IN MEMOR.1AM
henhy Thornton Steele
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Chicago literary club
IN MEMORIAM.
Henry Thornton Steele
DIED NOVEMBER lo, 1890.
At the regular meeting of the Chicago
Literary Club, held February i6, 1891,
the accompanying report of a Committee
appointed to prepare a tribute of respect
to the memory of our late fellow-member,
Henry Thornton Steele, was read and
adopted.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
Henry thornton Steele was
born on July 8, 1821, at East Bloom-
field, New York, where his father, the Rev.
Julius Steele, was then pastor of the Presby¬
terian Church. He was of the sixth genera¬
tion, in direct descent from John Steele, who
was born in Essex County, England, and
came to America about 1631, settling in
Newtown, now Cambridge, Massachusetts.
John Steele, in 1634 and 1635, was deputy to
the General Court of Massachusetts, and in
June, 1636, led the pioneer band from New¬
town which, under Rev. Thomas Hooker,
founded the new colony at Hartford, Con¬
necticut. Here, for the first four years, he
was Secretary of the colony; twenty years its
Recorder, and twenty-three years a member of
its General Court. The family remained in
Connecticut until 1814, when Henry's father,
having been graduated at Yale College and
Andover Seminary, settled at East Bloom-
field, New York. The mother of Noah Web-
5
ster was a lineal descendant of John Steele,
and a cousin of Henry's grandfather.
The childhood and youth of the subject of
this memorial was mainly spent at his birth¬
place and at Warsaw and West Bloomfield,
New York, and White Pigeon, Michigan, to
which place the family removed in 1838.
He prepared for college at Geneva Lyceum,
Geneva, New York, under Rev. Justus W.
French, in 1837-8, and at the West Pigeon
branch of the University of Michigan, under
Moses W. Gray, of Trinity College, Dublin,
and Rev. Matthew W. Meigs, in 1841-2. He
taught a district school at Constantine, Mich¬
igan, during the winter of 1838-9, and in La
Grange Collegiate Institute, at Ontario, Indi¬
ana, in 1841-2. He then entered Yale Col¬
lege, where he was graduated in 1846. Dur¬
ing the next year he was principal of the
Union School at New London, Connecticut.
This was followed by a residence at Colches¬
ter, Connecticut, until July, 1848, as preceptor
of Bacon Academy. Returning to Michigan,
he was admitted to the bar by the Supreme
Court of that state on July 4, 1849, and at
once entered upon the practice of his profes-
6
sioii at Constaiitine, in St. Joseph County,
where he remained until 1857. Within this
period he held the offices of Justice of the
Peace and Township Supervisor. In 1851 he
fnarried Rebecca Kno.\, of Carlisle, Pennsyl¬
vania, who has borne him five children—four
sons and one daughter. The devoted wife,
with whom he lived happily for nearly forty
years, and three of their children, survive
him. In 1857 he removed to Chicago, and
sodn thereafter declined a call to the pro¬
fessorship of rhetoric in the University of
Michigan. Here he spent the remainder of
his life. He was engaged in the general
practice of law until January 6, 1873, when
he was appointed Master in Chancery of the
Superior Court of Cook County, a position
which he filled very acceptably to the court
and the profession until about four years ago.
From i860 to 1867 he was associated with
William A. Porter, who was subsequently a
Judge of the Superior Court of Cook County.
From i860 to 1866, Mr. Steele served as a
member of the Chicago Board of Education.
In this position he took an active interest in
the schools of the city, and rendered valuable
services to the cause of education. He died
at the residence of his son, Julius Steele,
4322 Ellis avenue, this city, on November 10,
1890, in the seventieth year of his age.
Älr. Steele's standing as a lawyer, especi¬
ally in chancery matters, was high. As Mas¬
ter in Chancery of the Superior Court for
about fifteen years much of the important
business of that court received his careful
attention and supervision. He was thor¬
oughly versed, not only in the principles of
equity, but in the pleading and practice of
chancery courts, and in the office of Master
in Chancer}' his learning and talents found a
suitable field. His precise and scholarly
mind specially fitted him for the duties of an
office which is so largely judicial in character,
and together with his somewhat delicate con¬
stitution, led him to avoid in the main the
rougher battles and less literary atmosphere
of the law courts.
The influences that dominated the life and
molded the character of Henry T. Steele
were those of religion and literature. He
became a member of his father's church at
West Bloomfield, New York, when but si.x-
8
teen years of age, and continued an active
and consistent member of the church until
the end of his life. In this city he was a
member of the Old South Congregational
Church, and after its consolidation with Ply¬
mouth Church he was one of the most influ¬
ential members of that church, where he was,
as in college, known as " Deacon Steele."
He was an enthusiastic student of the Bible,
which he read in the original tongues, and
tanght for many years (up to his last illness)
to a large class of adults. The last time he
appeared in public was at the communion
service at Plymouth Church early in Septem¬
ber, when he served as one of the deacons,
although scarcely able to be out. In connec¬
tion with his religious life mention should be
made of his love for sacred music, of which
he had considerable knowledge. He has left
unpublished a considerable number of musi¬
cal compositions; these were played and sung
by him for many years in his own family.
His amiable and affectionate nature and
obliging, courteous manners endeared him to
his college associates and to all who have
since known him socially.
9
Mr. Steele never lost his interest in literary
matters. He kept up his studies and work to
the very end, and has left a large quantity of
unpublished manuscript and a complete jour¬
nal covering all the 3'ears of his mature life.
During his residence at Constantine, Michi¬
gan, he wrote much for the Constantine Mer¬
cury, the local paper, on political and literary
themes. At this period, in common with all
earnest men, he took a deep interest in the
political issues of the time. In 1852 he
earnestl}' advocated the election of General
Winfield Scott. The anti-slavery movement
received his active support both in the press
and on the platform. He spoke with Schuy¬
ler Colfax at various points in St. Joseph
County in one of the campaigns of that
period. His interest in politics always con¬
tinued, but he was never in subsequent years
as active in this respect as during the early
)'ears of his professional life. He always
wrote more or less for the press, and a num¬
ber of his articles have from time to time
appeared in The New Englander and other
publications.
The relations of Mr. Steele to the Chicago
to
Literary Club were alike a source of great
satisfaction to himself and to his fellow-
members. He joined the Club in 1874, the
first year of its organization, and was always
one of its most valued and active members.
The record of his attendance was higher
than that of any other member. During the
last five years of his life he attended 165
meetings, missing only ten meetings in all.
For the season 1889-90 he attended every
meeting. For fourteen years he never missed
the opening night of the season. He con¬
tributed three papers to the exercises of the
Club. Their dates and subjects were as fol¬
lows : November i, 1880, "The Deformed
Spelling." January 8, 1882, " Scientific Eth¬
ics." December 20, 1886, "Herbert Spen¬
cer's First Principles." They were marked,
as was all his work, by original research and
literary finish. The paper on " Scientific
Ethics " was printed in The New Englander
for 1884 (Vol. 43, page 145). One of the
last acts of his life was to send a cherished
copy of Horace as a gift to the Club on the
opening night of the present season.
Mr. Steele was in thought and spirit a puri-
11
tan gentleman of the old school. In him
were manifested all the virtues of the early
puritan character, with its severity softened
by a ripe culture and the tolerant atmosphere
of the nineteenth century.
James L. High,
William F. Poole,
Edwin Burritt Smith,
Committee.
CHICAGO LITERARY CLUB
IN MEMORIAM
EDWIN HOLMES SHELDON
DIED DECEMBER i8, 1890
At the regular meeting of the Chicago
Literary Club, held February i6, 1891,
the accompanying report of a Committee
appointed to prepare a tribute of respect
to the memory of our late fellow-member,
Edwin Holmes Sheldon, was read and
adopted.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
DWIN HOLMES SHELDON, a mem¬
ber of the Literary Club, died in the
City of New York on the i8th day of Decem¬
ber, 1890, at the age of sixty-nine years.
The period of his attendance upon the exer¬
cises of the Club was limited, as most of his
time during the later years of his life was
spent in travel or at places visited in search
of health, but he retained his membership
and interest until his death. He was one of
that band, now rapidly wasting, whose lives
have been closely interwoven with the life of
our city almost from the beginning.
Coming here in 1846, a young man of
twenty-five, he at once engaged with Mr.
William B. Ogden in the business which, in
connection with Mr. Ogden and his brother,
Mahlon D. Ogden, during their lives, and
afterward with his son, he prosecuted with
signal ability and deserved success until
admonished by age and weakness to put
aside the burdens of active life. During the
long period of his residence in Chicago he
s
was not only most efficient in the conduct of
business enterprises tending to her material
prosperity, but also a willing worker in the
fields of religion and philanthropy. As
Senior Warden of St. James Church for many
years, member of the Board of Managers of
Graceland Cemetery since its organization.
President of the Historical Society from 1870
to 1875, Trustee of the Hahnemann Medical
College, member of the School Board for
three years, and trustee of the Northern
Insane Asylum by appointment in 1875, he
gave a proof of his constant interest in the
progress of our city and society and his
readiness to give to all good works the aid of
his purse, his zeal, intelligence and wise
judgment.
He was a man of serene mind—a man of
reflection—thoughtfully patient, prudent and
conservative; in manner gracious and modest,
gentle in speech, and quickly responsive to
every expression of reflned taste or delicate
fancy. Few men have so loved and studied
nature. To him the finding of a favorite
flower in an unexpected place was a bright
event, worthy to be dwelt upon and recounted
6
with interest. He watched the coming and
fading of the autumn tints as if the changing
of the leaf had been the story of a soul. In
the bustle and clamor of our busy life he
seemed misplaced. To the ordinary inter¬
course of the street and office he may have
appeared indifferent ; but apart from this,
and especially when in later years the trend
of thought or conversation led him back to
friends and scenes of earlier life, he became
at once the charming companion.
Age came to him with a grace and beauty
that it rarely wears. With the snowy head
came the gentle dignity befitting it ; with
weakness, the tireless hands of love to bear
him up ; with the summons of death the light
of a living faith to pierce the gloom of the
untrodden path.
Mr. Sheldon's youth was spent in the vil¬
lage of Delhi, New York, and throughout a
long life lived in crowds and full of absorb¬
ing cares, he kept fresh the love of this early
home—the quaint old house, the shaded
street, the little village in the quiet valley.
Here he returned year after year with increas¬
ing fondness. Here in time he became the
7
patriarch of the old homestead, and three
generations gathered about him ; here old
men came and shared with him the memories
of more than three score years, and children
were taught to honor him ; and here in this
little village, the home of all his life, with
father, mother, wife and the friends of all his
life, he lies at rest.
E. B. McCagg,
J. S. Norton,
Com7nittee.
8
Chicago Literary Club
IN MEMORIAM
HENRY FIELD
DIED DECEMBER 22, 1890
At the regular meeting of the Chicago
Literary Club, held February i6, 1891,
the accompanying report of a Committee
appointed to prepare a tribute of respect
to the memory of our late fellow-member,
Henry Field, was read and adopted.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
WHEN a man dies who made such a
deep and interesting impression as
Henry Field did, it is well for his friends
and associates to express their thought about
him, and say why it was that they valued him
so much. But because he loved simplicity,
therefore it will be better to put in a few
plain words what we wish to say.
He was manly and self-reliant, needing no
help from others, but helping many. The
calmness and quiet strength of his nature
were helpful and restful to all who came near
him. There were many whom his words, his
generous giving, and the examples of his
daily living greatly helped ; but these must
tell, themselves, what he did for them, because
he never spoke of any good deed that he had
done.
He was a lover of beauty as well as of
goodness, and he gathered about him a col¬
lection of art which was famed far beyond
the limits of this city. And we shall never
look upon the beautiful pictures he gave this
5
Club without thinking of his taste and his
generosity.
But to know all these things about Henry
Field is not really to know the man. His life
was centered in his home. Strong and ten¬
der, wise and modest, deeply loving the
beautiful, yet able to cope easily with the
world of affairs—such were the qualities we
loved in him.
In the strong and loving spirit that was
given him, and in the earnest and faithful use
of such helps toward noble living as were
within his reach may be found the explana¬
tion of the character that we have known
and loved.
Clarence A. Burlev,
Franklin MacVeagh,
Walter C. Larned,
Committee.
6
Henry field was bom in the town of
Conway, Massachusetts, May 25, 1841.
He came to Chicago in 1861, and entered the
employ of the firm of Cooley, Farwell & Co.
Here he remained until 1869, in which year
he became a member of the firm of Field,
Leiter & Co. upon its organization. His
connection with this house and its successor,
Marshall Field & Co., lasted until the year
1883, when he retired from active business.
The remaining years of Mr. Field's life
were principally devoted to the cultivation
and enjoyment of the finer tastes of his gen¬
tle nature, but he gave a part of his time to
the affairs of the Commercial National Bank,
of which he was Vice-President, and to the
Art Institute, the Chicago Relief and Aid So¬
ciety, and other institutions, educational and
philanthropic, in which he was interested.
In 1878 Mr. Field was married to Miss
Florence Lathrop, daughter of J. H. Lathrop,
of Washington, D. C.
7
Chicago literary Club
IN MEMORIAM
JOHN WELLBORN ROOT
DIED JANUARY 15, 1891
At the regular meeting of the Chicago
ipiterary Club, held February i6, 1891,
the accompanying report of a Committee
appointed to prepare a tribute of respect
to the memory of our late fellow-member,
John Wellborn Root, was read and
adopted.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
TN the death of John Wellborn Root the
-*■ Literary Club has lost a valued member
and Chicago has lost a gifted man.
Everybody knew him as an architect and
artist. Our city is full of his work; his great
buildings tower above our business streets,
monuments of the strength and breadth of
his genhis; and quiet homes along our resi¬
dence streets bear witness to his grace and
refinement. All of us and all of the members
of his chosen profession knew his ability as a
writer. But the full scope and range of his
versatile nature were less well known. Only
a few knew him as a musician, and yet he had
rare musical gifts. Many surpassed him in
mere brilliance of execution; but he had few
equals in interpreting the spirit of the great
composers. To hear him play from memory
Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words" was
a revelation. It stirred the deepest emotions.
He died at the age of 41, young even for
his years, doing the best work of his life, and
giving promise of still greater development;
5
like all true artists, dissatisfied with what he
had accomplished, and hoping yet to do
something great.
As our fellow member and our friend has
gone from us, and we shall never see another
design from his hand, it is a pleasure to
remember that this home of our club is all
his work, the building, which was perhaps
his most artistic creation, and the decoration
and arrangement of these rooms, to which
he gave much loving thought and much of
his precious time.
We shall remember him not only as a great
architect and a versatile genius; but as a
modest gentleman, a delightful companion,
and a faithful friend.
Bryan Lathrop.
William L. B. Jenney,
Irving K. Pond.
Committee.
6
CHICAGO LITERARY CLUB
IN MEMORIAM
SAMUEL BLISS
DIED MARCH i8, 1891
At the regular meeting of the Chicago
Literary Club, held May 4, 1891,
the accompanying report of a Committee
appointed to prepare a tribute of respect
to the memory of our late fellow-member,
Samuel Bliss, was read and adopted.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
The Chicago Literary Club hereby
makes minute of the death of Samuel
Bliss, who died at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin,
Wednesday, March i8, 1891.
Mr. Bliss was born in Springfield, Ma.ss.,
October 8, 1832, the son of Harvey Bliss, of
that place. Two of his brothers became
eminent as missionaries at Constantinople,
one of whom, Edwin, is now living; the
other, who died two years ago, founded the
American Bible House in Constantinople.
Without other than a common school edu¬
cation, Samuel Bliss, like many of the farm¬
ers' sons of New England, was early trained
to habits of self-support. He served for some
time in a drug store in Springfield, and at the
age of seventeen came to Chicago. He
found employment in the wholesale grocery
house of Smith, Williams & Co., of which he
became junior and afterwards senior partner,
under the name of Bliss, Moore & Co., and
finally Samuel Bliss & Co. In 1872 this
5
house, like many others, went down, but Mr-
Bliss, with characteristic energy and enter¬
prise, soon reestablished himself, and soon
developed a most successful and lucrative
business, and with the rare integrity of his
character, paid his former creditors many
thousands of dollars from the payment of
which he was legally exempt.
In 1864 he married Amanda S. Nichols,
sister of Rev. Starr Hoyt Nichols, for some
time pastor of the New England Church in
this city.
Without making any pretensions to liter¬
ary attainments, Mr. Bliss was a strong and
vigorous thinker, and became an earnest and
close student, especially of works of a philo¬
sophical tendency, of which he had a keen
appreciation. While ever ready to receive
new ideas, his earnestness of purpose made
him tenacious of his opinions when once
formed. His attachments were strong, and
he was ever devotedly loyal to his friends.
For the last two years he had been declining
in health from a disease hereditary in the
family, a disease from which his brother Syl¬
vester, formerly of Bliss & Sharp, died in
6
November last. About a week before his
death he had been taken to Lake Geneva for
better treatment of the disease.
In the death of Mr. Bliss the Chicago Lit¬
erary Club has lost an earnest member and a
devoted friend.
George Rowland,
Robert J. Hendricks,
Franklin MacVeagh,
Committee.
chicago literary club
IN MEMORIAM
William Emerson Strong
BORN AUGUST lo, 1840
DIED APRIL 10, 1891
At the regular meeting of the Chicago
Literary Club, held May i8, 1891,
the accompanying report of a Committee
appointed to prepare a tribute of respect
to the memory of our late fellow-member,
William Emerson Strong, was read and
adopted
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
Beautiful Florence, with its many
great and interesting memories, will
hereafter always possess to this Club still
another. It was within her classic walls, far
from his native land, that General William
Emerson Strong, an honored and beloved
member, recently breathed his last.
The message, borne beneath the waters of
the ocean, which announced his death in the
prime of life, was unexpected and startling,
and brought profound grief to a host of
friends. Yesterday he was with us, and like
his name, strong in all the qualities of vigor¬
ous manhood; to-day " dirges from the pine
and cypress " are sung over his grave. No
more shall we hear his hearty welcome, nor
feel his genial presence, nor look into his
honest face.
General Strong was a noble type of the
American citizen. Courage, manliness, pat¬
riotism, sincerity and friendship, are instinct¬
ively associated with his name. He was as
5
chivalrous as a Knight. Like so many who
have attained distinction, he was educated
under the beneficent influences of the coun¬
try, and the promise of his youth was fulfilled
as soon as he encountered the conflicts of
life.
His record as a soldier is gallant and cap¬
tivating. Enlisting in the army before he
was twenty-one, and on the same day as that
on which President Lincoln issued his first
call for volunteers, he served his country for
over five years with ardor and distinction,
and quickly rose to high rank. He was at
the first battle of Bull Run. Upon the sur¬
render of Vicksburg he was the first to raise
the flag of the Union over the dome of the
court house in that city. He served at Chat¬
tanooga and in the Atlanta campaign. He
was on the staff of General McPherson, com¬
manding the Army of the Tennessee, and
when that brave officer fell, bore his remains
from the field. As chief of staff to Major-
General Howard, he shared in the glories of
Sherman's march to the sea, and thence
along the coast to Washington. He was the
beau ideal of a soldier. On the march he
(j
was active and vigilant; by the camp-fire a
delightful companion with story and song;
on the battlefield like " a soldier of Na¬
varre."
