It was a holiday within a holiday to traverse the town with this lambkin. I came to the right place to squarely meet him. Here they introduce people to themselves. This stripling that I used to be seemed bent on hiring a horse and carriage to show me about. That was his only idea of hospitality. On the best streets in town, he did not have far to go, the livery stables were as convenient to the homes of the people as the school-houses and churches. A very convenient location was near the public library. His fear was that all the horses would be already taken as there were a good many visitors in town. If the high steppers were out we would find their keepers in more or less rickety arm chairs tilted back against the side of a wall awaiting their return.
There are two panels placed side by side in the old palace at Potsdam. The left contains Napoleon refusing the queenly Louise favorable terms of peace at Tilsit, the right contains the nephew of that Napoleon receiving notoriously hard terms from the son of the beautiful Louise at Sedan. Entire shifts in history are vividly seen in companion pictures. On the left is a picture of the horse with the caption, The Greatest Pleasure-giver to Man. On the right is the picture of a Ford. All that a man hath will he give in exchange for an automobile. The left exhibits what God made, the right, what man made. No one living in the city will look at a horse. He now shows that he feels that he is something left over. Survey the specimens that remain, low-headed, tail-switching, creatures, with an indolent air, shuffling gait, abject, pitiable objects with mis-shapen, stumbling legs in front. No one doubts but that it takes all day to go anywhere and return with these antique, stunted, gaunt-ribbed, swollen-jointed, knock-kneed, piteous-eyed creatures that now survive. Knowing the pleasure that young people once had in horses and ponies, it seems odd to find that the rising generation has almost forgotten their existence.
But they had a fine history. Stonewall Jackson, the hero of the flank movement, gained his great victories and his great reputation by the celerity of his movements, made possible by the familiarity of Southerners with horses. When pressed in battle the Russians could fall back sullenly and the Japanese unfamiliar with horses could not strike their flank nor cut off their retreat. The mastery of nations has sometimes come from the possession of horses. The amazing spread of Mohammedanism came from the same sort of ownership. The horse gave to Paul Revere and to Phil Sheridan their place in history. He was in their day the greatest factor in strategy and surprise. He is docile, affectionate, and capable of a deep and lasting attachment. He has a real craving for human notice. He dislikes to be left in a solitary position. Essentially by his very nature he must love something. It touches the heart to have a horse reach out his fore foot and begin to paw until his master assures him that he recognizes him. This is what the horse likes. I confess to a feeling of pride when, leaving him untied at the door, I have gone into a house and have heard him whinny for me to return when he might have gone off and left me. Although there were other persons all about he would neigh at my approach and turn his well-shaped head, full of character, with clear intelligent eyes of the speaking kind, toward me. Such a warm-blooded sensitive horse will always exhibit in ways of his own the friendly relations that exist between us.
On revisiting the earth it is found that the owner of a high-stepper, threatened with speed, can now only lead a shame-faced kind of existence. If out in the daylight he feels like apologizing to every one he meets. This man used to electrify the street with his tallyho coach crowded with gaily dressed guests accompanied by a footman and a trumpeter, with a hitch of four noble grays showing by their arched necks and high knee action that they felt pride in belonging to a rich man. As in the case of the bicycle, the fashion changed abruptly. He had to load a lot of portable property into the carriage to get some poor relation to take the outfit for a gift. I find that a person can now buy a discarded silver-mounted harness for the cost of a halter and that the people today like an upholstered life. Gasoline spelled the doom of the horse and it must be said now that Dobbin's future never looked so uninviting.
