
lost sight of the grandest thing in all the world—the individual soul.
It addresses itself to child-humanity collectively, as if characters
were manufactured, like pins, by the million, and all alike, and it
attempts to grind out this great mass, each individual like every other,
as if its members could be made interchangeable like the parts of a
government musket.

To illustrate his ideas, the author selects a representative boy, Dodd
Weaver, the eldest son of a Methodist clergyman, and carries him through
the various schools and grades of schools from the time of his entrance
to his graduation. He does not make him a model boy to begin with, and
strive to show how he was spoiled by the school system. On the contrary
he endows him with a good many disagreeable qualities; he makes him
bright, sharp, and full of vitality, with a strong bent for mischief. He
is high-tempered, quarrelsome, and disobedient, and yet in the hands of
one who understands his mental peculiarities plastic as dough. It is the
aim of the author to show how utterly useless it is to treat such
boys—and our schools are full of them—in exactly the same manner as
those of different character and temperament, and to demand that
teachers have the right to adapt their methods according to individual
demands. He says:

It is not a system—any set of rules or formularies—that can make our
school, any more than it is forms and ceremonies that make our churches.
These may all be well enough in their proper places, but there is
nothing, absolutely nothing, in them, per se. It is the
righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees in the one case, and the dry
bones of pedagogy in the other.

The evil arises, in the schools as in the churches, from believing and
acting as if there were something in the system itself.

If human nature were a fixed quantity, if any two children were alike,
or anywhere nearly alike, if a certain act done for a child always
brought forth the same result, then it might be possible to form an
absolute system of pedagogy, as, with fixed elements, there is formed
the science of chemistry. But the quick atoms of spirit that manifest
their affinities under the eye of that alchemist, the teacher, are far
more subtle than the elements that go into the crucible in any other of
Nature’s laboratories.

A chemist will distil for you the odor of a blown rose, or catch and
hold captive the breath of the morning meadow, and do it always just the
same, and ever with like results; but there is no art by which anything
analogous can be wrought in human life. Here a new element comes in that
entirely changes that economy of Nature in this regard. The
individuality of every human soul is this new factor, and because of it,
of its infinite variability—because no two atoms that are cast into the
crucible of life are ever the same, or can be wrought into character by
the same means—because of this, no fixed rules can ever be laid down
for evolving a definite result, in the realm of soul, by never-varying
means.

And this is where many teachers are at fault. They put their faith in a
system, a mill through which all children shall be run, and in passing
through which each child shall receive the same treatment, and from
which they shall all emerge, stamped with the seal of the institution,
“uniformity.”

This is the prime idea that lies at the foundation of the popular system
of education—to make children uniform. This very thing that God and
Nature have set themselves against—no two faces, or forms, or statures;
no two minds, or hearts, or souls being alike, as designed by the
Creator, and as fashioned by Nature’s hand—to make all these alike was
the aim of the system under which Dodd began to be evolved, and with
which he began to clash at once.

But it is not the system only which is at fault. Hot with the
indignation bred from a discussion of its shortcomings, the author turns
suddenly upon the parents of the innumerable Dodds in the schools of the
country:

And for you, who send your six-year-olds to school with a single hook,
and grumble because you have to buy even so much of an outfit, what are
you going to do about it when your boy drains all the life out of the
little volume in a couple of weeks or a month? He knows the stories by
heart, and after that he says them over, day by day, because he must,
and not in the least because he cares to.

What are you going to do about this? It is largely your business. You
cannot shirk it and say that you send the boy to school, and it is the
teacher’s business to take care of him.

The remedy for the wrongs and faults of the system is, in his opinion,
to recognize the individuality of children in the schoolroom to study
the mental peculiarities and needs of each, and to do away with the
system so far as it interferes with the liberty of the teacher to adapt
his means to the proper ends to be attained. It is demanded that
teachers be selected on the sole ground of fitness and adaptability, and
not because of favoritism or the mere fact that their book education is
sufficient, and it is further insisted that parents interest themselves
to see and demand that the best that can be done is done for their
children. These are the means suggested in the way of reform, and they
seem adequate in a large degree to accomplish what is desired. We
commend the book to teachers and parents.

