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DOtne B^emlniscenceiJ of a ilong Htfe

WITH A FEW ARTICLES ON MORAL AND SOCIAL SUBJECTS
OF PRESENT INTEREST

By JOHN HOOKER

H^attforb, <!Eonn.
BELKNAP & WARFIELD
1899

Copyright, iSgg, by John Hooker.

All rights reserved.
r;

7 /' n ^0

Please niahe tbe following corredions —
gth page, 12th line from bottom, for mother read mothers.
72d page, 12th line, for a letter read letters.
104th page, loth line, for iSgj read iSSj.
I52d page, Sth line, ior profession read procession .

, j-.r-a 'a.'

-£. 78.

TO I. B. H.
WHOSE ENLIGHTENING AND INSPIRING COMPANIONSHIP
FOR OVER HALF A CENTURY
HAS MADE MY LIFE WELL WORTH LIVING AND FULL OF PLEASANT MEMORIES,
31 ©Ebicate tW^ "SBooft.
J. H.

CONTENTS.

PAGE.
INTRODUCTION, ...  9
TAKEN BY PIRATES, . . 27
FLORA SLAVE CASE, ... 31
SUI GENERIS, . . .... 33
THE OX THAT RETURNED FROM TICONDEROGA, . 34
MARTIN CAIRNS, ... 35
HOW I BECAME A DOCTOR OF DIVINITY, . 37
THE DOG-FIGHT SUIT OF RHODES vs. WELLS, , , . 41
GIDEON HALL, . . . . 45
MARTIN WELLES, . 46
CHARLES CHAPMAN, . . 48
RICHARD D. HUBBARD, . . . . 53
MR. HUBBARD'S OBITUARY ADDRESSES, 63
SAMUElL BOWLES, ... 65
SIRJSAMUEL ROMILLY, . 7°
DR, THOMAS ARNOLD, , , 73
WILLIAM M, EVARTS, . . 75
HENRY WARD BEECHER AND REV. DR. PARKER, . 78
SUSAN B, ANTHONY'S FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY, , 89
THE GREAT ROTHSCHILD AT PARIS, , 91
REV, DR, BURTON, , 92
CAPT, BAKER, , , ,99
THE DANSVILLE SANATORIUM, , lOI
LOOSING THE ASS, , . 106
THE ONION STEALER, . . 107
A SUMMER IN GUILFORD, . . Io8
THE WOMEN FOUNDERS OF NEW ENGLAND, . , , m
THE IDEAL WOMAN,  • "3
ADDRESS AT REV, DR, PORTER'S SEMI-CENTENNIAL, , 1 14

vi CONTENTS.
PAGE,
CHIEF JUSTICES WILLIAMS AND STORRS, , "8
MY DESIRE FOR A JUDGESHIP, I20
MY SUPREME COURT REPORTERSHIP, '24
SOME INCIDENTS OP MY REPORTERSHIP, . ,129
SOME OP MY JUDICIAL FRIENDS, . . . . 155
JUDGE HUNT AND THE TRIAL OP SUSAN B, ANTHONY, . I&3
LIFE AT NOOK FARM, , 17°
OUR GOLDEN WEDDING, , 173
SOME FURTHER INTRODUCTORY MATTER, . . 185
DAMON AND PYTHIAS, . 197
GROWTH IN UNSPIRITUALITY, . 200
DR. JOHN CHAPMAN, . , , , , 205
THE KEARSARGE, 209
SAMUEL MOSELEY, 214
GENERAL B., . . . 219
WILLIAM H. IMLAY, . 222
MY BICYCLE ACCIDENT, . 225
ANARCHY AND ITS PHILOSOPHY, . 228
TAXATION, , , 232
JOHN HOOKER OF SOUTH CAROLINA, , . 237
A WORLD POLICE, . 241
WOMAN SUFFRAGE, . 245
SPIRITUALISM, , , ,247
SOME BITS OF VERSE, , , 265
CANDOR, , , 275
THE PROGRESS OF WOMEN, , . ,279
MY THEOLOGY, , , .281
MY RELIGION, . . . . 295
THE UPBUILDING OF A STATE, . . 299
APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN, . 307
A PINAL WORD, 310
APPENDIX.
SOCIAL LIFE IN FARMINGTON EARLY IN THE CENTURY, 313
THE EARLY ABOLITION MOVEMENT, , , 338
MRS, MARY H, BURTON'S LETTER TO MRS, AMES, 343

PREFACE.

I HAVE been at work at these reminiscences in a very
leisurely and intermittent way for the past two years, I had at
first an idea of writing a series of articles for one of the Hart
ford papers, which would be sure of a local acceptance and not
invite any critical notice, in which I should give my recollec
tions of some men and things that had fallen within my obser
vation or experience. But I had not gone far in gathering ma
terials for this purpose before the idea, aided by frequent and
most friendly suggestions from my friends, grew into that of
a book. So I began upon the present work, printing as I
went, indeed printing the introduction before I had written
much else. It has been a pleasant occupation of many spare
hours, but with not infrequent doubts whether the book would
interest the public or be any credit to me. I knew at the out
set that with my unobserved life within the narrow domain
of the law, wholly out of the way of knowing the men who are
most before the public eye and impress themselves most on
the public observation, I could not expect to interest anybody
but the few who knew me personally, and perhaps the men of
my own profession throughout the state; and as I progressed
with the work I have repeatedly felt like stopping where I was
and abandoning the whole undertaking, giving what I had
written to our city papers. Still, I kept on until I became
satisfied that I could not fill the volume with matters purely
reminiscent, and I decided to avail myself of the opportunity
which the space thus left gave me to insert some brief articles
on subjects, mainly moral and social, now pending before the
(vii)

viii PREFACE.
public, in which I felt a deep interest. When the body of the
book had been printed I put the sheets into the hands of my
greatly-esteemed friend, Dr. Henry Barnard, to read. He
had frequently before expressed much interest in my work.
He is six years older than I, has been all his life a leader and
authority throughout the country in educational matters, and
is greatly interested in all matters of state and local history.
A few weeks later he wrote me as follows: "June i, 1899.
Dear Mr. Hooker ; The advance sheets of your ' Reminis
cences ' have proved most interesting. In fact, I have read
nothing else since they came into my hands. Very many of
the pages I could easily adopt as a better expression of my
own recollections of men and affairs than I should be able to
produce. . . . The book I am sure will pass into the per
manent historical literature of Connecticut." With this great
encouragement I have better heart for submitting my book to
the criticism of the public.
Mr. Julius Gay of Farmington, a gentleman of great intel
ligence with regard to local and state history, has, at my re
quest, prepared an article on the social life of Farmington in
the early part of this century, which is printed in the appendix.
I am sure it will be read with much interest, and it is particu
larly pertinent to these Reminiscences as it was in that village
that all my early life was passed.

INTRODUCTION.

in compiling and prejiaring for the press these rcniinis-
cciices of my life, 1 have not attempted to place them in chrono
logical order, nor indeed to make them auto-biographical.
Ihey are largely made up of what I have observed of men and
occurrences in the (|iiite limited space in social life in which I
have moved, with something of my own experiences and with
occasional rambles into the world of humor, on the edge of
which I have always lived. I shall devote but a few introduc
tory pages lo my own early life, which will probably interest
few but my near friends, and, perhaps, the good people of
F;iniiinglon, among whom I was born and brought up, so that
those who have known me in my later professional life may
find it more interestiii.g to omit wholly this introductory chap
ter and begin at once at tlie one which follows.
I was born in the town of L^armington, Connecticut, Aj^ril
19U1, 1816. My father was lulward 1 looker, who was the fifth
in direct descent from Thomas I looker, the first minister of the
First (now Center) Church of Martford, and whose son Samuel
was the second minister of the church in l'"armington, whose
pastorate of thirty-six years closed with his death in 1697. My
motlier was Eliza Daggett of New Haven, who was first cousin
of tlie motheaof Roger S. ISaldwin, Governor of Connecticut,
of William M. Evarts, and of Senator and Judge Floar of Mas
sachusetts, all of whom thus became my second cousins. My
father graduated at Yale Collcgx' in 1805, and was afterwards
a tutor there, and in the South Carolina College at Columbia,
South Carolina, finally settling in Farmington, where for a few
years he kept a private classical school, and later retired from
all active employment, excejit that of cultivating an extensive
farm which he had inherited. Fie died in 1845, at the age of 61.
I was married on tlie 5th of August, 184 [, to Isabella, the
youn.gest daughter of Rev. Dr. Lyman Reecher. She is still
living (1897). We have had four children, two of whom. Dr.

lO REMINISCENCES.
Edward Beecher Hooker and Alice, wife of John C. Day, are
living. Of the others, one, Thomas, died soon after birth, and
Mary, afterwards Mrs. Henry E. Burton, died in 1886, aged 40.
We celebrated our golden wedding on the 5th of August, 1891.
I shall speak of that occasion more fully in the body of the
book. I attended the district school of my native town until I was
about ten, when I entered the Farmington Academy, kept by
Simeon Hart, a noted teacher of the time, where I fitted for
college, entering Yale college when I was sixteen. My prep
aration for college was greatly aided by the private instruction
of my father, who was a rare classical scholar for that day, and
who began to drill me in Latin and Greek at quite an early age.
My college course, however, was never completed. I was taken
ill before the close of my second year, and had a long course of
typhoid fever, upon my recovery from which I began too early
the attempt, by hard study, to overtake my class, the result
being an injury to my eyes that compelled me to discontinue
my studies, and has afflicted me all my life. The college, later,
granted me a degree. My class graduated in 1837, and my
name stands with the rest on the catalogue.
In my uncertainty what to do, and in the probability that
I should have to follow an active outdoor life, and in the hope,
too, of benefiting my general health, I went on two voyages,
one to the Mediterranean and one to China, both before the '
mast. On our return voyage from China, when in the mid-
Atlantic, near the latitude of the lower West India Islands,'
our vessel was overhauled and taken possession of by a Portu
guese pirate. I devote a chapter to this adventure in the body
of the book. - --¦ I ^ 1 9 b i ^ ¦' '
After my two years of sea life I took up the study of law,
and was admitted to the Hartford County Bar in 1841. I
opened an office in Farmington, was married later in the same
year, and resided there until the fall of 1851, when I removed
to Hartford, where I have lived ever since.
In January, 1858, I was appointed by the judg-es of our
Supreme Court the reporter of the court, which office I held
until January i, 1894, thirty-six years. With the surrender of
this office I retired from all business, and have since been en-

INTRODUCTION. 1 1
joying the quiet and peaceful life of one whose work is done,
and who, in full readiness, is waiting for the summons to a
higher life.
I will, in this introductory chapter, give a little account of
old Farmington and of the people and their country habits as
I saw them in my boyhood. The changes in social conditions
and habits since then are undoubtedly greater than all the
changes from the early settlement of the country down to that
time. Those who have visited the village of Farmington have
been struck by its exceeding beauty of situation. It lies along
the lower slope of a mountain side, with a broad and green
meadow of rich cultivated land below, through which winds a
river of considerable size, with its banks fringed by a growth
of trees. I think I am not extravagant in saying that few hills
ever looked down upon a more lovely valley, and few valleys
ever looked up to more beautiful hills. Here my eye learned
very early to dwell with delight upon the view of mountain and
meadow that constantly met it. My father was a great lover
of beautiful scenery, and early cultivated in me a love of nature
that has all my life been to me what a love of fine music is to a
cultivated ear.
The beauty of the village is greatly increased by the fine
trees along its principal streets. It is a pleasant reflection to
me that a large part of these trees were planted by me or
thrbugh my instrumentality in my boyhood and early man
hood. I do not include a few very large old trees that are still
standing. I was an enthusiast with regard to such improve
ments, and persuaded other boys to join with me in much of the
work, particularly that on Main street. All the trees on High
street and the New Britain road were planted by me without
their help.
The stately and venerable church still stands upon the vil
lage street, well along in years when I attended it as a boy, but
hardly touched yet by decay. Social changes have afifected it,
but nature has dealt with it very kindly. It was built in 1771,
and to this day, over one hundred and twenty-five years, the
cedar shingles which were then put upon the roof are doing
good service still. So much for honest material and honest

12 REMINISCENCES.
builders. I am glad to be able to record the fact that my
grandfather was one of the building committee.
The pews in my boyhood were all square, with high straight
backs, very uncomfortable to hold one's self up against. There
were no stoves or other mode of heating, but the house was in
winter literally as cold as a barn. Every family carried a foot-
stove, which was passed along from one to another, while
heavy overcoats and shawls did what they could for our com
fort. It was my regular business, when I got old enough, to
carry the footstove, and I once, in a crowded state of our pew.
had to sit on it, absorbing for the time, and quite uncomfort
ably, the heat that was intended for the pew-full. The clergy
man often preached in his overcoat. One advantage of the
chilling atmosphere was that he had to gesticulate a good deal
to keep himself warm, thus making his delivery more impres
sive. We had at the time the high box pulpit, and it was prob
ably on one of the cold days that a specially active and earnest
preacher, who turned one way and the other in the narrow pul
pit as he vociferated toward the different quarters of the house,
excited the wonder of a little girl who was taken to church for
the first time, and who asked her mother on the way home
why they didn't let that man out, when he was trying so hard
to get out and was hollering so. There was also, while the old
pulpit remained, a huge sounding-board right over it. which I
used to look at with childish wonder, sometimes thinking it
might come down on the preacher, but more often thinking
of it as an image of heaven, or of some heavenly thing, placed
there for its moral effect. It disappeared with the old pulpit,
but whether it came down or went up I never quite knew.
Modern slips also early took the place of the old pews. It was
all well to have these changes made, but there was one that I
^ ¦ look back upon with great regret. I remember well the crown,
-^^ brass or .gilded, that was on the top of the steeple. We were a
colony of Great Britain when the church was built, and the
people placed the crown there as a token of their lovalty, and
there it had stood for nearly or quite fifty years after we had
won our independence. After so long a time it had ceased to
be an offensive reminder of royalty and had become only a very
interesting relic, and it would have grown more and more in-

INTRODUCTION.

13

teresting with the passing years. If the people of the town had
it there to-day they would not part with it for its weight in gold.
But some foohsh democratic whim tore it down. I forget what
year it was, but I must have been ten years old, which would
make it as late as 1826. But if the crown had to come down,
it is a marvel that nobody felt an interest in preserving it. It
should have gone to the historical society. As it was, it dis
appeared and has never since been seen. The old pulpit I
remember seeing in the rear of a house opposite to the old
cemetery, where it was used for some domestic purpose, a hen
house, or something of the sort, and probably it has long ago
gone for firewood.
The old church,- then known to us only as the " meeting
house," was well filled every Sunday. People came from a
great distance, and the teams which brought them were tied
to posts on the edge of the green. The present horse sheds
were built many years later. People came from what is now
Plainville, from White Oak district, from Unionville, and from
the Avon road, more than half the way to Avon. Avon was
then a part of Farmington, and was called Northington. There
were in the rear of the church two small one-story houses, be
longing to the ecclesiastical society, called originally " Sab
bath-Day Houses," but in my boyhood called " Sabba-day
Houses," where the people from out of town used to go on
Sunday noons to eat their lunches. There were open fireplaces
and great wood fires, and it must have been not only very com
fortable after sitting all the forenoon in the freezing air of the
church, but very pleasant socially, as the farmers and their
wives met and exchanged gossip. These houses were aban
doned after the church was warmed. For a while they were
let to poor families ; one, I remember, was occupied by a negro
family for a while, but I do not remember what finally became
of them. Rev. Dr. Porter, then plain Mr. Porter, was the pastor of
the church when I was born. He baptized me, as he did also
my son. In the record of his baptisms stands, in 1816, " John,
son of Edward Hooker," and in 1855, " Edward, son of John
Hooker." When my son was baptized my wife and I were -
members of the Fourth Church in Hartford, but, with the ac-

14

REMINISCENCES.

quiescence of our pastor there, we brought him to Farming-
ton, that he might be baptized by our beloved Dr. Porter. It
is a remarkable fact that Dr. Porter was a Farmington boy,
and his first settlement was here in his native town, and here he
continued his pastorate for over fifty years, dying here in a
good old age, and buried here among his people. He was a
great man; not an orator, but a thinker, a calm, clear-headed,
self-sustained expounder of Christian truth. If he had been a
lawyer he might have made a great chief justice.
He used to come to the district school that I attended and
catechize us on Saturdays. We got so that we could reel off
the greater part of the Assembly's Shorter Catechism, though
we sometimes made blunders, as where one boy that I was told
of, in answer to the question " What is baptism? " replied that
it was " an outward and miserable sign of inward sanctifica-
tion." It was the day of doctrinal preaching, and I once heard
Dr. Porter say to my father that he intended to preach one
doctrinal sermon every Sunday. There were then two regular
sermons in the forenoon and afternoon of Sunday, and an ex
temporaneous address in the evening; a pretty severe demand
upon both body and brain of the preacher.
It was a beautiful incident of Dr. Porter's pastorate, that
from his birth in Farmington, and his long settlement in the
ministry there, he came to know the family histories, and he
was often very felicitous in his remarks at funerals and wed
dings. At the latter he would often say to the bride, and per
haps to both, I married your father and mother, and at funerals
he would have some most tender remembrances of the early
life of the one who had passed away. I remember that, at the
funeral of an old man who had been poor and thriftless and un-
respected, but whom Dr. Porter had known from his boyhood,
he gave a quiet reminiscent talk that could hardly have been
surpassed for pathos and tenderness. He always at funerals
found something interesting to say of everybody. He did not
seem to fall back on his ingenuity, but on his early memories
and lifelong acquaintance.
One remark of Dr. Porter at a prayer-meeting greatly im
pressed me at the time, and has dwelt with me as a comforter

INTRODUCTION. 1 5
all my life. Our weekly church prayer-meetings were held
on Thursday afternoons, the daytime being taken to enable
the church members who lived at a distance to attend. I made
it a rule to attend when I was able. But as my business in
creased, and very often called me away from home, my attend
ance became infrequent. At one of the meetings I expressed
my regret that I was not able to attend the meetings more, but
that it seemed out of the question for me to do so, upon which
Dr. Porter got up and said, " There is a passage in the Psalms
that our brother ought to bear in mind. It is, ' Blessed is he
that condemneth not himself in that which he alloweth.' A
great many people cannot get time for religious exercises with
out neglecting other imperative duties. A mother is busy from
morning till late bedtime, attending to her children and her
family duties, and cannot get the half-hour that she greatly de
sires for reading her Bible and for prayer. Well, don't let her
worry about it. Let her do faithfully her family work, and if
she can get no time for anything else, let her not condemn her
self, but make up her mind to allow these unavoidable duties
to take all her time."
My father was very fond of Dr. Porter, and for a great part
of his life was one of his deacons. He was himself worthy of a
sympathetic and respectful notice, but, as his son, I will say
only a few words about him, and those only with regard to
matters that illustrate the early times in which I lived. He was
very particular about all religious observances, always having
family prayers in the morning and evening. He used, at the
morning service, to read from Scott's commentaries on the
Bible, taking each division of the comments on the chapter he
read, namely, "notes" and "practical observations." This
made the service rather long, and, as I thought it then, rather
dull; but my young mind took in a great many religious im
pressions that I should be sorry to have lived without. We al
ways kept Saturday night as a part of Sunday, and Sunday
night as the beginning of week-day life, and a happy deliver
ance from the confinement and rigor of Sunday. I remember
how I used to watch at the western window for the setting of
the sun, and used to think it an unkind ordinance of nature
that made the sun set so late in the lovely summer days., when
we so wanted to be out.