In public and in private life, in business
and in the social circle, his aims were high
and pursued with enthusiasm, ability and
success. To few have been given so many
rare gifts of heart and mind. He won from
all, from the humblest as well as from the
highest, love, confidence and respect. He
enjoyed literature, art and music, and found
special pleasure in the meetings of this
Club, having on several occasions read in¬
teresting papers before it. He was of broad
culture, of true refinement, and a lover of na¬
ture. The lesson of his life should inspire us
all to like unselfishness, honorable ambition,
and devotion to friends and duty.
General Strong was a unique character,
and the vacancy caused by his death can¬
not be filled. He will be missed in many a
circle as well as in the public walks of life.
While we deeply mourn his death, while we
recount his virtues, and keep his memory
green, and while we kindly mention his name
as We shall continue so often to do in the
future, we must not forget his afflicted fam¬
ily. To them whose loss and sorrow are
irreparable, we desire to tender our heartfelt
and respectful sympathy.
'' Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of our better days ;
None knew thee but to love thee.
None named thee but to praise."
Huntington W. Jackson,
George K. Dauchy,
James Nevins Hyde,
Committee.
Chicago, May i8, 1891.
Chicago Literary Club
IN MEMORIAM
HOSMER A. JOHNSON
DIED FEBRUARY 26, 1891
At the regular meeting of the Chicago
Literary Club, held June 8, 1891, the
accompanying report of a Committee ap¬
pointed to prepare a tribute of respect to
the memory of our late fellow-member and
ex-president, Hosmer Allen Johnson, was
read and adopted.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
The Chicago Literary Club in these few
words records the death of Hosmer
Allen Johnson. The society having been
organized for the purpose of finding a place
where professional men might meet each
oth«r in the name of all the themes of public
thought and in the name of a nearer friend¬
ship, Hosmer A. Johnson soon came in as
being a man whom none could know without
passing quickly from acquaintance to admi¬
ration. Our walls contained no nobler spirit.
His power and refinement were equal. He
came in the nineteenth century to fulfill a
rhapsody of the seventeenth.
" Oh could I flow like thee ! and make thy stream
My great example, as it is my theme !
Though deep yet clear ; though gentle yet not dull.
Strong without rage ; without overflowing full ! "
That sensibility and therefore delicacy
which helped make him great as a physician
made him excellent as a friend. He was
5
present here in these rooms only as an in¬
spiration. He never repelled, he knew how
only to attract. He had no space in his
heart for carrying an enmity. He would
have broken down under such a burden. He
possessed that power which could carry only
friendships. To him all science, all history,
all art, all nature, all religion were valuable
and beautiful. The books he read were re¬
viewed calmly and fearlessly in his own
mind and did not so much create him as
awaken him. In his readings he could add
and subtract like a mathematician. All the
varied scene around him added to his own
breadth. He loved that sincerity which
makes diverging thoughts the many lights
of many minds. He did not possess egotism
enough to make him isolated and narrow.
Deeply religious he would gladly have joined
in kind discourse with an atheist.
The only things Hosmer A. Johnson inher¬
ited at birth were a good mind, ill health,
and poverty. When a youth he engaged to
keep school three months when told that he
would live, perhaps, only one. But the end
of the quarter found him still in the world.
6
He was young when this State was young
and he was poor when all the West was the
favorite home of poverty. Would that his
heart could have been cheered in those dark
days by a vision of the success, love and
fame which were destined to fall to his lot in
far off time! The growth of the state, the
city and of the whole nation was no more
rapid than the unfolding of his personal
worth. He was not only the friend of each
meihber of this Society but he was a friend
of the world. Institutions of education, of
science, and of charity asked help from his
wisdom. He was always moving along in
the path of some excellence,—excellence in
his profession, or in science, or in morals, or
in the common relations of man to man.
Never holding to life with any sure tenure
our brother stood clothed with a certain phil¬
osophy which made him look with a calm
mental sweetness upon the going away from
this world. In the deeper forms of thought
he was self-adequate. When baffled at the
analysis of man he simply went nobly on¬
ward. We may repeat for his silent lips the
words of Matthew Arnold :
7
" Weary of myself and sick of asking
What am I, what I ought to be ?
At the ship's prow I stand. It bears me
Forward, forward o'er the starlit sea."
It is seldom so much goodness can go
away from our world in one dying breath.
When Hosmer Allen Johnson died he had
traveled sixty-eight years away from his cra¬
dle. It is with grief this brotherhood places
his name upon the roll of its dead.
David Swing,
Ezra B. McCagg,
Norman Williams,
Committee.
8
World-Wide Men
By DAVID SWING
WORLD-WIDE MEN
A TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF
DR. HOSMER ALLEN JOHNSON
IN
A SERMON
PREACHED AT CENTRAL MUSIC HALL,
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, SUNDAY, MARCH 8, 189I
BY
DAVID SWING
CHICAGO
1891
WORLD-WIDE MEN.
God so loved the v¡roT\á.—Jokn iii, i6.
No one of the sacred writers equaled St. John in per¬
sonal attachment to the word " world." That kos-
mos which delighted a Humboldt and all those great
students who followed him had once delighted one of the
twelve apostles; but John differed from the Humboldts
by thinking chiefly of the planet as full of aims and truths
and experiences of humanity. John's studies were more
spiritual, but they were broad as all time and space. He
lived in the middle part of that period of thought called
the Alexandrian Age. The city of Alexandria was so lo¬
cated and was so popular as a neutral ground that into it
poured pagan, Greek, and at last the Hebrew ideas, and
the chief aim of the local philosophers was to harmonize
many systems into one central truth. When the Christian
teachings came, they too were thrown into the furnace to
be melted into the body of the precious mass. Christ was
only a new Plato—a Plato made perfect, and the inspired
writers were only higher forms of the old oracles and
sibyls. This friendship of pagan and Greek and Hebrew
sprang up two hundred years before our era began and
moved three or four hundred years into it. It included
many such men as Galen, the great physician, Euclid, the
geometer, and Ptolemy, the geographer; and among re-
3
ligious thinkers Clement, a pagan Christian, and Origen,
the Christian universalist. Here were the mathematician,
the doctor, the semi-Christian theologian and the Chris¬
tian unionist, all studying, enjoying and loving the vast
scene of the world. These were the full-grown sons of
that era which had colored St. John in the first century.
In the first or second century of our era one might have
picked out a group of a hundred scholars who could have
formed on the coast of the Mediterranean a parallel to
our own Concord summer school of philosophy. The
faith held was held in peace, and the pursuit of truth was
not a matter of life and death, but chiefly a high pleasure.
Only a few names have survived the wreck of years. The
St. John inside the New Testament had many brothers
upon the outside. In the fourth gospel the word " kos-
mos" rises up on each page to remind us that there were
broad students before our Newton and our Humboldt—
broad in their spirit and charity, if not in their informa¬
tion. They attempted to see and love and study all the
human family, and must not be reproached if they imag¬
ined the nations to be all grouped around the Mediterra¬
nean Sea. As Alexander conquered the earth and wished
it were larger, so the Alexandrine philosophy rambled
around among a few temples and porches and called their
ideas the new wisdom of the race.
Wherever a kosmos student is found he is always de¬
lightful. The small in the mind and heart is choked to
death by the luxuriance of the great. Weeds do not
grow well in the woods ; the trees are too great for them.
The great oaks catch all the sunshine, all the showers, all
the fresh air, all the invigorating lightning. The little
weeds far below are so smothered and depressed that
4
they feel compelled to move away and set up, in some
field or fence corner, their struggle for existence. Thus
when hearts have studied for half a lifetime the entire
circle of fact and being, all unimportant notions die of neg¬
lect and certain great oaks stand up instead to intercept
all the showers and all the sunbeams. The persons are
fair to look upon, because our minds are all so made that
they love to see great things. The educated mind will
make a long journey to see the ocean. The wise man
said : " A pleasant thing it is for the eyes to see the sun."
He did not mean pleasant to look at its blazing face, but
to see it illumining and beautifying field upon field, moun¬
tains, lakes, hills, transforming light into splendor. The
beauty is to be found entirely in the immensity of the
outpouring. The vastness of the column of light is a part
of the sun's glory.
A pleasant thing it is, therefore, to look upon a broad
great mind. To be with it is to feel as though the great
sun were up, or to feel as though one were strolling along
the shore of the sea ; all little ills and imperfections are
forgotten. One seems to be a citizen of the whole earth,
and the earth to have come from God ; our religion seems
wide as the world ; our love a great sentiment, reaching
northward and southward to the poles ; our thoughts are
persuaded to become more immense, and as gentle as
large.
If St. John's period could produce a few of these minds,
they should abound in our century, because a more uni¬
versal education has come, and with this mental power a
more perfect liberty. That select group which adorned
the Alexandrian years should be in our day an innumer¬
able army. And doubtless the present world contains a
5
multitude of men as delicately poised as any of the St.
Johns of the past. If he was made by the surrounding
greatness of his world, the greater scene of the present
ought to possess the ability to rear up still better minds
than those who lived and died when the race was young.
In the late centuries the surroundings of the mind have
rapidly become greater. Not only has the world grown
like the wheat in June, but the art of printing has made
each soul to be a spectator of the entire scene. There are
greater contents in the present, and the art of printing
spreads out these contents in the sight of all. Nothing is
hidden. Our youth can see at once the armies of Caesar
and Napoleon and Washington, and can compare the
motives which were under each flag. They can see all
the thrones and republics which have come and gone ;
they can see all the paths of honor and dishonor which
reach across the great fields of action ; they can see the
result of all good and bad practices, and can see the vota¬
ries of a hundred religions, and can compare that of Jesus
with all the other forms of faith and with all other images
of God. Out of the study of these greater contents of
the world greater minds should issue and in greater num¬
bers. There is little doubt that this larger and better
multitude is here upon earth. They are partially con¬
cealed by the presence of the awful tramping and jostling
of twelve hundred millions, but all must feel convinced
that they are here, an immense and brilliant company
compared with any group which could have been assem¬
bled in the days of Jesus of Nazareth.
Not many days since, when a houseful of near friends
assembled to read a burial service over the dead form of
Dr. Hosmer A. Johnson, many whispered to each other,
6
"We shall not soon see his like again!" "What an
exception ! " " What a glorious man ! "
It is true, indeed, that one would search in vain for an
exact fac-simile of that mind and soul, for God is so infinite
a Creator that He never repeats a face, or a heart, or a
flower, or a leaf. Each company of sunset clouds disperses
never to assemble again ; the rose that scatters its leaves
will never come again. The Germans thought truly when
they spoke of "Jean Paul, the Only," but fortunately it is
true that other sunset clouds come in beauty, other roses
grow, and other noble mortals keep coming up to hold
new places in a new day and a new year. We ought to
be glad that God permits no exact copies or duplicates,
for such a law gives to each living and dying friend a
character, a fame, a memory all his own. A military
figure like General Sherman possesses an eternal monopoly
of itself ; a man like Dr. Johnson takes away with him
into immortality that beautiful something called himself.
It will never be seen again by any of us who saw the
vision once. He, too, was " The Only."
But we must possess faith enough in the greatness of
God's plans to compel us to rest in the feeling that the
world is producing other characters like those we are com¬
mitting to the dust. No friendship must ever permit a
grave to conceal the world. No personal grief must ever
be thought the grief of the human race. The race laughs
while you weep, because by its laughter and joyousness it
must cheer a new generation into action. While one
heart may need a dirge the vast army needs the music of
a march, for something must inspire it to battle for the
new true and new good. The dirge is for one heart, the
march is for the million.
The living would be broken-hearted over the ravages
death is making in society were it not for the reasonable
thought that the times which elaborated the souls which
were dear to our city and generation are at work at other
minds to be employed in the workshop of the morrow.
Time cannot make amends to us all, but it can make
amends to the world. If the study of the whole world
takes man away from himself in affliction, principles and
conduct, it should take him away from his griefs. He
must see the greater humanity beyond his own tears. Dr.
Johnson may well stand as an emblazonment of many
lessons for modern eyes to read. He ought to declare to
the young that a wise life is not difficult. Its yoke is easy,
its burden is light. Its paths come nearest of any to being
" ways of pleasantness and peace." He points out the
way of eclecticism as being the only safe one through
such a free and almost tumultuous age. When young,
he made full use of all his intellect. He must have been
thankful for such an outfit direct from the Almighty. By
it he could judge and select. Met by ill health in a most
alarming form, he almost lifted himself out of the grave
by the severe wisdom of his daily living. Death seems to
have followed him for many years, but could not find the
young mind off its guard. Poverty combined with
disease, but the will-power and the judgment so managed
the defense that both of these old-time enemies of our
race had to give up the campaign, and seek for less
watchful victims.
Mental philosophers have taught us that the human
mind possesses three faculties—the reasoning power, the
will, and the affections. The rèasoning power is to gather
up the truth, laws, and facts; the will is to compel man to
8
take the action the facts call for; the affections are to love
or hate the facts of the case and the will as acting under
the facts. It is a most marvelous trinity. The reasoning
or the understanding faculty learns about the ocean, the
will resolves to go and see it, the affections love the splen¬
did spectacle. The understanding measures honesty, the
will pursues it, the affections enjoy it. According to his¬
tory a large majority of human beings have used only one
or two of these departments of the human soul. The
wills of many have been powerless to secure any obedience
of the understanding, and the most of affection has been
lavished upon objects which reason never for a moment
approved. In the intemperate man the understanding
and will are both powerless, and the life is shaped by the
affections alone. The dram is loved, therefore it is drunk.
All is gone except the appetite. In some souls the un¬
derstanding is large, the will powerful, but the feelings are
cold toward noble objects. The heart cares little for
nature, or art, or man, country or God. These persons
may possess an iron will, but it is only the obstinacy of an
animal, the immobility of a savage. When the under¬
standing, the will and the affections are all great, each in
its place, there the noble manhood is seen. The under¬
standing perceives the world, the will acts within the vast
surroundings, the affections take it up as the mother picks
up her child to draw it near her heart. No three graces
ever moved hand in hand with more of beauty than be¬
longs to this trinity of the mind. As sunshine, earth and
the rain meet in plants and urge them forward to a sweet
blossoming, thus these three powers lead man on from
conquest to conquest, and from joy to joy. In a Wash¬
ington the understanding measured liberty and a republic,
9
the will led to a never-resting action of seven years, the
affections loved the young nation with a deep attachment.
The same threefold tie bound Linnaeus to the world of
plants, and John and Paul to the great kingdom of piety.
There can be no manhood where anyone of these three
powers lies in weakness or neglect, for that life is a wreck
whose heart loves contrary to wisdom, and where the will
performs deeds which the intelligence forbids. All who
knew this lost friend will carry forever the memory of one
whose learning, will power and love power were in full ac¬
tion and in perfect harmony. No three strings of a harp
were ever in richer accord.
Often with great scholarship come a coldness of nature
and a weakness of will. When the acquisition 'of truth
has been the dominant pursuit for many years the heart
often fails from disuse, and the will longs for nothing but
for more books to read, or sciences to master. Thus there
is a study which steals from one side of the soul while it is
adding to the other. A life of great acquisition is often
one of great loss. The addition is attended by a sad sub¬
traction. Our remembered citizen illustrates a life whose
knowledge did not eclipse the power of purpose, nor the
light of love. He lived in the whole world. His under¬
standing seized its truth, his will its duties, his heart all its
physical and moral beauty.
His name comes up to-day, not one as needing any
eulogy and as meriting the highest praise which affection
might utter. He requested that his funeral service should
be begun, contained, and ended in those words which
have become sacred beyond the limits of the Episcopal
Church. No eulogy is better than that which the public
carries around in its heart. His name recurs and often
10
will recur because it tells how possible and even how easy
it is in our age to lead a broad, noble, Christian and affec¬
tionate life. He reminds us of the poet's words:
" The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
God or nature did not wish us to be morose, narrow,
fault-finding, self-conceited and icy. No such outcome
was intended by the Creator of man. If man was made
in the divine image, he was made to pass through great
seasons of sunshine and bloom, longer than the blossom¬
ing days of the lily or the chattering days of the sparrow,
for he was to be better than many sparrows. In the long
sweep of threescore and ten years there were to be but
few days of illness, few of weakness, leaving almost all
the seventy summers to come in a divine beauty. It took
this man nearly seventy years to live his life ; it took him
only a few hours to die—a long, long sunshine, and only a
little cloud. And could he have spoken to the last, he
would have said that even the cloud of death was silvered
with immortality.
Human sciences were not to wear out the mind and
break the heart, but they were to be studied as sources of
happiness and gateways to utility. Hugh Miller hung
over the mysteries of geology, the traces of millions of
years and of extinct species, until his reason was shat¬
tered. Hugh Miller broke the vase which contained his
soul. Sitting down by the same problems of the earth.
Dr. Johnson extracted pleasure from every problem, and
smiled whenever infinity echoed back the question he
asked. He could, with the deepest thinkers, ask with the
Latin hymn, " How long art thou, eternity? " But he did
11
not grieve when the air sent back the same question to his
ear. He could say, not with Miller, but with Addison,
" Eternity, thou pleasing, dreadful thought ! " and could,
with Shelley, speak of " the white radiance of eternity."
The greater the theme the more was his mind cheered by
it. He loved the great side of every subject of reflection
or inquiry. He could find the spirit of worship in an
Indian's prayer just as he could note the first elements
of music in the monotonous song of these same savages.
As Cuvier, from a bone, could build up an extinct animal,
so from an imperfect detail this moralist could pass up¬
ward to find its ideal form and completeness. He was the
" golden medium " not of influence or idleness, but of the
most active research ; not an iconoclast, but a most reluc¬
tant enemy, a most willing friend. In his own profession
he was as broad as he was in religion. It is easy to be
broad in the profession of some other persons. A musi¬
cian can perceive that there ought to be charity among
painters. It is easy for politicians to feel that all clergy¬
men of different denominations should care nothing about
intellectual differences, friendship being the most charm¬
ing thing upon earth ; but it is only a rare intellect that
can be kind and just within the field of its own lifelong
pursuit. Here was a mind which could group the two or
three dominant schools of medicine into one great and
earnest inquiry into the causes and quality and cure of
disease. He respected all scholarship and earnestness,
and loved to follow along whithersoever reason led. He
revealed few prejudices in his own arena of practice.
Studious and sincere minds were all parts of the one
" kosmos," as the separate kinds of trees are parts of the
one great forest.