[pg 7]

Money in Politics. By J.K. Upton. With an introduction by Edward
Atkinson. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. The author of this
comprehensive and valuable work was for several years Assistant
Secretary of the United States Treasury, and in that responsible
position had admirable facilities for studying the question of money as
affected by congressional acts from the earliest history of the republic
down to the present, and he has made good use of his opportunities in
this book which is a succinct narration of the numerous changes made in
American money beginning with the continental issues, in fact, earlier,
the colonial money. The work is, therefore, a history of American coin
and the numerous issues of paper that served as money. To the student
there is in this book a fund of information extremely interesting,
particularly at this time when the popular will is likely to compel
farther legislation. A topic of present interest, is the silver dollar,
to which the author devotes a chapter historical in its character, and
another chapter concerning circulation of this coin. In the former
chapter he begins with the Spanish milled dollar, “the Mexican pillar
piece,” which was the first silver dollar known in American commerce,
and had, in colonial times, 386.7-8 grains of pure silver. In 1785 the
American standard was fixed at 375.64 grains of pure silver which became
the unit of account, the standard dollar. In 1792, after a Congress of
the States was organized, the standard dollar was required to contain
371.25 grains of pure silver, or, with the admixture of baser metal, the
standard of silver coin 416 grains, the pure silver rated by itself as
before. These facts are of interest as showing the origin of the
American dollar recognized as the standard down to 1873.

The chapters on “Circulation of the Silver Dollar” and “The Trade
Dollar” are interesting and timely, inasmuch as the questions considered
are now before Congress, or at least with the committees, and
legislation of some kind will be demanded within the next year. There
is, even now, a proposition embodied in a bill to suspend coinage of the
silver dollar, because it has been found impossible to put the great sum
coined directly in circulation. A great part of it has been made the
basis of silver certificates, a kind of currency that, by and by, will
bring distress to commercial interests if the issues are maintained, or
if they are materially increased. Mr. Upton treats all these matters
with very clear understanding of every question, and with certain
facility of expression that appeals directly to the reader who has only
common understanding of money affairs. From beginning to end the book is
a rich mine of facts, of historical matter, and of statements that have
undergone the scrutiny of the wisest financier during the critical
period between the appreciation of values, with the disturbing
influences of war, and the return of true values with resumption of
specie payment which was effected with gold. While the work must have
absorbing interest for that extended school of economists that has made
finance a special study in the past dozen years, it will prove very
useful to representatives in Congress, who may find here in compact form
facts of history with which they should have familiar acquaintance
before they attempt legislation intended to correct the errors
incorporated in our money system.

The Old Stone House. By Anne March (Constance Fenimore Woolson). Boston:
D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.50. This capital story, by one of the
brightest American writers of fiction, has been placed by the publishers
in their Young Folks’ Library Series, where it ought to find a new lease
of popularity. The Old Stone House is the home of five young people,
representing three families. They are all orphans, and are living with a
widowed aunt, whose single and constant aim is to educate them into real
men and women. The young cousins, who dearly love each other, differ in
tastes and temperament, but not in such ways as to interfere with each
other’s enjoyments. The younger ones are jolly and fun-loving, and no
occasion for having a good time is left unimproved. The main interest of
the story, however, lies with the eldest of the cousins, Sybil
Warrington, a girl of strong feelings but quiet exterior, whose ambition
to shine in society is held in check by a feeling that something higher
and better is required of her. The story of her struggles is quietly but
effectively told, and will have a peculiar interest for young girls.
Miss Woolson has written much, and her work has given her a very
enviable reputation both in this country and in Europe, but in all her
writings there is nothing more earnest.

How Success is Won. By Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton. With Portraits. Boston: D.
Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. This handsome volume is made up of
biographies of twelve men who have achieved distinguished successes in
the various directions in which they turned their respective energies.
Mrs. Bolton not only rehearses the main incidents of their lives, but
shows that in every case the success and honors attained were the result
of industry, economy and high moral principle. Among those selected to
illustrate how success may be won under different circumstances are
Peter Cooper, John B. Gough, John G. Whittier, Henry M. Stanley and
Alexander H. Stephens. The several sketches are bright and pointed, and
the portraits which illustrate them add to their value.

The Rochester (N.Y.) Herald speaks of this extremely interesting
book as “a singular collection of names, wide apart in many respects,
but they represent men whom it is interesting to read about.”