1 6 REMINISCENCES.
My father was an open-minded man, and wished to know
the truth, especially in public affairs, and he took the Connecti
cut Courant and the Hartford Times, both weekhes, (there were
no dailies then, not even in New York, I think,) and we, his
children, grew up to read both papers to see what each side had
to say. Perhaps this is the reason that I have never been able
to be much of a partisan. I never cared much for names. I
wanted the right thing done, and was always willing to help
any party do it.
Among the old men whom I remember seeing in my boy
hood, no one was more notable than Gov. Treadwell. He lived
in a red house close by the large rock in the front part of the
Norton place. I remember once calling at his house with a
line from my father, when I saw him at dinner, which he left
for a few minutes to attend to me and my message. I could
not have been over ten years old. I think he died very soon
after. As to remembering old people, I find that I have seen a
person who must have seen a person who saw the first settlers.
My grandfather on my mother's side, Henry Daggett, was born
in 1740, and died at the age of 90, in 1830. He could easily
have seen in his boyhood some very old person who in his boy
hood had seen the first settlers. This seems to bring them very
near to us — ¦ but three lives between.
It was while I was a school boy that the Farmington Canal
was devised and constructed. It ran from New Haven to
Northampton in Massachusetts. I remember well Mr. James
Hillhouse of New Haven, who was one of its principal pro
moters, going through Farmington with a large boat on wheels
drawn by several pairs of horses, full of New Haven gentle
men, with a band of musicians and flags flying. I think they
stopped over night at our village, and the next day went on to
other towns on the route. This I suppose to have been before
the canal was made, and to get up an enthusiasm for it. The
canal was used quite largely by people who were passing be
tween New Haven and the towns on the route. I have gone
to New Haven by it with my father when the boat was^vell
filled with passengers. It was not long, however, before it
was found to be poorly supported, and finally its bed was taken
for the canal railroad, and the canal, as such, was abandoned.

INTROD UCTION. 1 7
The digging of this canal brought the first Irishmen that
our state had known to do the work. I remember well the
first one I saw. I was on my way to school when I met him.
He stopped and said to me, in a brogue I could hardly under
stand, " Do you know who I am? " I told him I did not.
" Well," said he, " I am a wild Irishman, just over." I told of
this when I got home, as I would if I had seen a wild zebra in
the street.
Among the interesting things that I remember is the post
master and postal service of my early life. Dea. Samuel Rich
ards was the postmaster, a picturesque object in the social land
scape and in my memory. He was tall and slim, and very
straight, wearing the old knee-breeches that then lingered
among the survivors of an earlier time. He was very precise
in his manner, and punctilious in the discharge of his official, re
ligious, and social duties. He lived in a large house near the
north end of the street, and the post-office was in his front hall.
I often went there to carry or get letters. The letters that were
waiting to be called for were stuck into tapes that were tacked
crosswise upon the wall. I remember his telling my father
that they hoped soon to have a mail twice a week to New York.
I infer that there was then only a weekly mail there. There was
then and for a long time after a mail every other day to New
Haven. A stage started at Hartford and passed through Farm
ington, and went thence to New Haven, carrying the mail,
going one day and returning the next. Postages were graded
according to distance, and were a great burden upon business
and friendly correspondence. To any western town (and even
the middle states were then " the West "), the postage was
twenty-five cents, with eighteen and three-fourths, twelve and
one-half, and six and one-fourth for shorter distances. This
continued down to 1840. The young lady to whom I was en
gaged to be married lived in Cincinnati, and we exchanged let
ters every week. Prepayment was not then required, so that I
had to pay my own postage and hers. As each letter was
twenty-five cents, it cost me half a dollar a week, where now
the postage would be but four cents. Still, I think it was a good
investment. A curious feature of the system then existing was
that a separate postal charge was made for every piece of paper

1 8 REMINISCENCES.
contained in the letter. You were constantly asked, when you
brought a letter to be mailed, whether there was more than one
piece of paper. It was impossible for the officials to discover,
and so there was a great temptation to lie about it, and prob
ably a great deal of lying was done. The absurdity of the rule
was in requiring two separate bits of paper, no matter how
small, to pay double postage, and yet allowing very large
sheets, no matter how large, to go for single postage. This
led to a common device in scattered families, of starting large
sheets with all the family news, and passing them along till
they had gone the rounds of the family, each one adding its own
news. Among the things that greatly interested me as a boy were
the annual militia trainings. These were held on the " green,"
the large open space in front of and about the " meeting-house."
There was a very impressive looking company of " grena
diers," in brilliant uniforms, a company of troopers, and a large
company of " militia," of all sorts of arms and all varieties and
conditions of clothing. The training lasted all day. The sol
diers brought their own dinners, except that large pails of
punch or some other very palatable preparation of liquor, were
brought upon the ground, which we boys were always allowed
a good drink of. This was before the temperance movement
was started or had made much headway. While the troopers
were eating their luncheons, we boys were allowed to get on
their horses and gallop about the streets. They were generally
old farm horses, and often jaded ones, but their gay trappings
made them seem to us like veritable war horses.
I have spoken of the liquor-drinking habit of the mih-
tiamen. It was the general habit. I remember well riding in
a cart one day with our principal workman, when he took a
swig from a rum bottle, which he always took with him when
he went off for a day's work, and his saying, as he set the bottle
down, " What could we do without rum? A man can do twice
as much work with it as he could without it."
There are few things in which a greater change has been
made than in the modes of starting our fires, as well as of
making a light. In my boyhood we had no matches but sul
phur ones, made at home, which we used with flint and tinder-

INTROD UCTION. I g
box. We always took great pains to provide at night for a
morning bed of coals in the kitchen fireplace. Our cook
ing was then, and for a long time after, done in an open
fireplace, the baking being done in a large oven. If, as often
happened, a family got out of live coals, some one went to a
neighbor's with a fire shovel to get coals enough to start a fire.
I remember the first matches that I ever saw, I was a school
boy, and one of the older boys brought to one of our evening
entertainments a new mode of striking a light, at which we all
looked with the greatest curiosity. There was a case holding
a quantity of matches, and a phial, into which the match was
dipped, when it at once began to blaze. I doubt whether the
telephone when it came seemed to the people a greater advance
than those matches seemed on the old mode of making a light.
There was a very pleasant, but simple, social life in my
early days in Farmington. Neighbors came in frequently to
sit and chat of an evening, when apples and walnuts were al
ways brought out, together with cider, of which every cellar
had a good supply. The monthly meetings at the village li
brary, held on Sunday evening, were a special time for the
meeting of the elders, who spent the evening together in the
librarian's parlor, while the kitchen was occupied by us boys.
Family visits were common. Near relatives of my father and
mother used to come every year, bringing their entire families,
and staying several days, and we returned the visits in the same
way. I was born in the closing years of what Dr. Bushnell has
called " The Age of Homespun," but clearly within that age.
The people living in the village of Farmington were mostly
farmers, and all of whatever calling were more or less engaged
in farming. The lands that constituted the farms lay in part
on the mountain and in part in the broad meadows. The latter
were used mainly for hay and for planting; the mountain land
was used for pasturage, orchards, and woodlands. The families
made and consumed their own butter and cheese, and raised
their own pork, and, to a considerable extent, their beef and
mutton. My father kept a large flock of sheep, and the spring
washing and shearing was quite an event for us boys. The
wool was sent to the carding and fulling mills, and the cloth

20 REMINISCENCES.
made up for our winter clothes. A tailoress came around regu
larly to make them up for us. We knew httle of fashions,
especially of any change in them, and it was not till near the
time I went to college that I began to have tailor-made clothes.
My father always had a tailor-made suit for Sundays, which
would last him several years. Such a thing as ready-made suits
was never heard of. The wool, when it had been carded, was
brought back to the house to be spun. We kept a large spin
ning wheel in the kitchen or near it, at which a woman, hired
for the purpose, spun the rolls into yarn, from which our stock
ings were knit by the women of the family. Knitting was a uni
versal industry among the women, and when they were spend
ing an afternoon or evening together they all brought their
knitting. Quilting parties were also very frequent and very
lively. The ladies of the first families used all to spin. My own
mother, though well educated and refined, and coming from
one of the best families in New Haven, would frequently spend
an hour at the spinning-wheel. Pumpkin pies were a great
favorite. Large crops of pumpkins were raised in the meadows
among the corn. I do not remember to have seen a squash pie,
or even a winter squash, till I was a grown man. Anthracite
coal was then unknown, and cooking stoves were a novelty
and very rare. We had a large kitchen fireplace, and wood
fires about the house in open fireplaces, consuming a great
quantity of wood, all furnished by our woodland. My father's
house was one of abundance, yet it could hardly be surpassed
for simplicity of living.
There used to be several lawyers in the town, its commercial
and legal business about the beginning of the century being
very considerable. These had all gone before my day, except
Lemuel Whitman, a man of considerable legal and political
intelligence and at one time a member of Congress, but, as he
grew old, a cynical, unsocial man, who sat all day in his office
reading the papers, not mingling at ah in the affairs of the town,
nor making himself useful in any way. He walked across the
street to his office, and back to his house to eat and to sleep,
taking, so far as one could see, no exercise at all. At last he
died in a fit, in fact was found dead. At his funeral the late
Rev. Mr. Fessenden made some remarks at the grave. He was

INTRODUCTION. 2 1
not very adroit in getting upon his feet when he found himself
off them. Not thinking much beforehand what to sa}-, he fell
into the old rut of such occasions, and, alluding to his verv
sudden death, spoke of him as " cut off in the midst of his
use — , of his use — , of his — of his — activity." Poor Air. Fes
senden did not mend the matter much by substituting activity
for usefulness, for there probably was not in the town a more
useless or inactive man. I allow myself to tell this story be
cause not only is good and lovable Air. Fessenden gone, but
there is not a single member of Air. Whitman's family left,
either at Farmington, or, as I believe, anywhere.
I occasionally, when a boy, went into the town meetings,
where the town affairs were often vigorously discussed and
sometimes wrangled over. The selectmen were allowed one
dollar a day for the time actually spent in the town business,
and were held to a ^¦ery strict account of what they had done
to earn the money. I remember one of the farmers who was
opposing some outlay which he thought was unnecessary, re
marking that " if you touch a man's pocket you touch him all
over." Gen. Solomon Cowles often presided at these town
meetings, and deserves a passing notice. He was a tall, fine-
looking man, with white hair, and impressed one as a man quite
above the ordinar}- until he opened his mouth to speak, when
his pompous manner and misuse of language and absolute in
effectiveness of speech, disposed utterly of the impression
which one had got from the first observation of him. He must
have been at this time not far from eighty years old. At one
of the town meetings he was appointed on a committee to at
tend to some public business, when he arose to ask to be ex
cused, and said that he was " getting very old and superani-
mated.'" At an ecclesiastical society meeting over which he
presided a motion was made for the placing of large blocks of
stone at each end of the church for the women to step out upon
from their wagons. The motion was not in writing and so he
had to frame it for himself as he put it, which he did in these
words, " Gentlemen, those of you who are in favor of erecting
a mode of ladies getting out of wagons under the idea of a
horseblock, will please to say ' ave'."
In looking back to my boyhood I should speak of the exist-

22 REMINISCENCES.
ence of slavery in our southern states, and the apathy of our
northern states about the matter, with the universal disregard
of the rights of the colored people. Negro was always spelled
then with two " g's." The black man seemed to have no rights
as a man. He was often kindly regarded by humane people,
but such a thing as his having the rights of a man was hardly
thought of. In church he sat in the negroes' pew, a peW close
by the door in the lower part of the house or in the gallery. I
remember once when I was a small boy seeing the stage for
New Haven come from the north and stop at Phelps's hotel
(where Miss Porter's school is now) to take in passengers.
There came in it a very decently-clad black man, on his way
to New Haven. Capt. (ioodrich, one of New Haven's aris
tocracy, was waiting at the hotel to take the stage. As he was
about to get in he saw the black man inside. With an oath, he
ordered him out, and commanded the driver to take him out.
The driver compelled him to get out, and Capt. Goodrich got in
and the stage drove off, leaving the black man standing by the
hotel door. This man had as good a right to his passage as
Capt. Goodrich, and his treatment was a high-handed outrage.
We boys looked on, and could not help feeling a sympathy for
the black man, but somehow it did not strike us that it was
anything more than an unreasonable thing on Capt. Goodrich's
part; that the rights of a man were assailed we hardly thought.
After the stage had gone, Mr, Phelps feared that some blame
would be attached to his acquiescence in or possible abetting
oi the act, and he got up a wagon and drove tlie man to New
Haven, When the anti-slavery movement came alon.g it met
not only with ridicule, but with persecution. Its opponents did
not entertain a doubt of its ultimate failure. As the New York
Nation says of the time, it was a few fanatics on one side and all
society on the other. Harrison Grey Otis, a Boston politician
of the time, said, " There is not a possibility of this fanaticism
making any headway. Why, look at it; all the journals of the
country are against it, except one Boston paper that is pub
lished by a crank and a nigger." Yet that crank survived for
many years the overthrow of slavery. We had here in quiet and
orderly Farmington some outbreaks of the persecuting spirit,
I was attending an anti-slavery meeting in our town hall when

INTRODUCTION. 23
a stone as large as one's fist was thrown through the window be
hind the speaker, and, just missing his head, went across the
hall, striking the wall on the other side, but fortunately hitting
no one. It might have killed one whom it had chanced to hit.
Farmington was a place where there was a good number of
abolitionists, who harbored escaping slaves, so that many of
the latter were seen here, and some of them settled here. There
probably never were firmer or more determined people than
these anti-slavery men; and the town had many as determined
opponents of their cause. I was about that time superintendent
of the noon branch of the Sabbath-school, and one Sunday a
very respectable colored man came into the school. He was
not a fugitive slave — I forget what brought him there. Not
caring for the public sentiment, and wishing to do a kind thing,
I asked him to go over to church with me and sit in my pew.
He did so, but the moral shock was very great. One of the
church members said I had done more to break up the church
than any thing that had happened in its whole history. But it
was not long after this that Dr. Porter exchanged one Sunday
with Rev. Mr. Pennington of Hartford, a negro as black as a
native of Guinea. Yet the church has survived both shocks.
I shall devote a chapter of my R^eminiscences to this black
preacher, who afterwards became Rev. Dr. Pennington. He
was all the while a fugitive slave, though none of his Hartford
people suspected it. He afterwards confided the fact to me, in
order that I might negotiate with his old master for the pur
chase of his freedom, which, after a long delay, was accom
plished. The whole makes a very interesting chapter in the
history of slavery.
It was while I was living at Farmington that the case of the
Amistad occurred. A Cuban schooner of that name was trans
porting some forty freshly arrived slaves from Havana, Cuba,
where they had been purchased by two Spanish planters named
Ruiz and Montez, to their plantations on another part of the
coast, when the slaves rose up and overpowered Ruiz and
Montez, killed the captain, and took entire possession of the
vessel. They knew nothing: about navigation or geography,
but did the best they could to work the vessel in a northerly
direction. After about two weeks they were found bv one of

24

REMINISCENCES.

our revenue cutters at the east end of Long Island Sound, and
were taken into New London. Here the negroes at once found
friends and protectors, and, after being detained in prison sev
eral months, and finally declared free by the courts, they were
brought to Farmington, where they became an object of great
interest to the people for many miles about. Comfortable quar
ters were provided for them, with a large schoolroom, where
they were taught the rudiments of knowledge and something of
our language. Some of them were very bright and learned
quite rapidly, and all were well behaved and orderly, and
seemed to take much interest in the strange things which they
saw, and were very grateful for the kindness shown them.
They were put under no restraint, but were allowed to go about
the streets. They came from Mendi, in Africa, where a mission
was afterwards established, and most of the negroes returned
there. They were mostly young men, with a few girls. The
Mendi Mission was kept up for a long time by the American
Missionary Association, but through the death of the mission
aries, under the sickly climate and from other causes, it gradu
ally lost ground, and the great expectations that were enter
tained with regard to it have never been realized.
I will close this hasty review of the observations and ex
periences of my early life by mentioning one later incident that
it has always since been pleasant to me to remember. I have
mentioned the fact that Rev. Dr. Porter was a native of Farm
ington, and was brought up there, and that his first settlement
after completing his studies was over the church there, the
pastorate of which he held for over fifty years, finally dying
there. It was a case almost without a parallel. What I am
about to mention fits in so well with this unusual case that I
feel fully justified in speaking of it.
When I left Farmington to reside in Hartford the church
was considering the matter of employing an assistant pastor for
Dr. Porter. At this time quite a number of the people of the
town, with Miss Sarah Porter's name prominent among them,
sent me an urgent written request that I should give up the idea
of going and remain in Farmington, and one of the leading
men of the church called on me to see whether I would consider
a proposition from the church to give up the laAv and be or-

INTROD UCTION.

25

dained as a clergyman, and be an assistant, and, finally, the suc
cessor of Rev. Dr. Porter in the pastorate of the church. He
seemed to think I could be ordained at once, and not have to
go through a theological course; and perhaps he was right, for
to sit for many years under Dr. Porter's preaching, as I had
done, was equivalent, I think, to a course of theological study.
I did not, for what seemed to me to be decisive reasons, give
any encouragement to the idea, but it is a curious incident of
the matter, that if I had been settled over the church as its pas
tor, two Farmington boys would have had pastorates there,
one succeeding the other, Dr. Porter for over fifty years, and I
for fifty more. My life has been continued so long that I could
probably have made up the fifty years.