There are four new experiences for which no description ever adequately prepares us, the view of a volcano in violent eruption, a visit to the home of cliff dwellers (prehistoric peoples who left their homes just as they used them), a walk on a moving glacier, and the first survey of the Grand Canyon. I was lifted off my feet by discovering, when talking with that college youngster and comparing things closely, that the five senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—have had another added to them. Each of those we named over uses a distinctive organ. The surface of the whole body contributes to the sense of touch. These are pointed out as the receiving agents of the mind which keeps her hidden seat and receives communication from the distant provinces of her empire. They put us in possession of just the information needed concerning external things. On revisiting the earth it is awakening to engage in controversy with the young scion of the college that I used to be, touching learning's last word. He believed that we had all the possible senses defined and numbered like the fingers on the hand and now comes the new sense of balance having the exact function we have been naming. I remember the moment and the place where I was made conscious of this sixth sense. I did not learn it. I had it. I had bought a bicycle. I had no teacher. I was sitting on it in the hall giving the animal a little gentle exercise. "Keep your balance. Employ what sense you have; you do not need to acquire it, use it." It is so with aviators. We call them bird men. They were born, like birds, with a certain innate sense of equilibrium. Birds find out when to go north and to go south and how to build and line their own nests and where to find their food and how to maintain themselves in the air. All this is in them. Nature takes care of that. A small child, learning to walk, shows that he has an instinctive faculty of adjustment and equipoise and tries early to get his little legs to support his position. An untutored lad when mounted thinks he is riding a horse, whereas the quadruped, knowing at once that the boy does not know anything about his business, allows him to simply balance himself while he gives him a ride. The boy voyages like an unballasted ship. He does not acquire a new sense; he follows his intuitions and all is well. A seed of grain would not differ from a dust speck or tiny pebble except for what it is, but it is yet to manifest by its inherent vitality. You would not know, looking at a boy, that he has this instinct of balance, but he has and he will find it and use it. As the pilgrim with his staff wends his way to Mecca, so I went to that place to meet that particular stripling. He was the youngster that was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found. I wanted to stay beside him much longer. His heart was young. He was fresh for his work.
The skeleton of a horse is given in an automobile catalogue. He is depicted as a fossil and the statement is made, These animals were used until about the year 1900. Every man, woman, and child in the state of South Dakota could be seated at one time in the automobiles owned by the people of that one state. Eighty per cent of those cars have been bought in the last two years. It seems like flying or ballooning after jolting for years in a heavy farm wagon, and what miles they were! The Dutch are economical of money, but have been very profuse of time. Their conveyances by sea or land have been slow and "Dutch speed" has grown into a proverb for tardiness, but now, with scarfs over their heads, Dutch women loll in the back seats of a Pierce-Arrow with, not the father, but a son, in the family to drive. While in my earlier life I had never dodged an automobile and I have never been injured by one except in my disposition, we are all unspeakably indebted to them for getting people out-of-doors and for contributing more to the temperance reformation than all the lectures in Christendom. The automobile enforces the same abstinence upon the people that the railroads require of engineers. Automobiles plainly show that the only place for saloons is that place Rev. William A. Sunday so graphically describes, and while our streets do not yet come up to the requirements of the boulevards of the New Jerusalem as described by St. John, yet we are done with those crossings at the street corners made up of granite stringers. Carriages had worn down the softer material just before and just after the granite crossings, so that if a person rode rapidly length-wise of the street he would jolt and bite his tongue at every intersection. These depressions in the road were called "Thank you, marms," because persons in passing each corner would forcibly be made to bow their heads, as if in expression of gratitude, to some imagined object. Another transformation has overtaken the community, changing its general appearance in some cases for the better, almost beyond recognition.
All barns in the towns are upon the market and dealers in lumber have opened a second-hand department where they dispose of what is left of the barns to farmers for the construction of granaries. Back to the farm applies now even to lumber. The horse, the cow, and the pig once formed a part of the family circle and how kindly and carefully were they provided for. The execrable back alley was conducted on the pig-sty basis. How slatternly the old back alley fence would look now that the parking system is adopted by neighbors. In earlier days the sumptuous houses were fenced or hedged always. After the old English idea the grounds were private. It remains now to have fences removed among denominations. They stand for the old time privacy and exclusiveness that once prevailed in business. Down south they forced business out into the open, requiring by ordinance that all employees shall be paid in the public square. The parking system proceeds upon the principle that a resident owes something to the town. The present ideal is to induce people not to shut the blinds or draw the shades when the house is lighted but to see in the evening how far each little candle can throw its beams.
At the sight of the Eternal City, Luther prostrated himself and exclaimed,—Holy Rome, I salute thee. A graduate of Andover, on approaching the Sacred Hill, feels a disposition to manifest a like deference. Before him rises the hallowed ground. Andover is not large but there are those who love her. She was always a good mother to me. Andover on the map you can cover with your thumb, but you cannot so cover Andover. Its vital expansive influence has gone out through all the world and its words to the end of it. In an outburst of passionate eloquence, Mr. Webster once exclaimed, "What has America given to the world? It has given to the world the character of Washington." What has Andover given to the world? There is the East. There is India. There is our Western coast, where rolls the Oregon. There are our colleges and churches at home and over seas. In these she has given the world immortal names that were not born to die. It is said that no man now living can read even the alphabets of all the languages through which her sons have sought to interpret the Word of God to the world. Think the graduates of Andover out of it at that time, and sacred literature and religious results would drop immeasurably below their actual attainments. Andover, the very name is beautiful, especially when you look at it in the light of the old days. Its memories are delightful. There I sat at the feet of my own Gamaliel.