[pg 8]

Anna Maria’s Housekeeping. By Mrs. S.D. Power. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co.
Price $1.00. If we were asked to recommend any one single book to a
young housekeeper which should serve as a domestic guide, counsellor and
friend, we should unhesitatingly name Anna Maria’s Housekeeping.
So far as our knowledge extends, there is no other book which so exactly
and thoroughly fulfils the needs implied in those titles. It is no mere
collection of receipts, but a complete and common-sense treatise on the
whole science of housekeeping, tersely and clearly written, with a
flavor of experience about it that makes one accept it as authoritative.
It is a staff upon which the young housekeeper may confidently lean, and
by the aid of which she may overcome obstacles which without it would
seem insurmountable. Mrs. Power does not believe in a house keeping
itself. It requires continual care and oversight, and a clear knowledge
of what is to be done. She believes, too, that a house can be well kept
as easily as badly kept, and that a bright, clean, well-ordered home has
a deal to do with molding the temper and even character of its members.
“It is no small thing,” she says, “to stand at the head of affairs, and
be the motive power on which depend the welfare and credit, the health,
temper and spirit of the whole family. When in midlife you come to find
how essential the comfort of a well-kept home is to the bodily strength
and good conditions, to a sound mind and spirit, and useful days, you
will reverence the good housekeeper as I do, above poet or artist,
beauty or genius.” In the opening chapter of the book the author
instructs Anna Maria in the art of “How to Make Home-work Easier.” In
the succeeding chapters she takes up the various kinds of work there is
to be done about the house, and describes the easiest methods of doing
it. “No attitudinizing,” she remarks, “no fine lady affectations over
the griddles and saucepans; instead, cultivate the fine character which
acts up to the need of the hour swiftly, promptly, but with quiet and
certainty.” Her definition of “good food” is to the point. “It is not,”
she says, “rich food, nor even the tolerable fare which is just
undercooked and flavorless enough to tax digestion more than it ought.
It is the best of everything cooked in the nicest possible way, and with
pleasant variety.” Passing from the kitchen the care of the different
rooms of the house is taken up—the chambers, the sitting-room and the
storeroom; instructions are given for making “blue Monday” less blue;
the arts of starching and ironing are discussed; and a chapter is given
to the mending and darning basket. Other portions of the book are
devoted to “Company Days,” “Shopping,” “Sickness in the House,” “Making
the best of Things,” and “Helps that are Helps,” the servant-girl
question forming the subject of the closing chapter. The volume is very
handsomely brought out, but even were it not, it would be worth its
weight in gold to the young and inexperienced housekeeper.

Gertrude’s Diary. By Pansy. Illustrated. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price
60 cts. A new book by Pansy is always hailed with delight, and that
delight generally mingled with wonder can possibly write so much and yet
keep the freshness and brightness which runs through all her books.
Gertrude is a girl of fifteen, wide awake, full of life, generally good
tempered, and yet with as many faults as most girls of her age have;
faults which arise more from thoughtlessness than from intent. She is
one of four who agree to keep diaries, in accordance with a suggestion
made by their Sunday-school teacher, and she records with impartiality
all her good and bad times, her trials and her triumphs. Aside from its
interest, it contains suggestions which cannot fail to make an
impression upon the mind of any young girl who reads it, and to
strengthen her in like temptations and under the same conditions. A
pleasant story runs through the diary.

Many Colored Threads. From the Writings of Goethe. Selected by Carrie
Adelaide Cooke. With an Introduction by Kev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D.
Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. No other volume of the Spare
Minute Series contains more real meat than this. Goethe was
epigrammatic, and his ideas took the concentrated form of bullets,
instead of scattering like shot. We doubt if there is another author,
always excepting Shakespeare, from whose books so many noble and
complete thoughts can be extracted. In the two hundred and fifty pages
of this volume are more than a thousand of these gems, each worth; its
setting. Dr. McKenzie says aptly of Goethe that he is able by virtue of
his own genius to set more than the common man and to put his visions
and his reflections in such form that others who would never have seen
the tilings for themselves or been able to think deeply upon them, can
have the benefit of his generous study and thought. He was many-sided.
His mind took a wide range and seemed almost equally at home in many
places. The real and the ideal both interested him and were cherished by
him. Science and art, philosophy and poetry, engaged his attention and
were enriched by his handiwork. In this versatility of his power and the
manifoldness of their application he was remarkable. Out of this breadth
of study came varied and large thoughts of the world and of human life.
He had the faculties with which nature and humanity and divine power
could breathe their inspiration for the world’s instruction and delight,
and that they were fully employed no-one who turns over the pages of
this collection can doubt. A brief biography of Goethe takes the place
of a preface, and there is an index of subjects.