Note. — The case of the Amistad negn*oes is one of so great interest that I ap
pend a more detailed account of it, which was published a few years later by a resi
dent of Farmington, who was familiar with the facts.
On the 26th of Aug^ust, 1839, Lieutenant Gedney, U. S. N., in com
mand of the brig Washington, employed on the coast survey, boarded a
mysterious schooner called the Amistad near the shore at CuUodon
point, on the east end of Long Island. He found a large number of Afri
cans and two Spaniards, Pedro Montez and Jose Ruiz, one of whom an
nounced himself as the owner of the negroes, and claimed Lieutenant
Gedney's protection.
The schooner was taken into the port of New London. After an ex
amination by Judge Judson of the United States District Court the
Africans were committed for trial for murder on the high seas, at the Circuit
Court to be held at Hartford, September 17th. There were 42 in number,
viz. , 38 youths and men, three girls, and one boy. They were all sent to
the jail in New Haven.
When it was ascertained that the negroes were recently from Africa,
and had been illegally bought at Havana, Cuba, to be enslaved, and that
they had risen upon their enslavers and recovered their liberty, much in
terest was excited in the public mind. It was seen at once that some
body ought to act for these strangers. Accordingly a few friends of
freedom met at 143 Nassau street, New York, and Messrs. Simeon S.
Jocelyn, Joshua Leavitt, and Lewis Tappan were appointed a committee
to receive donations and employ counsel; and they immediately made an
appeal for funds and engaged the professional services of Messrs. Seth
P. Staples, Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., and Roger S. Baldwin. An Afri
can interpreter was secured, and Messrs. Leonard Bacon, H. G. Ludlow,
and Amos Townsend, Jr. , of New Haven secured suitable instruction for
these benighted pagans.
At the Circuit Court at Hartford, September 18, 1839, Judge Thomp
son stated that the killing of the captain of the Amistad was not a crime
against the law of nations, connected as it was with the slave trade.
The Africans were then taken back to the jail at New Haven, for the
District Court, to be held in November, to decide the question whether, they

26 REMINISCENCES.
were entitled to their liberty. And that court decreed that the Africans
should be deUvered to the executive of the United States to be sent back
to Africa. The Hon. John Quincy Adams had, at the soUcitation of the commit
tee, consented to act as senior counsel, and the cause was finally arg^ued
by him and Mr. Baldwin before the Supreme Court of the United States
at Washington, February and March, 1841; and apart of a letter ad
dressed to one of the committee gives the result:
"Washington, March 9, 1S41.
' ' To Lewis Tappan, Esquire, New York:
" The captives are free! They are to be discharge4 from the
custody of the marshal, free. 'Not unto us — not unto us,' &c.
But thanks in the name of humanity and of justice to you.
"J. Q. Adams."
The Africans were removed to Farmington, Conn., to the residence
of Austin F. Williams, where they remained under the instruction of Pro
fessor George E. Day, until they left this country.
Accompanied by Mr. Tappan, eight or ten of these negroes were taken
to several of the principal towns in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where
public meetings were held and collections made. The proficiency which
had been made by these strangers under such unpropitious circum
stances in reading, spelling, arithmetic, &c. , greatly interested the com
munities. At last, a passage having been secured for them in a vessel
bound for Sierra Leone, a farewell public meeting was held in Broadway
Tabernacle, New York, Lord's day evening, November 27, 1841, when,
after devotional exercises, instructions were given to the missionaries
under appointment, the Rev. William Raymond and wife and the Rev,
James Steele, who were to accompany the freed Africans back to then-
native land. Parting counsels were given to these returning Mendians,
some of whom took part in the exercises, and this was the preparation for
the mission work at Mendi, in Africa,
The first public movement made with reference to doing something
to carry the Gospel to Africa, and for the aid of colored people in America,
was by the Rev, James W. C. Pennington, the colored pastor of the First
Colored Congregational Church, Hartford, Conn., who called a meeting in
his own church. May 5, 1841, at which a committee was appointed to call
a general meeting of the friends of missions, which was held in Hartford,
August 18, 1841, to consider the subject of missions to Africa. This was
the origin of associated society work for Africa, and some of the ante
cedents of the American Missionary Association, which has done so great
and good a work for the freedmen, Chinese, and Indians.

REMINISCENCES.

TAKEN BY PIRATES,
1 have mentioned the fact, in my introductory chapter, that
I was compelled to abandon my college course, after pursuing
it for about two years, mainly because of a very serious weak
ness of my eyes, brought on by excessive study, in the attempt
to overtake my class after a long course of typhoid fever, and
when not fully recovered from my illness. The state of my eyes
not only disabled me in my studies, but seemed lil^cly to defeat
my plan for a professional life. It seemed to me that I must
spend at least a year or two in outdoor life, and as I had from
early boyhood almost a passion for sea life, I concluded to try
a few months on the sea, with a possibility that I might spend
my life on it. The town of Farmington, where I was born and
brought up, though an inland town, was almost like a seaport in
its relation to sea life. A firm of five brothers, of great energy
and ability, owned ships and became large importers of foreign
goods, which they sold at wholesale, the retail merchants of
Hartford going to Farmington to buy their goods of them.
These goods were not brought to Farmington, or at least be
yond what was needed to supply the wants of the vicinity, but
were generally delivered to the purchasers in New York, and
from there sent to Hartford. The five brothers made them
selves large fortunes for that time. Several of the Farmington
boys went to sea in their ships. One of them named Mix be
came a sea captain, and I remember him well as he walked the
street in his blue roundabout or pea-jacket. An uncle of mine,
a wayward brother of my father, went before the mast for some
time in one of their vessels, and often told of his adventures.
My only lirother is now a retired naval officer. He entered the
navy when the war broke out in 1861, having before been a sea-

28 REMINISCENCES.
captain in the merchant service. With all my desire to try a
sea life, and with a feeling that, as I might decide to follow it, it
was indispensable that I begin at the bottom, I shipped before
the mast on board a brig bound to Spain for wine and fruit,
the entire voyage taking four months. Soon after my return,
in 1836, 1 shipped as a foremast hand on board the bark Marble-
head, owned in Boston, but saihng from New York, for China
and other East India ports. I was gone on this voyage about
fourteen months. I had many interesting adventures on both
vessels, but will tell of only one of them.
On our way home from China, with a full cargo of tea, one
morning when we were in mid-ocean and about opposite the
most southern of the West India Islands, we were sailing with
the wind on our starboard quarter, and with a heavy sea left
by a hard blow of a day or two before. As my watch came on
deck we saw the captain on the forecastle, watching very in
tently with his glass a vessel that lay off a few miles on our
weather bow. After a while he gave an order to call all hands,
and when we all appeared he said : " Men, that is a pirate." We
could now see her distinctly. She was a schooner with raking
masts and a heavy mainsail, and was lying with her sails flap
ping, and was evidently waiting for us. We kept on our
course, watching her intently and anxiously. We were utterly
unable to defend ourselves if she should attack us, as we had
only two guns, which had not been fired since we left New
York, and were too old and rusty for use, and had very few
weapons of any sort, while the pirate's crew were probably five
times the number of our own. When we got within about a
mile of her, she filled her sails and bore down .upon us. When
near enough she hailed, us and asked who we were and whither
bound, and what we had on board. As we had nothing that the
pirate could take, the captain answered the questions truly.
She then said " Heave to, while we come up on the lee side."
She was on our weather side, and with the heavy sea running,
could come near us only on our lee side, which was then the
larboard side. The captain ordered the man at the wheel to
port the helm, which brought the sails shaking in the wind,
and the ship, except for her headway, to a standstill. The
pirate then dropped astern to come up on the other side. When

TAKEN BY PIRATES.

29

directly astern of us, and perhaps half a mile behind us, the
captain ordered the man at the wheel to bring the ship before
the wind again, and very soon we were surging ahead and leav
ing the pirate quite a distance behind us. But immediately she
threw out more sail, and came sweeping down upon us like a
hawk upon a bird. When she got near enough she fired a shot
over us from a long-tom, which swung on a pivot in the center
of her deck, and at the same time the pirate captain called out
to us through a speaking trumpet: " Heave to, or we sink you."
Our captain ordered the man at the wheel to put the helm
down, and in a few minutes the sails were shaking in the wind
again. There was too heavy a sea running for the pirate to
come alongside, and she lowered a boat, and with an officer,
either her captain or first mate, and a full boat's crew, she came
up under our lee and called to have a rope ladder lowered. Our
captain was in a frenzy of excitement, and told the men to seize
handspikes and knock the men down as they attempted to come
over the ship's side. But we had a first mate who had in his
youth been a privateersman in South American waters, and
who now seemed to be in his element. He called out to the
captain: " Captain Christie, you are crazy. We can do nothing
but let them come. If they choose to kill us we can't help our
selves, and they will surely do it if we make a fight. If we let
them come, there is a chance that they may not hurt us." Right
at this point a very grotesque incident occurred, and helped to
relieve a little the strain we were under. Our cook, the only
black man on board, had gone to his caboose, and was boo-hoo-
ing like a frightened calf. The mate, hearing him, went to the
caboose and broke in upon him with, " You d — d nigger, what
are you blubbering about? You afraid they'll kill you? They
may kill us white folks; but a nigger will sell. They'll never
hurt you — they'll only take you to market. Now, stop your
d — d blubbering." The men had lowered the rope ladder to
the pirate boat, and the officer came on board, followed soon
after by all the men. Our captain met the officer as he came on
board in a perfectly polite way, and the officer touched his hat
to him as he stepped on deck. The officer was evidently a Por
tuguese. He was tall and very erect, and a perfect gentleman
in his manners. The captain took him upon the quarterdeck.

30 REMINISCENCES.
and they walked back and fortk for about ten minutes. The
men, in the mean time, came over the ship's side and sat on the
rail, having brought up the painter of the boat and fastened it
to a belaying pin. The officer talked good English, and the
men generally could understand enough of it for what talk we
attempted. When it seemed probable that they were not to kill
us, they became quite friendly and ready for a joke with us.
Our men, now about three months out of Canton, had used
up all their tobacco, as sailors always do on long voyages, and
were crazy after more. So, as soon as they began to feel easy
about the throat-cutting, they asked the. pirate crew for to
bacco. The pirates, seeing that our men were out, gave them
all they had, and some of them had their pockets full. The
pirate officer and our captain at last got through their talk, and
came forward together. We were all standing about amidships,
waiting rather anxiously for the next development. Pretty
soon the officer said that he had sprung one of his spars in the
late gale, and asked what spare spars we had on board. We
had a large number of rough pine trunks for repairing our spars
that were lashed to ringbolts on each side of our long boat,
that was itself lashed to ringbolts about amidships. To these
spars were lashed all our water casks, probably ten on each side,
and about half of them still full. The pirate officer told us to
unlash the spars on the larboard side so that he could examine
them. His men did not offer to help us, but we went at it, with
him standing over us. The ship was rolHng heavily, and as we
cast the casks adrift it was all we could do to keep out of the way
of the full ones, which could be held in place onlv by being
blocked with billets of wood, and which seemed every in
stant to be ready to break away as the ship rolled. With the
greatest difficulty we got them all unlashed and blocked up, and
the spars open for his examination. He measured several of
them and finally said that there was no one which satisfied him,
and that he would look at those on the other side. So in utter
exhaustion we had to go through the same struggle with the
others. But at last we got them all unlashed and laid open for
his examination. Luckily, he here found one that would do,
and he made us get this over the ship's side, with a long rope
fastened to it, by which his men were to tow it over to their
vessel. The pirate then ordered his men to go down to their

FLORA SLATE CASE. 3 I
boat, and, touching his hat most politely to our captain, he said
" (^ood day, captain, I will settle with you for that spar the
next lime I see you."
Thus ended tills adventure. I had some other very exciting
ones, and some of much danger, in this l^ast liulia voyage and
on the one to the Mediterranean. But they are hardly worth
s])eiidingtinH' upon. FLORA SLAVE CASK.
In 1845 ' was living in the town of Farmington, Conn.,
liaving begun the practice of law there iivi84i. At that time
I received a letter from Rev. Mr. Hemingway of Suffield, in
this state, re(|uesliiig me to come up there and help him look
up some evidence in an important slave case in Virginia. It
a])pe;ired that a large number of slaves in and about Fincastle,
in the western part of Virginia, had brought suits, claiming
their freedom. They were the descendants of a negro woman
named Mora, and of her two daughters, all then dead, who had
always claimed to be free women and to have been kidnapped
from Connecticut soon after the Revolutionary war. None
of the iiresent negroes had any idea about Connecticut, but the
name of Sufiield had come down by tradition as that of the
place where Mora had lived. Under the settled rule of slave
law, tho child followed the condition of the mother, and if
Mora and her daughters were free, all their descendants were
entitled to freedom. Under a merciful provision of Virginia
law, the slaves were allowed to sue as paupers, the state reliev
ing them of all the ordinary costs of a suit. There were four
,suits, the slaves being held by four different masters. The
cases were, by agreement of counsel or by order of the court,
tried together. On receiving Mr. TTemingway's letter I went
to Suffield. and with him made inquiry among the very old peo
ple of the neghborhood, and found that they had a clear recol
lection of the following facts:
,^ man named Hanchett, who had been a captain in the
Revolutionary army, kejit a small country tavern just out of
Suffield, witliin the town of Southwick, Mass., immediately
after the war. He was a dos]ierate character, and the terror
of the region. There lived in Suffield a respectable black man
named F.xeter, with his wife Flora and two little daughters.

32 REMINISCENCES.
Hanchett had once tried to carry off Flora and the children,
but Exeter had fought him off. Some time later, when Exeter
came home from his day's work, he found them gone. He
knew that Hanchett must have taken them, and implored him
to bring them back, and on his refusing to do it, begged him
to tell him where they were. Twice the poor fellow went off on
long journeys, tramping and begging his way, only to find that
Hanchett had fooled him, and at last he died without ever
knowing what had become of them. A warrant was got out
against Hanchett, but he kept over the Massachusetts line, and
finally, in part from want of satisfactory evidence, the prosecu
tion was abandoned, and the whole matter was dropped from
public attention. Flora and the children were never traced.
Hanchett had now long been dead, and very few people of
the time survived, and only those who were then children. We
got memoranda of the recollections of some twenty of these
and sent them to the lawyers in Virginia, who had a commis
sion issued by the court for the taking of their depositions.
Mr. Samuel S. Cowles of Farmington was appointed commis
sioner, and I attended as counsel, Mr. Hemingway assisting
me. A Mr. Wisor, a Virginia lawyer, attended in behalf of the
defendants. There being four suits, he required that separate
depositions be taken for each case. The difficulties attending
the taking of the evidence can hardly be exaggerated. The de
ponents were, of course, very old, several bed-ridden, many
quite deaf, and some with failing memories, and all in a condi
tion to be embarrassed by cross-examination. Mr. Wisor,
however, acted very fairly, and did not take any undue advan
tage of this state of things. We succeeded in getting a consid
erable body of substantial evidence, which we sent to the Vir
ginia lawyers. The cases had been tried before, mainly upon
the fact that Flora and her children had been purchased in the
city of New York and brought into Mrginia in violation of
some law of Virginia, and the jury had disagreed. I never
understood fully this part of the case. The suits now came on
to be tried again, and the lawyer had the Suffield depositions
to use in them. This trial resulted in a verdict for the negroes.
Their counsel in A^irginia were John T. and Francis T.
Anderson, brothers, who were in practice at Fincastle, the
county seat of Botetourt County. They at once wrote me of

SUI GENERIS.

33

the success of the suits, and that the negroes had at once been
to them, proposing that they hire them all out for a year, and
that their earnings should go to pay their lawyers and the Con
necticut expenses, and they requested me to send on a bill for
my services and for all the money paid out by the friends of
the negroes in getting the evidence. None of us had thought
of getting any pay, not even for the considerable expenses that
we had incurred, but I made out a reasonable bill and sent it
on. The next I heard was that the cases had been carried up
to the Supreme Court of the state, on some exceptions taken
on the trial, and finally they wrote me that the higher court
had set aside the verdict and granted a new trial. Two or three
further trials were had, in the earlier of which the jury dis
agreed, but, finally, on a later trial, brought in a verdict against
the negroes. Their counsel carried this verdict to the Supreme
Court on exceptions taken on the trial, but that court affirmed
the judgment. This ended the case, and the poor negroes re
mained in slavery until set free by President Lincoln's procla
mation, some ten years later.
I felt a great admiration for John T. Anderson and his
brother Francis. Both are dead and buried at Fincastle. If I
should ever go there, I should look up their graves with a tear
ful interest. They were leading lawyers in that part of Vir
ginia, and Francis was afterwards a member of the Supreme
Court of the state, where he served twelve years before his
death. Of the fate of the negroes in their new life of freedom
I have no knowledge. SUI GENERIS.
The only time that I ever kept school was in finishing out
a term in the Farmington Academy which had been begun by
a college friend, who, for some reason, was not able to finish it.
It was, I think, in 1838. Among my pupils was a very stupid
boy who was studying Latin, in the hope of finally going to
college. This purpose he wisely abandoned soon after. He
was one day reciting to me in Sallust. The passage was one
where the author describes in much detail one of the leading
conspirators who was with Catiline in his conspiracy. After
mentioning many traits of his character, he closes by saying.

34 REMINISCENCES.
" in short, he was sui generis " — a man of his own kind, or a
peculiar man. The boy went along pretty well till he came to
this passage, which he translated thus: " in short, he was siii
generis — a kind of a hog."
Every one familiar with the Latin language will see at once
how the blundering boy got that meaning out of the words.
The same boy, at another time, translated capaces fcminae
(meaning women of capacity), " capacious women."
THE ox THAT RETURNED FROM THE TICONDEROGA EXPEDITION.
The incident I am about to relate is not a reminiscence of
my own, but was told me by my father, and is well worth pre
serving. In 1758, during the old French war, a number of the Con
necticut young men, sons of farmers, went to Ticonderoga
with yokes of oxen to assist in the transportation of war ma
terial and supplies. My grandfather, Noadiah Hooker, living
in Farmington, and then twenty-one years old, went on with
a yoke of his father's oxen.
The following extract from the journal of Augustus Hay
den, I think of Windsor, who seems to have gone on in the
same way, appeared in the Hartford Courant of October 12,
1889: " July the 28th our escorts were escorting the teams from
Fort Edwards to Halfway Brook, and the enemy lay in ambush
for them, and when the escort had got against them the enemy
rose up and fired upon them and killed twenty-six- men. There
is about fifty in all that are missing. There was thirty-six
teams. They was all killed but one, and they knocked off his
horns. The loadin was all destroyed."
My grandfather's oxen were among the teams, and he was
to have gone with them, but was ill that day, and another
young man took his place. This young man was killed, and
it was supposed that the oxen were killed. The enemy lying
in ambush was, in large part, Indians, who were fighting on the
French side. My grandfather, as his team was now gone, soon
after came home to Farmington. On the following Thanks
giving Day, about four months after the slaughter at Ticon
deroga, as he was on his way to church he heard an ox lowing

MARTIN CAIRNS. 35
from the bottom of the hill on which his house stood and com
ing up the hill. As he got nearer, he saw it was one of his
Ticonderoga yoke, that had escaped the general butchery.
The ox had been browsing his way along for the four months.
and had had to swim across the Hudson. It was a marvelous
piece of intelligence on his part, and a very pretty bit of senti
ment that had led him to time his arrival for Thanksgiving
Day. He was a great favorite the rest of his life.
The horns of the ox were not broken, showing that Mr.
Hayden's im.pression that all the cattle were killed but one,
and that the Indians broke off his horns, was not correct.

JIARTIX CAIRNS,
^Martin had, in 1850, been for several years the messenger
of the court room at Hartford. The Superior Court and the
County Court were held in the same room, and he was mes
senger for both. He had been quite attentive to his duties,
and the members of the bar thought it fitting that they should
give him a testimonial of their regard. A committee appointed
on the subject concluded to get something for his wife, and
accordingly the money raised was placed in the hands of Airs.
Thomas C. Perkins and ]Mrs. D. F. Robinson, who bought with
it two nice dresses and a shawl. The presentation was made in
the court room one noon, during the session of the Superior
Court. Judge Ellsworth, who was holding the court, took the
noon recess a half-hour earlier than usual to accommodate us,
and staid himself to witness the proceeding. The members
of the bar, the officers of the court, and the law students of the
citv were generally present, as pubHc notice had been given.
I was appointed to perform the ceremony of presentation, and,
in making it, read the following lines, which I had hastily pre
pared. It should be stated In explanation of some points made in
them that we had recently had our court room refitted with
new carpet and new furniture, and that IMartin, who took great
pride in the improvement, was constantly on the alert to pre
vent tobacco-chewers from spitting on the carpet, and when
ever he saw this happen, or from the person's known habit
Hkely to happen, was in the habit of placing one of the spittoons

36 REMINISCENCES.
before the tobacco-chewer. This led to many jokes on the
subject. He had an interesting boy, about ten years of age,
whom he occasionally brought to the court room with him, and
who happened to be present at this time, giving a happy effect
to the allusion to him. It is also to be stated that the court
messenger was then appointed by the judge of the County
Court, who, being annually elected by the legislature, changed
with every change in the politics of the state, and as he changed
the messenger was very likely to change. Martin, however,
had given so good satisfaction that he was kept in through
several changes of administration.
The Hartford lawyers, good friend Martin,
Whose favor specially thou art in.
Have deemed it just, and no less pleasant,
To give to thee a little present;
And knowing where dwells thy life of life.
Have made it, through thee, to thy wife.
For her thou lovest most of all
We bring two dresses and a shawl.
Take them, friend Martin, to thy home,
Where she is waiting till you come;
And as she meets you with caresses,
Hold up the shawl and both the dresses.
And ask her from the Bar to take
A present for her husband's sake ;
And with them give our wishes true
For all that can bless her and you.
And may'st thou long, friend Martin Cairns,
Rejoice in her and many bairns.
Till, furrowed by no mournful tears,
Your face shall furrowed be by years;
And till your hair, at last grown gray,
Shall round your brow like snow-wreaths play.
Thou well hast borne thine office, Martin,
And distant be the day of parting.
May'st thou preserve thine honest station
Under each new administration ;
For who but thee would look so sharp at
The man who spits upon the carpet?
And who but thee would wait so soon
On such offenders with spittoon ?
Old Justice's halls who'd dust so neatly ?
And who of errands run so fleetly?
And who could show such merry heart in
His duties as our Merry Martin ?
Then may thy virtues, like a charm,
Long death and politics disarm;
And though the arm of each be bared,
By both be thou in mercy spared.