12
It is often said of such public men that they belong to
a noble classic past and are becoming an extinct species.
They are often called in high compliment, " Gentlemen
of the old school." But the colleges, the books, the art,
the pure literature, the nobler religion of our day should
not proclaim a sinking manhood. Rather should they
empty the meaning out of such compliments. It is much
more probable that this citizen was a gentleman of some
new school which is to become plainly visible in the new
century. He is not a memory, but a dream. He was purer
in language, in life, in thought more learned, more toler¬
ant, rrtore philosophic and poetic than the far-off men of
our continent. He was so simple in his costume, so free
from despotic individualism, so quick to enthrone love
above authority that he must stand not so much a history
as a prophecy. One glory and utility in this man consists
in his thus showing whither science, art, social life, and
religion are pointing. They are not pointing down, but
up. He ought to be reckoned by all our young people as
the first fruits of an age whose trees and branches will
bend under a yield richer than any that have ripened in
the past autumns of our race. Such breadth, such learn¬
ing, such friendship, such purity, such Christianity ought
to seem the first flowers of a new spring.
Intolerance toward another comes from over-rating
one's-self. A great age destroys intolerance because it
destroys egotism. The entire world was so mirrored and
retained in this heart that he could not sweep across it
like a Cassar, he could walk on its shore only like a New¬
ton. He did not wish to be the world, but only to live in
it. It seemed a good place in which to study and act and
love. It was full of great images, those of science, those
13
of manhood, womanhood, childhood, those of a God and
a Christ and a second existence. As in old galleries of
art the marble floors are most worn in front of the greatest
pictures, because there for hundreds of years the most
feet have paused or have moved to and fro in seeking
different lights and shadows, have come in the morning
and at noon, so where the themes of thought were noblest
this man wore most of the marble floor of his three score
years. Once as a group of friends came into the city from
a lake seventy miles away, on whose shore they had left
in a flower-covered grave the form of an esteemed friend,
the question of a second life came up, and this eloquent
talker set forth in so many lights the probability of a
heaven that the fields, the fruits, the harvests along the
railway seemed to be the most positive evidence of a God
and of a man's immortal life in his Creator. His great
argument was that God could not willingly permit his
children to die.
There are themes of conversation which are so great
that, after they advance a little way, they emblazon their
own evidence. Often when some pensive music sounds,
the listening heart becomes transfigured and sees all the
world in a higher light, and revels for the moment in a
new empire full of beauty and righteousness. But music
is only one of the languages of the soul. There is a con¬
versation so deep, so brotherly, so humble and so thrilling
that it transfigures the talking group and makes the lips
say: "It is good to be here." Let us build tabernacles
here and not go back to the noisy streets. Life is better
up in this height.
Such a character as the one most of us now recall casts
light upon the future more than upon the past. It may
14
■well tell all young souls what beautiful gateways are open
before them—what paths of beauty and greatness are in
waiting for each foot. The door to vast wealth is not
open to all, because the kind of civilization which gives a
hundred millions to one must allow only smaller sums to
the many, but the door to wealth is not a great gateway.
It is not a gate of pearl. It is not the portal through which
the procession of mind with its silken banners and angelic
music has ever marched. It is not an arch of triumph.
The greatest avenues nature has in love left open to all.
This human life is full of latent powers and beauties.
The past has not done justice to the earth. It contains a
greater professional life than the learned doctors, lawyers
and preachers have enticed out of it ; it contains more
grandeur and charms than woman has extracted from its
hours ; it contains a better youth than our children have
found in its streets ; it contains a better socialism than has
yet been expressed in our laws; it contains a better
Christianity than any of those forms which lie between
Christ and our day. When we see noble souls, made
broad, kind, pure and profoundly religious by our age, go
down into death in a moral triumph like a sun setting in
summer, drawing after it a whole horizon full of impress¬
ive hues, may the vision only tell us of the greatness oi
that God who has made His children capable of living
and dying in such spiritual colorings and tell us to pass
from such a magnificence of the citizens of this world to
the vision of a greater morning and day in some still
greater world. There is no probability that God would
make a small earth to be occupied by small minds and
small spirits. The world is in potency full of God's glory
and the parallel glory of man.
15
Chicago Literary Club
IN MEMORIAM
Thomas Foster Wíthrow
DIED FEBRUARY 3, 1893
the regular meeting of the Chicago
Literary Club, held February 20, 1893,
the accompanying report of a Committee
appointed to prepare a tribute of respect
to the memory of our late fellow-member,
Thomas Foster Withrow, was read and
adopted.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
IT has become our sad duty to transfer to
the lengthening roil of the deceased mem¬
bers of this Club, the honored name of our
late companion,-Thomas Foster Withrow.
In doing so it is fitting that we should, as a
tribute to his memory, commit to our records
a brief memorial of his life, and of the high
regard for his ability and character we enter¬
tained while he remained among us.
Mr. Withrow was born in the State of Vir¬
ginia, on March 6th, A. D. 1833. In early
childhood his father removed to Mt. Vernon,
Ohio. At sixteen years of age he was teach¬
ing school for his own support and contribut¬
ing to that of his widowed mother. At
twenty-one, he was editor of a newspaper in
Mt. Vernon, leading the thought of the
people of his neighborhood, and showing his
sturdy love of liberty for others as well as
for himself, by faithful services as conductor
on the underground railroad. In 1855 he
was engaged in editorial work on a news¬
paper in Janesville, Wisconsin. In 1856 or
early in 1857, he was a student of law in the
office of Hon. Daniel Miller in Fort Madison,
Lee County, Iowa. In 1857 Ralph P. Lowe,
s
of that county, was elected Governor of the
State of Iowa, and upon entering upon the
duties of his office chose Mr. Withrow to be
his private secretary. In that year he becamè
a resident of Des Moines, the capital of the
State, then a small frontier town a hundred
miles beyond the terminus of any railroad of
the State. In connection with his duties as
private secretary of the Governor, he began
the general practice of the law. In i860 Mr.
Withrow was Reporter of the decisions of
the Supreme Court of the State, a position
which he held until 1867, discharging its
duties to the great satisfaction of the court
and bar of the State. He edited and pub¬
lished thirteen volumes of reports, numbered
from the ninth to the twenty-first volumes of
Iowa reports, both inclusive.
In 1866 he was appointed local Attorney
of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Rail¬
road Company, and had much to do with the
legal proceedings by which the old Missis¬
sippi and Missouri Railroad was sold and be¬
came a part of the line of the Chicago, Rock
Island and Pacific. From the time of this
appointment Mr. Withrow devoted himself
6
almost entirely to the study and practice
of corporation law. In 1872 he edited the
first volume of American Corporation Cases,
and afterwards edited three other volumes—
the latter published in 1881—making four
volumes of that series, which appeared as
the result of his labor and under his name.
In 1873 he was appointed general solicitor of
the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad
Company, and removed to Chicago. For
twenty years since then the threads of his
professional life have been interwoven in
all the legal complications of the affairs of
that great company. He died at his home
in the City of Chicago, on February 3rd, A. D.
1893.
The professional career of Mr. Withrow,
from i866 until his death, was almost entirely
devoted to the solution of the complicated
legal problems which concerned the Com¬
pany whose counsellor he was during all
that time. Although a steadfast Republican
in politics, he neither sought, nor would ac¬
cept political position or office, except that
in 1863 he became chairman of the State
Republican Central Committee, and as such
7
conducted the political campaign of that
year with his accustomed zeal and ability ;
and, also, after his removal to Chicago, serv¬
ing as one of the Board of Commissioners
for Lincoln Park. He was unflinchingly
faithful to the great interests entrusted to
his care. To their protection and advocacy
he gave his time and strength. The burdens
and cares of the great trust became in time
heavier than even his strength could longer
support, and he passed to his rest at a pe¬
riod of life, when but for them, he would in
all probability have remained in the full vig¬
or of his manhood and the highest exercise
of all his mental and physical powers.
He was an earnest student of the learning
of his profession, and was deeply imbued
with the fundamental principles of law and
constitutional liberty. His disciplined mind,
unquestioned honesty of purpose, hatred of
wrong, and industry that knew no rest, would
have placed him in the highest rank of any
department of his profession he might have
chosen. Mr. Withrow was more than an
eminent lawyer. He was a man of wide and
varied reading in the literature of his lan-
8
guage, and an earnest thinker upon all the
practical scientific and philosophic ques¬
tions of the day, which concerned the hap¬
piness and advancement of his fellow-men.
He was an ardent lover of nature, and in
communion with her silent voices sought
almost his only rest from the tireless indus¬
try of his life.
His nature was kind, noble and generous,
always in sympathy with the poor and
afflicted. His ready hand was continually
extended where help was needed, and many
a young and struggling member of his own
profession has felt the spur of his aid and
encouragement when despondency was most
threatening.
The life of such a man is an inspiration
and a blessing in his generation, and his good
influences will long survive his decease.
Joseph B. Leake,
Frank Gilbert,
William Eliot Furness,
Committee.
Chicago literary Club
m
IN MEMORIAM
GEORGE HOWLAND
DIED OCTOBER 22, 1892
At the regular meeting of the Chicago
* Literary Club, held October i6, 1893,
the accompanying report of a Committee
appointed to prepare a tribute of respect to
the memory of our late fellow-member and
ex-president, George Howland, was read
and adopted.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
Perhaps no member of the Literary
Club more appreciated its purposes and
privileges, and more identified himself with
all its interests, than did our lamented friend
George Rowland. He was one of the
founders of the Club, and for nearly twenty
years was the member most constant in at¬
tendance at its meetings, and ever ready to
participate in the literary exercises. He had
the affectionate regard of all the members
who were drawn to him by his refined and
gentle nature, his charming social qualities,
and his wide and generous scholarship. The
Club bestowed on him its highest office. He
was a man of rare accomplishments; and, by
his life-work as educator, he secured a local
and national reputation which reflects honor
upon his associates in the Club he loved
so well, and with which he was so closely
identified.
George Rowland was born in Conway,
Franklin County, Massachusetts, July 30,
1824. His father, a mechanic and farmer in
5
moderate circumstances, was a lineal de¬
scendant of John Howland, a Pilgrim, who
came over to Plymouth in the Mayflower,
in 1620 ; and his mother was from the same
stock of Pilgrim ancestry. Until he was
twenty years of age he lived on his father's
farm and had only such opportunities of edu¬
cation as the country free schools afforded.
Pie then went to Williston Academy, in East-
hampton, to fit for college. PPe entered Am¬
herst College in 1846, and, graduating in
1850, delivered the salutatory address at
commencement. For two years he taught
in several schools in Massachusetts, and was
then appointed tutor at Amherst, where he
taught languages for three years. He then
entered the law office of Beach and Bond in
Springfield, Massachusetts, where he re¬
mained until the close of the year 1857.
Coming to Chicago, he was, in January, 1858,
appointed assistant in the Chicago High
School, under Mr. Charles A. Dupee, our
associate member, who was then the Prin¬
cipal. Mr. Dupee resigned in i86o to enter
upon the practice of law, and Mr. Howland
was elected to fill the vacant position. He
6
here entered upon his larger and splendid
career as Principal, by introducing methods
which were as novel as they were successful,
and their adoption constituted a new era in
the history of education in Chicago. His
methods were the basis of a system now uni¬
versally approved which is often called the
"New Education," and which some of his
contemporaries have claimed the credit of
introducing. He governed by no code of
arbitrary rules, but by reason, justice, the
law of love and of mutual respect. When
he began teaching in Chicago the schools
were conducted under the old régime of force
and terror which was abhorrent to his kindly
nature in which there was no trace of the
technical disciplinarian and martinet. He
regarded his pupils as personal friends whom
he was helping to educate ; as reasonable
and emotional beings who could better be
controlled and taught through their intel¬
lectual and sympathetic natures than by fear
and force.
His theory of education was not to cram
his pupils with information and prepare them
to passa brilliant examination ; but he sought
7
to develop their observing and reflective fac¬
ulties, that they might acquire the informa¬
tion for themselves and become self-reliant.
When a question was put to him by a pupil,
he became himself the questioner, and sug¬
gested a train of thought or reasoning which
enabled the pupil to answer his own question.
In intercourse with his classes his constant
practice was to draw them out, to inspire in
them a love of original investigation ; or, in
other words, to train their intellects, rather
than burden their memories with facts.
There are thousands of men in business
and professional life who attribute their suc¬
cess to his humane, stimulating and unique
methods of discipline and instruction. He so
impressed them with his own individuality
that they came to appreciate what a true edu¬
cation is, and to form habits of study which
will go with them through life. No high-
school teacher was ever more admired and
loved by his pupils than was our gentle friend
who has passed away from our sight.
For twenty years Mr. Rowland filled with
eminent success the position of Principal of
the Chicago High School ; and if his career
8
had stopped here, no one in the profession
would have outranked him as a teacher. A
more responsible station, however, demanded
his services. In August, 1880, he was by a
nearly unanimous vote of the Chicago Board
of Education elected Superintendent of the
city schools. He had not sought the place,
but the place had sought him. With some
reluctance and timidity he accepted the posi¬
tion^ and during the eleven years he held it,
he showed himself possessed of an educa¬
tional and administrative ability of the high¬
est order. One who was in most intimate
relations with him in his work, says of him :
" Between Thomas Arnold and George
Rowland there were many points of resem¬
blance—the same enthusiasm, the same high
standards, and the same power over boys.
But Arnold was a teacher pure and simple.
Mr. Rowland's sphere was wider. It was as
a teacher of teachers that his characteristic
genius was best displayed. When he began
his duties as Superintendent the public school
system was in a chaotic state. Many reforms
had been begun, but the corps of teachers
was inharmonious; many were not in sympa-
9
thy with reform, some were too timid, some
too radical, many recalcitrant, more were
impatient and fearful of results. They needed
a discreet and firm director, a kindly and
courageous chief to bring all these elements
into harmony with a thorough and conserva¬
tive spirit of reform. This was Mr. Rowland's
opportunity. Never overbearing, yet always
resolute; never in haste, yet ever progressive;
appealing now to their reason, and now to
their esprit du corps, he fused the inharmo¬
nious mass into a symmetrical whole, and
surrounded himself with a body of teachers
in sympathy with his ideas. They absorbed
his kindly spirit and co-operated with him in
establishing that reign of reason, of affection
and companionship which is the prevailing
characteristic of the public schools of the
city. These results were accomplished not
by authority nor by stringent rules, but by
insinuation, by suggestion, by example. His
ideas were infused into his subordinates by
absorption, and not by injection. • He en¬
couraged individuality and special judgment
in his teachers, subordinated only to his own
grand ideas. He was impatient of martinets
10
who demanded minute instructions and special
rules; and hence he was unappreciated and
misjudged by narrow-minded teachers who
could only act by rule and under special in¬
structions. To indiscreet and importunate
demands for the appointment of teachers,
made by political members of the Board of
Education, he opposed a barrier of courteous
inertia, which avoided the giving of offense
and^averted injury to the schools. To the
advice of new members who regarded them¬
selves as missionaries of reform, he applied
with courtesy the same principle of masterly
inactivity.
" It was a public misfortune that he had so
little ambition for a professional reputation.
Had his self-assertion been equal to his
merit, he would have ranked, in the annals
of education with Pestalozzi, Froebel, and
Horace Mann. Retiring, and reticent in the
presence of those who loved to talk, he was
content to modestly perform his public duties
and exert his influence on those in his imme¬
diate sphere."
The editor of a leading educational jour¬
nal in a distant city, writes as follows :
II
" George Howland was easily the leading
City Superintendent of Schools in this coun¬
try. No other superintendent ever saw his
work so enlarge upon his hands. Besides
the abnormal and unparalelled growth of the
Chicago Schools, the schools of half a score
of large suburban towns were suddenly
merged in his overgrown system. While
the process of absorbing this large and
heterogeneous accretion was going on, he
succeeded, by his wisdom and administrative
ability, in so unifying and toning up the
details of school-room work, that no city
from the Atlantic to the Pacific had more
modern, uniform and superior methods of
instruction. It has been a wonder to all
special students of school work who were
conversant with the facts, how this unifica¬
tion of methods and high grade of work
could have been reached so quietly and with
so little friction. A partial explanation may
be found in the constant practice of his,
which, in 1886, he expressed by the motto :
' Make the good contagious.' His annual
address to the principals and teachers of the
schools was a feature of his work which no
12
other superintendent followed. Each ad¬
dress was an educational classic ; and in
1889, they were, under the title of 'Practical
Hints for the Teachers of Public Schools,'
published by the Appletons, in New York, in
their 'International Education Series.' It is
the most valuable and practical volume for
teachers that has come from the pen of an
American educator. His Annual Reports
haye been more sought for by teachers than
those of any other city superintendent in the
country."
One of Mr. Howland's associates in educa¬
tional work, who was asked to state briefly
the secret of his success, replies, in substance,
as follows : " Mr. Howland's methods were
peculiarly his own, and were not the conven¬
tional rules of the schools. In his High
School experience he was fortunate in having
for his assistants men of enthusiasm and high
culture, and who had implicit confidence in
his views and methods, which, although never
put in writing, became by precept and custom
the common law of the school. The new
pupil soon observed that the law of love,
justice, and mutual respect had taken the
13
place of the old law of force and fear ; that
school life was no longer the dismal drudgery
of cramming for examination, but was the
delightful exercise of learning how to ob¬
serve, how to think, how to act, how to
acquire a fondness for literature and an ele¬
vated and pure critical taste, and how to get
full possession of all the faculties of the mind
and activities of the body. School life was
no longer a burden ; the pupils had a love of
and thirst for knowledge, and came in time
to appreciate the fact that all complete men
are self-made men. Such broad views of
' education Mr. Rowland carried into his larger
field of labor, and the public schools of Chi¬
cago have received the benefit of them."
Mr. Rowland was a well-bred scholar, and
a facile writer. With classical literature
and especially Latin authors, he was very
familiar. Re had a poetical taste and took
pleasure in writing verses, a small volume of
which, entitled " Little Voices," he printed
in 1878, and a second edition in 1891. A
" Grammar of the English Language " he
issued in 1867, and a new edition he had in
preparation at the time of his death. Ris
14
"Practical Hints on Teaching," 1889, has
already been mentioned. His most impor¬
tant work, " A Translation of the .¿îineid into
English Hexameters," in two volumes, 1880-
84, was published by the Appletons, and has
been greatly admired as the most successful
of many attempts to give a poetical and lit¬
eral rendering of the text of Virgil in English
hexameters. In 1881 he was elected a mem-
bef of the Illinois State Board of Education,
and was President of the same in 1883. He
was a Trustee of Amherst College from 1879
to 1888. On his resignation as Superinten¬
dent of the Public Schools of Chicago, Au¬
gust 26,1891, in consequence of his ill health,
a long leave of absence was offered him,which
he preferred not to accept, as he needed a
permanent rest. When his decision was re¬
ceived, the feelings of regret entertained by
the Board of Education, as well as by the
public at large, were expressed by the Presi¬
dent of the Board, who said ; " I am, indeed,
sorry for the schools. I greatly regret that
Mr. Howland has had to resign ; but know¬
ing, as I do, that his health demands it, I
cannot but approve the wisdom of his course.