It is impossible that any institution living or dead, in this country or any other, ever gained a firmer hold on the affections of her alumni. If love is the greatest thing in the world, Andover had it in a sort of double measure. With some knowledge of the whole field I do not know of any other place that so takes hold of its students on their affectional side. To do this, all experience teaches that a place must not be too large. A country home grows tendrils around a man's heart that a house numbered with others, in a uniformly brick-faced block, fails to do. A thoroughly cultivated or built-up country is much less beloved by its people than an open one that is close to nature. A strictly fenced locality where all surfaces are exclusively appropriated, leaving only the dusty highways to the people, does not gain the attachment that we all feel for Andover, beautiful for situation. When the Creator prepared the Seminary grounds on that crowning elevation he left little for the hand of man to do in the way of improvement. In my day, the oak tree was still standing into which Dr. Pearson climbed to locate buildings, trace the walks and indicate the settings for trees. Being located in a county that has more people in it than the entire state of Vermont and four times as much wealth, a county of cities, it has afforded great opportunity for students to get experience in pulpit work and the incidental wherewithal. It gave me no trouble or inconvenience the last year of my studies to earn eight hundred dollars. Most students on reaching Andover begin, I began like the rest, by occupying the little Union Chapel on the slope of the Blue Hill in Readville, on the edge of Hyde Park. The honorarium was five dollars, and the fares from Boston. In that pulpit, that has meant so much to under-graduates, Phillips Brooks preached his last sermon. Rev. Samuel F. Smith, author of America, was on his way to preach there when death overtook him and arrested his journey.
When I sing America I think of Andover. She is what S. F. Smith thought of, for in a nature stroke, writing the words in Andover, he sings, "I love thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills," just as Whittier so simply depicts other delightful features of Essex County which were indelibly impressed upon the sensitive plate of his brain. We discern the scenery behind the words. This the Swiss heart does when it is pathetically affected in hearing, in music, as if upon bells, "The return of the Cows." There never has been a nation without patriotism. There never has been a people without a God. The author of the hymn so much used in our great revival of national feeling was in Andover to study theology and produced our most common expression of patriotism. Andover was well born. She has beauty in her own right. This is evident since the first time she sat for her picture. My relations have been such, that it falls to me at times, having visitors from a remote part of the land, to entertain them and to show them the East. For typical New England towns I have usually taken them to Plymouth, Concord and Andover. These three. But in the matter of a large fairly well-trained and useful progeny, the greatest of these is Andover. Dr. Henry M. Storrs used to style the place, the mother of his mind.
It is Acadian. In other residential localities it is their custom not to point out any celebrities except millionaires. Everything in the community is leveled to its cash basis and a habit of doing it is ingrained, and unconsciously money slips into the conversation and out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaks. But in Andover names do not stand just for mere crude wealth. The homes of the professors were never handled as a commercial proposition. Everything was not computed in terms of bankable wealth. Prosperity was only one word, another was welfare. That noun of all nouns, dollar, was not so often heard as the name Andover. The teaching force is as uncommercialised as Agassiz, Lafayette, or John Brown. Their wealth is their learning and their character. "Now how much is he worth?" He is worth a lot to his pupils. Here is a community which every member belongs to with a conscious pleasure and pride. All the ideals bounded by the dollar are replaced. She had an entirely different code of values, which were not pecuniary.
I felt that I was exalted to heaven in point of privilege to be there at all. Here I had my first view of acres of girls. At the end of the study hours they would throng through the gates of the Abbott Female Seminary—"The Fem Sem"—and spread out over the town, young, joyous, carefree, fresh-faced, handsomely dressed. It was a delight to see them about.
"The hill of Zion yieldsA thousand sacred sweetsBefore we reach the Heavenly fieldsOr walk the golden streets."
"The hill of Zion yieldsA thousand sacred sweetsBefore we reach the Heavenly fieldsOr walk the golden streets."
So many of the books in the library with which I was most familiar, my father's, were published at Warren F. Draper's in Andover that on reaching the town, which my imagination had always placed in Class A, I sent my baggage to the Mansion House that I might not deny myself two things, to go on foot with much feeling up the long hill, also to get a first preliminary glimpse of Draper's. Could so much that is good come out of that Nazareth? It was a travesty on my expectation. I was looking for a book store like Appletons' or Revell's, or Harpers'. When my father graduated, there were thirty different parts on the Commencement programme and I was looking for things on an immense scale like that.