HOIV [ BECAME A D.D. 37
Till thou, an old man, may'st with pride
Perhaps see here thy son preside
A judge (such things do oft occur),
Or rule our State as Governor.
Then, with thy heart with God at peace.
And waiting patient thy release,
Old death, that messenger so grim,
Shall take our messenger to him.
Then thee to Heaven may he transport.
Humbly to wait in Heaven's court.
And those whom thou on earth hold'st dear,
May all, in new robes, there appear.
Martin made a genuine Irish speech in reply, closing with
one of the best bulls that an Irishman ever got off. Speaking
of the great regard that he entertained for the members of the
Hartford bar, and had always felt since he knew them, he said :
" Before the present was given me I felt just as I do now, but
now I feel fifty times more so."
The General Assembly at this time sat, every other year, in
New Haven, and many of the books from the various state of
fices at Hartford had to be carried down. They were generally
sent under Martin's care, who took them to the state house at
New Haven and then went to the Tontine hotel to put himself
at the service of the state officials, who generally staid there.
He felt the importance of this duty greatly, and, in view of the
necessity for occasionally signing his name, had early set out
to learn to write his name, which, I believe, was to the last the
limit of his education in penmanship. By taking time for it,
and with considerable motion of his tongue, he was able to
write his name quite readily. On one of these occasions at New
Haven he walked up to the clerk's desk at the hotel with quite
an important air, and spread out his name upon the register.
A Hartford man who arrived with him and knew his limitations
in the matter of chirography, said to him, just as he finished the
entry of his own name: " Martin, won't you write my name,
too? " Martin turned around to him and said: " Write your
name, sir? You wouldn't have me commit forgery, would
you? " HOW I BECAME A DOCTOR OF DIVINITY,
The " Fugitive Slave Law," which was passed by Congress
in 1850, created great alarm among the colored people of the
North, Many of them were runaway slaves, and of course
they had great fear of being discovered and captured, but the

38 REMINISCENCES.
free negroes, as well, were alarmed lest they might be seized
and carried off as slaves, the law giving the claimant a great
advantage over the black man, by compelling the latter to
prove his right to his freedom, which he might not be able to
do if away from home, while the question was to be decided
by a single magistrate of about the grade of a justice of the
peace, and that finally and without appeal, the law providing
that if the magistrate found for the claimant he was at once to
issue an order, under which the claimant could immediately
transport him out of the state. The law even appealed to the
cupidity of this low grade of officials by allowing them a fee of
but $5 in case of a decision for the negro, and of $io in case of
a decision for the claimant, the larger fee being put under the
thin cover of compensation for his added trouble in having
to make the order for the delivery of the negro to the claimant.
This act was but the culmination of a growing aggressive
ness on the part of the slaveholders in the assertion of what
they claimed as their constitutional rights, and of an obsequious
concession to their demands on the part of Northern poli
ticians. This state of things kept the blacks who were in fact
fugitive slaves in a constant fear, though until this act was
passed the free negroes were in no great danger of being seized
and carried off as slaves. For several years before the passage
of the act Rev. James W. C. Pennington, a full-blooded negro,
was the pastor of a congregational church of colored people
at Hartford. He was a faithful pastor, and very much re
spected by the clergy of the city, as well as by the people gen
erally. No one knew or suspected that he was a fugitive slave.
But a short time before the passage of the act he came to me
for a most confidential consultation and advice. He told me
that he was a fugitive slave, and that he had never divulged the
fact to any of his people in Hartford, nor even to his wife, and
that it was known to nobody but the Quaker friends in Penn
sylvania who had sheltered him at the time of his escape, and
had afterwards aided him in getting an education. The fact
was withheld from his wife, however, mainly to save her from
disquieting fears. He told me that in his studies, in his do
mestic life, and in the discharge of his parochial duties, he was
burdened with harrassing apprehensions of being seized and
carried back to slavery. He disclosed the fact to me that I

HOIV r BECAME A D.D.

39

might attempt to negotiate with his master for the purchase
of his freedom.
He was born the slave of Frisbie Tilghman of Hagerstown,
Maryland, and remained his slave until he ran away, when he
was eighteen years old. He was now about forty. The name
which he now bore was an assumed one; his name as a slave
was " Jim Pembroke.'' After his escape he found protection
and assistance in a Quaker family in Pennsylvania, whose kind
ness he had ever since remembered with the greatest gratitude.
He had already, in a stealthy way, learned to read a little, but
here he began those studies which, ever since pursued with
unremitting ardor and industry, had made him a man of intelli
gence and something of a scholar. After a while he entered
the Christian ministry, and was licensed and ordained as a
minister, and, as I have before stated, was now settled over a
congregational church of colored people at Hartford.
That he could preach quite acceptably I knew, as I had
often heard him, and at one time Rev. Dr. Porter of Farming-
ton had exchanged with him, and the people of the quiet old
town had been astonished, some of them shocked, by seeing
one of the blackest of men in their pulpit.
After two or three consultations it was decided that it was
best for him to go to Canada and remain while the negotiation
was pending. After he had left the city I wrote to Mr. Tilgh
man, stating that I did so in behalf of his former slave, " Jim
Pembroke," who was then out of the country and beyond his
reach, but was willing to pay a small sum for his legal freedom.
I took care, of course, to give him no intimation of his adopted
name, nor of his place of residence. Mr. Tilghman wrote me
in reply that " Jim was a first-rate blacksmith, and well worth
$1,000," and that as servants were then very high he could not
take less than $500. He also stated that he had learned that
Jim was making himself useful in the world, from which I in
ferred that he had some knowledge of his being a preacher, and
probably of the name he was bearing, and perhaps of his place
of residence. The sum demanded was much beyond Mr. Pen
nington's ability to pay, and on my informing him of Mr. Tilgh-
man's demand, we decided that it was not safe for him to re
turn to Hartford, but that it was best for him to go to England,
where he would find many friends among the abolitionists

40

REMINISCENCES.

there. He did so, and was abroad about two years. He found
warm friends wherever he went, and on visiting Heidelberg,
in Germany, was made a doctor of divinity by the university
there. This honor he accepted in a graceful speech (or possibly
written communication), in which he declared his personal un-
worthiness of it, but accepted it as the representative of his race.
When the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, in 1850, which, of
course, made it out of the question for him to return to Amer
ica as a fugitive slave, he was in Scotland. At this time it was
generally known that he was a fugitive from slavery, this fact
creating a wide interest in his case and drawing to him great
sympathy. He frequently wrote to me, and I kept him advised
as to the state of things here. Soon after this some friends in
Scotland determined to take the matter in hand and raise the
necessary money to secure his freedom, whatever might be the
amount required, and appointed a committee to attend to the
matter and correspond with me on the subject. Upon hearing
from the committee that they wished me to renew the corre
spondence with Mr. Tilghman, and to pay him whatever he
should finally insist upon, I wrote him, stating that Jim
was now in England, and would not return unless his freedom
was secured, and asking what was the lowest price he would
take for his freedom. A stranger replied, stating that Mr. Tilgh
man was dead and that he was his administrator, and that in the
circumstances, as he desired to close up the settlement of the
estate, he would take $150. He added that, as administrator,
he had no power to manumit, but could'only sell the slave, and
the purchaser could manumit, and wished me to name the per
son to whom the bill of sale should be made. Mr. Joseph R.
Hawley, since our senator at Washington, was then my junior
law partner, and he at once went to Maryland, carrying the
money (a larger sum than was necessary had been sent me by
the Scotch friends), and, by my directions, took a bill of sale
to me. I thus became a slaveholder, and the owner of a doctor
of divinity. On receiving the bill of sale I held it for a day to
see what the sensation would be, and then executed a deed of
manumission, which I had recorded in the town records, where
it may be found in Vol. 76, page 356, under date of June 5,
1 85 1. It set free " my slave, Jim Pembroke, otherwise known
as Rev. James W. C. Pennington, D.D." It stands on record
there for the wonder of future generations.

DOG FIGHT SUIT.

41

After Dr. Pennington's return to this country and settle
ment over a church in New York, he attended at Hartford a
meeting of the colored people that had been regularly held for
several years on the first day of August in commemoration of
the emancipation of the slaves in the English West India
Islands, which took effect August i, 1834. I attended this
meeting, as did a few other white persons, and about two hun
dred colored people of both sexes. It was held in a grove in
the suburbs, a platform having been erected for the speakers.
Dr. Pennington was welcomed as their old pastor, and was
one of the earliest called out, the call passing around for " Rev.
Dr. Pennington." After he had spoken they saw me in the
crowd, and a clamorous call was made for " Mr. Hooker." I
went upon the platform, and prefaced my short speech with a
few words, as follows: " Before I make a speech, my friends,
I want to set you right about an error you have just fallen into.
You all know that Mr. Pennington was once my slave. Now
it is one of the elemental principles of slavery that the slave can
own nothing. Everything that he acquires, or thinks he ac
quires, passes through him to his master. Even the mule that
he got with his own earnings belongs to his master. Now
when I set Mr. Pennington free I merely took my hands off
from him — merely let him go. I did not give him anything.
Thus the doctorate of divinity, which, as his master, I owned,
remained with me, and did not go by his manumission to him,
and I hold it still. So, when you next call us out on an occasion
like this, I want to have you call for ' Rev. Mr. Pennington '
and ' Rev. Dr. Hooker.' "'
THE DOG-FIGHT SUIT OF RHODES vs. WELLS,
In February, 1857, the case of Henry E, Rhodes vs. Setb
and Oliver Wells was tried in the Superior Court at Hartford
before Chief Justice Church and a jury, and made a good
deal of sport for the bar, a large number of the lawyers of the
city attending. The Daily Times in its report of the case says : —
" This action was the last scene of a dog-drama which was got
up some two years since in the ancient town of Wethersfield.
' Strike my dog and you strike me,' is an old saw, and this affair
proved its applicability in these latter days. By some means two

42 REMINISCENCES.
bull-dogs engaged in a fight; they fought as such dogs always
do, and, as not infrequently occurs, the dog fight was but the
forerunner of a man fight. Rhodes, getting rather too severely
beaten in his opinion, brought his action to recover damages.
Much evidence and of a conflicting character was introduced,
but the jury seemed to be of the opinion that but little blame
could be attached to the defendants, and rendered a verdict in
their favor."
During the first day of the trial my sense of humor found so
much to enjoy that I could not resist the temptation to scribble
some rhymes about the case, which I passed about the court
room for the amusement of the lawyers, and, the case going
over to the second day, I carried them home and in the evening
completed them. The next day Mr. WiUiam W. Eaton (since
our senator at Washington), who was then clerk of the court,
begged the lines of me to insert in the Times, where they ap
peared that evening. There are various hits, or attempted
hits, in them which will not be understood by lawyers who have
come upon the stage since, and which, therefore, need explana
tion. Martin Welles, the leader for the plaintiff, was a man of
great legal learning and ability, and of rare elegance of diction,
but of bad temper, morose and sullen, and with little friendly
regard for him on the part of the bar. Francis Parsons, who
was with him, was a man who got into the law by some mis
chance, of the highest principles, yet disliking the practicing of
law, and above all abhorring all fights of men or dogs. Mr.
Hungerford was an old bachelor, immersed in the law, and
hardly breathing anything else, living wholly out of society
and very careless about his clothing or personal appearance.
Mr. Toucey, who had been Attorney-General of the United
States, was a man of great dignity of bearing, cold, impassive,
and unbending, and quite out of place among the humorous in
cidents of the trial. Charles Chapman, the junior counsel for
the defendants, was in his element in the case, keen, witty, en
joying its humor to the utmost, and making a great part of it.
He had just been defeated as the Whig candidate for Congress
by Loren P. W^aldo, afterwards judge of the Superior Court.
During the campaign he had made speeches in which he ridi
culed three Free Soil speakers who held meetings together
about the state, John M. Niles, Gideon Welles, and Amos M.

DOG FIGHT SUIT. 43
Collins, describing them as " a Demarara team - — two mules
and a jackass." Judge Church, who presided, was a short man,
whose face, as he watched the trial, was full of twinkles, show
ing his enjoyment of the humor, with a sense of his duty to
preserve his judicial dignity. Mr. Waterman was the sheriff,
and made proclamation of the opening and closing of the ses
sion. His voice was almost terrific in its strength and volume,
and it was a common remark among the lawyers that it was no
fiction that he made proclamation to the whole county. With
these explanations I come to the lines.
"Beware of Dogs.'' — Phil. 3:2.
Dogs and dog-fights, in doggerel lays,
To sing, my epic muse essays;
Be mine the labor, hers the praise.
Beneath October's mellow sun,
In Wethersfield a deed was done ;
Oh, deed of deeds ! oh, sight of sights !
One bull-dog with another fights !
As from the rape of Helen grew
The war which mighty Troy o'erthrew,
So here, a bull-dog shook a pup,
Another bull-dog straight took up
The quarrel; and the two dogs fought
As dogs on such occasion ought.
Mean-time their masters swore and hollar'd;
Then each the other struck and collar'd;
One broken head, one bloody jaw.
The parties part, and go to law.
Like seed upon the waters cast,
Forgotten long, but found at last,
So after lapse of many days
Occasioned by the law's delays,
The famous suit is brought to trial.
The legal angel opes his vial;
(That is to say, friend Waterman
Shouts to the world that court's begun ;)
The judge with dignity assumes
That seat which no one more illumes;
Solemn and grave, except the twinkles
That now and then light up his wrinkles.
Within their seats twelve solemn triers
Sit listening to as many — liars.
(The counsel here I don't include.
This would of course be understood.)
Along the table, learnedly,
Five lawyers sit the case to try —
On one side two — on th' other three —
In numbers matched unequally,

44

REMINISCENCES.
Like, in the fight, the one dog who
Fought a bull-dog and puppy too.
There sits, severe and cold, the ex-
Attorney-general, whose specs
Alone can into mystery pry
Farther than many a lawyer's eye.
Then comes the jurisprudent sage
Adorned with learning as with age ;
Who knows by heart each legal saw
And preaches you to death on law;
With coat unbrushed and hair awry.
Yet heart serene and humor dry;
Whose life and heart no wife e'er blest.
Yet never heaved a kinder breast.
To make a " Demarara team,"
Friend Oily Gammon's on the scheme;
A man who knows all legal wiles.
Yet wears the while such winning smiles,
He'll talk a jury's eye teeth out,
Nor they suspect what he's about.
Oh, happy that the public call
Could spare him from the nation's hall,
And leave him here to try this case.
As well as try another race.
On th' other side, of gravest port.
Sits an ex-judge of County Court,
Who seems to view this strife of dogs.
Much as a Hebrew looked on hogs.
No one can doubt we godly are
When we have Parsons at our bar.
Beside him sits the plaintiff's leader,
Th' expert and wary special pleader.
Who proves that truth the adage tells
That says truth lies at bott'm of Wells;
Though some who claim to know have said
Truth sometimes gets up to his head.
Thus marshaled stood they — and they fought
As in such case such lawyers ought.
The parties watched, with gaze intense,
The fierce assault, the firm defense;
And as the battle this way swayed
The other party looked dismayed;
Then, as the scales turned, full of joy
He clapped his hands, and cried " stee-boy."
And thus the drama found its close
In the same scene in which it rose;
The parties' bull-dogs 'gan th' affray.
Their lawyers' squabbles closed the day.
Thus ended in a fierce logomachy
What had begun a fierce dogomachy.
MORAL.
My tale has this impressive moral —
Never back up your dog in quarrel.

GIDEON HALL. 45
GIDEON HALL.
The later generation of lawyers who did not know Gideon
Hall of Winsted, in Litchfield County, will find it difficult to
realize that such a man ever had a place at the bar, and, above
all, that he should ever have been elected a judge of our Su
perior Court. His air was always an assuming one, and his
language, especially in court, where he always seemed to wear
a barrister's gown, was stilted and pedantic, and often ir
resistibly laughable in his- efforts to be impressive. In ex
amining a witness he almost always prefaced his in
quiry by the remark, " I will now propound to you this inter
rogatory." Having inherited a moderate property, he was
able, with such practice as he had, to keep a very respectable
position in the village where he resided, and in which he lived
from childhood to his death at near the age of seventy. At
the time he was appointed to the bench our judges held office
for terms of eight years, and were nominated by a caucus of the
members of the General Assembly who were of the dominant
political party. This mode of supplying our judges was hap
pily soon after abandoned for our present one of having the
governor nominate them and the General Assembly confirm.
Mr. Hall had a weak ambition for the place, and got it by a
vote of the caucus. His term on the bench was an utter failure.
I know of nothing that better illustrates the intellectual
idiosyncracies of the man than a report which he made while
at the bar, in 1865, in a divorce case in which he had been ap
pointed by the Superior Court a committee to hear the evi
dence and find the facts. The report itself is worth preserving
for the amusement of the bar. The case was that of Phoebe
J. Tibbetts vs. Luther C. Tibbetts. I omit the first part of Mr.
Hall's report. After stating some of the facts, it proceeds thus:
" I further find that, till his acquaintance with the said Mrs.
Neal, in the fall of 1862 or thereabouts, the respondent's de
portment as a husband towards the petitioner was kind, but
that from that time prospectively the respondent's former af
fection for the petitioner became gradually diminished; until
now, largely attributable to the acts and intrigues of an un
scrupulous woman, the petitioner, wholly blameless for the
result, has become the subject of his strong aversion; and that,
before strangers and on public and other occasions, in a con-

46 REMINISCENCES.
temptuous and offensive manner, and without cause, he has
repeatedly assailed the petitioner with language and epithets
cruelly severe and opprobious. He refused to acknowledge
her as his wife, and declared that he would never live with her
more ; that he would no longer furnish her with support or pro
vide for her a home, and that she might go to her brother or
to the Devil. He has accused her of robbery and burglary,
and sneeringly called her ' that woman,' ' deceitful,' ' treacher
ous,' ' miserable creature,' 'wretch,' and ' liar.'
" I find also that since his acquaintance aforesaid with the
said Mrs. Neal, protracted and often-recurring interviews be
tween her and the respondent were held, in evening and day
time, clandestinely and alone, in his. and her private apart
ments, and with doors frequently locked; and their reciprocal
caressings and kissings and street ambulations, and her per
sistently offensive intrusion, and improper advances and at
tention to the respondent in presence of his wife, and to her
exclusion and grief, by him unrebuked, but tolerated and ap
proved, were, as between the said Mrs. Neal and the respond
ent, of common occurrence. And that, also, on two different
occasions, the said Mrs. Neal, unattended by her husband (or
friend save the respondent), and the respondent, in the absence
and without the knowledge of the petitioner, traveled in com
pany, and at his expense, by land and water, and in their
transit by the latter mode, taking passage by steamboat in
adjoining rooms, with door intercommunication direct; and,
when unknown in certain hotels in which they were guests,
they registered their names as ' L. C. Tibbets and Lady.' "
Judge Hall died several years ago, and left no children or
other near relatives who would feel hurt at my account of him.
MARTIN WELLES.
Martin Welles was a striking figure, as well as personality,
at our bar. He died in 1863, in his 75tli year. In an obituary
sketch of him in 30 Conn. Reports, p. 607, I thus described
him: " Mr. Welles had an intellect of great original force and
vigor, disciplined by a thorough education, and well furnished
by professional and general reading. He had at command an

MARTIN WELLES.