15
His resignation must be regretfully accepted.
He has done wonders for the schools of Chi¬
cago. He has made them what they are.
Our public school system is the product of
his labors." The Board has since named in
honor of him one of the new schools, " The
George Howland School."
On retiring from the Chicago schools, Mr.
Howland made a trip to Europe, and return¬
ing visited the old farm in Conway, Massa¬
chusetts, where he was born. Later he came
back to Chicago, and died suddenly, of heart
disease, October 22, 1892.
William F. Poole,
Daniel L. Shorey,
Edward G. Mason,
Committee.
Chicago Literary Club
IN MEMORIAM
Charles Gilivian Smith
DIED JANUARY lo, 1894
At the regular meeting of the Chicago
Literary Club, held January 22, 1894,
the accompanying report of a Committee
appointed to prepare a tribute of respect to
the memory of our late fellow-member and
ex-president, Charles Oilman Smith, was
read and adopted.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
Dr. charles oilman smith was
born in Exeter, New Hampshire,
January 4, 1828 ; and died in Chicago,
January 10, 1894.
In taking the measure of a man it is help¬
ful to know what influences, remote and
near, have moulded his character. Theo-
philus Smith, the ñrst American ancestor of
Charles Oilman Smith, came over from Eng¬
land in 1643, and settled at Strawberry Bank,
which, ten years later, took the name of
Portsmouth, now one of the most charming
cities in New England. A year earlier.
Strawberry Bank and Dover came under the
jurisdiction of Massachusetts, under which
they remained for forty years, with all the
privileges of settlers in Massachusetts. The
year in which Theophilus Smith settled at
Strawberry Bank is memorable in American
history. In that year (May 19, 1643) the
first confederation of American Colonies was
formed. It was the type of all subsequent
confederations down to the adoption of the
National Constitution. In the confederation
5
of 1643 the national note was first sounded
in New England : "A consociation amongst
ourselves for mutual help and strength in all
future concernment, that as in nation and re¬
ligion, so in other respects we be and remain
one." The spirit that breathed in that docu¬
ment has never died out in New England.
It is the spirit under which the New England
men of that and all succeeding generations
have been formed. Theophilus Smith, him¬
self an educated man, and the progenitor
of a race of educated men, that year, at
Strawberry Bank, assumed the calling that
has secured to New England its greatest in-
fiuence and its pre-eminent distinction, that
of a teacher, a calling that was pursued for
several generations by other ancestors of
Dr. Smith. Seven years earlier Harvard
College was established. The Alma Mater
which in 1847 gave its degree to Charles
Oilman Smith had conferred a like degree
upon four of his ancestors. Dr. Smith was
a true son of New England. Its social, reli¬
gious and historical traditions, and its high
culture, running back two and a half cen¬
turies, in an unbroken line through teachers
6
and scholars to the foundation of Harvard
College, help us in no small degree to better
understand this beautiful and interesting
character.
It is no marvel that a man of such ante¬
cedents, training and character should have
been honored in this community, as Dr.
Smith was honored, the last forty years. Dr.
Smith entered his profession fully equipped.
H% not only had the training of Phillips'
Academy, Harvard College, Harvard Med¬
ical School, and the University of Pennsyl¬
vania, but his mind was also improved by
travel, and for forty years he never ceased to
be a student in the well-selected library at
his home. He was conservative in his prac¬
tice, and was not carried away by new theo¬
ries and new remedies until their value had
been sufficiently tested in medical practice ;
and then he was alert in applying what was
new and useful in the treatment of his
patients. As a practitioner, he had the tem¬
pered modesty characteristic of a man who
knows his own worth and respects the worth
of others. He had no need to push himself,
and he took no part in the wire-pulling poli-
7
tics of medical societies. It was no accident
that one with such life-long training, force of
character and gentleness of spirit should win
and hold the professional and social confi¬
dence, respect and affection of the people in
the city where his main work was done.
Nowhere was Dr. Smith held in higher
esteem than in this Club. He was one of its
founders. In 1877 he was elected a Vice-
President. His first essay was read on the
5th of March, 1877, on " The Physical Basis
of Character," and on several other occa¬
sions he conducted its literary exercises, and
he gave his inaugural address at our annual
reunion in 1884. At other annual reunions
he was selected as one of the speakers. That
compliment is conferred frequently only
upon those the Club delights to hear.
In such a community as this, burdens are
laid unceasingly upon every capable man of
interesting character. Time woúld fail to
mention a tithe of the burdens laid upon Dr.
Smith. He lectured in the Woman's Med¬
ical College. He was Consulting Physician
at the Women's and Children's Hospital and
the Presbyterian Hospital. He was one of
8
the Trustees for the Peck Home for the
Incurables. He was Examining Physician
for life insurance companies. There were
social demands upon him innumerable. And
he had a large professional clientage, enough
in itself to overtax his strength. The one
element of sadness in his interesting and use¬
ful life is that he was an overworked man.
But for that penalty for his fidelity and devo¬
tion to duty he might have been spared for
the enjoyment of a ripe old age, and for the
solace of those who loved him.
We may not enter into the sacred privacy
of the beautiful home where he received and
conferred so much joy. Dr. Smith was
married on the i6th of October, 1873, to
Harriet, youngest daughter of Erastus F.
Gaylord, of Cleveland, Ohio. After twenty
years in that happy home, with its generous
hospitality, surrounded by friends and among
his books, an ideal life has too soon ended.
Daniel L. Shorey,
Samuel S. Greeley,
Emilius C. Dudley,
Clarence A. Burley,
Committee.
in memoriaiw
William Frederick Poole
born december 24, 1821
Died March i, 1894
Chicago Literary Club
1894
HIS Memorial of our late fellow mem¬
ber and ex-president, William Fred¬
erick Poole, was read at the meeting of the
Club, on Monday evening. May 21, 1894, and
ordered printed and copies sent to the mem¬
bers of the Club.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
WILLIAM FREDERICK POOLE, LL.D.
R. WILLIAM FREDERICK POOLE
was born in Salem, Mass., on the 24th
day of December, 1821. He was of Puritan
ancestry, a descendant, in the eighth genera¬
tion, from John Poole, who emigrated from
England to Cambridge, Mass., in 1632, his
name being found (with those of Thomas
Dudley, Symon Bradstreet and five others)
among the first settlers of that place, then
called "Newtown." John Poole was granted
land in Reading and was probably the
wealthiest of the early settlers there. He
lived in what is now known as Wakefield, on
the site of the great rattan factory now there
located. His son. Captain Jonathan Poole,
captain of the Reading Military Company,
was distinguished in King Philip's Indian
War and was president of a council of war
in 1675-6. He was selectman, justice of the
peace and representative.
The father of William F. Poole was Ward
Poole (a descendant of Captain Jonathan
5
Poole of Reading), a wool merchant of Salem,
Mass., who resided in that part of Salem which
subsequently became part of Danvers, then
South Danvers, and finally Peabody. The
family homestead, in which William F. Poole
was born, still stands on Main Street in Pea-
body, not far from the boundary line of
Salem. The mother of William F. Poole
was Eliza Wilder, daughter of Abel Wilder
of Keene, N. H. William F. was the second
son of a family of six sons and one daughter.
He attended the common school of his native
town until twelve years of age, when he went
to Keene, N. H. Before leaving school he
had acquired a good knowledge of English
branches, and some of Latin and advanced
mathematics,—the latter acquired by study
outside of school hours. During the year
in which he remained in Keene his father
removed to a farm at Worcester, Mass., and
he there engaged for a year in the work of
farming.
When about seventeen years of age, his
mother, believing in his capacity for attain¬
ments of a high order, resolved that he should
receive a liberal education, and in the fall of
6
1839 he entered Leicester Academy for the
purpose of preparing for college Here he
was later an assistant teacher, and in 1842
he entered the freshman class at Yale College.
His studies were, however, interrupted dur¬
ing his first year from financial causes, and
he was obliged to leave college and engage
in teaching in order to secure the means to
continue his studies.
After three years spent in teaching he
returned to college, entering the sophomore
class in 1846, and graduating with honors in
1849. Among his classmates and life-long
friends were President Timothy Dwight of
Yale College, and President Franklin W. Fisk
of the Chicago Theological Seminary.
Dr. Poole was married in 1854 to Miss
Fanny M. Gleason, who survives him. His
son, William Frederick, was graduated at
Yale in the class of 1891.
In June, 1847, during the latter part of his
sophomore year, he accepted the position
of assistant librarian of the Society of
''Brothers-in-Unity," which had a library of
about ten thousand volumes. By this his life
profession was determined. Shortly there-
7
after he began the preparation of an index to
reviews and periodicals in the library to aid
the students in the preparation of their essays
and exercises. When he first entered the
library, and before the beginning of his work
on the index, the young librarian, after the
announcement of topics for essays, which was
made in chapel, was beset by the students
with requests for references to required
authorities, and he soon began the practice
of making out lists of references to all acces¬
sible articles relating to the topics given,
posting the same in the library as soon as
possible after the topics were announced.
This involved considerable labor, but it made
clear the value and utility of a general index
to the periodicals, the preparation of which
was then begun. Thus was laid, in a modest
way, the foundation for that monumental
work, "Poole's Index to Periodical Liter¬
ature." Thus, also, was shown at the begin¬
ning of his career one characteristic which
distinguished Dr. Poole throughout his life,
namely,—a limitless devotion and self sacri¬
fice in opening to others the sources of
knowledge and the riches of literature. The
8
index to the periodicals in the Society Library
proved of great value to the students, and
the desirability of printing it became obvi¬
ous, and by arrangement with George P.
Putnam, of New York, it was published in
octavo form, making a book of 154 pages.
In a short time the whole edition was sold
and another one was called for. The last
year of his college life, as well as the year
after his graduation, was largely given to the
preparation of the second edition of the
"Index," and it was printed in an octavo
volume of 531 pages in 1853.
It will thus be seen that in addition to the
work required in his classes, he did the
greater part of the work on the first and
second editions of the " Index " during the
three last years of his college life, and the
energy and enthusiasm which he put into his
work will be understood when it is stated that
he was graduated with honors, and that his
scholarship was recognized by his election to
the Phi Beta Kappa Society. It is said that
during the preparation of the first edition of
the " Index," he would frequently work
among the books in the library until an early
9
hour in the morning, and then, throwing him¬
self on a table, without undressing, he would
snatch a few hours of sleep.
In 1851 he entered the Boston Athenaeum
as Assistant Librarian, and in 1852 was ap¬
pointed Librarian of the Boston Mercantile
Library, where he remained for four years.
Here he prepared a catalogue of the library
on a new plan, and one which has since been
widely followed, and is known as the " Dic¬
tionary Catalogue," or "title-a-line" plan.
In this, as in all matters in life, he showed
that love for simple and direct methods which
distinguished him in his profession. In this
catalogue the authors' names, title and sub¬
jects were arranged in one alphabet, and each
entry occupied a single line only,—a plan the
value of which is obvious and has been gen¬
erally recognized. This catalogue was a
book of 322 pages, and covered about sixteen
thousand volumes, and was printed in 1854,
two years after he took charge of the library.
In 1856 he was elected Librarian of the
Boston Athenaeum, a position which he held
until January, 1869. Here, among associ¬
ations most conducive to literary effort, in
10
daily intercourse with the most brilliant and
cultivated minds of America, and in the full¬
est development of his powers, he accom¬
plished the principal part of the literary work
on which his fame as a writer and a historian
rests. He was, from his connection with
libraries, all his life in relations of intimacy
with the men and women famous in modern
American literature; but the period of his
librarianship of the Athenaeum was one rich
in literary production, and for the famous
group of literary celebrities the library was a
common and familiar meeting place. Artists,
authors, statesmen, journalists, and the cul¬
ture and wealth of New England sought con¬
stantly the stores of literary treasures found
in the library, and in the librarian was found
a key to the storehouse. The librarian sat
in an alcove surrounded by the books which
had formed President Washington's private
library; from the library windows could be
seen the homes of the Quincys and of Pres-
cott, the historian. Beyond the Old Granary
Burying Ground rose the spire of Park Street
Church; nearby were the State House, Boston
Common, and Ticknor & Fields' famous pub-
II
lishing house. Here he met and was in
familiar intercourse with men whose names
are famous in American literature: Long¬
fellow, Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, Ticknor,
Charles Francis Adams the elder, Francis
Parkman, Samuel Eliot, and James T. Field
were frequent visitors. These were the days
of the "Autocrat " and the " Professor." It
was the golden age of the "Atlantic Monthly,"
and its younger contributors, Henry James,
Jr., T. B. Aldrich, H. E. Scudder, W. D.
Howells, F. J. Stimpson and others fre¬
quented the library and often sought the aid
of the librarian. The coterie of writers for
the "North American Review" were fre¬
quently found at the library and welcomed
the librarian among them. The library was
a common meeting place of Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and his daughter,
Louisa M. Alcott, the Hoar Brothers, Judge
and Senator, and others of the Concord group.
At the long table in the library Hildreth
wrote most of his "History of the United
States;" and the younger Adamses, James
Schouler and Henry Cabot Lodge, as young
men, were then pursuing their historical
12
studies, and frequently sought the assistance
of the librarian.
The more important historical works of
Dr. Poole, published during this period of
his life, were: "The Popham Colony," a
discussion of its historical claims, with a Bib¬
liography of the subject, published in 1866;
a reprint of "The Wonder-Working Provi-
dehce of Zion's Saviour in New England,"
with an historical introduction by Dr. Poole,
published in 1867; "The Popham Colony,"
printed in the " North American Review,"
October, i868 ; "Anne Bradstreet, the Early
New England Poetess," in the " North Amer¬
ican Review," 1868; and "Cotton Mather
and Salem Witchcraft," in the " North Amer¬
ican Review" for April, 1869.
In January, 1869, Dr. Poole resigned from
the position of librarian of the Athenaeum and
became a professional expert for the organi¬
zation of libraries. Among those that he
had under his charge at this time were the
Bronson Library, at Waterbury, Conn.; the
Athenaeum, at St. Johnsbury, Vt.; the Naval
Academy Library, at Annapolis, Md.; and
the Public Libraries of Newton, Mass., East-
13
hampton, Mass., and Cincinnati, Ohio. His
connection with the Cincinnati Public Library,
as organizer and librarian, continued from
November, 1869, to January, 1874, and during
this time he selected the books for and put
into operation the Indianapolis Public Library.
The building for the Cincinnati Public Library
was begun a short time before he went to Cin¬
cinnati, and the building was occupied in 1870.
The library contained about twenty-two
thousand volumes at that time, and had
grown when he left it, in 1874, to about sixty
thousand volumes. When he assumed charge
of the library a new catalogue was begun,
and this was finished in 1871, making a book
of 656 pages. His work in the reorganiza¬
tion and development of this library, as well
as in the preparation of its magnificent cata¬
logue, was such as to command the respect
and admiration of all familiar with the facts.
It was while in Cincinnati that Dr. Poole's
attention was called to Dr. Manasseh Cutler
and his services in furthering the develop¬
ment and settlement of the Northwest Ter¬
ritory, and this led to the preparation of his
article entitled "The Ordinance of 1787 and
14
Dr. Manasseh Cutler as an Agent in its
Formation," which was published in the
" North American Review," for April, 1876.
On the 25th day of October, 1873, Dr.
Poole was elected librarian of the Chicago
Public Library. It requires trained skill of
a high degree to organize successfully a great
library. The Directors were fortunate at the
beginning in securing the services of the
most eminent librarian in the United States
to take charge of the library through the
first fifteen years of its organization.
During his connection with the Chicago
Public Library he entered into the undertak¬
ing of bringing down to date the " Index to
Periodical Literature," of which the first and
second editions had been largely prepared
while he was still a student in college. This
work was a stupendous one, owing to the
great mass of periodical literature which had
meanwhile been printed, and the magnitude
of the undertaking would have appalled a
man possessing less force of will than Dr.
Poole. He sought and obtained the co-oper¬
ation of the librarians of a number of Ameri¬
can and English libraries. Every article
IS
indexed was read through in order to deter¬
mine accurately the subject treated. In his
work on the " Index " he was assisted by Mr.
William I. Fletcher, of Amherst College, as as¬
sociate editor; but Dr. Poole himself examined
and corrected the proof sheets of every page
of the "Index." The "Index" was printed
in a royal octavo volume of 1469 pages, a
book equalling in size Webster's Unabridged
Dictionary, and one which now stands beside
the latter at the hand of every student or
scholar. The work of indexing was con¬
tinued to cover the contents of periodicals as
they appeared after the third edition of the
"Index" was printed, and in 1888 the first
"Five Year Supplement," of 496'{)ages, was
published by Dr. Poole. A second supple¬
ment, edited by Mr. William I. Fletcher, ap¬
peared in 1893.
In 1887 the bequest of Walter L. Newberry
for the founding of a great library in Chicago
became available, and in August of that
year Dr. Poole was called upon to undertake
the formation of the Newberry Library. The
bequest of Mr. Newberry afforded a founda¬
tion of the munificent sum of three million
l6
dollars, and Dr. Poole decided, with the con¬
sent of the trustees, that the library should
be primarily a scholar's reference library.
This plan was strictly adhered to during the
remainder of his incumbency, which ended
with his life, and the library under his man¬
agement soon rivalled the older libraries of
the country, and in some departments became
more complete than any other in America.
From the time of his earliest library work,
Dr. Poole was an earnest student of library
economy and administration, and as his life
covered practically the period in which the
occupation of librarian grew into a recognized
profession, the methods suggested and put
into practice by him have been generally
adopted and followed. He contributed many
papers on the subject of library economy,
and his writings on the subject of library
architecture are widely known. His paper
on the " Organization and Management of
Public Libraries " was printed by the govern¬
ment in the " Report on Public Libraries,"
issued by the Bureau of Education in 1876,
and one entitled " The Public Library of Our
Time," appeared in the " Library Journal "
17
in 1888. His plans are described and com¬
mended in the article on library construction
in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and have
been adopted in the new building for the
Newberry Library in Chicago.
In the promotion of associated work among
librarians, by which the cause of libraries has
been greatly assisted. Dr. Poole has taken a
prominent part. He was a member of the
first library conference, held in New York
in September, 1853. At this meeting the
"Jewett" rules for catalogueing libraries
were for the first time considered, and the
exchange of catalogues among libraries initi¬
ated. He was one of the founders of the
American Library Association, which was
organized at Philadelphia in 1876; was Vice-
President of the same 1876-84, and President
1885-87; and was one of the American repre¬
sentatives at the International Conference of
Librarians, held in London in October, 1877.