Andover develops the "We" feeling. The students constitute a brotherhood, while with the years the word grew greatly yet it never outgrew its original manifestation. That little word We is the talisman that awakes the consciousness that there must be sympathy, fellowship and co-operation among students, among those in the same high calling between pastor and people, as there must be for good results between teacher and pupil, between physician and patient. The Seminary gave to us that soul of kindred, which so few understand. It is an essence which perfumes life. Its influence is nothing less to me than sacred, and the benefit received is beyond any estimate I compute. In anticipation of a recent particular visit to that shrine of the heart, for no other purpose than to express my admiration amounting even to reverence, also my indebtedness, to that far famed and justly distinguished seat of learning, I arranged with that useful, unselfish, helpful resident, Charles C. Carpenter, that we should canvass together the sacred precincts. Among holy places none is holier than this. My errand there was to see a great deal and to feel a great deal. I bow with deep veneration at the remembrance of each one of the ornaments of the place. We walked about among the friends whom we had known who were resting in God's acre. The inscriptions made for us a book of remembrance. Some personality lingered about the most far-away name. We lingered long where sleep the great who made themselves a record among the mighties. No other spot in the land, of equal space, contains the dust of so much eminence. By one of the ironies of history those who differed most, where the contention was so sharp between them, like Barnabas and Paul, that they departed asunder, one from the other, come close together in their burial.
When Oliver Alden Taylor, late of Manchester, was graduating from Union College his biographer says:[1]"We find him deliberating where he should resort for his theological education. His thoughts were turned toward Andover, but he says, 'I am afraid of the dislike of elegant speaking which is said to characterize the faculty.' He was reassured however with very faint praise, for he writes, 'Dr. Nott tells me that Andover is not opposed to good speaking, though the graduates are too generally poor speakers.'" We wish that he could have heard Richard Salter Storrs, father and son, Horace Hutchinson, Leonard Swain, George Leon Walker, or either of the brothers, Walter M. or John Henry Barrows, or as he was speaking of the faculty, Professor Park, or his very close second, a very different man but highly distinguished for brilliant uniform work, Austin Phelps.
While in the Himalaya Mountains they have many exalted peaks, still there is one that towers above the rest, Mt. Everest, the highest ascertained point on the surface of the globe. So at Andover there was a high general range of intellect, yet there existed one master mind that dominated the whole sphere. The pulpit was his throne. I had never seen a man take so high a position on the mount of God as Professor Edwards A. Park, at the crest of his popularity and power, did as he rose to his own high level in his masterpiece, the Judas sermon. I remember my delight and wonder. He magnetized his audience. I was greatly drawn to him. The heart of the congregation touches his. Deep calleth unto deep. There are those who testify that he became the first vigorous intellectual presence they ever encountered, and they gained much from the relation to so great a man. Of larger than ordinary mould, I suppose no real credit or desert fell to him for rising to his work like a giant refreshed, any more than belonged to Goliath for wielding a spear like a weaver's beam in his mighty hand instead of a weapon of ordinary size. He was one of those rare men who are scarcely ever duplicated. He was not classed with any one in his own or in previous or in subsequent times. His appeal was such that one's own moral sense confirmed all his teachings. The mark of talent is to do easily what is difficult for others. His imposing almost majestic presence, his powerful and brilliant intellect, his great learning, his genius, his uncommon gift of eloquence, his fervor, I do not now describe, after my memory of it, which shines to me like a star, but according to my idea cf what now it will seem to a stranger. It is impossible to reproduce his work in cold type. To attempt it is to spoil it. When we have seen him reported verbatim—that was not his sermon, only its ghost, its shade, its tenantless remains. The air about him became electric as he, having located Judas for a time nearly in front of him, a little to the right, dealt with him as one of the foes of the household. He considered his case past praying for. After he had his picture well drawn he put on more color and the moment he had him well blacked, with sudden great dramatic effect he swung a perfectly knock-out gesture, saying, "Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! Good were it for that man if he had never been born." It needs the Sinai voice to get the effect.
Passion, unabated emotion pervaded the great effort from the beginning to the end of the masterpiece. Every sentence, every word had been pruned of every ineffective syllable, like changing "penetrate" to the word of one syllable, "pierce". Every idea went to its mark like a bullet. There was not a cold or weak passage in it. In preparing his direct discourse he did not stick a stake and cart material to it. His great thoughts were not drawn from without but from his subject which he fathomed. He had depth, as someone said, for elephants to swim in and places for lambs to wade. He seemed from the first to be starting a great offensive. I took occasionally great delight in a few moments of his company and I always have congratulated myself that I lived for three years in the same town, and at the same time with so illustrious a person.