47

elegant and classical diction, while a stately form and dignified
manner gave an impressiveness to all he uttered in his forensic
and public addresses. The great feature of his character, how
ever, was his will, which, for a firm and inflexible resoluteness,
has rarely been surpassed. Strong and clear as was his intel
lect, the decision of character for which he was remarkable
was less the result of inteUectual conclusions than of the de
terminations of his will. With him to resolve was to execute,
and his resolution only gained strength from the diffculties
which the attempt to execute it encountered. His inflexible
adherence to his own determination almost necessarily brought
him into conflict with others, and, as he had little tact in deal
ing with men, and never understood how to conciliate an
enemy, he never became a popular man, even among his
political friends, and in consequence failed to attain in public
life those high positions in the state or nation Avhich, with so
great abilities, he might otherwise easily have secured, and his
failure to attain which was always a disappointment to him.
. . He rarely gave up a case that was decided against him
until he had pursued it to the extreme limit of the legal remedy,
and submitted to a final adverse decision only as to an ac
cumulated wrong that he had no further power to resist."
Soon after the above was published, Judge Butler, in the
Supreme Court (then an associate judge, afterwards Chief
Justice), leaned over the bench and said to me that he had been
reading my sketch of Mr. Welles, and that my picture of him
was a perfect one, and that he had been greatly entertained by
it. Mr. Welles had so often had cases decided against him in
the Supreme Court that he had come to feel a personal dislike
for all the judges, and was in the habit of calling the court " a
hospital of incurables."
He told me that he made it an invariable rule never to
accept as a referee any person who had ever in any circum
stances decided a case as referee against him.
At one time he had a case in the Superior Court in which
he claimed for the plaintiff a right to make or keep up a dam
across a small stream. The court made a finding of the facts,
and decided the case in his favor. The defendant, however,
carried the case to the Supreme Court, and that court reversed

48 REMINISCENCES.
the judgment of the lower court, and denied the right of the
plaintiff to maintain the dam. When the decision was an
nounced at the' opening of the court one morning, Mr. Welles
was present. He had expected a decision in favor of his client,
and was fairly livid with rage as he heard the adverse decision
announced. Wisely he seized his hat and bolted out of the
court room. Every one saw the state of mind he was in. After
he had gone, I scribbled the following lines, and handed them
up to the Chief Justice:
The court below, as it would seem,
Decreed that plaintiff dam the stream ;
But this 's reversed on last resort,
And now the plaintiff damns the court.
The Chief Justice was greatly amused, and handed the squib
to the other judges, who laughed heartily over it, and thence
it came to the lawyers who were sitting within the bar, and,
finally, got into the next day's papers.

CHARLES CHAPMAN.
Charles Chapman was, in his time, the most brilliant advo
cate of the Connecticut bar. Only the older members of our
profession can have any personal recollection of him, as he
died in 1869. He was at that time seventy years old. In an
obituary notice of him, prepared by me for the law reports
and published in the 35th vol. of Conn. Reports, I characterized
him as follows :
" Mr, Chapman seemed to be in his natural element in
the trial of causes before a jury. The more desperate his case
the more he seemed to be inspired by it. His resources were
inexhaustible. His power in addressing a jury was very re
markable. In the examination of witnesses and the sifting of
evidence he had no superior; it seemed impossible for a false
hood to elude him. His sarcasm, when he thought the oc
casion demanded it, was terrible. He had command of a mas
terly English, which he compacted into sentences generally of
finished eloquence, often of dramatic power. His wit was
always keen and ever in hand; nobody approached him in
readiness of retort. He did not move his hearers, as the
greatest orators do, by being profoundly impressed himself

CHARLES CHAPMAN. 49
and carrying them along by sympathy. The pjrocess with him
was wholly intellectual. Cool himself, and with a perfect com
prehension of the subtlest springs of human feeling and action,
he played with his audience like a magician. Wit, pathos,
humor, invective, fancy, logic — all seemed to combine and
take their turn in sweeping everything before them. In his
delivery he was entirely natural, and his manner unstudied.
He was very social in his nature, a remarkably good talker,
and incomparable and inexhaustible as a story-teller. Many
of his felicities of speech and story will long survive among
the festive traditions of the bar."
His perpetual flow of humor was well characterized by a
rough countryman who one day was listening outside the bar
to his talk to the jury, and was shaking with laughter. I knew
the man well, and as I passed by him on my way within the
bar, he said to me, " What a tremendous wiggle that creetur
has to his tail."
To a sanctimonious Baptist clergyman, whom he was
cross-examining as a witness, and who had said in reply to a
question as to his calling, that he " aimed to be a humble
candle of the Lord," Mr. Chapman said, " A dipt candle, I
suppose." In the old days of the County Court there were two
brothers named Watson, from East Windsoi*, who had for a
long time been in a quarrel over the division of their father's
property, and who each had a suit against the other in almost
every term of the court. The case was much like the old
feudal quarrels, in that each kept a band of retainers, who al
ways came to court with their chiefs, and were always their
witnesses, no matter what the case was. At the trial of one of
these cases the witnesses of one of the parties were sitting
in a long row on a bench along the wall, just outside of the bar,
the railing of the bar covering up from view all below their
waists. Mr. Chapman, who was standing counsel for the
other party, was addressing the jury. He commended the pa
tience of his chent, who had so much to bear from his malicious
and litigious brother, who brought a suit against him at every
term of the court, " and (said he) what is very remarkable, he
brings the same set of witnesses with him at every trial. No
matter what the case is, there always comes the same set of

50 REMINISCENCES.
loose fellows to testify for him. Why, gentlemen, look at
them; there they sit — familiar as a gallery of family por
traits." Mr. Chapman said nothing of the other party that
the opposing counsel could not have said of his own client,
but he was not embarrassed in his invective by this hazard.
He was one day asking the court to allow him to amend
a writ in which he had discovered a serious error. At that time
it was not so easy as in later years to get the court to allow an
amendment without paying costs to the other party. Mr.
Chapman closed his address to the court upon the subject
with this " amended" quotation:
" To err is human ; to allow an amendment of an error
without cost is divine."
He told me that once in his early experience he was trying
a case before a justice of the peace, and had to cross-examine
a young woman brought as a witness by the other side. She
had sharp, black eyes, was full of quick temper, and was greatly
irritated by his cross-questioning. At last she stood mute,
and refused to answer. Mr. Chapman repeated his question,
but she still stood defiantly mute. He finally appealed to the
justice, who told her that she must answer. At this she let off
an answer that was enough to take one's head off, and said,
" Have you got it now, Mr. Nimblechops ? "
One of the fitiest incidents that I ever saw in the court room
was what occurred in the trial of the action of Case vs. Marks
in the Superior Court, about the year 1850. Miss Case, the
plaintiff, was a school teacher in one of our country schools,
and had, in some way, incurred the hostility of Marks, who set
out to ruin her reputation and compel her to leave the school.
The slander was of the worst conceivable kind. After bearing
it a while, she brought a suit against him for it, and Mr. Chap
man was her principal counsel. The court room was crowded
with people from the town. Miss Case was a very modest and
sensible looking girl, whose mere appearance was enough to
show the extreme improbability of Marks's charge being true.
Marks was a very tall, lank man, not at all prepossessing in his
appearance. He set up the truth of his charges, and brought a
set of vile-looking men to testify for him. They were thor
oughly broken down by Mr. Chapman's cross-examination,
and her innocence was made clear by other evidence. In Mr.

CHARLES CHAPMAN.

SI

Chapman's address to the jury he gave Marks a terrible ex
coriation. I have never heard a more terrific invective. The
whole audience, outside of Marks's friends, was with him. In
the midst of it Marks, thinking a Httle bravado would help him,
rose up, high above the heads of the crowd, and scowled at
Mr.. Chapman. He sat in the rear of his counsel, at the other
end of the table, bringing him a little in Mr. Chapman's rear,
and some ten feet from him. Mr. Chapman did not see him
for a moment, but the excitement in the court room was no
ticed by him, and he turned a little and saw the tall, ungainly
figure of Marks. He was taken aback for an instant, but very
quickly gathered himself up, and stretching out his right arm
and pointing his finger at Marks, he turned to the jury and
said in a slow, shrill voice: " Gentlemen of the jury, behold
the brazen statue of a slanderer." He kept his arm out
stretched and his finger pointing, and would have stood so as
long as Marks had kept his position, but the latter soon began
to settle down slowly, and finally got into his seat. The jury,
of course, gave the plaintiff their verdict, and it was a heavy
one for that day. One of the jurymen told me that Marks's at
tempted bravado added five hundred dollars to the verdict
against him.
About 1845, when I had been about four years at the bar,
I brought a suit for a Mr. Deming of Farmington (I then lived
in Farmington) against a horse jockey, whose name I forget,
-which was afterwards tried in the Superior Court. I was
alone for the plaintiff, and Mr. Chapman was employed by the
defendant. The case was a very clear one for my client. It
appeared that the defendant, who was a regular horse-trader,
called on Deming with a fine-looking pair of black horses
which he wished to sell. Deming said that he wanted a pair
of gentle family horses. The defendant told him that these
were just the ones — that his daughter, but thirteen years old,
had several times driven them, and that they were perfect
family horses. The first time they were brought up for Dem
ing to take his family to ride, they started off before the people
could get in ; knocked down a gate-post, and ran a mile before
they were stopped, having utterly demolished the carriage.
We found evidence, and had it at the trial, that the only driving
of the horses that his daughter had ever done was to sit in the

52 REMINISCENCES.
carriage and hold the reins while he had walked backwards a
few rods in front of the team. When Mr. Chapman came to
address the jury there was not an honest word that he could
say, and so he entertained them for an hour with horse stories
that kept them shaking with laughter. Finally he took up
the subject of my horse — a fine animal, but singularly marked,
having a white face and breast, and a darkish red color over the
rest of the body. " Gentlemen," said he, " did you ever see
Brother Hooker's horse? You go into nis stable and see him
in his stall, and you would swear that he kept a red horse;
you see his man lead him out, and you'd swear that he kept a
white one. You see him coming into the city in the morning,
and you would swear that he drove in with a white horse ; you
see him driving home at night, and you'd swear he drove home
a red one." At every available point he would bring in the
refrain, " Red behind and white in front," at every repetition
of which the jury would explode with laughter. With this
amusing episode he concluded his address to the jury. When
I came to reply, after alluding to his anecdotes as having left
him no time for argument, I said: " My Brother Chapman has
entertained you very greatly, gentlemen, with an amusing
description of my horse, and especially with his frequent re
frain of " Red behind and white in front." All I will say in
reply is, that if, when he was a boy, his father had more often
made him look red behind and white in front, it would have
been better for his morals."
The jurymen and all the audience burst out into a loud
laugh, and Mr. Chapman's pyramid of stories was all toppled
to the ground. We got a good verdict, after the jury had been
out but a few minutes.
A few years after I was arguing a case. before the Supreme
Court, with Mr. Chapman against me. There were some
horse-trade elements in the case, and something that I said in
my argument brought to his mind this little passage between
us. He interrupted me by saying, " Hooker, tell the court
that story about ' red behind and white in front.' " "Oh,"
said I, " that has nothing to do with this case." " Well," said
Chapman, " the Chief Justice is fond of a good horse, and of
a good horse story." Chief Justice Butler spoke up, " If it's
a good horse story, Mr. Hooker, give it to us." So I told the

RICHARD D. HUBBARD. 53
whole story, and the Chief Justice laughed over it till it seemed
as if he would fall out of his seat.

RICHARD D. HUBBARD,
The character of Governor Hubbard, both professional
and personal, has been sketched by me in an obituary notice of
him in Volume 50, Conn. Law Reports, p. 604. I shall here
speak only of certain personal qualities that were but little ob
served by the public, and which it is specially proper that I
should notice in these reminiscences, as they brought us into
very friendly personal relations.
Governor Hubbard came to the bar about a year after I
did, and we were thereafter fellow-members of the Hartford
bar. I observed his progress in the profession with most
brotherly interest, and, though he soon outstripped me in the
race, it never occurred to me to regard his greater success in
vidiously. I saw less of him for the first ten years, as I was then
living in Farmington, but I often met him in the court room,
and on my removal to Hartford we became warm and faithful
friends. Among letters that I received from him, especially in
the latter part of his life, I find several among my papers
that I am sure will be read by the profession with interest, as
exhibiting the fine qualities of his nature that I have adverted
to. I take them by their dates, and with no attempt (except
in one case) to give my side of the correspondence. Indeed,
my letters to him were probably not preserved by him. The
letters often show the occasion that called them out, and where
they do not I thought it not best to occupy space with stating
the but half-remembered occasion. Hartford, April 20, 1874.
My Dear Hooker :
I write to tell you how glad I am you are going to Europe — almost
as glad as if I were going myself. No good fortune can come to you
that I will not rejoice in. God go with you, my friend— bring repose to
weary nerves and cudgelled bram — bring you back in health and safety,
and preserve in your memory a kindly recollection of him who now bids
you a loving adieu. May the ocean, perfidious to others of late, be kindly
to you. Beheve me, with the most friendly regards, very truly yours,
R. D. Hubbard.

54 REMINISCENCES.
Hartford, Sept. i6, 1874.
God bless you, John Hooker, and welcome home. Your friendly
words are beyond price. I used to rub against and know something o
you when you were in practice.* But you seem to me, since then, to have
held yourself aloof from your professional associates, which I have often
and much regretted. Nevertheless, I have never allowed my regard for
you — which is greater than you know — to diminish one hair's breadth.
I cannot see and feel and lay hold of the hfe beyond as you do. I
know not if it be those glorious things for the elect which glorious old
John Bunyan saw in visions, and those dreadful things for the non-elec
which John Calvin eviscerated from his infernal brain; or, on the other
hand, that " infinite azure" of Prof. Tyndall's, if anybody knows what
that means. But what I do know is, that in what remains of the little
span of the life that now is, whilst I agree with you in few things, or, at
least, in few theological dogmas, I love you in all things as a man whose
heart and life are infinitely better than his theology.
Accept, my dear fellow, a thousand assurances of friendly regard
from the poor groundling whose eyes see not the things which you see,
and whose ears hear not the things which you hear, but whose eyes are
not blind and whose ears are not deaf to the least proof of affection from
his friends, and least of all from you, John Hooker.
Ever and truly yours, R, D, Hubbard.
January i, 1875.
God bless us both, my dear John. The year of grace, '75, has over
taken us. Eheufugaces, etc. It seems like yesterday or the day before
that you and I took a ride together from Farmington in. 'Twas some
petty business that -we had there. For the life of me I can remember
nothing of it. Only I know that, whereas before you had seemed to me
all polar, you then opened up all tropical. You have forgotten it. Well,
no matter. 'Twere something if I were ambitious, as the great cardinal was, to
have such an " Honest Griffith " as you for a " chronicler." But no more
of that " an thou lovest me." The earth is all glorious to me still, and
the heavens infinitely deep and blue. I would not willingly come to " a
little earth for charity" as yet. Nor would I have you. But if I should
out-tarry you, trust me for a kindly word, my good fellow, if heart and
brain survive.
Sam. Bowles is a trump, and publishes the best paper in the United
States. God save all such, and let Ben. Butler go to his own without de
lay or hindrance, and with him all such as he.
Your friend, R. D. Hubbard.

* Referring to my acceptance of the office of Reporter of the Supreme Court in
1858, and my final withdrawal from ordinary practice in court.