He was Vice-President of this conference, and
delivered an address which was received with
approval by the foreign press. He was also
President of the Western Library Association
from 1881 to 1884.
18
Dr. Poole's historical work began with his
paper on the " Popham Colony," which was
published in Boston in 1866. This paper
was a criticism, somewhat caustic in its char¬
acter, upon an address by Prof. J. W. Patter¬
son, delivered at Popham, Maine, in 1865, on
the occasion of the anniversary of its first
settlement. In a memorial volume published
in 1862, and in Dr. Patterson's address, claims
were made that the settlement of Maine by
the Popham Colony was earlier than that of
Massachusetts; and in his paper Dr. Poole
refuted the claims of the " Pophamites "
regarding the time of settlement, and the
character of the colonists, holding that the
latter were not of a kind to be proud of.
This paper led to an extended controversy,
in which the Rev. Edward Ballard, D. D.,
the author of the memorial volume, and Mr.
Frederick Kidder, took part. Dr. Poole's
final paper in the controversy was printed in
the "Boston Advertiser" of May 3r, 1866.
Two years later he published an article on
the same subject in the "North American
Review " for October, i868.
His researches and papers on the subject
«9
of Cotton Mather and witchcraft in Salem
were largely instrumental in giving him dis¬
tinction as an historical writer and critic.
His first paper on this subject was called out
by the appearance of the " Mather Papers "
in the collections of the Massachusetts His¬
torical Society, Volume VIII, Fourth Series.
This paper was printed under the title "The
Mather Papers; Cotton Mather and Salem
Witchcraft," at Boston in 1868. In 1831
Mr. Charles W. Upham had printed his lec¬
tures on Salem witchcraft, in which Cotton
Mather was charged with being the principal
instigator of the proceedings against those
accused of witchcraft. These charges had
been repeated in Quincy's " History of Har¬
vard University," in Peabody's "Life of
Cotton Mather," and by Mr. Bancroft and
other historical writers, and had been copied
into all of the popular and school histories.
He pointed out the evidence found in the
Cotton Mather papers as establishing a con¬
trary view, and vigorously defended Mather
and his fellow Puritans. Mr. Upham an¬
swered the paper and the discussion created
great interest among all students of New
ao
England history. James Russell Lowell,
then editor of the "North American Review,"
shortly after wrote to Dr. Poole, saying: "I
know very well that you have not said all
you know about witchcraft, and I want you
to write an article for the ' North American.' "
His second paper on the subject was printed
in the " North American Review " for April,
1869. The views expressed by him on this
subject have been generally accepted by later
historians. His vigorous defense of the char¬
acter of the Puritan leaders of the New Eng¬
land Colony, of whom Mr. Quincy has said,
" The guilt of the excesses and horrors con¬
sequent on that excitement rests, and ought
to rest, heavily upon the leading divines and
politicians of the Colony at that period," was
received with hearty approval, and the unerr¬
ing logic of these papers, with their clear,
incisive and brilliant style, established his
reputation as an historical writer. He made
a further contribution to the history of witch¬
craft in " The Witchcraft Delusion of 1692, by
Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, from an unpub¬
lished manuscript; with notes by William F.
Poole," which was published in the "New
71
England Historical and Genealogical Reg¬
ister" for October, 1870, and he prepared the
chapter on "Withcraft in Boston" for "Win-
sor's Memorial History of Boston," Volume II.
Another important historical paper pre¬
pared by him was the introduction of 139
pages to Johnson's "Wonder Working Provi¬
dence," which was reprinted in 1867. His
paper on "Anti-Slavery Opinions Before
1800," published at Cincinnati in 1872, con¬
tained the results of researches in an unex¬
plored field. His studies in Western history
resulted in the chapter entitled " The West,
1763-83," in "Winsor's Narrative and Criti¬
cal History of America," vol. vi, 1888, and a
paper entitled The Early Northwest ; the
President's Address, December 26, i888," in
the "Papers of the American Historical A.sso-
ciation,"vol. III. His article on the ordinance
of 1787 has attracted wide attention by rea¬
son of the light it throws on an important
historical question, namely, the origin of the
article in that ordinance by which slavery was
prohibited in the Northwestern Territory, and
the great States afterwards therein founded
remained free from the curse of slavery.
In 1874-5, at Chicago, he edited a literary
33
monthly called "The Owl." This was a pre¬
decessor of "The Dial," to which he was
a constant contributor.
Dr. Poole was an active member of the
American Historical Association, and he was
its President in 1887-88. He was also a
member of the American Antiquarian So¬
ciety, the New-England Historic Genealogi¬
cal Society, and the Essex Institute, all of
Massachusetts. He was a corresponding
member of the Historical Societies of Massa¬
chusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland,
Wisconsin and other States.
Dr. Poole was a member of this Club from
its beginning. He was influential in shaping
its original policy; and many of his best liter¬
ary productions were first announced in its
scheme of literary exercises. No member
has given to it more valuable contributions.
He was elected President in 1887.
His powers were mature, and his reputa¬
tion was established when he first came among
us, twenty years ago; and by his studious
scholarly habits, his reputation was increased
every remaining year of his life. His char¬
acter was of the Puritan type, tempered by
23
two hundred and fifty years of New England
civilization. He loved to commemorate the
virtues of his Puritan ancestors, to whose
memory he was as loyal as he was to his liv¬
ing friends; but his life was a better exempli¬
fication of Puritan virtues than anything ever
written about them.
He was a sincere, genuine man, whom
neither self-interest nor affection could swerve
from the line of perfect integrity. Writing
of him in " The Dial," William Morton Payne
says:
" The bibliographer and the historical student,
combined in William Frederick Poole, were known
to the world ; something better than these, the man
himself, was known to his friends. The brusque-
ness of his manner, at first, a little repellant to
those who came in contact with him, was soon seen
to be but the outward expression of a mental habit
of the rarest sincerity. And upon those who had
the privilege of his intimacy was made the impres¬
sion, dominant above all others, of his absolute
integrity, intellectual and moral. They realized
that here was a man who simply could not think one
thing and say another, or swerve by so much as a
finger's breadth from what he believed to be the
right course, were the matter in question great or
small. Such men are none too common in the
world, and when one of them leaves it, his place,
M
for those who have really known him, is not likely
to be filled again."
Dr. Poole was prééminent in his profession.
" In my opinion," says Mr. B. F. Stevens, of
London, " Dr. Poole was the most learned
and the most practical librarian in the United
States." In the service of two great libraries
he gave to Chicago the fruits of his ripe
experience. The value of his work in these
libraries cannot be overstated. Thirty-five
public libraries in Illinois, and many others
in the adjoining States, in the last twenty
years, have been helped by his advice, assist¬
ance and influence.
He was a great teacher. To all who ap¬
proached him, with serious literary purposes,
he gave information freely and in a spirit
that inspired others with his own enthusiasm
for books.
He was widely admired, at home and
abroad, for his exceptional scholarship and
knowledge. To be known as his friend, in
any of the great libraries of Europe, was the
best of introductions. If he was a man to be
admired for his attainments, still more was
he to be loved for his character, which was
formed for friendship. Impatient of shallow
25
and triñing natures, it was not easy for all to
approach him on familiar terms; but those
once admitted to his friendship, he held in a
life-long intimacy.
In this Club, to which he was devotedly
attached, he felt that he was among his
friends, to whom he gave without measure
and without reserve his entire confidence with
unfaltering loyalty.
His personality still seems to pervade this
place and all the places where he was best
known, so that one thinks of him, and will long
continue to think of him, as of a friend absent
on a journey. When death shall have extin¬
guished these personal memories and associa¬
tions, he will continue to be known, as he
rightfully expected finally to be known, by
the writings which he published. He con¬
structed while living the monument that will
best preserve his memory.
Daniel L. Shorev,
Edward G. Mason,
James L. High,
William Eliot Furness,
John G. Short all.
Committee.
36
Appendix
LIST OF WORKS BY
WILLIAM FREDERICK POOLE
AN ALPHABETICAL INDEX TO SUBJECTS
TREATED IN THE REVIEWS AND
^ OTHER PERIODICALS, to which no Indices
have been published. Prepared for the Library
of the Brothers-in-Unity, Yale College.
8»; pp. iv, 154. New York, George P. Put¬
nam, 1848.
AN INDEX TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE.
8»; pp. X, 521. New York, Charles B. Norton,
»853-
AN INDEX TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE.
Third edition, brought down to January, 1882,
with the assistance of William I. Fletcher, Assis¬
tant Librarian of the Watkinson Library, Hart¬
ford, Conn., and the co-operation of the American
Library Association and the Library Association
of the United Kingdom.
Royal 8«; pp. xxvii, 1442. Boston, James R.
Osgood & Co., 1882.
—THE SAME.
In two volumes, Royal 8». Boston, Houghton,
MifHin & Co.
29
POOLE'S INDEX TO PERIODICAL LIT-
ERATURE; THE FIRST SUPPLEMENT,
from January i, 1882, to January i, 1887, by
William Frederick Poole, LL.D., Librarian of
the Newberry Library, Chicago, and William 1.
Fletcher, A.M., Librarian of Amherst College.
Royal 8®; pp. xiii, 483. Boston, Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., 1888.
DICTIONARIES IN THE BOSTON MER-
CANTILE LIBRARY AND BOSTON
ATHEN.ffiUM.
8»; pp. 8. Springfield, Mass., G, & C. Mer-
riam, 1856.
WEBSTERIAN ORTHOGRAPHY; A Replv
to Dr. Noah Webster's Caluminators.
8®; pp. 23. Boston, Crocker and Brewster,
1857.
THE ORTHOGRAPHICAL HOBGOBLIN.
By Philorthos [W. F. Poole].
8®; pp. 14. Springfield, Mass., G. & C. Mer-
riam, 1859.
THE POPHAM COLONY: a discussion of
its Historical Claims, with a Bibliography
of the Subject.
Comprising:
i. The Last Popham Address, by William Fred¬
erick Poole, reprinted from the Boston Daily
Advertiser, April 11, 1866, being a notice of
30
the address of James W. Patterson, at the
258th Popham Anniversary, August 29, 1865.
2. "The Last Popham Address," by Edward
Ballard, reprinted from the Boston Daily Ad¬
vertiser, April 21, 1866, being a reply to the
above notice.
3. "The Last Popham Address," by "Orient,"
reprinted from the Portland Advertiser, April
26, 1866.
Popham Again and Finally, by William Fred¬
erick Poole, reprinted from the Boston Daily
Advertiser, May 31, 1866, being a rejoinder.
5. The Popham Colony, " Finally," by Edward
Ballard, reprinted from the Boston Daily Ad¬
vertiser, July 28,1866.
6. A Running Review of the "Popham Again
and Finally," by Frederick Kidder, reprinted
from the Boston Daily Advertiser, July 28, 1866.
7. Bibliography of the Popham Colony, by Wil¬
liam Frederick Poole.
8»; pp. 72. Boston, Wiggin and Lunt, 1866.
Edition 300 copies.
THE WONDER-WORKING PROVIDENCE
OF SION'S SAVIOUR IN NEW ENG¬
LAND. By Captain Edward Johnson, of
WoBURN, Massachusetts Bay. London, 1654.
Reprinted with an Historical Introduc¬
tion (pp. 139), by William Frederick Poole,
and an Index (pp. 23); and Genealogy of
the Descendants of Captain Edward John¬
s'
son, by John Alonzo Boutelle (pp, 15).
4»; pp. 419. Andover, Mass., Warren F.
Draper, 1867.
Edition, 10 copies drawing paper, 50 copies
large paper, 250 copies small paper.
ANNE BRADSTREET, THE EARLY NEW
ENGLAND POETESS.
North American Review, 1868. Vol. 106, pp.
330-334.
THE POPHAM COLONY.
North American Review, October, 1868. Vol.
107, pp. 663-674.
THE MATHER PAPERS; cotton Mather
and Salem Witchcraft.
Boston Daily Advertiser, October 28, 1868.
—THE SAME.
12®; pp. 23. Privately printed; Boston, 1868.
Edition 100 copies.
COTTON MATHER AND SALEM WITCH¬
CRAFT.
North American Review, April, 1869. Vol.
108, pp. 337-397-
—THE SAME.
8»; pp.63. Privately printed; Boston, 1869.
Edition 100 copies.
COTTON MATHER AND WITCHCRAFT;
Two Notices of Mr, Upham his Reply.
3«
From Christian Era, Boston, April 28, 1870,
and Watchman and Reflector, Boston, May 5,
1870.
Sq. 16®; pp. 30. Boston, T. R. Marvin & Son;
London, Henry Stevens, May, 1870.
THE WITCHCRAFT DELUSION OF 1692.
By Governor Thomas Hutchinson. From an
unpublished MS. (an early draft of his History
of Massachusetts) in the Massachusetts archives.
With Notes by William Frederick Poole.
New England Historical and Genealogical Reg¬
ister, October, 1870. Vol. 24, pp. 381-414.
—THE SAME.
Sm. 4® ; pp. 43. Privately printed. Boston,
1870.
THE TYLER-DAVIDSON FOUNTAIN.
8®; pp. 118. Cincinnati, 1872.
—THE SAME, Illustrated.
Royal 4®. Cincinnati, 1872.
ANTI-SLAVERY OPINIONS BEFORE THE
YEAR 1800. Read before the Cincinnati
Literary Club, November 16, 1872. To
which is appended a fac simile reprint of
Dr. George Buchanan's Oration on the
Moral and Political Evil of Slavery, de¬
livered at a public meeting of the mary¬
land Society for Promoting the Abolition
of Slavery, Baltimore, July 4,1791.
33
80 ; pp. 82 and 20. Cincinnati, Robert Clarke
& Co., 1873.
THE ORDINANCE OF 1787, AND DR.
MANASSEH CUTLER AS AN AGENT IN
ITS FORMATION.
North American Review, April, 1876, Vol. 122,
pp. 229-265.
—THE SAME.
8®; pp. 38. Cambridge, Mass., Welch,
Bigelow & Co., 1876.
THE ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT
OF PUBLIC LIBRARIES. In Special Report
on Public Libraries in the United States of Amer¬
ica. pp. 476-504. Washington, Government
Printing Office, 1876.
THE CONSTRUCTION OF LIBRARY
BUILDINGS. Address at the meeting of the
American Library Association, held at Washing¬
ton, D. C., February, 1881.
The Library Journal, April, 1881. Vol. 6,
pp. 69-77.
The American Architect and Building News,
September 17, 1881. Vol. 10, p. 131.
—THE SAME, with additions. Circular of In¬
formation of the Bureau of Education. No. r,
1881.
8»; pp. 26. Washington, Government Print¬
ing Office, 1881.
34
WITCHCRAFT IN BOSTON.
In Winsor's Memorial History of Boston. Vol.
2, pp. 131-172. Boston, 1881.
REPORT ON THE PROGRESS OF LIBRA¬
RY ARCHITECTURE, and resolutions of
the Association concerning the Building
for the Library of Congress. Address at
the meeting of the American Library Association,
held at Cincinnati, Ohio, May 24-27, 1882.
, The Library Journal, July-August, 1882. Vol.
7, pp. 130-136.
—THE SAME.
8»; pp. 16. Boston [American Library Asso¬
ciation], Secretary's Office, 1882.
REMARKS ON LIBRARY CONSTRUCTION.
To which is appended an Examination of Mr. J.
L. Smithmeyer's Pamphlet entitled, " Suggestions
on Library Architecture, American and Foreign."
8°; pp. 34. Chicago, Jansen, McClurg &
Co., 1884.
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY OF OUR TIME.
The President's Address at the meeting of the
American Library Association held at Round
Island, N. Y., August 30-September 2, 1887.
The Library Journal, September-October,
1887, Vol. 2, pp. 311-320.
—THE SAME.
8®; pp. 10. Privately printed, 1887.
35
THE WEST; from the treaty of Peace
with France, 1763, to the Treaty of Peace
with England, 1783.
In Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of
America. Vol. 6, pp. 685-743. Boston, 1888.
THE EARLY NORTHWEST. address as
President of the American Historical
Association, at its Fifth Annual Meeting,
Washington, D. C., December 26, 1888.
Papers of the American Historical Association.
Vol. 3, pp. 275-300.
—THE SAME.
8«; pp. 26. New York, The Knickerbocker
Press, 1889.
ROOSEVELT'S "THE WINNING OF THE
WEST."
Atlantic Monthly, November 1889. Vol. 64,
pp. 693-700.
THE ORDINANCE OF 1787 ; A REPLY.
The Inlander, Ann Arbor, Mich., January, 1892,
pp. 169-181.
—THE SAME.
pp. 15. Privately printed. Ann Arbor, 1892.
COLUMBUS AND THE FINDING OF THE
NEW WORLD.
Northwestern Christian Advocate, October 19,
1892.
36
—THE SAME.
16»; pp. 19. Privately printed. Chicago,
1892.
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AND THE
UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM. Phi Beta
Kappa Address Northwestern University,
June 13,1893.
12®; pp. 55. Chicago, Fleming H. Revell
Company, 1894.
BOOK REVIEWS AND OTHER ARTICLES
Contributed to " The Dial," Chicago.
In Volume I, 1880-81.
Hildreth's History of the United States.
p. I.
Dexter's History of Congregationalism.
p. 69.
winsor's Memorial History of Boston, p. 152,
Father Louis Hennepin, p. 253.
In Volume II, 1881-82.
Lodge's History of the English Colonies in
America, p. 32.
The Yorktown Campaign, 1781. p. in,
Lossing's Popular CyclopjEdia of United
States History, p. 209.
General Arthur St. Clair, pp. 227-251.
In Volume III, 1882-83.
General Arthur St. Clair and the Ordi¬
nance OF 1787, p. 13.
37
Doyle's English Colonies in America, p. 221.
McMaster's History of the United States;
Volume I. p. 271.
In Volume IV, 1883-84.
The Quaker Invasion of Massachusetts.
p. 32.
German Mercenaries in the Revolutionary
War. p. 305.
In Volume V, 1884-85.
Thomas Hutchinson, p. 54.
Discoveries of America; The Lost Atlantis
Theory, p. 97.
Arnold's Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 261.
The Pocahontas Story, p. 318.
In Volume VI, 1885-86.
Hosmer's Samuel Adams, p. 65.
McMaster's History of the United States;
Volume II. p. no.
winsor's Narrative and Critical History
of America, p. 317.
In Volume VII, 1886-87.
Thomas Hutchinson, p. 102.
Preston's Documents Illustrative of Amer¬
ican History, p. 155.
Adams' The Emancipation of Massachusetts.
p. 263.
In Volume VHI, 1887-88.
The Cessions of the Western Lands, p. 285.
38
winsor's Narrative and Critical History
of America, p. 337.
In Volume IX, 1888-89.
winsor's Narrative and Critical History
of America, p. 127.
Hosmer's Sir Henry Vane. p. 317.
In Volume XI, 1890-91.
The Persistence of Historic Myths, p. 43.