He is one of the stars, a planet I should say, in the firmament of the pulpit. "Go and feel his power" I used to say; no one can describe it. Everything seemed to conspire to make my life exceptionally happy and fortunate at Andover, knowing him at the zenith of his glory. Professor Park's work had the element of nicety about it. It was fascinating. We were spell-bound, lost in admiration, even in amazement. His elegance in diction would make one's sense of beauty ache. "Honor is the substance of my story," said the imposing, uplifting man starting on his moving recital, told in his unique, felicitous style, with utterance broken by emotion, of the life and death of Miss McKeen of Abbott Academy, of whose board of trustees he had been president for thirty years. That trinity of qualities, wisdom, eloquence, and pathos, swept everything. Rhetoric cannot be shut up in a book. Its play of words, even in a sympathetic auditory, and among vibrant hearers, while it sparkles, dies.
Ernest Renan tells us of the vanished city Is, which, years ago, disappeared below the waves. Up from those depths, fishermen say, that on calm summer nights they can hear the bells chiming. In my heart is a cherished Is. As the years rise and fall I love to hear the harmonies that float to me from its past. Distance does not dissipate the gentle sounds and they come to me like echoes from another life. At that enchanted time I met my heart's ideal and have been wondering ever since how it happened, that on seeing a certain face, it seems to you distinctive, set apart from all others. Is it familiar, because you have seen it before, or is it impressed on you, because it is an expression of your intuitive sense of what suits you, and what you like and what you want? The expression, love at first sight, would be intelligible enough if it was only finished with the words, when one's dream comes true. When it materializes it is of course all at once. A person busy with his profession, going along happily and more or less prosperously, meeting people, judging young folks, almost unconsciously forms an ideal of face, figure, graciousness, type, temperament, intelligence. This is the product of half a dozen years. The work of choosing, so far as he is concerned, is all done. His mind is made up. His idea is clearly defined. Jesse made Eliab pass before Samuel and the Lord said, "Look not on his countenance nor on his stature." Then Jesse called Abinadab, then Shammah, and seven passed in review, when David came along, who was ruddy and withal of a beautiful countenance, and goodly to look to, "That's the one. This is he." First there is an image in the mind, and when the counterpart appears, instantly, of course, one recognizes it. Samuel did not shirk any real question nor did he make up his mind before he had any mind to make up. There was a choice to be made and he had come to a conclusion so far as he was concerned, and expressed himself at the earliest moment, without being irresolute or vacillating, which is an abomination when a social choice is to be made.
There is in us a tendency to selection and preference of one human being before all others. This action of the heart is forceful and even almost irresistible to us and yet may not accord with other persons' ideas of appropriateness. This strange preference, in its early stages, and in its strength and duration, is nature's greatest sidelight upon our individuality. It is entertaining to see what people pass right by and then to see what they choose. It distinguishes itself most at the further end of a long life and seems to have an unfading quality which shows that it is nature itself. This tendency to selection affords people the strongest argument against Dr. Johnson's position that all marriages would be better made if they were arranged by the Lord Chancellor. Also against that multitude of students, of the subject and writers, who show that marriages seem best, last best, and are best for a fact, when the parties themselves have little to do in bringing them about, when all such matters are left to parents and others as in the royal families who rest everything on the pure merits of the case.
In waking hours, in reveries, and in dreams, pictures had been painted on the fancy, and now the lenses were given, through which they could be viewed. A vague and indistinct idea had now taken a form. It was very unromantic, but it seemed the expression of an intuition. It was like an acquaintance, accidentally met at the way-side. There seemed to be a susceptibility hid away, hitherto kept dormant, that the slightest cause seemed to magnetize.