RICHARD D. HUBBARD. 55
Hartford, Nov. 29, 1876.
My Dear John Hooker :
Health and benedictions ! Yours with enclosure this moment re
ceived. Enclosure reserved, as per your advice, to accompany my cigar
this evening.
Meanwhile, the blessings of the heavens above and the deep that
coucheth beneath, and all other blessings in store for the elect (among
whom I doubt not you are numbered), rest upon your honest head and
thinking brain. Your friend, ¦ R. D. Hubbard.
Sunday Evening, Dec. 3, 1876.
My Dear Hooker ,-
[The letter is mainly taken up with a discussion of some points suggested by the
" enclosure " referred to in the last letter. It then proceeds as follows :]
Meanwhile, the years fly like weavers' shuttles ; the almond tree blos
soms and the sun westers, and eras ingens iterabi7nus CEquor. See all
that remains of my scanty Horace, brought to mind by the little that re
mains of my poor self. But what little remains, my dear fellow, and
while that little remains, believe me, with the sincerest assurances of re
gard for one whose heart and mind I believe to be as honest as the day,
and whose faith, unlike mine, lays hold on the high heavens — ¦
Most truly your friend, R, D, Hubbard.
Mr. Hubbard became Governor of the state at the begin
ning of 1877. The following note is in reply to one I sent him,
congratulating him on his accession to the office.
Hartford, Sunday, Jan. 7, 1877.
My Dear John Hooker :
Any kind word from you provokes me to a kind acknowledgment, and
so I thank you, my good friend, for your too appreciative note.
I was never intended for pubKc life, and, I begin to think, for little
else of any account. But hold me always for your friend and admirer
and believe me, my dear fellow,
Most sincerely yours, R. D- Hubbard.
I find that I preserved a copy of a letter which I wrote
Governor Hubbard in April, 1878, and insert it here as neces
sary to the understanding of his reply:
Hartford, April 7, 1878, Sunday P. M.
My Dear Governor Hubbard :
I Uke your Fast Day proclamation. It is first-rate. Do you, suc
cessor (and more and more worthy one) of the sturdy Puritan governors
of Connecticut, turn your thoughts inward and study yourself, so as to

56

REMINISCENCES.

observe that your governorship (which may the Lord continue for many
years) is doing a certain fine moral work upon you ? I have seen and re
joiced over it for many months. You are feeling the responsibility that
the office carries with it, and are meeting it nobly. Even to my most
friendly observation you have seemed in time past not wholly unwilling
to shirk a good many responsibilities that rested on you as a member of
society, and especially as a foremost man.
You would have knocked down a knave if he had jostled you ; but
you did not seem to feel as if you had any special call to go around with
a lantern and hunt up dishonest men in their hiding-places, and especially
to pull off your coat and tug at the world to turn it over right side up.
Well, now has come to you a special opportunitj', and you seem both to
see it and to feel its responsibility, I thank God for it all, and am glad
that my humble vote helped to make the majority that elected you.
Made, puer, novd virtute.
May the Lord bless you, dear Governor, and bless you long as
Governor, and thus bless the world, and with the rest your friend,
J, Hooker.
Sunday, April 14, 1878,
I do introvert, my good friend, and much more than you think, and
I find myself without any real length, breadth, or depth ; but -^whenyou
praise me I grow for a moment in my own estimation. There does not
live on the earth a creature I would have asked to vote for me, even by
the remotest hint or indirection, but I wish you could know how much
pleasure it gave me when I learned I had your vote.
I am a shirk. I know it. No one else knows it so well. I can't tell
you with what a reluctance, what a drowning bark, I came to my office.
Being obliged to enter on its duties I have discharged them with inde
pendence and honesty. So much I dare say — beyond that I dare not.
I have been ambitious not to shame the friends who have supported
me. I have no other ambition. I was not made for a great man, or for
public position. I lack all the elements necessary for public life. In
other words, I am a shirk. That's just the plain truth, and I cannot
make myself other than I am.
Now, my good friend, ten thousand thanks for your too kind words.
Coming from you, I prize them as if they were of gold. I know you see
beyond the curtain what I cannot. You touch the heavens while I grope
under them. Serus redeas, etc.
With a world of friendly regards and grateful acknowledgments,
Truly your friend, R. D, Hubbard,
Governor Hubbard, in his first message to the General As
sembly, stated in very strong terms the injustice done to mar-

RICHARD D. HUBBARD. 57
ried women in respect to their property by the law as it stood,
being the ancient English law with a few recent modifications;
and soon after he sent for me and requested me to draft a bill
for a public act securing equal rights to women with regard
to their property with the rights of men with regard to theirs.
This required a fundamental change in the law of husband
and wife, and an abandonment of the old idea of the superior
rights of the husband. I drew the bill with much care, and
on its being submitted to Governor Hubbard, he accepted it
without change, except that a section in which I had provided
for direct conveyances and transfers of property between hus
band and wife, he thought, in spite of safeguards which I had
thrown about it, presented an opportunity for defrauding cred
itors, and this section was stricken out. This was the act of
1877 with regard to the property rights of married women, an
act which very soon received, and has ever since held, the full
acquiescence of the legal profession and the public, and still
holds its place on the statute book without material change.
After the bill was passed my wife sent a copy of it to my
friend Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield RepubKcan.
In his reply, dated March 28, 1877, he speaks very strongly in
approbation of the act, calling it a great step forward, and says :
We owe its success, first, to the right of the matter ; second, to the
agitation of the whole question, which has disseminated the perception
of that right ; third, to you and your husband in particular ; and, fourth,
to the fact that you had in Connecticut this year a governor who was
recognized as the leading lawyer of the state, a genuine natural conserv
ative, who yet said the measure was right and ought to go. It is this
last element that has given Connecticut its chief leadership. It is a
bigger thing than it seems at first, to have an eminent conservative law
yer on the side of such legislative reform. With such things going for
ward in national politics and such a sign in the heavens as this in Con
necticut, we ought to be very happy, and I believe I am — spite of debts,
hard work and fatigue, and more or less chronic invalidism. At any
rate, I salute you both with honor and with affection, and am very faith
fully yours, Sam'l Bowles.
Mrs. Hooker sent a copy of this letter to Governor Hub
bard, from whom she received the following reply :

58 REMINISCENCES.
Easter, April i, 1877.
My Good Friend :
'Twas a " Good Friday " indeed that brought your friendly message.
And what a gracious and dainty epistle Sam. Bowles does know how to
write ! He is a good fellow, upon my word ; full of generous instincts
and ideas. He ought to be at the head of the London Times, and master
of all the wealth it brings. Add to this that the Good Physician should
heal him of his " chronic invalidism,'' and then — well, what's the use of
dreaming ?
Thank yourself and such as you for what there is of progress
in respect of women's rights amongst us. I do believe the bill is a
" great step forward." "Alas," says our friend Mr. Robinson, "it has
destroyed the divine conception of the unity of husband and wife," As
divine, upon my soul, as the unity of the lamb and the devouring wolf.
Half the abasement of woman has been and is due to theology. Out
upon it! half of it, I mean; and live the better for the other half. Pardon
me, my good friend, that I am skeptical, I believe in half as well as I
know how. God help my unbelief, for I grope.
But .enough of this. I salute you, my good friend, with a thousand
salutations of respect and admiration. I do not agree with you in all
things ; still less with St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians; but I cannot
tell you how much I glorify you for your courage and devotion to woman
hood. I am a pretty poor stick for anything like good work in the world;
but I am not without respect for it in others. And so I present myself to
yourself and to your good and noble husband, whom I take to be one of
the best, with my assurances of affection and esteem.
Do you think your husband would ever have written that Epistle to
the Corinthians ? I trow not.
Thanking you for your kind letter, I remain, my dear madam,
Yours very truly, R. D. Hubbard.
Governor Hubbard, in one of his letters, speaks about his
dissent from my theological dogmas. It is only justice to my
self to state that our occasional conversations on religious sub
jects were almost invariably practical and personal. I never
held with any tenacity, certainly in my maturer life, to the
Calvinistic dogmas, and certainly never pressed them upon
him. Perhaps I cannot better present to the readers of this
memorial of my friend the kind of talks we had together on re
ligious subjects than by giving an account of a conversation one
evening at his house, about 1875. He had invited me to din
ner. Mrs. Hubbard was absent, and after dinner Governor
Hubbard sat down with me by the parlor fire, and We spent

RICHARD D. HUBBARD. 5g
the whole evening in talk. Our conversation ran over a wide
field, but when we got upon the subject of religion we spent a
large part of an hour upon it. He told me of the impossibility
of his seeing " beyond the veil," as I seemed to do, while at
the same time fearing those dreadful realities that the orthodox
theology had so long held and taught. I told him that we
could never have our eyes opened to divine truth except by
doing our full duty to God and man. The Scriptures told us
that it was by doing the will of God that we came to know
the truth of God. Now (said I) it is very plain to me how you
ought to begin if you would get this knowledge. You are an
Episcopalian. How simple a thing for you every morning to
get your family together and read with them your form of
morning prayer. It is a very different thing from what it
would be to begin with making an extemporaneous prayer.
Just think of it; your children never heard you pray. I would
not have that true of myself and my children for all the wealth
that could be showered upon me. You don't know what a
saving influence it might have upon your children. He replied
that he did not feel as if he could do it. We talked it over at
a good deal of length, he receiving most kindly and in an inter
ested way what I had to say; but I came away with the feeling
that he would never make the experiment, and I think he never
did. A friend told me not long after that Governor Hubbard
had told him of our conversation.
A few years before his death there came into Governor
Hubbard's life a deep sorrow — too deep to admit of any direct
allusion to it on the part of the friends who would gladly have
comforted him. I wrote him the following note: March 30th.
Dear Hubbard :
Remember that my wife and I love you dearly.
Affectionately, J. H,
There came this answer. April ist.
il/i' Dear Friend;
I wish I could thank you and your wife as you deserve. But words
are beggarly, and I am perplexed beyond measure.
God bless you, my dear Hooker.
I shall remember your goodness with love and gratitude to the end.
Ever and faithfully yours, R. D. Hubbard.

6o REMINISCENCES.
Governor Hubbard died, after a short but severe illness,
on the 28th day of February, 1884. The General Assembly was
then in session, and on the announcement of his death elo
quent addresses in eulogy of him were made in each house.
At a meeting of the Hartford bar, called on the occasion and
held on the 29th of February, and quite fully attended, after
several addresses had been made by other members of the bar,
I arose and rnade some extemporaneous remarks, saying that
after so much had been said, and well said, about Governor
Hubbard's transcendent abilities, it was hardly worth while
for me to occupy their time with remarks upon that subject,
but that I would speak of the affectionate side of his nature,
of which the public knew but little, and of him as my personal
friend, telling them of the overflowing cordiality of his oc
casional letters, and of his rarely writing me on professional
business without adding, by way of postscript, an affectionate
word. I then passed to another subject, upon which I spent
most of the time that I occupied, and in which I was listened
to with very close attention. After the meeting was closed
one and another of the older members of the bar came to
thank me for what I had said, and one leading citizen, not of
our profession (there were many citizens present outside of
the bar), asked me to give him my speech, taking it for granted
that I had it written. I told him that it was wholly extem
poraneous and that I had not a line of it in writing. He then
asked me if I could not write it out. I told him that I thought
I could without difficulty while it was fresh in my mind. He
then begged me to do so, and to put in every word that I said
with regard to Governor Hubbard's attitude toward religion
and the future life. When I got home I at once wrote out my
remarks, and found no difficulty in following both my line of
thought and the language I had used. My remarks (not in
cluding the introductory part of my address) were as follows:
" I now come to a subject which I approach with much hes
itation, and which I think I should not have ventured to touch
but for the way haying been opened for me by an allusion
made by our Brother Sill a few minutes ago, in the closing part
of his address. He spoke of the " halting faith " of our friend.
I have long and sadly known of Mr. Hubbard's want of re
ligious faith, and have endeavored to lift him up into a clearer

RICHARD D. HUBBARD. 6 1
perception of spiritual truths. The spiritual part of his na
ture he had never cultivated. He had a reverential spirit, but
it was towards objects worthy of his admiration and reverence
that presented themselves to his sight or vividly to his imagina
tion. Always an anxious questioner of the infinite, he seemed
to get no response that he could interpret. He was pre-emi
nently a truth-loving man ; he hated shams and pretenses ; and
if he could speak to us to-day he would say, " Tell the truth
about me if you say anything." I am sure he would wish me
to say just what I am saying.
" To him the future life was all uncertainty. With all his
imagination he could not see beyond the veil and fill the
seeming void with realities. And so he came to dread that
life. He loved this life — this green and beautiful earth — its
intellectual enjoyments, its social delights, not a little its mere
animal life, and did not want to leave it for another world of
which he knew and could conceive nothing. He has often
told me this. A few summers ago he spent some time at New
port, taking with him his family and his equipage. On his
return he said to me : ' Hooker, I have had one of the pleas
antest summers of my life, but over it all there hung a shadow.
The question kept coming into my mind, How long will this
last? and what then?' In commenting a few months ago
upon a poem of mine which appeared in the papers, in which
I had expressed a longing for the other life, he said: ' How
can anybody, with this green earth around him, be wanting
to go over into the unkno\vn world? ' To me that world does
not seem like an unknown one. I live in it, it seems to me,
more than I do in this. It is as real to me as this.
" Now with that world so near and so real to me, my mind
has been filled, ever since I heard of Mr. Hubbard's death,
with the thought of his experiences over there. I could not
dwell on his eloquence, or his legal ability, or any of the things
which his eulogists are so eloquently saying of him. I have
been able to think only of where he is in that spirit world that
was so uninviting to him. What has he found there? What
is his condition there? I have wished, with inexpressible de
sire, to be there with him. It seems to me that I could hold his
hand and steady and guide and comfort him there; that he
would not seeni so much to be in a strange place if I were
there with him.

62 REMINISCENCES.
" Well, I should not have thought of saying all this if I had
not been prepared to follow it up with words of comfort and
hope. I was brought up on a stern old theology that, in con
siderable part, I utterly repudiate. I believe profoundly, it
seems to me that I know as if God himself had revealed it to
me, that our probation does not end with this life. As a pro
gressive religious thinker has well said: 'We are placed in
this world to be trained, not to be tested.' All bitter experi
ences in the other world I believe to be reformatory. They
may be of long continuance, but I believe there will be sweet
fruit in the end. It is a dreadful mistake to lay up a burden
of sin in this world; its weight will be terrible upon the soul
over there. But our friend had a great soul — reverential,
truthful, just, generous, affectionate — and such a soul will
soon find something in that spiritual world to which it will
be drawn and which it will draw to itself. His progress may
be slow, but it will be constantly an ascent. He had the most
important elements of a great character, and character there
becomes everything, I do not believe in any doctrine of im
puted righteousness. The soul must work its slow way up into
a high spiritual character of its own. And that such a soul as
his will do this I feel sure. So I think of our friend with sad
ness, but with a calm trust and an expectation only of good,
and if I shall tarry much longer upon the earth I shall expect
to be welcomed over there by a bright spirit, which, if I do
not recognize it in its new form, will say to me: " Why, I am
your old friend, Dick Hubbard,"
Governor Hubbard was buried on Monday, the 2d day of
March, On the Sunday preceding I wrote and sent to the
Courant of Monday morning, where they appeared, the fol
lowing verses, with which I close these reminiscences of my
friend : To R. D, H. — March i, 1884.
Silent thou liest in death's solemn calm,
Shaming the tumult in our breasts ;
For 'tis the shadow of the lofty palm,
Not cypress, on thee rests.
From earthly pain set free and earth's defilence,
Thou liest with thy dear hands folden ;
Thy speech in life was silver, but thy silence
To-day is more than golden.

MR. HUBBARD'S OBITUARY ADDRESSES. 63
The halls which have so oft thy triumphs seen ,
Mourn their great victor passed awaj- ;
Yet in triumphant life thou ne'er hast been
Such victor as to-day.
Oh, questioner ! who found in earth's dim ways
No answer to th}- mind's deep quest ;
Art thou nx>t lighted now by the clear rays
That shine upon the blest ?
Hast thou not found th' immortal stream that flows
To heal the earth-stained souls of men ?
And Him, who for us went to death, and rose,
And loves all souls as then ?
MR. HUBBARD'S OBITUARY ADDRESSES.
Mr. Hubbard's addresses at the bar meetings called upon
the occasion of the deaths of members of the bar were often
exceedingly finished and elegant. He never offered any per
functory eulogy, and, indeed, rarely spoke on those occasions
unless the decedent had passed a long and honored professional
life among us, or had qualities which commanded his admira
tion and affection. At such times his remarks were of surpass
ing interest and his language gave one a new conception of
the richness of our English tongue. Yet he never seemed to
attempt to be an orator. He spoke in a low voice, without
gestures, and with the utmost simplicity of manner. One who
has hstened to him at such times can appreciate what I lost in
outliving him, and thus never getting that loving notice of me
which he promised in one of the letters that I have given in
my sketch of him, in case he should " out-tarry "' me. His fine
addresses are wholly out of sight of all but the lawyers, buried
in the appendices of the Connecticut Law Reports. If any
choose to look them up, and they will well repay the search,
the most noteworthy among them are those of Charles Chap
man in vol. 35; of \Mlliam Hungerford, in vol. 39; of Chief
Justice Seymour, in vol. 48; and of Loren P. Waldo, in the
same volume. The concluding part of his address upon Mr.
Hungerford is one of such rare beauty and interest that I give
it at some length. Mr. Hungerford died in 1873. at the age
of 86. He was more like the traditional English law}-er than
anv other lawver whom our state had known. He never mar
ried. He never mingled in politics or went into society, and

64 RE.MINISCENCES.
he never held or sought office. He was wedded to the common
law and familiar with all its abstrusities. As Islv. Hubbard
said of him in an earlier part of his address, " His weapons
were a full equipment from the strange, heavy old armor of
Littleton and the Year Books down to the most cunning and
newly-contrived fences and foils of forensic warfare." He had
not the slightest oratorical power, nor even a pleasing voice,
yet few lawyers were listened to so attentively by the judges
or made an equal impression upon them. He sat all day and
all the evenings in his office. Among his much-read books
no one was so well worn as his Bible. ]Mr. Hubbard, in his
address, had been presenting in much detail the admirable
points of his professional and private character, and had
expressed his belief that he was " the most learned lawyer
at the bar of this state." He then proceeded as follows: —
And now when I consider this long life closed — these many years
ended of eminent labor in the highest ranks of the forum — and nothing
left of it all but a tolling bell, a handful of earth, and a passing tradi
tion — a tradition already half past — I am reminded of the infelicity
which attends the reputation of a great lawyer. To my thinking, the
most vigorous brain work of the world is done in the ranks of our pro
fession. And then our work concerns the highest of all temporal in
terests, property, reputation, the peace of families, liberty, life even, the
foundations of society, the jurisprudence of the world, and, as a recent
event has shown, the arbitrations and peace of nations. The world
accepts the work, but forgets the workers. The waste hours of Lord
Bacon and Sergeant Talfourd were devoted to letters, and each is infi
nitely better remembered for his mere literary diversions than for his
whole long and laborious professional life-work. The cheap caricatures
of Dickens on the profession will outlive, I fear, in the popular memory,
the judgments of Chief Justice Jlarshall, for the latter were not clownish
burlesques, but only masterpieces of reason and jurisprudence. The vic
tory gained by the counsel of the seven bishops was worth infinitely
more to the people of England than all the triumphs of the Crimean war.
But one Lord Cardigan led a foolishly brilliant charge against a Russian
battery at Balaklava, and became immortal. Who led the great charge
of the seven great confessors of the English church against the English
crown at Westminster Hall? You must go to your books to answer.
They were not on horseback. They wore gowns instead of epaulettes.
The truth is, we are like the little insects that in the unseen depths of
the ocean lay the coral foundations of uprising islands. In the end come

SAMUEL BOWLES. 65
the sohd land, the olive and the vine, the habitations of man, the arts
and industries of life, the havens of the sea and ships riding at anchor.
But the busy toilers which laid the beams of a continent in a dreary
waste, are entombed in their work and forgotten in their tombs.
Yet the infelicity to which I have alluded is not without its compensa
tions. For what, after all, is posthumous fame to him who brought
nothing into this world and may carry nothing out? The dead leave
behind their reputations alike with their estates. A man may be libeled
to-day as a fool, a fanatic, and a knave, and to-morrow his libelers sneak
into his funeral procession, and the chief magistrate of forty millions of
freemen begs the honor of two feet of space at his obsequies. It is the
old story — the tax which posthumous fame so often pays for its title —
a garret and a crust in life, a mausoleum and statue afterwards. What
avails it all ? We may justly console ourselves with the reflection that
we belong to a profession which above all others shapes and fashions the
institutions in which we live, and which, in the language of a great
statesman, " is as ancient as the magistracy, as noble as virtue, as neces
sary as justice,'' — a profession, I venture to add, which is generous and
fraternal above all others, and in which living merit is appreciated in its
day, according to its deserts, and by none so quickly and so ungrudg
ingly as by those who are its professional contemporaries and its com
petitors in the same field. We have our rivalries — who else has more ?
— but they seldom produce jealousies. We have our contentions — who
else has so many? — but they seldom produce enmities. The old Saxons
used to cover their fires on every hearth at the sound of the evening
curfew. In like manner, but to a better purpose, we also cover at each
nightfall the embers of each day's struggle and strife. We never defer
our amnesties till after death, and have less occasion, therefore, than some
others to deal in post mortem bronzes and marbles. So much we may
say without arrogance of ourselves — so much of our noble profession.
No better proof and illustration can be found than in the hfe just
closed — a life clear and clean in its aims — full of busy and useful labors
— void, I dare believe, of offense toward God and man, and crowned in
its course with that three-fold scriptural blessing — length of days, and
riches, and honor. SAMUEL BOWLES.
Mr. Bowles, as editor of the Springfield Republican and as
a great journalist, was too well known in his lifetime, and is
too well remembered, to need any notice from me. It is only as
a warm-hearted personal friend that I wish to speak of him.
He was a good hater, but was one of the truest and best of
friends, and it was my felicity and that of my wife to know this
gracious side of his nature. We had, one or the other of us.