Economic and Social History of New Eng¬
alano. p. 279.
In Volume XII, 1891-92.
John Dickinson, p. 71.
Christopher Columbus, p. 421.
In Volume XIII, 1892.
Patrick Henry, p. 41.
In Volume XVI, 1894.
Massachusetts; An Object Lesson, p. 74.
ARTICLES AND REVIEWS
Contributed to Various Newspapers.
[This list is not complete but includes the more
important articles.]
The Mather Bibliography.
Boston Daily Advertiser, August 15, 1870.
Nathaniel Mather.
Salem, Mass., Register, September, 12, 1870.
39
George Bancroft's Tenth Volume of the
History of the United States.
Chicago Tribune, December 18, 1874. Re¬
printed in the Boston Transcript, July 7, 1875.
Yale in 1700.
Chicago Tribune, January 10, 1875.
Palfrey's New England; 4th Volume.
Chicago Tribune, March 25, 1876.
Early American Books.
Chicago Times, May 12,. 1876.
Rutherford B. Hayes.
Chicago Evening Journal, June 17,1876.
Sam Peters and His Blue Laws.
Chicago Tribune, December 22, 1877.
Yale in Literature.
Chicago Times, January 6, 1878.
Samuel Sewall's Diary.
Chicago Tribune, November 8, 1879.
The Bayard Family.
Chicago Evening Journal, July 8, 1880.
John Esten Cooke's History of Virginia.
Chicago Tribune, September 22, 1883.
Fraudulent Mather Letter on "Bagging
Penn."
Chicago Tribune, May 23, 1870; June 11, 1870;
August 10, 1878; August 17,1878; December 9,
1878.
40
Fraudulent Mather Letter.
Chicago Evening Post, May 26, 1891; January
13, 1892.
PAPERS READ BEFORE THE CINCIN¬
NATI LITERARY CLUB
November 16,1872.
On the Anti-Slavery Movement before 1800.
* December 21,1872.
The Ordinance of 1787.
PAPERS READ BEFORE THE CHICAGO
LITERARY CLUB
April 19, 1875.
The Origin and Secret History of the Or¬
dinance of 1787.
May 14, 1877.
The Opportunities of the Man of Means
and Leisure (Conversation).
November 11, 1878.
The Mission and Function of Public Li¬
braries.
October 6,1879.
Inaugural Address as President of the
Club.
April 17,1882.
Witchcraft (Conversation).
41
May 28, 1883.
Mr. Bancroft and the Ordinance of 1787.
February 4, 1889.
Some Matters Relating to the Early
Northwest.
October 24, 1892.
Columbus as a Discoverer and as a Man
(Conversation).
November 27, 1893.
Our Modern Education and the University
Curriculum.
This paper was first read before the Phi Beta
Kappa Society at the Northwestern University,
June 13,1893, and was afterward (1894) published
under the title of The University Library
and the University Curriculum.
42
IN MEMORIAM
JOSEPH KIRKLAND
born january 7, 1830
Died April 29, 1894
Chicago Literary Club
1894
This Memorial of our late fellow-
member, Joseph Kirkland, was read
at the meeting of the Club on Monday even¬
ing, May 28, 1894, and ordered printed and
copies sent to the members of the Club.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
Joseph kirkland.
As one by one the members of this Club
pass from life, there is no more becoming
ceremony than that which commemorates the
loss we sustain in the departure from our
crrcle of a worthy member.
Joseph Kirkland is the latest loss we have
been called upon to mourn. He was born in
Geneva, New York, January 7th, 1830, of a
family distinguished on his father's side in
the history of the country and of his native
State, tracing descent from the pilgrims of
Plymouth and other notable ancestors. His
mother was a woman well known in the
literary annals of the century. His father
died in 1846, and it was from his mother
chiefly, as we learn from his own statements,
that he obtained his education.
In 1856 he removed to Chicago, which was
his home until he died, with the exception of
time spent in the army during the Rebellion
and at Danville, Illinois, while engaged in
coal mining operations in that neighborhood.
5
iîis service in the army was from the date
of the call for three-months troops until the
retirement of General Fitz-John Porter, of
whose military family he was a member. He
served with credit in the West Virginia cam¬
paign, the campaign of the Army of the
Potomac on the Peninsula, the campaigns of
the Second Bull Run and Antietam, as
Second Lieutenant of Infantry, Captain and
Major on staff duty as Aide to Generals
George B. McClellan and Fitz-John Porter.
His subsequent life was spent in coal min¬
ing business until 1874, in the Revenue Ser¬
vice of the United States until 1880,—when
at the age of fifty he was admitted to the
Bar of this State, graduating first in his class
at the Law School, and practicing as an
attorney until 1890.
Major Kirkland's reputation, however,
rests especially on his literary work. In 1885
he published his first novel, " Zury, the
Meanest Man in Spring County," and at once
took high rank as a novelist, which he justi¬
fied by two later works, "The McVeys,"
published in 1887, and "The Captain of Com¬
pany K " in 1889. He contributed noteworthy
articles on " The Poor of Chicago " to Scrib-
6
ner's Magazine, on "Nicaragua" to Peter¬
son's Magazine, and on " The Chicago Fire "
to the New England Magazine; and he is
also the author of two histories of Chicago,
one of which, together with a second volume
of the other, is yet unpublished; and for two
years he was the Literary Editor of the Chi¬
cago Tribune. His contributions to this
Cfhb have been many, and his appearance as
an essayist was always welcomed by a large
attendance.
His death was to his many friends sudden
and unlooked for. It is needless to attempt
to draw the character of our departed friend.
Few men are able to receive into the fold of
their sympathy so many persons coming from
such diverse positions in life. He had warm
friends amongst the highest and the lowest.
His heart was tender to the lowliest of God's
creatures. Cruelty to an animal, even when
under the name of scientific inquiry it was
attempted to be justified by the name of vivi¬
section, was as abhorrent to him as cruelty to
a child or a woman is to most men. He
made it a matter of principle always to have
a genial word of greeting for everyone he
knew, from the poorest workingman to the
7
most prominent citizen; and what to his
intimate friends appeared one of his most
charming traits and one eminently noticeable
on account of its general rarity, was his abso¬
lute freedom from rancor. The sun never set
on his wrath. His greeting and, what was
more, his feeling, towards one on the morning
following some business dispute or difference,
trifling or otherwise, was as pleasant as
though no cloud had arisen.
We all knew and loved and respected him.
Indeed, it would be hard to find anyone who
was his enemy. His kindness of disposition
rendered it impossible for those who met him
to be other than his friends, and while kindly
and genial, sympathetic and a staunch friend,
his morality was above question and his
honor never sullied in word or deed. He was
a true gentleman, without fear and without
reproach.
David Swing,
William Eliot Furness,
Joseph L. Silsbee,
Alexander A. McCormick,
John G. Shortall,
Committee.
8
VI
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literary/
\ CLUB /
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Y V .
IN MEMORIAM
David Swing
IN MEMORIAM
DAVID SWING
born august 23, 1830
died October 3, 1894
Chicago Literary Club
1894
This memorial of our late fellow-
member, David Swing, was read at
the meeting of the Chicago Literary Club
on Monday evening, October 29, 1894, and
ordered printed and copies sent to the mem¬
bers of the Club.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
DAVID SWING.
SIXTY-FOUR years ago, in the city of
Cincinnati, David Swing was born. His
father died soon after, and when David was
five years old, his mother having married
again, the family settled on a farm near Wil¬
liamsburg, on the Ohio river. Until he was
eighteen years of age he lived upon the farm
and did the ordinary work of a farmer's boy,
attending the village school and academy
during the winter months. In the academy
Greek and Latin were taught, and when he
was eighteen years old, by his work at the
academy and at home, he was fitted for col¬
lege and entered the Miami University at
Oxford, Ohio, from which he was graduated in
1852. In most departments of college work
he was a student of simply average ability,
but was at the very front in literary work
and the classical languages. After his grad¬
uation he studied law for a year in the office
5
of an uncle in Cincinnati, but, becoming sat¬
isfied that the work of a clergyman was his
proper vocation, he exchanged the study of
law for that of theology, and in due time was
graduated from the Lane Theological Semi¬
nary. He then returned to Oxford, and for
the next twelve years taught the Greek and
Latin languages, and preached every second
Sunday in a small country church near Ox¬
ford, and frequently in the village churches.
In this early day his sermons had many of
the characteristics of the work of his maturer
years—the breadth of view, the profound
scholarship, the exquisite mastery of lan¬
guage, the literary touch, the dainty wit and
sarcasm and the sovereign poetic fancy which
irradiated all. Four years before he came to
Chicago he received and accepted a call to a
Chicago church, but two or three weeks later
he withdrew his acceptance, stating that he
felt himself unqualified to permanently inter¬
est a city audience. He received three or
four subsequent calls to Chicago, which were
declined from the same distrust in his own
abilities, but in 1866 came his final accept¬
ance from the insistence of some of his
6
early friends, who more correctly gauged
his powers. His first church was presently
consolidated with another, forming the
Fourth Presbyterian, for which he preached
with constantly growing success until 1875.
Meantime the church had been burned in the
great fire, and until it was rebuilt services
were held in Standard Hall and McVicker's
Theatre. Charges of heresy were preferred
against him, upon which he was tried and
acquitted by the local Presbytery, but when
an appeal was taken to the General Assem¬
bly, he severed his connection with the
denomination rather than to be embroiled in
a controversy, which to him seemed infi¬
nitely distasteful and profitless. Central
Music Hall was built by those sympathizing
with his views, and from its platform he
preached to great and appreciative audiences
until the end of his labors.
Such, in brief, is the outline of the life
and work of the man who is to-day so widely
and profoundly mourned. From boyhood
he seemed to have a special facility in the
acquisition of languages, and mastered the
Italian tongue for the purpose of reading the
7
poems of Dante. His knowledge of the
classical languages was phenomenal ; his
study and teaching of these languages made
them seemingly as familiar to him as his
mother tongue. His library contained the
works of nearly all the Greek and Latin
authors, and he usually read several pages
daily in each of these languages. This
familiarity with the classical authors gave him
an inexhaustible fund of anecdote and illus¬
tration for the work of his life.
His first national recognition came with
his trial for heresy. As we look at this inci¬
dent after a lapse of twenty years, when the
smoke of conflict is cleared away, we can see
clearly and without prejudice the merits of
the issue between Professor Swing and his
principal prosecutor. The Church had a
confession of faith, formulated more than two
hundred years before, which was supposed
at its date to embody the teachings of the
New Testament, points, however, which
many of the Church members had come to
question or quietly to ignore.
Professor Swing formulated his dissent
from these certain points upon the ground
8
that they did not truly represent the teachings
of Christ. Dr. Patton's position, in substance,
was, that the Presbyterian Church was organ¬
ized upon this confession of faith ; that the
question was not whether Professor Swing
was right or wrong in his interpretation of the
New Testament teachings, but whether he
could remain the pastor of a church founded
qpon formulae which he in part disbelieved.
From a purely technical standpoint, we may
concede that Dr. Patton's position was cor¬
rect, although this position makes the rea¬
soning of past centuries absolutely final in
matters of theology, and cuts off all possibil¬
ity of growth, progress or development, re¬
garding the most vital question pertaining to
human life.
The decision of Professor Swing to sever
his relations with his chosen denomination
was for him the beginning of a fuller and
freer life. He bore no feeling of bitterness
toward his former associates, but held them
ever in cherished and loving remembrance.
He felt, however, that disputes upon ques¬
tions of doctrine were worse than a waste of
time and brain ; were, as a rule, regarding
9
questions outside the domain of human
knowledge and tended to keep apart millions
of the good and pure, who should work in
harmony for the salvation of men.
From the broad platform of the Central
Church thenceforth doctrinal dogma and the
religion of despair were banished, and a faith
was taught full of love and gentleness and
charity ; full of a serene and tranquil belief
that the history of man is ever the history of
progress ; that goodness and virtue will ever
rise triumphant in the end.
From his pulpit, too, he reached the
widest audience yet accorded to any Ameri¬
can preacher. His Sunday's discourse was
printed in full the following Monday in one
or more of our most widely circulated jour¬
nals, was copied wholly or in part into other
newspapers in every part of the country, and
his weekly audience was thus numbered by
the hundreds of thousands. The effect of
these discourses cannot be over-estimated.
The thinking world was ripe for the modifi¬
cation of the earlier and sterner tenets of
theology, as it emerged more and more into
the light of modern civilization ; was hungry
10
for the teaching of one who should dwell
more upon the love and less upon the rigid
justice of the Supreme Father of us all ; of
one who should bring us more into touch
with the life of the world in which we live,
and less into the discussions of those abstract,
dogmatical questions, which have been de¬
bated from the dawn of the historic period,
§nd which, from this very fact, are seen to be
incapable of solution by the human intellect,
or they would have been settled long ago.
All persons who have reached middle life
realize the marvelous change which has come
over the teachings of our pulpits within the
last thirty years, the most notable change
since the Reformation ; see the broader
charity in matters of abstract belief, the
wider recognition of the fact that all the
great religious faiths of the world are based
upon certain common, fundamental princi¬
ples, but which, by long processes of growth
"and evolution, are specially adapted to the
varied needs of the widely separated and
differently constituted peoples. No one in
our country has done more to promote this
kindly change than Professor Swing. No one
II
so grandly paved the way for the great Parlia¬
ment of Religions, which met in our city in
1893—a gathering which would have been
impossible a generation ago—and the benefi¬
cent consequences of which will be more
and more appreciated as the years go by.
He was ever ready and eager to recognize
the truth, wherever found. Early he had
realized fully, as Whittier phrases it, that
" In Vedic verse in dull Koran
Are messages of love to man.
The prophets of that early day.
The slant-eyed sages of Cathay,
Read not the riddle all amiss
Of higher life evolved from this.
Wherever through the ages rise
The altars of self-sacrifice.
Where love its arms has opened wide.
Or man for man has calmly died,
I see the same white wings outspread
That hovered o'er the Master's head."
Born in the Presbyterian Church, his work
bore the abiding fruits of wisdom, of a gra¬
cious and tolerant spirit, and a beautiful and
intellectual life in all the Churches. He was
a herald of the dawn, and to him all men
12
were brothers, who aided in ways however
diverse, in the bringing of the better day.
In the great movement of the religious
thought of the nation in the direction of
charity and toleration toward those who see
not the truth as we see it, the quiet and
unassuming preacher of the Central Church,
utterly devoid of the graces of oratory, but
,with a heart full of love and tenderness, with
the poet's grasp and the prophet's vision, and
with his glowing sentences, which linger in
our memories like an exquisite melody, was
perhaps the most potent factor.
His sermons abound in paragraphs, epi¬
grammatic in their concentrated wit and wis¬
dom—pure and sparkling gems of thought,
from which some loving hand will some time
compile an anthology rivaling that of Shakes¬
peare, Franklin or Emerson ; phrases musical
with the majestic resonance of the psalms ;
pages where the orator may seek for meta¬
phors and the poet may find his inspiration ;
and maxims which the eloquence of genera¬
tions yet unborn will crystallize into the
common and permanent speech of people to
whom his very name may be unknown. He
13
held his vast audience, not by the rheto¬
rician's art, but because he had a message to
deliver for which the world was waiting and
had waited long.
Outside his pulpit work, the most valuable
literary efforts of Professor Swing were his
papers read before this club, of which he has
long been the most loved and honored mem¬
ber. Of late these papers have been largely
relative to the leading men of Greece and
Rome : Socrates, Cicero, Demosthenes, Pliny
and others. From his familiarity with classi¬
cal literature, these papers have been most
graphic and admirable pictures of these
antique heroes, bringing them before us from
the mists of time with the picturesque vivid¬
ness of the portraiture of a man of to-day.
A volume of these essays was published some
years since, and enough others are extant to
make two more similar volumes, which it is
hoped may soon be published and thus made
accessible to his wide audience.
Professor Swing, notwithstanding he was
never a man of robust health—being for the
greater part of his life a partial invalid—yet
led an exceptionally sunny and happy life. He
14
appreciated and keenly enjoyed the good and
beautiful things of this world. Beautiful
scenery, flowers, pictures, music, the drama,
and, above all, the society of his countless
friends, were to him sources of perpetual
delight. Dining with a friend on the after¬
noon of the last Sunday on which he preached,
in speaking of his summer's vacation, he said :
•" The rest, the pure air, the trees, the lake, the
birds and flowers were delightful, but men and
women are more than all else ; all those
things were as nothing when compared with
the welcoming faces of my congregation and
the greetings of the friends of my soul." His
sympathetic nature brought him many
friends. To him came those who were bowed
down under the burden of their sorrows, who
were weary and heavy laden, for words of
encouragement, of cheer and of consolation,
which were never wanting. He was an opti¬
mist in his views of the future of his country¬
men, whom he believed would be the manly
and heroic citizens of the ideal common¬
wealth which was to come in the fulness of
time, and which was to be the realization of
the dreams of our civilization. Especially
15
was he hopeful of the growth of the religious
idea by the garnering of all that was good in
the foregone times and the addition of new
truth from our better knowledge of the laws
which govern the universe. He quoted the
words of Emerson ;
" The word by seers or sybils told
In groves of oak or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world has never lost."
The approach of old age caused him no
unhappiness. To one who recently offered
him birthday greetings he said ; "As age
comes upon us we must console ourselves
with the words of Browning :
Grow old along with me,
The best is yet to be,
The last of life for which the first was made.
Our times are in His hand.
Who saith a whole I planned.
Youth shows but half. Trust God, see all,
nor be afraid."
Few more impressive scenes have been wit¬
nessed in our city than on the occasion of
l6
Professor Swing's funeral. His audience room
was filled with those who had long listened
to his teachings. With none of the heralding
of a public burial, the body of the great
preacher was borne to the platform of Central
Music Hall, and everywhere surrounded with
the fiowers which he loved. In the beautiful
autumnal afternoon, from all parts of the
great city, the saddened multitudes gathered
in reverent silence until the streets were filled
with the mourning thousands, who, with low¬
ered voices, tremulous with tender feeling,
spoke of the graces and virtues of the de¬
parted, and of the city's remediless loss.
Most impressive, however, was the scene
upon the platform within, where sat some
seventy clergymen, representing nearly every
sect and denomination finding a home in our
city. There sat the priest of that church
which, among the Christian sects, in point of
time is the oldest, in point of numbers in
the nation is the greatest, and as a business
corporation, the most ably managed in church
history. There sat the representative of the
extreme liberalism of the modern days, reck¬
less of all the ancient landmarks, side by side
17
with those who feel that the ancient land¬
marks are as the laws of the Medes and
Persians, which alter not. There were those
representing the various Christian sects,
divided upon questions of technical construc¬
tion of some passage of Holy Writ, or some
point of church government, and whose
points of difference the great divine had by
his teachings lovingly sought to obliterate,
side by side with the learned Jewish Rabbi,
representing the nation from which Chris¬
tianity itself had sprung, and which Christian¬
ity had since ceaselessly persecuted. There
sat many of those who, twenty years before,
in his time of trial, had criticised his course,
and spoken of him words of bitterness, but
who, in the intervening time, had in great
measure reached the point where he then
stood, their views modified largely by his
pure and sinless life, his wisdom and loving
kindness, his gentleness and abounding char¬
ity. All these were met together, bound by
the ties of a common sorrow, to testify by
their presence, by their reverent bearing, by
their hardly subdued grief, their realization
of the nation's loss, and of the lovable
l8
qualities of him whose death to our vision
seemed so sudden and untimely.