[pg 9]

MR. CHARLES LANMAN THE AUTHOR OF “THE LEADING MEN OF JAPAN.”

Mary Cole Baker writes in the Washington (D.C.) Republic: “Mr.
Lanman is well known both in England and America as the writer of some
of the most delightful descriptive books in the English language. To the
facile wielding of his pen he adds an equally adroit and skilful use of
the pencil, and his admirable results in these combined pursuits won for
him from his friend and brother of the quill, Washington Irving, the apt
and deserved soubriquet of ‘the picturesque explorer of America.’ To the
pleasure which Mr. Lanman derived from these pursuits he added a
sportsman’s love for the field and took genuine delight in the
‘contemplative art’ of angling. He was the first American to cast the
artificial fly in the Saguenay region and to describe for the angler the
charms of that since famous locality. He has followed this sport in
nearly every State in the Union, never without his sketching materials,
which he used unstintingly. The results of these labors are many
hundreds of sketches of American scenery, invaluable now that the march
of civilization has so completely changed the face of a large part of
the country. It is delightful to find a man who has been able to get so
much good from life as has Mr. Lanman. One would think that the writing
and illustrating of more than thirty books, some of which are in two
large octavo volumes, was the work of a lifetime. But this has been to
Mr. Lanman his recreation. The fact that his books have been successful
pecuniarily has not prevented him from following the duties of the
various governmental positions in which he has been placed. No sinecures
they either—librarian at different times of the House of
Representatives, the War Department, of copyrights in the State
Department and of the Interior Department, secretary to Daniel Webster,
at the head of the returns of office of the Interior Department, and for
the last ten years the American Secretary to the Japanese Legation at
Washington. A lover of social intercourse, Mr. Lanman has led the
typical busy life of the American, untouched by the direful and
disastrous ills it is supposed to bring. He is now engaged in editing
fourteen of his books for reproduction in uniform style, and a new book,
The Leading Men of Japan, is ready for issue.” 12mo, $1.50.
Boston: D. Lothrop, & Co., Publishers.

Couldn’t be Bought: and Other Stories. By Faye Huntington. Illustrated.
Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price 75 cts. A delightful collection of short
stories for boys and girls, adapted to the Sunday-school library. The
volume takes its name from the leading story. The author has a pleasant
and attractive style, and her stories have a large amount of “telling”
force in them.

China. By Prof. R.K. Douglas, of the British Museum. Edited by Arthur
Gilman, M.A. Illustrated. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.50. This
volume comes just at a time when there is a strong demand for something
brief, exact and authoritative in the way of Chinese history. Current
events have brought China before the world as one of the really great
powers, and one which in time will be able not only to defend herself
against the aggressions of other nations but will be perfectly able to
take the offensive should occasion require. In the arts of diplomacy the
Chinese are a match for the keenest statesman of Europe, and since the
beginning of the present troubles with France they have developed a
military talent which is perfectly surprising. With the growth of the
military spirit it would not be strange if, in the course of the next
generation China should hold as distinct and important a place among the
warlike powers as France or England.

The author of the volume before us had exceptional advantages for making
such a book as just now the public demand and need. He was for several
years a resident of China in an official capacity, and studied the
people and their mode of life from actual observation. In preparing the
book he also freely availed himself of the labors of others where they
seemed capable of adding value to the narrative. In his preface he
acknowledges his indebtedness to Doctor Legge’s “Chinese Classics,”
Archdeacon Gray’s work on “China,” Doolittle’s “Social Life of the
Chinese,” Denys’s “Chinese Folklore,” Mayers’s “Chinese Reader’s
Manual,” Sir John Davis’s “Poetry of the Chinese,” as well as to the
important linguistic, religious and topographical writings of Doctor
Edkins of Peking, and particularly to the late Professor S. Wells
Williams, of Yale College, whose work on the Middle Kingdom
contains more information of value than any other single volume in our
language.