However this may be, there is such instinctive insight in the human heart, that we often form our opinion, almost instantaneously, and such impressions seldom change and they are not often wrong. To notice anything, so casual, sounds like an imprudence and yet it is almost a revelation. It seems as if we were but renewing the relations of a previous existence. Some one, from this, goes on to inquire, What will the doubters of impressions do with a fact like this? Almost everyone has experienced something similar. In this house, we often speak of our instant meeting, our introduction, and the destinies which were made to swing on such a chance acquaintance. It wanted not a word, not a hint, for within was the consciousness of what was to be. The problem was solved. My foreshadowing was realized. If a person is looking for a lesson in Providence, here it is. I could plainly see how I had been led along. "Come live with me." The irrevocable yoke of life was on us. The mysteries of Providence are felt in the coincidence of two paths over surfaces so widely apart. We are astounded at this miracle of meeting. A breath, a lifting of the hand, an inconceivably small intervention would have diverted the attention of either of us. There, too, is the miracle of hinging so much of destiny and of happiness on so small an occasion, that might easily have been no occasion at all. It is like taking letters out of the alphabet. The art is in placing them side by side in such a way as to make words. Use no skill of location and the arrangement into which they have fallen is inappropriate and unfortunate. Standing apart the letters are meaningless. Jumbled or jarred together the chances are very much against their having any significance, but when brought to their final position, by what they spell together, they are read of all men with approbation. The first time that Mr. Paul R. George of Concord, N. H., met the young lady that became his wife he felt a little click in the neighborhood of his heart. Now about this "click" to which so many persons bear witness. Men are great imitators. They follow a crowd. But a hit duck flutters the water. It is like the late selective draft: a man is touched; he attempts no evasion; he knows he was selected and comes promptly forward and puts on the uniform. The way the mind receives this impress, is noticeable in the further fact that if Paul R. George had been abroad, and the meeting had been so casual that he received no introduction, it would have been permanent just the same. The heart never loses anything. Touch the right string later and the impression is sure to be reproduced. All that is peculiar about Mr. George's case is his confession. We know that matrimony is either heaven-made or done in purgatory. The issue seems too important to turn once for all on the original early choice of an inexperienced person. An individual is not thus forced to choose once for all in determining what college he will take. He may choose Williams and change to Dartmouth. Nor is it an unchangeable choice on entering business. He may begin with law and change to politics or he may incline to manufacturing and take to banking. If, however, he enters the matrimonial field, having put his hand to the plow, there is no turning around nor looking back.
There are, however, some good rules for an individual to follow. One, for example, would be, to take a girl that was a favorite with other girls. Another to be uninfluenced in your choice by dowry. The question before the house is matrimony, not money making. Acquire lucre by another process. Too much is at stake to be moved now by thirty pieces of silver. The young man was worthy of all admiration who on his wedding trip asked the bride how much of a dot she had left after paying for her trousseau. She said, "Half a dollar." "Well," he said, "heave it over into the canal and let us make an even start." I can better understand how a girl could be induced to shy a silver coin into the canal than how she could be reconciled to parting with such a name as she sometimes must drop. Here is a girl just reported engaged to a soldier. Her name was Priscilla Weymouth Alden, which tells not only her illustrious descent but in just what locality, in the old colony, her branch of the family made its distinguished nest. In this country the wife or maiden invariably walks by the side of her male companion and never follows after him in Indian file, like geese returning from pasture. It is against nature for a man to say "my house" or my this or that. He should be unable to pronounce the word. In this house our account at the bank is open for either to check upon. Our exchequer, on the one hand, or our politics on the other, are a joint affair. The family is the unit. When Bunker Hill monument was still incomplete interest flagged. Money was gone. Work came to a full period. An appeal was made to the women of the land to hold a great fair to obtain the wherewithal so that the builder should bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying Grace, grace, unto it. Subscriptions and contributions hurried to its aid from every section and it rose to "meet the sun in his coming," "to be the last object on the sight of him who leaves his native shore and the first to gladden his who revisits it." It is not good for man to work alone. The house in which a man is married seems to him odd.
Bridgewater is a belle among residential communities. The best place in this country or in any other to raise girls. The street is attractive. The house fine, yet it seems distinct, different. I think most men feel so about the house in which they were married. In all other shrines I had made a home. Isaac blessed Jacob and sent him away to Padan-Aram to take a wife from thence, and God appeared unto Jacob again when he came out of Padan-Aram and blessed him. Under similar conditions the Duke of Buckingham dropped his purse so that the person finding it might feel that nothing but good fortune attends the visit to a home like that. I used to like to go there, yet I had to do, every day, the full work of an adult at home, and so it became plain that I would get along better if I could locate both of my interests in the same place. In speaking of weddings much is said with truth about "the negligible groom." I could not long live on angel cake and so I had to turn abruptly to face the prosier plain bread and butter question; so when the bird was caught and caged I took up the inquiries, What shall we eat and wherewithal shall we be clothed? It is a merciful provision that this latter question rests lightly upon the groom for the first decade, as some part of the hat the bride wore to Washington (it being understood that a wedding admits no variation but means either a trip to Washington or Niagara Falls) will reappear as a feature of her headdress with much variation of location during the next ten years.