To the large circle of his closest friends,
great as was their admiration for his intel¬
lectual endowment, it was his heart that was
greatest. These knew most the breadth of
his love and charity, the purity of his thought
and life. They saw most of the genial wit
#and sarcasm, exquisite and unique as that of
Charles Lamb, but ever without sting or bit¬
terness. For them a great light has gone
out, and the world which has been enriched
and made beautiful by this benignant pres¬
ence can to them be never more the same.
How many have applied to him within the
last few saddened weeks the lines of Tenny¬
son's In Memoriam :
" Yet in these ears till hearing dies,
One set, slow bell will seem to toll
The passing of the sweetest soul
That ever looked with human eyes.
^ ^ ^
Whereof the man that with me trod
This planet was a noble type,
Appearing, ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God."
19
One of the tenderest and most apprecia¬
tive tributes to the memory of Professor
Swing was that of his and our friend, Dr.
Gunsaulus, from which, in conclusion, we
quote a stanza :
" Our poet preacher in his words of prose
Made life a lyric and its dreams sublime
Far from his musing and his hope there goes
Eternal music for the sons of time."
Franklin H. Head,
Abram M. Pence,
John H. Barrows,
Committee.
Chicago, October 29, 1894.
IN MEMORIAM
ARTHUR BROOKS
BORN JULY tl, 1845
DIED JULY 10, 1895
Chicago Literary Club
1895
' I ""HIS Memorial of our late fellow-
member, Arthur Brooks, was read
at the meeting of the Club on Monday
evening, December i6, 1895, and ordered
printed, and copies sent to the members
of the Club.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
ARTHUR BROOKS
• Arthur Brooks was elected a member of
this Club at its first general meeting at the
Sherman House, March 31, 1874, and he
was present on April 21st, when the first
constitution was adopted. He was born in
the city of Boston, on the eleventh day of
July, 1845, and died at sea on the tenth day
of July, 1895. He was the fifth son of Wil¬
liam Gray Brooks, a lineal descendant of
the Rev. John Cotton, the famous Puritan
divine. His mother, Mary Ann Phillips,
was a granddaughter of Judge John Phil¬
lips, who was founder of Phillips' Exeter
Academy, and together with his brother,
Samuel Phillips, was the founder of Phil¬
lips' Andover Academy. They were lineal
descendants of the Reverend George Phil¬
lips, who came from England about 1630
with Governor Winthrop's band of Puri¬
tans. Descended from founders of New
5
England, our brother was connected by ties
of blood, education and patriotism with
many of the most distinguished men and
women of Massachusetts.
Arthur attended the Boston Latin school,
graduating in 1863, and while there gained
many prizes for scholarship and elocution.
He entered Harvard University in 1863,
and was graduated in 1867, then studied for
one year in Andover Theological Seminary;
from thence went to the Episcopal Theo¬
logical Seminary in Philadelphia, and was
graduated in 1870. During his first year in
Philadelphia he had the companionship of
his brother Phillips, who was, until October,
1869, Rector of the Church of the Holy Trin-
ity. Immediately after graduating in 1870,
Arthur was ordained deacon at Old Trinity
Church, Boston, of which his brother Phillips
was rector from 1870 until he accepted the
Bishopric of Massachusetts in i8gi. At
that ceremony Arthur was presented by
another older brother, Frederick, whose
untimely death in 1874 closed a life of singu¬
lar and eminent promise. The father and
mother of these three great sons were
6
present at the ordination, as well as many
of the leaders of thought and action in that
great city.
Arthur was called at once to Trinity
church, Williamsport, Pa., and was
ordained to the priesthood there in October,
i^o. One year after Arthur Brooks was
ordained a priest of the Protestant Episco¬
pal Church, the great fire of Chicago swept
away the beautiful and costly church of St.
James on the corner of Cass and Huron
streets; its rector had been here but a few
weeks and was but little acquainted with
his parishioners, and had no ties to bind
him here, and as he left us for another field,
it seemed doubtful if there would ever be
another such church as St. James. Our
deceased brother, Edwin H. Sheldon, was
then senior warden of the church, a man
of great culture, singular foresight and
sagacity, combined with a most kindly
Christian character. Mr. Sheldon nomi¬
nated Arthur Brooks for election as rector
of St. James, and though he was then less
than 27 years of age, he was unanimously
elected. The ability of the church to pay
7
a living salary was very uncertain and Mr.
Brooks was then considering two calls, one
to St. Luke's, Philadelphia, and another to
a large church in Newark, N. J., both
with large salaries. Mr. Sheldon informed
Mr. Brooks that he could not promise him
more than ^2,500 or Í3,ooo a year to begin
with, and his immediate answer was "I
will go to you, make it the lesser sum." In
the month of April, 1872, Arthur Brooks
began in the dust and ashes, the wide¬
spread ruin and utter desolation of a
burned-up city, to rebuild what had been
the foremost church of the northwest, and
to gather together a congregation which
had been accustomed to the eloquence and
learning of Bishop Clarkson, Edward C.
Porter and Dr. Joseph H. Rylance. His
first sermon was preached April 28 in the
vestibule of the old church which had
been roofed over and made into a tempo¬
rary chapel. His words had the same true
ring in them that men had been accus¬
tomed to hear from his distinguished brother
Phillips. Among other things he said:
8
The strength of the past has not perished and
cannot perish. If calamities have come upon us
they have but tried and proved the work, all that
was wrought in God shall continue, all that was
wrought without God has been destroyed. And so
without discouragement, nay, with exultation, may
we look to the future. There is strength undestroyed
in t|)e past, there is still more waiting, reaching on
indefinitely into the future. New tasks, new powers
are before us. The work is one of progress, not of
restoration. We are to open a house here in the
midst of all the world's manifold businesses and cares,
and we want a voice to go forth from it to this busy
city, telling its people how sweet a master is Christ.
The young rector, who at once won all
our hearts, was then about six feet and one
inch in height, without an ounce of super¬
fluous flesh, erect and energetic in all his
movements, and spoke with a nervous force
and rapidity which carried his hearers
along without effort on their part. His
introduction to St. James was at once fol¬
lowed by a very conspicuous introduction
to the general public. On the 30th of May,
1872, so soon after the graves made by the
great Rebellion had been raised in Grace-
land and Rosehill, and so soon after so
many homes had been swept forever out of
9
our sight, there were thousands of mourn¬
ers in this great city who laid down their
work and repaired to the green slopes of
our cemeteries. Mr. Brooks was the
orator of the day at Rosehill, and was sur¬
rounded by as many thousands as could
get within reach of his rich, clear voice.
He spoke without notes and made a most
excellent impression, and his hearers went
away feeling that patriotism had not died
out from our hearthstones, even if they
were covered with ashes.
On the 17th of October, 1872, Mr. Brooks
was most happily married to Elizabeth W.
Willard of Williamsport, then a mere child
of eighteen, but who took her place at once
with rare grace and dignity, and became the
devoted and helpful companion of all his
subsequent years. Ten days after his
marriage he resumed his preaching at St.
James, his pulpit during his absence having
been filled by Bishop Clarkson.
The task of rebuilding St. James was
accompanied by untold difficulties. Every
parishioner but one on the North Side had
lost home, office, libraries, pictures, silver
10
and property of every kind; the cost of build¬
ing material and labor increased; the country
had suffered by other great fires in the west
and in Boston, and all business in Chicago
was for a time stopped by the epizootic.
The vestry of his church had undertaken to
bnild, and did erect a much larger and
more costly church than the former. In
an article by Col. Francis A. Eastman, in
the Tribune, in 1875, he says:
Men and women remember the lurid days of
the great fire epoch; the church edifice a mass of
ruins; the whole north division an ashen waste, and
remember, too, Mr. Brooks' gallant conduct coming
into our midst at a great sacrifice to himself to be
the minister of St. James. Under the circumstances
he has done wonders since he has been here. The
year before the fire there were 314 communicants,
and the money contributions for strictly church pur¬
poses were about $35,000. The year after the fire
there were found 100 communicants and the money
contributions were about $3,000. In 1873 the con¬
tributions rose to upward of $33,000, and in 1874
there were more than $34,000, and now there are 220
communicants, and all the church work is intelli¬
gently organized and vigorously prosecuted. How
much this condition of things proves in favor of Mr.
Brooks let anyone estimate who knows how much
II
the liberality of a Christian congregation depends
upon the degree of confidence and esteem in which
the pastor is held.
In the summer of 1874 Mr. Brooks visited
Europe upon the invitation and as the guest
of his brother Phillips, who at that time
preached the first sermon ever preached
by an American in Westminster Abbey.
They also visited the old church in Boston,
Lincolnshire, where their ancestor, John
Cotton, had preached from 1612 to 1630,
and from where he emigrated to the first
church in Boston, New England, in 1633.
They made a study of glass decorations in
the cathedrals and churches of Europe,
and during the following winter Arthur
delivered a lecture on stained glass before
the Anonymous Club in Chicago. While
absent in Europe his pulpit was filled by
Bishops Lee and Clarkson, Edward C.
Porter and Lord Charles Harvey of Eng¬
land, all since deceased, and by Dr. J. W.
Brown, the present Rector of St. Thomas'
Church, New York.*
* Dr. Brown preached a fine sermon August 30Ch from the
text** He doeth all things well.*' It was at this service the
exquisite Italian baptismal font was first unveiled.
12
Mr. Brooks came home from his restful
and ideal trip about the ist of October to
find his father and mother bowed down
with grief at the tragic loss of their gifted
son Frederick, who was accidentally
drowned near Boston, on the 15th of
September. Fred, as he always called
him, was but a little older than Arthur, and
had settled in Cleveland, established a live
church paper, a school and missions, and,
in short, had stamped his Brooks energy
and genius on all the church work of
that progressive diocese. His death was a
severe loss to Arthur, and on all Saints
Day, November i, 1874, he preached a
touching sermon at St. James in special
memory of his brother, and of that other
brother, George, the soldier, who had given
his life for his country in 1862.
When the work of rebuilding St. James
was assured and practically completed in
the spring of 1875, the death of the Rever¬
end Dr. Henry E. Montgomery left vacant
the Church of the Incarnation on Madison
avenue. New York city. Mr. Brooks was
unanimously elected by a strong and har-
13
monious congregation admirably adapted
for old-fashioned evangelical and aggres¬
sive work. It was a great inducement for
a young man who had no relatives in the
west to go to a city where he was within
a half-day's journey of his father and mother
and his three brothers, Phillips, William
and John. It was a bitter struggle for Mr.
Brooks to give up the career so unselfishly
adopted, of making his life work in this
western world, and letters to his friends in
this city for twenty years have never ceased
to allude to the trial it was to him to change
the field of his labor. Among the institu¬
tions here which he always remembered and
spoke of with enthusiasm was the Chicago
Literary Club. Only eight weeks before his
untimely death he wrote; " I thank you
very much for sending me the memorial
notice of Dr. Poole. I remember him
both in Boston and Chicago and this
tribute to his work for library efficiency and
literary culture is surely well deserved
and excellently conceived. The characters
of my Chicago days are passing away alto¬
gether too rapidly and I am much gratified
14
at receiving those volumes which show how
warmly they were appreciated."
Mr. Brooks began his new work on the
i8th of April, 1875, finding himself ham¬
pered almost as much as at his beginning
in Chicago, there being upon the church a
mortgage debt of ;|Í48,ooo, and a floating
d¿bt of $6,500. Not only was all this in¬
debtedness paid by almost, if not the only,
Episcopal church in New York city, which
never asked for or received help from Old
Trinity, but missions were built by it, and
hospitals and countless other charities aided.
On the 23d of March, 1882, when his church
work seemed relieved of all embarassments
the fine building was burned involving a
loss of about $75,000. It was a remarkable
tribute to the broad and popular character
of the young preacher that among the
many public edifices offered to him for the
temporary use of his congregation was one
from the Jewish rabbi. Dr. Gustav Gott¬
heil. The rabbi himself and many of his
flock were present at his first service in the
Temple Emanuel, at Fifth avenue and
Forty-third street, and strangest of all
15
things under the sun was the celebration
of Easter Sunday by Arthur Brooks and
his church in the same synagogue.
As the Hebrews had divine service on
the Sabbath and the Christians on Sunday
there was no interference, or inconvenience.
Harper^s Weekly, April 22, 1882, said:
On the very evening of the fire the Rev. Dr.
Taylor of the Congregational Tabernacle Church
offered the use of that spacious edifice for the services
of the Church of the Incarnation, and in acceptance
of a similar invitation from Rabbi Gottheil of the
Jewish Temple Emanuel, the Easter service was
held in that Hebrew synagogue. The hospitality of
the Jews to the Christians is of the true Church uni¬
versal, and certainly surprises no one who knows the
large and catholic heart of Dr. Gottheil.
There was another unusual and touch¬
ing tribute to Mr. Brooks as a Christian
whose word and works could never be con¬
fined to the narrow limits of the church of his
own preference. The distinguished New
York lawyer, Mr. John E. Parsons, isa Pres¬
byterian and a liberal giver to his church.
He built a memorial chapel at Lenox,
Mass., intended for the worship of God by all
denominations, and he selected and invited
i6
Mr. Brooks to preach the dedication sermon.
The picture of Mr. Brooks now hang¬
ing on our walls was taken in the library of
Mr. Parsons about a year ago by one of his
family. A still more striking proof of his
hold on those outside his own church was
that old Princeton and the University of
fhe city of New York both gave him the
degree of Doctor of Divinity, and the Vic¬
toria Institute, the great philosophical
society of Great Britain, elected him to its
membership.
The Church of the Incarnation was
rebuilt with promptitude and the oppor¬
tunity was then afforded Mr. Brooks to put
in practice the fine taste for architecture
and decoration, which he had studied with
his brother in building Trinity Church in
Boston, and the restored church built by his
own congregation and not from the inheri¬
ted wealth of Old Trinity, became possessed
of some of the finest bits of art in New
York. The monument to the memory of
Dr. Montgomery was designed by H. H.
Richardson and executed by Augustus H.
Gaudens. The tablet to Admiral Farragut,
17
given by the Loyal Legion was executed
by Launt Thompson; another naval hero,
Commander Eagle, was similarly commem¬
orated. John LaFarge, Louis Tiffany and
Wm. Clark Noble contributed their genius
to painting and decorations of various
kinds. Three of the windows are by Henry
Holliday of England. The most beautiful
American glass, surpassing the best modern
English glass, was supplied by Louis
Tiffany, the sculptural work of the font was
by Louis St. Gaudens; and the last work to
adorn this church home was a magnifícent
bronze statue of Phillips Brooks in bas-
relief, seven feet in height and surrounded
by mosaics of onyx and marble.
Mr. Brooks did not confine his love for
art to the decoration of churches alone,
for he was an insatiable student of every
kind of art, and aided in every way to its
development in our own country. When
such men as George W. Curtis, Parke
Godwin, Andrew Carnegie, R. W. Gilder
and others of national fame, gave a great
banquet at Delmonico's, April 22, 1891, to
testify their appreciation of Theodore
18
Thomas, on occasion of his coming to Chi¬
cago, Mr. Brooks sat next the chairman at
the head of the group. The chairman, Mr.
Curtis said;
I rise to propose the health of a public bene¬
factor, an artist whose devotion to a beautiful, re¬
fining and ennobling art has greatly distinguished
Ms name and given great distinction to the city in
which he lives, the central figure of the musical life
of New York for a generation and your hearts go be¬
fore my lips in saluting "Theodore Thomas."
The whole speech of Mr. Curtis was an
exquisite mosaic of music, poetry and
eloquence. After Mr. Thomas' response
Mr. Curtis called upon Dr. Brooks, saying:
My friend is a man of peace; he seeks the concord of
the race and the harmony of this world with the other.
Mr. Brooks said, among other things:
"That he was not entirely in sympathy
with the sad tone which had characterized
some of the speeches. He felt rather like
singing a paen than a dirge. He would
desire to send the great leader away with a
feeling of the deepest joy for all that he
had accomplished and the highest anticipa¬
tions for all that he was to accomplish in
the future. All men had felt the magic
19
power oí his wand, and he was sure that
Chicago would be happy in the possession
of the treasures which would fall from the
casket of Mr. Thomas. He then proceeded
to discourse upon the moral force of
Mr. Thomas' example, and rapidly and
eloquently reviewed his attainments as a
^ leader, and the great good accomplished
by him for all classes of people. His
standard was always high, and Mr. Thomas
had never lowered it."
Mr. Brooks spent many of his vacations
traveling in foreign countries, and in 1886,
after his church was rebuilt and in a flour¬
ishing condition he and his wife started
for a grand tour through Italy, Egypt,
Arabia, Palestine, Asia Minor and southern
Greece.* They were accompanied all that
winter by our fellow member, Mr. William
W. K. Nixon, and by Mr. and Mrs. Fred¬
erick T. West, then of New York and now
*—In 18911 met his guide in Athens, Constantine Veroitziotes,
and he told me of a long-legged American minister who was
the only traveler be had ever met who had tired him out.
Those who have read "Walks in Hellas," by our fellow
member, Denton J. Snider, can imagine what opportunity
there was for foot travel in every part of that classic country.
20
of Chicago. Arthur preached on Christmas
day in the American Church, near the old
baths of Diocletian.
Mr. Brooks also went on camel and
horseback from Suez to Sinai, through the
desert of Arabia-Petrea and thence to
Palestine. When Mr. Brooks returned to
his parish and his church work in 1887 he
was in the perfection of his powers, mental
and physical, and it may be interesting to
note what outsiders then thought of him,
when it seemed as if he had at least twenty-
five or thirt) years of work before him.
The New York Daily Tribune of March
19, 1888, in an article headed "Preachers
Worth Hearing," says:
The most striking characteristic of Arthur
Brooks as a preacher is the phenomenal exuberance
of his thought. This characteristic would amount
almost to a defect were it not that the thought is
always worth the thinking, and consequently worth
uttering. Mr. Brooks is not a word monger, he
does not depend for his success upon the sonorous
ring of a well-balanced sentence, or upon the deft
use of rhetoric. As one listens to him he feels that
a man is talking to you of the problems that he has
felt and tried to solve, and that their number and
21
greatness have taken complete possession of him.