66 REMINISCENCES.
sometimes both together, letters from him, written often only
to convey his good will, but sometimes to tell us, in an ex
asperated way, what he thought of some public men and meas
ures — these letters, however, often freighted with a large con
tingent of kindly feeling for us. Almost all were written at a
moment of release from overburdening editorial care and work,
or when, overburdened with such work, his mind sought relief
in friendly correspondence or companionship. I shall omit
all that do not bear directly on these personal relations. Those
which I publish were, with one exception, written within the
last four years of his life. The earlier ones, so far as they have
been preserved, deal more with political and reformatory mat
ters in which he was in hearty sympathy with us. I give one of
these earlier letters, addressed to Mrs. Hooker. The Governor
Brown to whom he refers is Governor B. Gratz Brown of Mis
souri, to whom she had written an earnest letter on woman
suffrage, which he had strongly advocated. Springfield, April 19, 1872.
My Dear Mrs. Hooker:
I thank you for sending me your note to Gov. Brown. I have taken
a copy of it, and, unless you forbid me before, I shall publish it in the
Republican next week. It is a good item in the general agitation, of
which there has got to be a good deal more than you imagine before the
end is achieved. You will get nothing from any party this year. Such a
revolution as we propose is not won in a day or a year. It is a long road
and through much prayer and labor. But your hope and courage are
splendid, and I watch their demonstrations with much interest.
I am yours very cordially, Sam'l Bowles.
In the fall of 1874 I spent a Sunday with him. My wife was
spending the winter in Paris, and I felt a great desire for a
few hours of his companionship. We spent the whole day at
his house together, intermingling rest and conversation. I
arranged to go back Monday morning by a very early train,
getting my breakfast after I got home. On going to my room
I found some refreshments for the early morning on a stand
by the head of my bed, with this note: " Dear J. H. — Break
the egg into the tumbler, stir, and drink it. Come again, and
we won't talk of anything serious. I am ashamed to have
spoken of my light troubles. S. B."

SAMUEL BOWLES.

67

Early in 1875 ^^f- Bowles had on his hands a very serious
libel suit, brought by one Phelps, upon whose transactions he
had commented very severely in his paper. He feh the burden
of the suit greatly. At this time he wrote me this letter:
,,, ,r , Springfield, April 22, 1875.
My Dear Mr. Hooker:
Come up Saturday and spend this Sunday with me, I am very
much absorbed in my great libel suit. But I want you now for two
reasons — first, as a distnaction and comfort, and second, to see if I can't
squeeze a Uttle help out of you. I want all the legal knowledge of my
learned friends, and aU their aid and comfort. It is a good suit and we
have a good case. My chief anxiety now is to make the court let in our
e\-idence. Anyway, come up.
Yours very cordially, Sam'l Bowles.
The suit came to trial soon after, and resulted in a victory
for Mr. Bowles. I had left for Europe in :\Iay. joining my
wife in Paris, where she had spent the winter. Mobile there,
seeing in the Weekly Republican, which I had sent to me while
abroad, that he had gained his suit, I wrote him a letter of
congratulation. I had written him, before leaving home, of my
intention to go abroad for the summer. In my letter from
Paris I had commended his pluck in fighting the libel suit, and
told him of my lack of the fighting spirit and my disposition to
run away like a coward rather than stay and fight. He replied
as follows : Springfield, June 18, 1875.
My Dear Jfr. Hooker:
I am indebted to you for two ver\- kind and sympathetic notes.
They did good in the full measure of their intent. It was a great victory
in the libel suit — a greater one every way even than appears on the
surface. We should have had the letter of the law as well as the spirit,
but the spirit was so sweeping that it killed the letter, and set up the
Republican before our local public as no other incident in its history
ever did.
I am ashamed not to have seen you before you went. I di_d not
realize that your time had come, and the preparation for the suit which
was very much in my own hands, absorbed all my spare time and thought
during the spring.
I am struggling, as usual, with an adverse head. " You know how
it is yourself." But I peg away after my incoherent fashion, and don't
seem to have the slightest "encouragement of death."

68 REMINISCENCES.
I am glad both you and your wife are over there. It is the best place
for me also. But I cannot well get away this summer, though there is a
chance that I may repeat last year's run. By the way, is your wife to
remain abroad next winter, and if so, where ? Tell me that when you
speak next.
I hope Switzerland will restore your self respect, I never knew a
man who pretended to be such a coward, however, that could fight so like
the devil when the hour came, I would bet odds on you against the
whole Beecher family now,
Mrs, Bowles joins me in heartiest remembrances to both Mrs, Hooker
and yourself. If you come across any of our children or grandchildren
in Europe, embrace them for us. Anyway, believe me always
Very cordially yours, Sam'l Bowles.
My wife and I returned from Europe in the fall of 1875.
The next letter from him that I find is as follows :
Springfield, Dec. 21, 1S75.
My Dear Hooker .-
* * * I wish you and Mrs. Hooker would come up to see us,
together or one at a time. You are pretty absorbing people, and if you
come together I might have to set you to quarrelling with each other by
way of relief to myself. Tell madame I think " the'cause " is growing,
but I don't believe we shall elect a woman president next time. Moody
and Sankey don't seem to have helped Brooklyn very much.
Yours very cordially, Sam'l Bowles.
On the 7th of January, 1876, I received the following tele
gram from him:
You and JIrs, Hooker come up to-morrow and make us happy.
Sam'l Bowles,
On the 31st day of July, 1876, I received the following note
from him, in reply to an urgent invitation that I sent him to
come down and see us: Springfield, July 31, 1876.
My Dear Hooker :
L could neither go to you nor answer promptly, being at Boston try
ing to make a president for Amherst College. My family are scattered
about the country in various places, and between running these various
detachments and a daily newspaper, and keeping myself in tolerable
harmony, I find very little spare time on my hands. Nevertheless, I am
very glad you want to see me. I certainly want to see you, and I will,
somehow and somewhere, before the year gets on to ripeness.

SAMUEL BOWLES.

69

I hope you are making up your mind to Tilden's election. It looks
to me almost as certain as the fall frosts.
With much regard to Mrs, Hooker, I am yours very heartily,
Sam'l Bowles,
The next letter I find is the following: Springfield, March 26, 1877,
My Dear John Hooker :
Won't you send me a copy of the law which you and Gov, Hubbard
have got through the legislature on the rights of married women ? What
I see of it indicates a real and healthy advance, the greatest triumph of
the new dispensation that has yet been achieved.
Yours very cordially, Sam'l Bowles,
My wife sent Mr. Bowles a copy of the law, and an inter
esting letter from him in reply and one from Governor Hub
bard to my wife on the subject, are given in the chapter on
Governor Hubbard, ante pages 57, 58.
A little later Mr. Bowles wrote me as follows in reply to an
urgent invitation that he make us a visit:
Springfield, Aug, 16, 1877,
My Dear Mr. Hooker:
It is hard to resist such an invitation, but it is impossible now to
accept, Mrs, Bowles worried herself because of a sick grandbaby into
her own bed, and hasn't left her room for three weeks, and I have be
come so miserably dyspeptic this summer that I cannot trust myself to
another table and another bed. But if Saturday is a tolerable day and I
am in a half-tolerable condition, I shall go down on the 12 o'clock train
and spend the afternoon with you, I do want to see you and get new
comfort by fresh contact with good people,
I am yours very cordially, Sam'l Bowles.
Mr. Bowles came down and spent the afternoon with us.
I find no later note from him. A few weeks later he had a
paralytic stroke and lived on, at times more comfortable, but
in constant restlessness and discomfort, and often great pain,
until January 7, 1878, when he died. He had given my name
to his family among those of friends whom he wished specially
invited to his funeral. A very interesting memorial service
was afterwards held, to which my wife and I were invited, and
which was largely attended by his friends.

70 REMINISCENCES.
A strong, earnest soul, that had had an intense hold on Hfe
and on public interests, and was ready for any contest that the
assertion of the right made necessary, but with a constant,
and sometimes pathetic, outreach for sympathy and com
panionship, passed to the greater life when he departed.

SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY,
Soon after I came to the bar (which was in 1841) I read with
great interest in one of our American magazines a review of
the life of Sir Samuel Romilly, an eminent English chancery
lawyer. The memoir was in two volumes, edited by two of
his sons; one of whom. Sir John Romilly, was afterwards
Master of the Rolls. Sir Samuel was born in 1757, and died in
1818. Not being able to find the work in this country I sent
to London for it, and after procuring it read and re-read it
with great interest.
Sir Samuel was of Huguenot descent, of a family that fled
from France to England at the revocation of the Edict of
Nantes in 1685. His later ancestors were jewelers, who ac
quired considerable property, and he received a good educa
tion, though not a university one. He entered Gray's Inn as
a student for the bar when twenty-one years old, and after ad
mission to the London bar pursued his profession with great
success, attaining the foremost rank at the chancery bar, his
professional gains at the height of his practice being said to
have averaged £14,000 a year. He was a man of the highest
professional and personal honor. In the course of his advance
ment he had reached the point where, at the next vacancy, he
was regarded, and regarded himself, as entitled to the position
of Lord High Chancellor. The memoir is made up largely of
extracts from his journal, and it appears from frequent entries
upon it that he was looking forward with an honorable ambi
tion and pride to the Lord Chancellorship. As is generally
known, the Chancellor presides in the House of Lords, and has
an important influence on legislation. When, at last, the ex
pected vacancy came, the king, George IV, sent for Sir Samuel,
and told him that he was prepared to put the great seal into his
hands, but that if he did so he should expect him to do what
he could to secure the passage of an act that was pending be
fore the Lords, and which he desired to have passed. It was

SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY. 7 1
some act extending or strengthening the king's prerogative,
and was not approved by Sir Samuel. He said to the king: " I
know, your Majesty, what the act is. I have already considered
it, and I cannot support it." The king replied that he could
not have the great seal except on the condition of his support
ing it. '¦ Then (said he), your Majesty, I decline it." And
thus he let the great office pass to other hands — understand
ing clearly that his loss of it now was a final sacrifice of it.
And he never had another offer of it.
He was in Parliament for several years before his death
(1818), and while there introduced, and to a considerable ex
tent worked through, the series of enactments known to this
day as " The Romilly Acts," the object of which was to miti
gate the severity of the criminal law of England. When he
began the church and all society were against him. It was the
nearly universal belief that the letting up on the punishment of
crime would only increase crime. A few thinking men were
with him, but he was substantially alone in his undertaking.
He began with introducing a single measure, which was voted
down overwhelmingly. At the next session he introduced the
same bill again, and another for another amendment of the
law. The latter would be voted down by an overwhelming
majority, and the former by a reduced majority. After a
while they began to fall in, and then at every session one meas
ure and another would be carried through. At his death a con-
sirable part of the legislation that he sought had not yet
reached success, but it was all so well on its way that the whole
was soon after carried through.
I regarded Sir Samuel with so great admiration, and in
deed reverence, that I determined if I ever went to England to
look up his sons, and especially Sir John, then a chancery
judge, and to visit his rooms in Gray's Inn and his professional
haunts. No Englishman has gone into my life as he has, un
less I place by his side Dr. Thomas Arnold, of whose memory
I am equally a worshiper.
In 1857 the British government had some important litiga
tion in the Superior Court at Hartford. It grew out of a large
contract with Robbins & Lawrence, of Hartford, for the manu
facture of breech-loading rifles for the English army. The
case was heard at very great length before a committee, and

72 REMINISCENCES.
in one form and another went five times to our Supreme Court.
A Mr. Whittaker, of Brooklyn, N. Y., a practitioner at the
New York bar, was general counsel for the British govern
ment, while I was retained as local counsel. As the case grew
more serious and difficult, Thomas C. Perkins, Esq., was em
ployed with me, and later, Franklin Chamberlin, Esq. Mr.
Whittaker was an English lawyer who came to New York to
practice his profession. During the pendency of this litiga
tion, which lasted several years, I spent a summer in Europe.
On my informing Mr. Whittaker at one time when he was in
Hartford of my intention to do so, he said that he could give
me -a letteKof introduction to friends in London, and that when
he got home he would write some for me. Not long after a
package of letters came, and with them one to myself, in which
he said that he had sent me, among others, a letter to his
cousin. Sir John Romilly. The letter to Sir John I then read,
and found it addressed him as " Cousin John." In it he spoke
very kindly of me as a lawyer of Hartford, and as having been
retained by the British government in an important case in
the courts there. I can hardly express my surprise and pleas
ure at having the way thus opened for me to the Romilly fam
ily. Mr. Whittaker explained to me his relation to Sir Samuel
when I next saw him. His mother was sister of the wife of
Sir Samuel, and he himself had spent months in his family, and
lie and Sir John had been playmates in childhood, and later,
schoolmates. Of course I set out, soon after reaching London, to avail
myself of Mr. Whittaker's letter to Sir John. It was now in
the early summer. The court over which Sir John presided
was known as the Rolls Court, as his title was " Master of the
Rolls." It was a chancery court of the higher order. I went
to the court room a half hour before the time of opening court,
and found his secretary in the parlor attached to the court
room, to whom I made known the object of my call. He said the
judge would not come in till a few minutes before the time for
opening the court, and advised me to come in in the afternoon,
just before the adjournment, after which the judge would be at
leisure. I did so, and sat a half hour looking on with great
interest as he dispensed justice. When the hour of adjourn
ment was reached the court was formally adjourned till the

DR. THOMAS ARNOLD.

73

next morning, and the judge disappeared through a private
door near the bench, that led into the parlor. Another door
opened into the same room from the public part of the court
room, and, after waiting for a few minutes, I went to it and
rang the bell. His secretary appeared and asked me to walk
in and take a seat. I handed him the letter for the judge, which
he carried to him in an inner parlor, which seemed to be his
private room. Very soon he came back and said the judge
wished me to come right in. I did so, and he received me most
cordially. He was glad to hear from me about his cousin
Whittaker, and I told him of my great admiration and rever
ence for his father. Ihis greatly interested him, and we spent
a half hour in talking about .Sir Samuel. In this conversation
he told me some of the facts which I have before stated, and
particularly about his labors in Parliament for the improvement
of the criminal law. With regard to these he mentioned this
occurrence: Sir Samuel, after years of labor in the cause,
had reckoned confidently on carrying through a certain very
important measure, the passage of which was the more im
portant as he was expecting to leave Parliament. When the
vote was taken it was defeated. He felt it keenly, and in a
short speech upon some motion which he made in the matter,
told the house how disappointed and depressed he felt. " But
(said he), my labor has not been lost, for the effort that I have
made and which has failed, will inspire some other man to make
an effort that will succeed." This utterance has vibrated in my
soul through nearly forty years, a perpetual inspiration. I
shall be well paid for the trouble I have taken in writing out
this story if I can pass on its inspiration to others.

DR. THOMAS ARNOLD,

In my early manhood I read the life of Dr, Arnold by Canon
Stanley. It was made up largely of his letters. The volume
was large and, with the little time I had for such reading, I had
it on hand for nearly two months. As I neared the end of it I
remember thinking how I should have liked to have it run on
indefinitely, keeping me for years in the companionship of the
noble man, and permitting me to drink constant drafts of
inspiration from his life and thoughts. No two Englishmen
have gone into my life as Dr. Arnold and Sir Samuel Romilly
liave done. Of the latter I have just spoken.

74 REMINISCENCES.
In the summer of 1872 I was in England with my daughter,
Mrs. Burton, her cousin, Miss Kate Foote, Rev. Dr. N. J. Bur
ton, and Senator Joseph R. Hawley. We were at one time all
together at Bowness, on Lake Windermere, and arranged for a
drive through the lake district to Keswick, about twenty miles.
As we passed through Ambleside we learned, by inquiry of
our driver, that by going a little out of our way we could pass
by Fox Howe, the favorite residence of Dr. Arnold. His
widow, the driver told us, was living there, with an unmarried
daughter. We soon reined up before the gate, from which a
carriage drive led to a tasteful stone mansion, which stood
among wooded and picturesque grounds. After sentimental
izing a few minutes over the scene I asked them if any of them
would go in with me. They all declined and thought it would
hardly do for me. But I told them I was going to call, even
if I had to do so alone. They agreed to wait for me, and I
went in at the gate, and was soon at the door. Upon my ring
ing the bell a servant came to the door, who told me that ]\Irs.
Arnold was in, but was at breakfast. It was now about 9
o'clock. I took out my card and wrote on the back of it, " Will
Mrs. Arnold see for a moment an American gentleman who
worships the memory of Dr. Arnold?" I was shown into a
parlor, and in a moment Miss Arnold, a lady of about fifty,
came in, reaching out her hand most cordially to me, and say
ing that her mother was greatly pleased with my call, and would
be in in a moment. And very soon the old lady came in, reach
ing out both her hands, and with the tears rolling dovim her
cheeks. I have to confess that my cheeks were wet all through
our brief interview. She seemed delighted at my visit, and
hardly willing to let me go. She showed me a portrait of Dr.
Arnold, the best, she said, that was ever painted of him, and
gave me a photograph of it; also the desk at which he wrote
and the chair in which he used to sit at it. I had to hasten my
departure, as my party would get impatient, but I had in the
brief quarter of an hour that I spent there one of the most ten
der and inspiring experiences of my life.
I told my friends, when I got back to the carriage, what
a delightful time I had had, and what they had lost, but I am
strongly of the impression that if we had trooped in as a com
pany of tourist sight-seers it would have vulgarized and utterly
spoiled the whole affair.