The various chapters of the work deal with the history of the empire in
brief, its government, religions, its educational system, the nurture of
the young, superstitions, funeral and wedding rites, the language, food
and dress, honors, architecture, music, medicine and other subjects. It
has been critically read by the young Chinese scholar, Mr. Yan Phou Lee,
of Yale College, who has suggested a few notes. Its completeness is
added to by an analytic table of contents and an index.

In the Woods and Out. By Pansy. Illustrated. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co.
Price $1.00. In the score or more of short stories which make up this
volume Pansy is at her best. She never writes for the mere sake of
filling up, but always, in the briefest of her sketches, she has
something worth telling and worth remembering. There isn’t a thing in
the book which will not be read twice, and certain of the stones will be
perennial favorites with the younger class of readers.

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PHILOSOPHIÆ QUÆSTOR.

The seeker of philosophical truth, which is described as the shadowy
figure of a young girl, is, throughout, very expressive of desire and
appreciation. The impressions she receives are those to which such a
condition are most sensitive—the higher and more refined ones—and the
responsive thoughts concern the nature and character of what is heard or
felt. The elevation into classic importance of Concord, its
philosophers, and its School of Philosophy is due to the influence of
their history and teachings in American literature, and it is pleasant
to recognize in this work such reverence of their classicism. Mrs.
Anagnos has written a prose poem in which the last two sessions of the
Concord School of Philosophy, which include that in memory of Emerson,
and its lecturers excite her feeling and inspire her thought. It is sung
in lofty strains that resemble those of the sacred woods and fount, and
themselves are communicative of their spirit. It will be welcomed as an
appropriate souvenir.—Boston Globe.

OUR NATIONAL FINANCES.

Mr. J.K. Upton used to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury of the
United States. Few men, therefore, have had better opportunities to
inform themselves about our national finances. His volume, Money in
Politics, published by D. Lothrop & Co., price $1.25, is a full
history of the financial policy and legislation of this country. It is
of the utmost value as a record, a book of reference, and an expression
of sound theories. The intelligent reader cannot repress a feeling of
shame that our national history in respect to finance should have been
characterized by such continual bungling. The saddest feature in the
case is the crass ignorance which Congress usually has displayed. Much
of our legislation about money matters has been the merest
experimenting, if not worse than this—the deliberate effort to enrich
some one class of business men at the expense of the nation.

He utters a solemn warning of the dangers to which we now are exposed
through our present acts of coinage and legal tender, whereby our gold
coin sooner or later must be driven from the country and our standard
must become a silver dollar of light weight and uncertain value. He also
shows conclusively the futility of legislation in causing two substances
to become and remain of the same value. Mr. Edward Atkinson has
furnished the introduction to the book, in which he commends it warmly.
While Congress continues to permit the coinage of $2,000,000 in silver a
month, for which there is no demand and the coinage of which merely
furnishes a market for the wares of a few owners of silver mines, it is
difficult to overstate the need that such books as this should be
circulated and studied attentively throughout the nation. Mr. Atkinson
makes an impressive comment, which we quote:

“The productions of the hen-yards of the United States, according to the
census statistics, was, in 1879, 456,910,916 dozen eggs, and, if hens
have now increased in the ratio of population, it is now 500,000,000
dozen, which at only ten cents a dozen, would exceed the value of the
products of the silver mines.

“It would be vastly more reasonable for Congress to order the compulsory
purchase of two million dollars’ worth of eggs per month,” in order to
sustain the hen products of the United States, “than it is to buy two
million dollars’ worth of silver; because the eggs could be used, or
else would rot, while the silver cannot be used, and is expensive to
store and to watch (pp. xvi-xvii).”—Congregationalist.

ILLITERACY AND MORMONISM.

Of Illiteracy and Mormonism, a brochure from the pen of Doctor
Henry Randall Waite, just published by D. Lothrop & Co., the Boston
Daily Transcript in an advance notice, says:

“In view of the present great interest in the problems treated, and the
value of the material which it offers as an aid to their solution, the
book is especially timely. Doctor Waite, who was for some time editor of
the International Review, and whose work is well-known to readers
of the standard American periodicals, is one of the clearest-headed of
our younger writers on politico-economic subjects, and his views as here
set forth demand thoughtful consideration and respect. He brings to the
treatment of the subjects included in the title the special knowledge
gained in his important official position as statistician of the late
census, in charge of some of the most important branches, including
education, illiteracy and religious organizations.”

