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Read Ebook: Davy and the Goblin What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' by Carryl Charles E Charles Edward Bensell Edmund Birckhead Illustrator
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Ebook has 482 lines and 29551 words, and 10 pages
New England in 1850--Daniel Webster
Massachusetts Puritanism--The Yale Class of 1853
Yale Professors--Harvard Law School
How Massachusetts in 1854 Surrendered the Fugitive Slave Anthony Burns
The American Defoe, Richard Henry Dana, Jr
A Visit to Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson in England--English Traits--Emerson and Matthew Arnold
A Group of Boston Lawyers--Mr. Olney and Venezuela
Wendell Phillips
Wendell Phillips and the Boston Mobs
Wendell Phillips--Governor Andrew--Phillips's Conversion
William Lloyd Garrison--A Critical View
Charles Sumner--A Private View
Experiences as Journalist during the Civil War
Civil War--General McClellan--General Hooker
Civil War--Personal Incidents at Antietam
A Fragment of Unwritten Military History
The New York Draft Riots in 1863--Notes on Journalism
How The Prussians after Sadowa Came Home to Berlin
A Talk with Count Bismarck in 1866
American Diplomacy in England
Two Unaccredited Ambassadors
Some Account of a Revolution in International Journalism
Holt White's Story of Sedan and How it Reached the "New York Tribune"
Great Examples of War Correspondence
A Parenthesis
"Civil War?"--Incidents in the 'Eighties--Sir George Trevelyan--Lord Barrymore
Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the Alaska Boundary
Annexing Canada--Lady Aberdeen--Lady Minto
Two Governors-General, Lord Minto and Lord Grey
Lord Kitchener--Personal Traits and Incidents
Sir George Lewis--King's Solicitor and Friend--A Social Force
Mr. Mills--A Personal Appreciation and a Few Anecdotes
Lord Randolph Churchill--Being Mostly Personal Impressions
Lord Glenesk and "The Morning Post"
Queen Victoria at Balmoral--King Edward at Dunrobin--Admiral Sir Hedworth Lambton--Other Anecdotes
Famous Englishmen Not in Politics
Lord St. Helier--American and English Methods--Mr. Benjamin
Mrs. Jeune, Lady Jeune, and Lady St. Helier
Lord and Lady Arthur Russell and the "Salon" in England
The Archbishop of Canterbury--Queen Alexandra
A Scottish Legend
A Personal Reminiscence of the Late Emperor Frederick
Index
ANGLO-AMERICAN MEMORIES
ANGLO-AMERICAN MEMORIES
NEW ENGLAND IN 1850--DANIEL WEBSTER
My memories begin with that New England of fifty years ago and more which has pretty well passed out of existence. I knew all or nearly all the men who made that generation famous: Everett; Charles Sumner, "the whitest soul I ever knew," said Emerson; Wendell Phillips; Garrison; Andrew, the greatest of the great "War Governors"; Emerson; Wendell Holmes; Theodore Parker; Lowell, and many more; and of all I shall presently have something to say. Earlier than any of them comes the Reverend Dr. Emmons, a forgotten name, for a long time pastor of the little church in the little town of Franklin, where I was born, in Norfolk County, in that State of Massachusetts on which Daniel Webster pronounced the only possible eulogy: "I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart." Whether the world knows it by heart may be a question. We are perhaps a little too apt to assume that things American loom as large to other eyes as to our own. But whether the world knows Massachusetts by heart or not, we know it; and the rest does not much matter. Every son of hers will add for himself "God bless her."
Dr. Emmons was of the austere school of Calvinists, descending more directly from the still more austere school of Jonathan Edwards. I cannot have been more than three or four years old when I last saw him, but I see him still: tall, slight, bent, wasted; long grey locks floating loosely about his head; his face the face of an ascetic, yet kindly, and I still feel the gentle touch of the old man's hand as it rested on my baby head. And I see the imprint of his venerable feet, which it was his habit to rest on the painted wainscotting of his small, scantily furnished study.
My father was first his colleague, then his successor; then was called, as the phrase is, to the Second Congregational Church in Worcester; whence he passed many years later to the First Presbyterian Church in Troy, N.Y., where he died. Worcester was at that time--1840 to 1860--a charming example of the thriving New England village which had grown to be a town with pleasant, quiet streets--even Main Street, its chief thoroughfare, was quiet--and pleasant houses of colonial and later styles standing in pleasant grounds. A beautiful simplicity of life prevailed, and a high standard; without pretence, not without dignity. The town had given, and was to give, not a few Governors to the Commonwealth: Governor Lincoln, Governor Davis , another Lieutenant-Governor Davis, and two Governor Washburns: to the first of whom we lived next door in Pearl Street; in the shadow of the Episcopal Church of which the Rev. Dr. Huntington, translated afterward to Grace Church in New York and widely known, was rector. Later I read law for a year in the office of Governor Washburn's partner: afterward that Senator Hoar who in learning and capacity stood second to few in Washington, and in character to none.
Twenty years ago, my mind filled with these images of almost rural charm, I went back on a visit to Worcester. It had grown to be a city of near one hundred thousand people, and unrecognizable. The charm had vanished. The roar of traffic was to be heard everywhere; surface cars raced through the streets; blazing gilt signs with strange and often foreign names emblazoned on them in gigantic letters, plastering and half hiding the fronts of the buildings; mostly new. It might have been a section of New York--at any rate it was given over to the fierce competition of business. Of the tranquillity which once brooded over the town, no trace was left. I suppose it all means prosperity, in which I rejoice; but it was not my Worcester.
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