The place of the wedding is always a conspicuous shrine. On revisiting the earth we were strolling around the streets, quite a number of soldiers were about and were entertaining the girls at a soda fountain, and one of the enlisted men told a pitiful story about swallowing a pin, and when a vivacious young lady expressed alarm and sympathy, "Oh," he said, "no harm could come of it; it was a safety pin."
We go there often and sit on the stone steps of the old Unitarian church just as we did when we were young and foolish. Times have changed incredibly since the visit to Padan Aram or else a favorite and very accomplished writer just at this writing is all dead wrong in throwing the weight of his great influence against what he calls being "married without capital." This would cut out the wedding of Dr. Joseph Parker of the City Temple, London, the greatest expositor of scripture known to us. "Improvident" is the word his biographer uses "certainly when tested by the maxims of the world. He was twenty-two without having secured a definite position." But marriages are to be judged by their history. Let us hear the eloquent orator himself. He speaks of "Annie, the soul I loved, the girl who saved me and made me a man." His estimate of her varied from the opinion the editor we have quoted would have put upon her. She was gentle, domesticated, cultivated, with a poetic turn of mind, and like Mary of Bethany, religiously meditative. She read widely, being now more assiduous than ever in her Bible studies. Her appetite in this was twofold for her husband and herself. She asked God to bless him and He blessed them both. He was strong, constituted for public life, full of fire, and prepared to take the kingdom of heaven by violence. We feel like questioning Cupid's sanity when he brings together persons of such diverse natures, training, antecedents, and tendencies, but among opposites, in disposition, Cupid displays his best achievements. They took life together as they found it. To have "saved" one of the world's greatest forces, to have "made him a man" was more than an equivalent for living on short commons for some few weeks while they were getting under way. Working out good fortune together is great happiness to many young people who know each other well and without reservation believe in each other and in their future. A young man graduating or entering a business life must make his capital before he can share it. There is much to be said in favor of what many healthy spirited girls achieve when their affections are satisfied. Adam was asleep when he chose his wife and this is one reason why things proved so out of joint. The strong dissuasive to become "married without capital" would have borne heavily upon Peter H. Burnett when a clerk in a country store on two hundred dollars a year, less than four dollars a week beside his board.
He had met a beautiful girl and one day having dined with her family and talked with the young lady herself after dinner he came out of the house and was amazed to discover that the sun was gone from the sky. In a confused manner I enquired of her father what had become of the sun. He politely replied, "It has gone down." A new heaven and a new earth surrounded him. They were married and lived happily ever after. It was not Mrs. Burnett "and her lesser fraction." An humble home was paradise to him with the right girl. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox without it. Sometimes I think that the rich face greater problems in the matter of marriage than even the poor. Such a wedding based on affection goes far toward nullifying the phrase "lottery of marriage." An American girl can marry an English Duke if her father has money enough. In this country the prevalent sanctity of marriage can be attributed chiefly to the fact that among the rank and file, husbands and wives have generally married each other for love. Perhaps this statement would not apply to the smart set in some commercial cities. This young man did his best. He became the president of the Pacific Bank of San Francisco and the first Governor of California. And as for a young woman she will become quite a heroine, in hard outward conditions, if her affections are entirely satisfied. Having spirit and courage and health she often becomes quite a prop to the prosperity of the household. She does not need to be supported in idleness by her husband. As between the two, it is often the case that she can earn about as much as he can. A young lady has just become a bride who had been receiving a larger salary than her own father ever earned. In new countries, under pioneer conditions, that is true today, which was distinctly a fact in early New England, that a marriage was a partnership, which made for thrift. Of course affection works out her sums by different rules.
Chinese wives are valued by their weight. French marriages have been generally happier than the English owing to the comparative ascendency which the French wives possess over their husbands, or better, the equality we find that exists between them.
There is a proverbial prejudice in an English establishment against the interference of a woman in the husband's conduct of his private affairs. This is that one matter in which any theorist can prove his position, for in solving the problem it is natural to him to count the hits and not the misses. He arrays unquestioned facts and depends on those who follow his recital to jump at the conclusion he desires. It was suggestive to notice that Governor Burnett, when presenting such a fine specimen of feminine attractiveness, that while showing us that he was overwhelmed by it, did not directly describe the girl, but made us infer what the facts were by the situation and by the results she brought about. To make you appreciate the Lady of the Lake, Scott alludes to her in attitude and grace and lets the reader's mind supply the picture.