Those who habitually listen to Mr. Brooks cannot
help thinking that the thoughts which he is about
to utter stand out clearly before his mental vision,
He sees them as clearly as he sees his audience.
That under such circumstances he speaks with per¬
fect ease and facility is only natural. He is reading
just as much as the man with a manuscript before
him, only instead of reading from a material manu¬
script, he reads from a beautiful, clearly-defined
mental vision, in which there are no erasures, no
interlineations, and no obscure passages. His
preaching will awaken a response in the heart of all
who can appreciate a ripe scholar and an acute and
earnest thinker.
From 1889 to the close of his life Mr.
Brooks took an active interest in the estab¬
lishment and endowment of Barnard Col¬
lege for the higher education of women, a
college with the same courses of study as
those of Columbia College, and his enthu¬
siasm for this cause brought many of the
best men and women in New York into active
co-operation with him, and soon placed
it in the front rank of the great educa¬
tional institutions of the world. Mr. Brooks
was always an attendant at the church
congresses which began about the time he
22
entered the priesthood, and have ever since
continued the most interesting feature in
the Episcopal Church history in this country.
There year by year, congregate many of
the foremost leaders of thought and action,
untrammeled by any constitution or inflex¬
ible rules and giving great opportunity for
the intellectual development of our great
thinkers. There Arthur Brooks was at his
best, and his speeches in those congresses
were always tumultuously applauded.
In 1891 the Washington Post, Novem¬
ber 20, said:
Arthur Brooks was the last announced speaker,
and his address carried the audience into that fervor
that intense conviction never fails to produce. He
poured out a perfect volley, an uninterrupted stream
of succinct eloquence. He talks with great rapidity,
but each word is cut short and sharp like steel.
There was a similar experience at the
Ninth Church Congress in Detroit over
which our deceased member. Bishop Samuel
S. Harris, presided. Arthur had been
assigned a written discourse against the
adoption of the cathedral system in this
country, but at the request of Chancellor
Woolworth and Dr. H. H. Hart, who
23
advocated the adoption of the cathedral
system had yielded the floor, and when he
replied his written address was of no use,
and he made an extemporaneous speech,
which carried the vast audience to a high
pitch of excitement. Bishop Harris joined
heartily in the applause, and said to the
writer before leaving the house, "That
speech has saved me from any further
agitation of that subject while I continue
a bishop." Dr. Huntington of Grace
Church, New York, said "that to his
mind Mr. Brooks was at his very best
in platform utterances. Apart from his
eloquence as a public speaker he was never
at a loss for a speech or a rejoinder even
when called upon without warning or
preparation."
Many of Mr. Brooks' sermons were pub¬
lished in the newspapers of the country,
and in 1893 Whittaker published twenty-
five of his sermons in a book, entitled
" The Life of Christ in the World."
The New York Tribune said of them:
Mr. Brooks has not selected the masterpieces of
his study for publication, but sermons which have
24
evidently been preached to living men and women.
They are marked by a vividness and point that no
essay can ever possess. They reflect not merely
the message of the preacher, but the humanness
and spiritual needs of his hearers.
Mr. Brooks always took a great interest
in all the Bible Societies of the country and
hiß very last prominent public appearance
that we know of was at the eighty-second
anniversary meeting of the Bible Society
of Virginia on the 22d of April last. The
Richmond Times of the 23d of April said:
The great feature of the occasion was the annual
address by Rev. Arthur Brooks, a masterpiece of
deep thought and eloquent diction. His theme was
the Bible and Bible circulation and he thrilled his
hearers with his earnest eloquence. He spoke for
an hour and it was the general verdict that a greater
address on that great subject has rarely been heard
in this city.
The great sorrow of our friend's life came
to him in January, 1893, when his brother
Phillips died, and he immediately supple¬
mented his already too heavily loaded life
for his church, his charities and missions
and colleges by the sad task of placing that
brother vividly and faithfully before the
25
world in two volumes of biography. In
Phillips Brooks' remarkable essay on biog¬
raphy to the boys of Phillips' Exeter
Academy in 1886, he said: "I think that
I would rather have written a great biogra¬
phy than a great book of any other sort, as
I would rather have painted a great portrait
than any other kind of picture. The first
class of men whose lives ought specially to
be written and read are those rare men who
present broad pictures of the healthiest and
simplest qualities of human nature, most
largely and attractively displayed; not men
of eccentricities, not men of specialties, but
men of universal inspiration and appeal." In
the course of that essay he speaks of the
"Memoir of a Brother," by our honorary
member, Thomas Hughes. Immediately
after the death of Bishop Brooks, Arthur
prepared a small biography for Harper &
Bros., of which the Christian Evangelist of
September 9, 1893, said:
It is the noblest tribute which has yet been paid to
the memory of one whose death we yet mourn only
less than we rejoice in his fullness of life. So large, so
profound, so whole-souled an appreciation could come
26
only from a brother, and yet it is marvelous that even
a brother can so penetrate the secret of a life, so
apprehend its fullness, as to present it so that every¬
one who reads shall say: "This indeed was the man
I knew; this perfectly expresses what I could never
express of his marvelous power and beauty, and
what he was to me." It is not eulogy which makes
this tribute fine; we can all eulogize, but there is no
•ulogy here except in its true meaning of beautiful
speaking. It is the clear apprehension, the adequate
appreciation which give this book its quality; with
those no words of praise are needed and there is no
praise here. But there is here just what Phillips
Brooks would have desired in a memorial himself,
such a presentation of his character as draws all who
read to feel the warmth of true Christian life, the
largeness, the beauty, the power of a life, so per¬
vaded with Christ, with His light and love, that it
knows no difierence between sacred and secular.
The Annual Cyclopedia of Appletons for
1893 contains a noble sketch of Bishop
Brooks, six columns in length written by
Arthur, and much of what he said may well
be applied by us to Arthur himself. He
says;
Phillips was through all his life identified with the
broad Church clergy; his training was in the Evan¬
gelical school, but without dogmatism, and the
devotion to the personal Christ which was thus
given him grew as the prominent feature of his
27
theology. His mind was eminently constructive.
Old forms of thought and expression of doctrine
received new meaning under his large and intelligent
and spiritual interpretation of them. There was no
hostility towards ideas that he had outgrown, and
which to him had been the starting point in the
search for new truth. He was intensely loyal to all
the doctrines and discipline of his own Church, but
he claimed the right of free and large interpretation
in their use and of Christian charity and fellowship
with all who were servants of the truth under any
name. He deprecated all movements and tendencies
that looked toward separation of the Episcopal
Church from connection with the religious life of the
country, and ecclesiastical theories of exclusive
claims or of priestly authority met with his instant
opposition. He exercised a large influence in draw¬
ing persons to the Episcopal Church by his illus¬
tration of its comprehensiveness and spirituality.
These two sketches were only prelimi¬
nary to the full biography upon which he
worked diligently until his last sickness.
It is a pleasure to know that his work was
nearly completed, and is now soon to be
finished by his friend, Professor Allen of
Harvard University, and then the spirits of
the two great brothers whose bodies lie
side by side under the classic shades of Mt.
78
Auburn cemetery, will take their place for¬
ever on the library shelves of the great in¬
stitutions of our country, a perpetual ex¬
ample and a never failing incentive to the
scholar, the patriot and the Christian.
When the tidings of Arthur Brooks'
death reached the public last July, there
was from all denominations a general con¬
sensus of praise and appreciation.
The Rabbi of the Temple Emanuel wrote
of him.
Mark the perfect man and behold the upright for
there is a future for the man of peace.
Bishop Potter of New York said:
It came to us with a strange shock to hear that
Arthur Brooks, in the prime of life and in the strong
maturity of his rare and varied powers had died
while on his homeward way from a foreign land.
He had endeared himself to a large and devoted
circle of friends as a preacher of singular ability, a
pastor of most tender and tireless ministries, and a
friend of most transparent and beautiful soul.
Honored, for he himself was the soul of honor, and
respected, for his was a mind so just, a judgment so
wise, a temper so generous that they could not but
compel respect. The community has lost in him a
most loyal and useful citizen, and the church a
most fearless and faithful son.
29
The Churchman, the leading conservative
organ of Episcopany, July 27, 1895, said:
His pastorate, during his twenty years in New
York has been an influential one. He was strong
and vigorous in body and mind and conscious of
splendid health, was indeed impatient of suggestion
that he might work too hard, believing it to be the
duty of every pastor to give himself unsparingly to
his work. Of quick, vigorous mind he read widely
and assimilated rapidly. For scholarship for its
own sake he did not care; and truth that was not
susceptible of conversion into expression in enthu¬
siastic spiritual phrase, did not attract him. He
used his enthusiasm for preaching as a magnet to
draw from general knowledge the particular truths
he needed for use. Thus, while not distinctively a
scholar, he had not only spiritual insight of a keen
high order, but an intelligent instinct for the living
principles of thought and life. He hated shams and
was suspicious lest forms should throw into shadow
the deeper things which they should only be allowed
to express. His conscience was intensely keen, sen¬
sitive and not morbid, and it was balanced by a moral
vigor, a sort of cheerful breeziness which made his
personality widely attractive, not only to his own
congregation but to those with whom he came in
contact in his work in the parochial mission society,
his services in connection with Barnard College,
and in the many other works of benevolence of
which he has been the mainspring. In religious
30
thought he was characterized by absolute sincerity;
he hated sensationalism in the pulpit and religious
cant anywhere but with whatever was weak and
suffering, with whatever was righteous and true,
with whatever was direct and sensible and energetic
he was ever in thorough accord.
The Outlook July 27, 1895, said:
*t)r. Brooks was virile to the very core of his
nature, a man absolutely free from the mannerisms
and aridity of the professional ecclesiastic. Like his
brother he had the religious genius of the prophet,
one who receives truth not through institutional or
historic channels, but by direct perception, a man
born therefore to make institutions sacred by reveal¬
ing anew their educational possibilities, a man born
to clothe life with a new sanctity by making clear
its spiritual significance.
Barnard College will miss its inspiring and wise
head. Identified from its very inception with the
movement to provide ample opportunities for the
higher education of women in this city. Dr. Brooks was,
during the six arduous years of its period of organ¬
ization, Chairman of its Board of Trustees. He
was practically president of the college, though with¬
out the title or the rewards of that dignified position.
He bore the burdens, carried the responsibilities and
did the work of the head of the college as if he had
nothing else to do. He knew every detail of college
management, he was personally acquainted with
every student; he was tireless in his endeavor to give
31
the college high aims and sound methods and to
interpret it justly to the community. No service
was ever more faithful and none more self-effacing.
When in the near future Barnard College is nobly
housed on Morningside Heights, it will not fail in
some enduring form to associate forever with its
growth, this high-minded and noble hearted leader
of its days of uncertain fortunes. Such men are the
true teachers and inspirers of youth in every age.
Harper^s Weekly said of him:
Dr. Brooks displayed great administrative
ability and a wonderful care and talent for detail.
Scholarly tastes, oratorical power and business
capacity have seldom been combined as they were
in him, and the condition in which he left his own
and his church affairs bears testimony to a pains¬
taking skill that would do credit to a trained man of
business. He was an old-fashioned churchman.
More perhaps than at any other church in New
York, the Episcopal service was read and sung at
the Church of the Incarnation after a fashion that
was distinct from modern ecclesiasticism. His flow
of humor was fresh and abundant; his manner
was gracious and his spirit was kindly; it was a
privilege to know of him; it was a boon to possess
his friendship.
The New York Observer said:
He was one of the thorough painstaking, wise and
trusted men in the New York ministry whose depart¬
ure vñll be felt by every religious and charitable insti-
32
tution and deplored as a personal loss by thousands
of individuals. His twenty years of service in this
city is not to be reckoned in material values for it
has gone to the account of things eternal, neverthe¬
less the city is poorer in every way, except in the
memory of excellence and beauty of character by
the death of such a man as Arthur Brooks.
If we have exceeded the length generally
allowed to such memorials in this club, we
are sure we shall be pardoned by those of
you who remember Chicago immediately
before and after our great fire. This vigor¬
ous young soldier of the cross who came to
us in the darkest days of our civic and
social life was a rainbow of hope, a bridge
to bear us over the gulf which threatened
us, and there are men here who recovered
from the great shocks of that period, and
have in some degree contributed to the un¬
paralleled civic pride and spirit of this won¬
derful city, who might not have survived
the heart-sickening distresses of those
days, but for the brave heart and brain, the
cheering tongue and pen of this embodied
spirit of ten generations of Puritan life.
His twenty years of active work among the
numerous churches, hospitals, colleges and
33
societies of the seaboard have made his
life one of unusual distinction where many
others have shared the harvest, but his
three years of early manhood dedicated to
our own dear city will never be forgotten
by some of the early members of this club,
but will ever be remembered and cherished
with gratitude and love.
Daniel Goodwin,
Charles F. Bradley,
William W. K. Nixon,
Committee.
34
^KCHICAGO ■■■'■■
LiTeßAßY
IN MEMORIAM
WILLIAM ADAM MONTGOMERY
Born June 21, 1838
Died August 21, 1895
Chicago Literary Club
1896
PRESS OP
ROGERS & SMITH CO.
CHICAGO
This memorial of our late fellow-
member, William Adam Montgom¬
ery, was read at the meeting of the Club,
on Monday evening. May 4, 1896, and
ordered printed, and copies sent to the
members of the Club.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
IN the death of William A. Montgomery
the Literary Club has lost one of its
esteemed members who appreciated its privi¬
leges and associations, and who looked
forward to its meetings with interest and
anticipation.
• William Adam Montgomery was born
June 21, 1838, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
and, coming from an ancestry of lawyers, it
was but natural that he should select the
profession of the law. He was admitted to
the bar at Chicago in February, 1861, and
gave to the interests of his clients the most
conscientious and efficient care; he con¬
ducted many suits of large importance to
successful termination, and, at the time of
his death, was in the possession of a large
and prosperous business. In the practice of
his profession he was invariably courteous,
and at the same time tenacious for every
interest committed to his care. He was a
lawyer of sterling integrity and honor, and
respected by all his associates, having the
respect and regard of all the courts in which
5
he practiced. It was not possible for him to
do a mean thing, or to resort to an undigni¬
fied method to advance his cause. His prac¬
tice was honorable in all the details of his
profession, and under all circumstances he
was a gentleman; an opponent always knew
that every point of his client's case would be
thoroughly fortified and that no weak place
would be left unguarded; he honored and
ennobled the profession of which his father
and grandfather were illustrious members.
William A. Montgomery came from a
patriotic ancestry. His grandfather did
brave service in the Revolutionary war, and
it was but natural that our friend should
draw the sword to preserve and perpetuate
the liberty and institutions which his grand¬
father had shared in creating and establish¬
ing. He entered the army in December,
1861, and was engaged in active service
until the close of the war. His regiment
took part in the battles of Missionary Ridge,
Orchard Knob, Knoxville, Kenesaw Moun¬
tain, and other engagements, and he always
led his men in every action, but of his
bravery on the field no one would ever hear
from his own lips. He loved to refer to the
6
part his ancestors had taken in the Revolu¬
tionary war, and in establishing the gov¬
ernment, and at the time of his death he was
collecting materials for an article on the
history of the Society of the Cincinnati in
the United States. He was a graduate of
Beloit College, Wisconsin, graduating in the
year 1859.
William Adam Montgomery will be missed
from this Club by his many friends who
loved and respected him; he joined the Club
in 1885, and took a warm interest in its
exercises, to which he was an appreciative
listener. Being of a retiring nature, he was
not well known to all our members, but to
us who knew him well he was especially
endeared, and the loss of his quiet and
genial greeting at our meetings will be
deeply felt.
William A. Montgomery was a soldier
"without fear and without reproach;" he
ennobled and ornamented the profession to
which he belonged and the college from
which he graduated. In his private life he
was always courteous, manly and attractive,
the type of a perfect..gentleman ; and in his
bearing, conversation and demeanor he was
7
always dignified, considerate and courteous.
In his death the Club has lost a valued
member, and we desire to place on record
these words of appreciation and affection
for our friend.
David Fales,
Daniel Goodwin,
Walter M. Rowland,
Committee.
8
-"X—i'ln:
' I .íi, xji-
'^á / :
M
-. CHICAGO
jpfe;.
^ LlTERARY^ïn^^'
>■.1^^ ^ CLUB / -'vr^S . .■
—-=>i
IN MEMORIAM
PORTER PUFFER HEYWOOD
Born July 30, 1828
Died April 28, 1896
Chicago Literary Club
1896.
PRESS OF
ROGERS & SMITH CO.
CHICAGO.
This memorial of our late fellow-
member, Porter Puffer Heywood,
was read at the meeting of the Club on
Monday evening, May i8, 1896, and ordered
printed and copies sent to the members of
the Club.
Frederick W. Gookin,
Recording Secretary.
OUR CLUB is again called upon to
mourn the loss of one of its members.
On the 28th day of April, 1896, Porter Puffer
Heywood died at his home in Chicago, after
•an illness of but five days. His death was a
shock to his friends and business acquaint¬
ances and a sad blow to his wife and family,
destroying the anticipation of happy years in
the future.
Porter P. Heywood was born July 30,
1828, at Westminster, Worcester County,
Massachusetts; he came of good New Eng¬
land parentage and revolutionary stock,
and was educated in the public schools of
the town and county where he was born.
In 1855 he came West, and was for several
years the superintendent of the public
schools in Aurora, Illinois, where he made
for himself an enviable reputation as an
honorable, industrious and devoted official,
esteemed and respected by all who had rela¬
tions with him.
5
In 1864 Mr. Hey wood first came to
Chicago to live, and engaged in the local
fire insurance business with Messrs. Moore
& Stearns, and two years later became associ¬
ated with the Hartford Fire Insurance Com¬
pany as an adjuster for the Western Depart¬
ment.
In November, 1869, he was sent to the
Pacific Coast as general agent for the Hart¬
ford, and remained some two years in San
Francisco. In 1872 he was transferred to
Chicago, and became assistant general agent
of the Western Department of the company,
and, on the death of the general agent, June
I, 1895, succeeded to the general agency,
which position he held when he died.
Mr. Heywood became a member of the
Literary Club, February 28, 1881, and, while
he never took an active part in the exercises
of the Club, on account of the engrossing
character of his employment and illness in
his family, he was always appreciative of the
advantages afforded and the pleasures of the
social side of the Monday evening meetings.
In all the relations of life in a great city,
Mr. Heywood took an active interest; and
his voice was ever on the side of honesty
6
and good government : he was unswerving
in his allegiance to right, strictly obeying
the dictates of a conscience easily awakened
against injustice, dishonesty and wrong-do¬
ing. In his death this city has lost a good
citizen, his family a loving husband and
father, and our Club a worthy member.
Wm. Eliot Furness,
^ George L. Paddock,
Benjamin R. Bulkelev,
Committee.
7
977.31 C5322m 1
3 5556 010 480 960