The Dover (N.H.) Star, says:

“He makes the best argument for the Constitutionality of National Aid
[to education] which we have yet seen. It will bear careful
consideration by members of Congress.”

The Boston Daily Herald refers to the author’s views as follows:

“One of the most original and valuable contributions yet made to the
discussion of the project of extending federal aid to common school
education in the States * * * The moderation of its tone and the
conservatism of its suggestions will commend it to all thoughtful
students of this problem, while its statistics, many of which, in their
arrangement and application, are substantially new, should have a direct
influence in shaping the final action of Congress * * * Mr. Waite has
given long and careful study to this subject in all its bearings, and he
writes with an equipment of information and reflection which has been
palpably lacking in much of the Senatorial discussion of it.”

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ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS.

The New York Independent, after referring to the various books on
Arctic explorations and adventure—the narratives of Kane and Hayes and
Gilder and De Long—says of Dr. Nourse’s work: “The field of Arctic
authorship was not yet, however, covered by any of these works, and it
is to the credit of Professor Nourse that he saw what remained to be
done. In the work before us he comes into no competition with the
literary workers who have preceded him. No one will be the less disposed
to read Dr. Kane’s chapters, or to peruse Mr. Gilder’s, for having read
Professor Nourse; nor, on the other hand, will these works prejudice
Professor Nourse’s chance to be read. His book stands on ground of its
own, as the one complete and competent survey of what American explorers
have done in the polar zones…. Professor Nourse’s volume is embellished
with numerous good illustrations, and provided with an excellent and
indispensable circumpolar map. It deserves the successful sale we
understand it is already receiving.”

The Literary World in a review of the book says “it is an
encyclopaedic review of the whole subject of American enterprise in
Arctic seas,” and adds: “Professor Nourse’s book bears the credentials
of accuracy and authority, is well printed and bound, has numerous
engravings and useful maps, including some portraits on steel, has a
suitable index and table of contents, and furthermore is provided with a
bibliography of chief publications on Arctic research since 1818. In
every respect, then, it is a well-made book, a solid contribution to
popular reading.”

BACCALAUREATE SERMONS.

D. Lothrop & Co., of Boston, have published in book form nineteen
baccalaureate sermons preached at Harvard College, by Dr. A.P. Peabody,
the new Professor of Christian Morals. Dr. Peabody’s reputation, as a
vigorous thinker and manly preacher, is as wide as this Republic; and
the volume of sermons before us is something more than a series of
homilies. It is a collection of addresses to young men—students just
ready to embark on the perilous sea of life—which may be profitably
read by every citizen of our country. The preacher does not address
himself to any single side of human life. He counsels the students in
their duties as men in all the relations of life. And in the selection
of themes he embraces a great variety of topics. In the discourse on
“Hebrew, Latin and Greek,” for example, he takes the first-named tongue
as standing for religion, the second for beauty and the third for
strength. On this triad be formulates not only an intellectual cult but
a practical rule of life. Another notable sermon is on “The Sovereignty
of Law,” an admirable disquisition on the supremacy of law in the
intellectual life, the physical existence, the domain of morals and in
every department of human activity. Dr. Peabody’s style is forcible and
virile, and his compactness of statement, enables him to put “infinite
riches in a little room.”—Chicago Tribune.

A BOY’S WORKSHOP.

Every boy with a jack-knife in his pocket and his head full of plans
will fall to with delight on anything that gives him plenty to do in the
boyish line. This is the merit of a little manual just published by the
Messrs. D. Lothrop & Co., A Boy’s Workshop, with Plans and Designs
for Indoor and Outdoor Work, by a “Boy and his Friends”; with an
introduction by Henry Randall Waite. The little manual goes to work
intelligibly, describing the shop, and the tools, giving hints and
accurate directions how to make a great variety of things whose uses
will be at once apparent to the boyish mind, and suggestions as to other
mysteries, the key to which makes any boy who possesses it a king among
his mates.

HOW SUCCESS IS WON.

“How Success is Won,” by Sarah K. Bolton (D. Lothrop & Co.), is a
collection of twelve brief biographies intended to make clear to the
young the character and conduct that have resulted in the success of
Peter Cooper, John B. Gough, John G. Whittier, John Wanamaker, Henry M.
Stanley, Johns Hopkins, William M. Hunt, Elias Howe, Jr., Alexander H.
Stephens, Thomas A. Edison, Dr. W.T.G. Morton and the Rev. John H.
Vincent. The sketches are gracefully and interestingly written, and the
little volume is in every way to be commended.—N.Y. Com. Adv.