It is astonishing to notice what heroic young women have been doing in meeting rather hard conditions occasioned in part by the high cost of living. Give the girl all round confidence, imagine her susceptibilities and energies to be happily employed, and she will undertake a temporary encounter with poverty with bravery. The one she has chosen among men has to meet it whether he will or no. In addressing themselves to that problem, by united enterprise, some young people have passed their most joyous years. We find here the magic spell which transforms a house into a home. Musicians rarely give their best exhibition when singing or performing in a hostile atmosphere. It is so with women. Happiness is never an accident. There is no such thing as an accident. Everything has a cause if we can find it.
Forty years were long enough to eliminate all the Israelites of one generation. It appears that in that length of time all the adults of one generation that had dwelt in Egypt were gone except two. Reckoning things then on a scriptural basis and assuming that all who lived forty years ago are gone, except two, a grave responsibility obviously rests upon me, as I have seen more than a generation rise and wane, to let the people of the present age or period in a definite locality know how things look in that lifetime just preceding their own. I remember when we had preaching services Sunday afternoon in all our churches at three o'clock and by count in our church the attendance often differed only by two, forenoon, afternoon and evening. I remember when Christmas and Easter observances were introduced into Sabbath services, it having been customary from Puritan days in New England to make, on Sunday, next to no reference to them excepting in Catholic and Episcopal Churches.
Unless one sticks a stake, at some definite point, say less than a generation ago, he is not likely to remember that powerful electric lights have not always been, like the images of the Israelites, on every high hill and under every green tree. It is hard for me to realize that at my table I burned the midnight oil in Lynn, particularly when the next morning was Sunday, and my library during my ministry of twelve years was never decorated with anything but a student lamp. The city was in the kerosene oil period. The front hall lamp used to drip petroleum upon the carpet on the stairs, and I was contributing my full share to give John D. Rockefeller a start in his oil-refining business, a start indeed that I hear he has not been slow to appreciate and improve. After reaching the big hall down town, as the lights supplied to Professor Churchill, the renowned elocutionist from Andover, seemed dim, I left the hall and went out and bought a student lamp and had a wick put in and filled it with kerosene, which if now brought into a blazing auditorium in these enlightened days would be like holding a candle to the sun. In a more significant way the city has turned from Darkness into light.
We stood in relation to the gambling evil about where the country now stands in relation to drunkeries, whose death warrant we have lived to see signed. The hand-writing was written on the wall touching lotteries but they were winked at when conducted only for sweet charity's sake even after the death-knell had sounded. In a church fair a fine young acquaintance got a pony for fifty cents as he held the lucky ticket. Unless a person has felt it or witnessed it, he little conceives the fury of the passion to which gambling appeals. When fired up, there are men who would cross Sheol on a rotten pole to make money in a game of chance. It starts an appetite that feeding does not satisfy. It seems to rage by the fuel it feeds on. These lotteries, like the plague of frogs, were everywhere. For constructing the earliest building of Williams College, that is in particular the mother of missionaries, a lottery was granted and $3500 were raised.[2]It goes with the blood in Massachusetts, for when the State was hard up she used to spring a lottery, in one of which Harvard College drew four tickets, and clergymen seemed to have been particularly successful, and teachers for purposes of publicity were likeliest of all to profit by the turn of the wheel, till at length the whole gambling fabric suddenly, like the walls of Jericho, fell down flat.
Here was purely and distinctively an American City. The people were homogeneous in language, modes of thought and type of character. She had the specific New England, or Yankee, cast of mind. For her factories, forces were drawn from the hillsides, particularly of New Hampshire. There were elderly people, as we shall see, but the prevailing type was youthful, and the young lady contingent was attractive and had a good deal of the quality which we call charm. I wrote a column for a local paper, out of my experience on "Tying the Silken Knot," and Dr. Henry Hinckley, referring to my contribution and using my title, went beyond even my testimony, affirming that the City of Shoes furnished more marriageable material to the square rod than any other city of its size, and he seemed to attribute the fact, not merely to the incident that they met here under pleasant auspices, but that they heard in churches that marriage is honorable and that it is not good for man to be alone.
A couple would come to the parsonage, and if the associate pastor went to the door the young man would say, "Where's your foreman?" meaning her husband. As the lady of the Manse was entirely supported by her wedding fees and had money to lend, and as I married more people than could be seated in my church, if they should come together at one time, I have often deeply regretted that in the hurry and toil of removal, it did not occur to me to invite them all to attend a special service to be arranged for them, with specific hymns, and a practical address. I think I can claim for the couples that I made happy, the banner low record in the small percentage of divorces.
The house of one parishioner was built in the century before the last, while General Washington was alive and on the earth, and was rich in history and tradition. A call upon the family was a lesson out of Colonial Records, the paper on the wall like that at Mt. Vernon, being of the same period.