THE GRAY MASQUE.

The Gray Masque of Mrs. Mary Barker Dodge (D. Lothrop & Co., Boston) has
won a series of splendid notices; yet, so far as we know, sufficient
stress has not been laid upon the keynote of the volume. Love, in
its varying phases, sounds through the majority of the verses like the
refrain of a song. Sometimes sad, sometimes solemn, oftener gay and
hopeful, the differing themes take up, one after another, the burden of
the initial poem; and answer, in separate ways, the question there
propounded, until the many-sided revelation is found to be fittingly
illustrated on the cover by the winged boy, who throws aside the masque
of mortality, and, soaring aloft, leaves behind him every earthly doubt
and care. The “Dedication” and the concluding poem, the first emotional
in its simplicity, the last intellectual in its subtlety, mark the
breadth as well as the limits of Mrs. Dodge’s poetical
expression.—Baldwin’s Monthly.

[pg 12]

WIDE AWAKE. Only $3.00 a Year. 25 cts. a number. The best, the largest, the most entertaining, the most beautifully illustrated, and the widest in range, of all magazines for young people. It is the official organ of the C.Y.F.R.U., and, as heretofore, will publish the Required Readings, and all needed information for members of the Union. The magazine proper will be even more brilliant and valuable than before during the next year. Ideal literature and ideal art for young people and the family, for entertainment, for the healthful training of the body and the liberal education for the mind, fill this magazine each month from cover to cover. It has won recognition from the American and English press as the largest and best, the most beautiful and original, and the most ably edited magazine of its class in the world. It gives each month original music by eminent composers. “Wide Awake” is the wonder of all the wonderfully beautiful children’s magazines and books of America. Without dispute the largest, handsomest, most artistic and best young people’s periodical ever issued. There is no juvenile magazine published in the country so carefully edited.”—Boston Transcript. “A treasure of good morals.”—N.Y. Tribune. “At the head of juvenile periodical stands Wide Awake all the time.”—Phil. Inquirer. “A whole family library in itself.”—Putnam Patriot. “Unsurpassed in skilful adaptation to young folks’ needs.”—Chicago Standard.
THE PANSY Edited by Mrs. G.R. Alden (Pansy). $1.00 a year; 10 cts. a number. For both week-day and Sunday reading, The Pansy holds the first place in the hearts of the children, and in the approval of earnest-minded parents. Among pictorial periodicals especially designed for Boys and Girls, it stands royal leader, and as a Christian Home Magazine for young folks, it is without question the best and the most attractive magazine in the world. Pansy’s own bright, quick-seeing spirit inspires all her contributors. Very fully illustrated.			Chautauqua Young Folks’ Journal. 75 cts. a year; 7 cts. a number. This new periodical is intensely interesting to both old and young, as well as practical. It contains the Course of the C.Y.F.R.U. Readings (issued also in Wide Awake) and additional features of varied interest. Beginning with the December issue, the Chautauqua Young Folks’ Journal gives a fine illustrated historical serial story. It is a stirring tale of old Knickerbocker New York, and its accounts are as true as they are exciting. It is written by Elbridge S. Brooks, and is entitled, “In Leisler’s Time.” Send for a circular giving full information about the C.Y.F.R.U. Reading Course.
Our Little Men and Women. $1.00 a year; 10 cents a number. For the youngest readers no magazine approaches this in number and beauty of illustration (each volume containing 75 full-page pictures) and in the peculiar fitness of the accompanying text. It is especially adapted for use as Supplementary Reading in schools. It is always bright, always fresh and attractive.		BABYLAND 50 cents a year; 5 cents a number. The only periodical of its kind in the world. As for seven years past, this exquisite magazine for the nursery is still unrivalled in its monthly merry-making for the wee folks. Large pages, large pictures, large type. Each month its pictures are more enticing, its stories are sweeter, its jingles gayer.

Splendid premiums for new subscriptions. Agents wanted. Liberal pay.
Send stamps for specimen copies. Circulars free. Address

D. Lothrop & Co., Publishers, Franklin and Hawley Sts., Boston.

[pg 13]