" WILLIAM M. EVARTS. 75
WILLIAM M. EVARTS.
Mr. Evarts was a classmate of mine at Yale, in the class of
1837. We were second cousins, and in vacations he was occa
sionally at my father's house in Farmington. He and Colton of
our class made, with me, a trio who were specially intimate, one
or the other of them being my very frequent companion in
my walks. There was at that time a great propensity among
us all for pun-making — the more extravagant the pun the
better, and there was very little scruple about appropriating
each other's puns. One morning after breakfast Evarts and I
were taking a walk together, and, in passing through Meadow
street, I saw across the way a house with a very long stoop ex
tending out from its rear end. Said I, pointing to it, Evarts, that
is a stoop-endous house." "Good," said he; "good." We
passed on, and soon got round to our rooms. The next morning
Colton called at my room right after breakfast, and asked me to
go for a walk. I started out with him, and asked him where we
should go. " Let's go down this way," said he, pointing to
wards Meadow street. " Oh (said I), I went down there yes
terday morning and would rather go some other way." " No
(said he), let's go down there." So I yielded, and we started in
that direction. As we came to corners he elbowed me around
them, and finally got me into Meadow street, opposite the
house with the long stoop. " Look there," said Colton, " that
is a stoop-endous house." " I know it is," said I. " But that
is not your pun." " Well," said he, " I own up. It isn't my
pun; it's Evarts's." " Evarts's pun? " said I. " No, it is not.
It's mine, and I made it to Evarts only yesterday morning."
" Good! " said he. " Why, Evarts came to my room yesterday
evening just before dark, and asked me to go to walk. I
told him I did not feel like it, but he pressed me, and I started
out. ' Where shall we go? ' said I. ' Down this way,' said
he, pointing in this direction. ' No (said I) ; one of my last
walks was down there. Let's go another way.' ' No (said he) ;
I want to walk this way.' So we started off, and he navigated
me around the corners, till we found ourselves here, when he
pointed to that house and said, ' Colton, that's a stoop-endous
house.' "
The Linonian Society at Yale celebrated m 1853 its cen
tennial anniversary. Mr. Evarts delivered the commencement

76 , REMINISCENCES.
address before the alumni. It was a fine address, full of elo
quent passages. At the commencement dinner he sat on the
platform with the faculty and numerous invited guests. The
name of WilHam Wyckham, the founder of the Linonian So
ciety, was specially honored on the occasion, and was displayed
in large letters on the front of a balcony over the platform,
which was filled with ladies. Just as we got seated at dinner
Professor (afterwards President) Porter came to where my
class sat, and asked me to speak to the toast of Wyckham,
which I, not very wisely, consented to do. He told me that
I should not be reached till I had had ample time to think
the matter up, and that I should follow John Van Buren,
who was to respond to the toast to the " Linonian Society."
I at once began to get together what little scraps of thought
I could on the subject, and before the speaking had laid out
a little speech which I thought would do. My anxiety over
the matter, however, spoilt my dinner. One of my points,
and really my best one, was to refer to the name of Wyck
ham where it was displayed on the front of the balcony as
being placed " a little lower than the angels," and " crowned
with glory and honor." But as the speaking went on, one and
another of the speakers, reminded by the prominence of the
name of Wyckham on the balcony, and with the general in
clination on the occasion to allude to him as the founder of
the Linonian Society, used up one and another of my scanty
points, until I had none left but the allusion to the angels, and
I thought that I could, at least, caU attention to him in that
place of honor, and leave him there and sit down. What oc
curred to bring my embarrassment to an acute stage is very
weH told in an article on Hon. Henry Barnard as the " Nestor
of American Education," in the New England Magazine for
July, 1896. The article illustrates Mr. Barnard's readiness
and ability as a speaker by an account of what he did on this
occasion. It had mentioned the fact that he was an enthusi
astic member of the Linonian Society, and had been its presi
dent, and that John Van Buren was to respond to the toast to
the " Linonian Society," as Rev. Dr. Bacon was to that to the
" Brothers in Unity," the rival society. It then proceeds as fol
lows : —

WILLIAM M. EVARTS. yy
" Dr. Bacon eulogized the work of his own society and
pointed with pardonable pride to the Brothers in Unity, whose
distinguished services to their country had entitled them to the
honor of a place in the portrait gallery of eminent graduates.
liaving lauded the work of the Brothers, he proceeded in a vein
of light satire. to speak of the ' trifling services of a few other
gentlemen whose pictures he saw around him,' referring to
the members of the Linonian Society, and closed by looking
steadily at the portrait of the founder of the Linonians for some
moments with a puzzled expression, and saying slowly:
'Wyckham! Wyckham! I fail to remember at this moment
why he should have a place of honor on these waHs. I have
heard his name mentioned, however, as the founder of some
literary society while a student.'
" For some reason Mr. Van Buren left the platform before
the conclusion of Dr. Bacon's address, and failed to respond
when called by the chairman. The Linonians, however, were
not dismayed. Promptly the call for ' Barnard ' came from all
parts of the hall; and the young orator brilliantly responded
to the unexpected summons to duty. The great occasion, the
splendid audience, and the unbounded enthusiasm of his com
panions, aroused his best powers, and for a generation his
speech was the boast of his fehow Linonians. In a few choice
sentences he emphasized the estimate of Dr. Bacon in regard
to the Brothers in Unity, and manfully acknowledged the in
debtedness of posterity to such able and noble men. Then
rising to the platform he had thus constructed, he painted in
still more glowing colors the labors and triumphs of Linonians,
naming Kent, Plillhouse, Calhoun and others, reserving the
founder of the society for his closing. Wyckham's portrait
hung just below the front of the ladies' gallery. Pointing to
wards it and looking reverently at it, he stood for some time
unable to proceed on account of the tremendous cheering of
the Linonians, joined by the entire audience. ' What shall I
say of him whose memory is revered by all Linonians?' said
he, when quiet was restored. ' If it be true, as has been lightly
said to-day, that his only claim to glory is that he founded our
society, even Linonians will be satisfied when they know that
for that supreme work so full of beneficence to humanity he
has been placed " but a little lower than the angels."

78 REMINISCENCES.
Mr. Barnard sat down, and the audience renewed its ap
plause. When this was over the toast to " William Wyckham "
was read, and it was announced that Mr. Hooker, of the class
of 1837, would respond to it. I had to get up, but could not
think of a word to say about Wyckham that had not been said,
and was delivered from my terrible strait only by the sudden
thought of that story about Evarts. So I said that William
Wyckham had been abundantly honored by the speakers who
had preceded me, who, in fact, had utterly used up all the ma
terial that I had mentally gathered for use in my speech. " But
(said I), as I see my classmate and friend, Mr. Evarts, on the
platform, I will give you a little incident of our college life that
I think will interest you." I then told the story, which, at its
close, drew out a prolonged roar of laughter and applause.
After the applause had subsided, I added : " We have all been
listening with delight to the eloquent periods of the orator of
the day. I should have enjoyed them with the rest, but for a
painful thought that haunted me all through. It was the fear
that some of the finest of those passages may have been —
borrowed." This brought out a new response from the assem
bly, in the midst of which Mr. Evarts arose and walked to the
front of the platform, the applause bursting out again as he did
so. When the noise was over, he said very quietly: " I re
member very well the incident that Brother liooker mentions.
Indeed, the story is one of my favorite ones, only as I teH it I
stand where he puts himself, and he stands where he puts me,"
HENRY WARD BEECHER AND REV. DR. PARKER,
A serious controversy arose in 1852 between Mr, Beecher
and Rev. Dr. Parker of New York, growing out of something
which Mrs. Stowe had published with regard to the latter. Dr.
Parker had been for many years a Presbyterian clergyman in
New Orleans, and had been regarded, though originally a
northern man, as a defender of slavery. Mrs. Stowe, after
writing " Uncle Tom's Cabin," published a book called " The
Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," in which she presented slavery
by a vast number of quotations from southern orators and writ
ers and from newspaper advertisements. Among these quo
tations and comments upon them she had published something

H. W. BEECHER AND REV. DR. PARKER.

79

which Dr. Parker regarded as libellous, and he put the matter
into the hands of a New York lawyer to demand a retraction
and to threaten a suit for a libel if it were not made. I am un
able after so long a time to find what precisely the matter
claimed to be libellous was, and it is not important to the part of
the controversy of which I shall speak.
Dr. Parker before this had left New Orleans and was
now residing in New York. Mr. Beecher undertook the
negotiation with him for an amicable settlement of the matter,
to which he seemed inclined. It was at first proposed that a
joint card should be published, but this was given up and an
exchange of letters was proposed. Mr. Beecher then drew up
a form of both letters and submitted them to Dr. Parker, ex
pressing his confidence that Mrs. Stowe would be satisfied
with the letter which he had drawn as Dr. Parker's to her.
Mrs. Stowe had given Mr. Beecher an outline of such a letter
as she was willing to write to Dr. Parker. These two
letters soon after appeared in a New York paper, with that
of Dr. Parker signed by his name. Not long after they ap
peared Dr. Parker came out with a card denying that he ever
signed the letter that purported to come from him, and charg
ing Mr. Beecher with putting his name to it without authority.
The matter attracted great attention in New York, and ah the
papers took up against Mr. Beecher in the matter, especially
when he admitted writing Dr. Parker's name at the bottom of
the letter, and they seemed to regard it as substantially a
forgery on his part. He had then been settled in Brooklyn
but a few years, and had not acquired the position of respect
and influence which he gained a few years later.
Dr. Parker's lawyer published an article presenting a legal
view of the case against Mr. Beecher, which greatly aided and
strengthened the popular verdict against him. In these cir
cumstances it seemed to me that a legal view of Mr. Beecher's
side of the case was greatly needed, and would be very helpful
to him. I accordingly prepared the following article, which he
published in the Independent, and afterwards in the Neiv York
Times. He and Mrs. Stowe were delighted with it, and he soon
after wrote me that it had turned the whole tide in his favor,
not merely completely exculpating him, but leaving Dr. Parker

So REMINISCENCES.
open to most serious animadversion. I insert my defense of
him in this book in part as being one of the interesting ex
periences of my life, and in part as an interesting and im
portant incident in the life of Mr. Beecher.
The public, chiefly from good nature, but partly from indolence, -will
be found very ready to adopt the conclusion that Dr. Parker and Mr.
Beecher have honestly misunderstood one another, and that neither has
been guilty of misrepresentation. Such a verdict, while it totally excul
pates Dr. Parker, not only from intentional wrong, but from all indiscre
tion, leaves Mr. Beecher, though with integrity untouched, yet convicted
of great, and perhaps criminal, imprudence. Can it be his duty to
acquiesce in such a verdict, when his position, if the public will patiently
examine it, will be found impregnable ?
The question of fact between the parties is precisely such a one as
lawyers are discussing every day in court ; and a member of that pro
fession, in a communication to the New York Observer of October 14th,
in which he advocates the cause of Dr. Parker, has presented precisely
the style of argumentation that ought to be applied to the case. As a
member of the same profession, the present writer asks the candid atten
tion of the public to the following suggestions, which he regards as
decisive in favor of Mr. Beecher.
But before proceeding to the argument, let us spend a moment in con
sidering what was the precise act of Mr. Beecher ?
I. The Journal of Commerce, in an article of a good deal of fair
ness on the subject, says : ' ' To say the least of the matter, it was highly
imprudent thus to affix another's name." And, again: "The facts to
support the use of another's signature to documents ought to be very
clear and undoubted before it is done.'' And the public generally have
regarded the matter as prominently a case of signature, and of signa
ture to documents, thus attaching to the transaction the odium of an
unauthorized signature of a contract, making it a sort of mitigated
forgery. Now the correspondence was not of the nature of a contract,
to be operative between the parties, deriving its life from the signature
of the parties. It was merely a matter for publication, the original
letters being of no consequence after the pubUcation. It was just as if
one clergyman should request another to draw and publish for him a
card, expressing his thanks for a donation party, or as if one man should
draw and publish an advertisement for another, or as if one of a numer
ous committee should publish a notice of a meeting, and should sign the
names of the other members. These things are done every day. In all
these cases there should be authority, express or implied, for the act; but
the matter of the signature becomes a totally different thing from what
it is where the paper signed is a contract, that is to be preserved as such,
and to have an operation on the rights of the parties as such.

H. W. BEECHER AND REV. DR. PARKER. 8 1
2. It seems to be taken for granted that the' letters were drawn by
Mr. Beecher, with the signatures omitted, and in this form discussed at
Dr. Parker's study, and that Mr. Beecher afterwards, at home or some
where, sat down to the deliberate and special act of affixing Dr. Parker's
name. This does Mr. Beecher great injustice. What is the fact? Mr.
Beecher suggested that a correspondence be substituted for a joint card
which had been under consideration and Dr. Parker left the study that
he might be alone to draw it. Could there be clearer authority than this
for Mr, Beecher to write out a supposed correspondence ? He does so, and
as he drafts the letters writes straight through the names. He writes
Mrs, Stowe's name as well as Dr, Parker's, He does this because he was
writing, not a contract, but an article for a newspaper, and it was an object
that both parties should be able to look at it, just as if they were reading it in
a newspaper, that they might see how it would strike them. This we sup
pose to be the reason ; but if it were not, and if, indeed, it were done
-without a reason, still it does not alter the fact. The correspondence
thus complete is shown to Dr. Parker. He makes no objection on the
ground that his name has been thus written ; neither party thinks of this
as important ; they merely discuss the character of the letters, and, as
Mr. Beecher claims, they were approved and agreed on for publication ;
as Dr. Parker claims, they were qualifiedly approved, and were to be
further considered by him. But the fact is not denied that the letters
were twice read by Dr. Parker, were handed by him to Mr. Beecher, and
by Mr. Beecher carried away to be sent to Mrs. Stowe for approval. Mr.
Beecher's error then — if there was any — was not in using Dr. Parker's
name ; it was simply in publishing the letters, or, rather, in prema
turely publishing them, This is a very different thing from an i^nauth-
orized use of another' signature. Whether Mr. Beecher was in the
right or in the wrong, the act done by him should not be confounded
with that of "signing another man's name to documents."
It is, then, doing great injustice to ^Ir. Beecher to endeavor to fasten
upon him the odium of even an ' ' imprudent " use of another's name.
He is in no manner blameworthy unless he pubhshed the letters without
authority from Dr. Parker, either actually given or supposed by him to
have been given.
Now, as no conceivable motive can be found for the unauthorized
pubHcation of the letters, but, on the contrary, every motive applicable
in the case against it, especially as it would only worse embroil the con
troversy, which he -s^^as desirous (no one can doubt sincerely) to settle,
and as Mr. Beecher himself declares that he understood the fullest
authority to have been given, no one, who has any candor or good sense,
can fail to acquit him of all intentional wrong, even if entirely satisfied
that Dr. Parker did not, in fact, give such authority. Here the niatter
might be left, with perhaps no very serious damage resulting to either

82 REMINISCENCES.
party, since the pubHc, with too much real and intentional injustice daily
before their eyes, have little time or patience to follow up and remember
unintentional and accidental wrong.
But upon the question on which Dr. Parker and Mr, Beecher are at
issue, viz, : as to whether the former did in fact assent to the letters and
authorize their publication, the case is entirely clear for Mr, Beecher.
And now what is this exact question ?
And here we are to observe that there can be no question but that the
letters, when their form was fully agreed on, were to be published ;
that is, that both parties understood them as intended for publication.
This is evident from the following facts : i. They were substituted for
the card, which it is agreed was to have been forthwith published. 2.
Dr. Parker's constant demand was that he should be set right before the
public. 3. Mr. Butler understood that the letters were to be published,
although he supposed (of his own conjecture simply) that the}' were to
be further considered by Dr. Parker before publication. 4. Dr. Parker
does not deny that they were intended for publication, but simply that
he did not assent to them in their present form. If, therefore, the letters
were assented to by Dr. Parker, they were properly published. The
question is, therefore, narrowed down to the simple one, whether Dr.
Parker assented to them in the form in which they were published.
That we may see still more clearly what is the question between the
parties, let us look at the affirmations of each.
Mr. Beecher affirms that Dr. Parker approved the letters, subject to
his counsel's approval (and, of course, Mrs. Stowe's adoption of her letter
without alteration), and authorized their publication. Dr. Parker affirms
(letter to Professor Stowe, June 30th) that the letters " were not written,
nor signed, nor sanctioned" by him, and that they were published
" without his knowledge or consent" ; and (letter to Observer, July 31):
" I agreed to have it under advisejnent, and encouraged the expectation
that, with some modification, we might settle the whole matter by some
such method," and " I could iiever have been induced to sign them as
they were, nor to accept of Mrs. Stowe's letter as satisfactory,'' and (let
ter to Observer, October 4), "I said to him distinctly that they would
have to be modified. " (A strange case for an honest misunderstanding.)
Here, then, is the issue between the parties ; now let us look at the cir
cumstantial evidence.
I. If Dr. Parker was simply to have the letters under consideration,
and to consult upon with his legal adviser, why did he not take a copy
of them? He says in his letter to the Observer of July 31st that he
took no copy, and does not know certainly whether the letters published
are the same (that is, precisely the same) that were written at his study.
Now, how could he have had the letters under advisement — much more,

H. W. BEECHER AND REV. DR. PARKER. 83
how could he lay them before his counsel, without a copy? It is to be
borne in mind that the question to be considered was not the general one
whether there should be an amicable settlement; all were agreed on this;
but the minute and particular question what exactly that settlement
should be. It turned wholly upon details, upon the use of one word
rather than another, and upon shades of meaning. It was clearly impos
sible to have considered and consulted upon the matter without a copy.
It may be said that his counsel would see the letters, since it was agreed
that Mr. Beecher should call and show them to him ; but would Mr. But
ler, from such hasty perusal, be able a day or a week after to sit down
with his client to an intelligent and critical examination of the letters ?
Much more, could they frame and fit in the various "modifications"
which Dr. Parker had told Mr. Beecher, as he says, would have to be
made, and which it was, of course, for Dr. Parker to propose? Clearly
not. It is to be remembered that Dr. Parker does not pretend that at
the time of the interview he requested Mr. Beecher to send him a copy
of the letters afterwards, or that any arrangement was proposed under
which Mr. Beecher should call on him again with the letters, or un
der which the letters themselves should be sent to him; but it seems
admitted that Mr. Beecher took his final leave, carrying them with him,
and leaving Dr. Parker (according to his claim) to consider and take
counsel, as well as he was able, without the originals or a copy, and in
form Mr. Beecher of the result.
2. If Dr. Parker was to have the letters under consideration, and to
lay them before his counsel for advice, why did he not directly after
call on his counsel for advice ? Bear in mind that he has shown much
impatience of delay up to this point; letters have followed letters in
quick succession. Here, according to his claim, is a step in the settle
ment which he seems so anxious to effect, that is left with him for
determination, and the whole settlement is to wait for that determina
tion. Would he not at once call on his counsel for advice ? And that for
two reasons : One, to avoid loss of time, and the other, to avail himself,
as he had no copy, of his own and his counsel's fresh recollection of the
contents of the letters. He admits that it was agreed that Mr, Beecher
should go at once and read the letters to Mr, Butler, and he had no rea
son to doubt that he had done so. Yet we find no evidence that Dr.
Parker called on his counsel at all during the fourteen days that inter
vened between the interview of June loth and the publication of the
letters on June 24th. Dr. Parker himself has not claimed that he did so,
and the fact is so vitally important that he would have claimed it if the
truth would have allowed ; but, on the contrary, he says in his letter of
June 30th to Professor Stowe, twenty days after the interview : " I am
not aware whether Mr. Beecher saw my counsel or not ; I have made re
peated efforts to see him (Mr. Butler) since my return, for I have been

84 REMINISCENCES.
absent," etc. It is plain, then, it was not till after the publication of the
letters that he attempted to see his counsel, and then only because of
their publication ; and, as we understand the facts, he left town shortly
before the publication, having done nothing toward a determination of
the matter which he claims was submitted to him, and in precisely the
manner of one who had nothing to do on the subject.
And here it cannot be said that he expected Mr. Beecher to call again.
First. —Dr. Parker does not pretend that it was understood that he was
to do so. Second. — Had this been even proposed, Mr. Beecher would
at once have informed Dr. Parker that he was to leave home imme
diately, and could not possibly call again.
These two facts, of his retaining no copy, and not attempting to con
sult his counsel, show not only that the letters were not, in fact, to be
held under advisement, but that Dr. Parker did not understand that they
were so to be held. So much for the theory of an innocent misunder
standing. 3. If Dr. Parker did not assent to the letters, then we find the parties
involved in this absurdity : The card of Mrs. Stowe had been " tinkered "
until it was made on the whole acceptable to Dr. Parker. Mr. Beecher,
however, does not exactly like it, and finally, at his suggestion, it is
thrown aside, and a correspondence substituted that Dr. Parker " could
never have been induced to sign," and which he told Mr. Beecher " dis
tinctly would have to be modified." Mr. Beecher had gone there for the
sole purpose of effecting a settlement on some terms. Nobody can doubt
that he was sincere and earnest in the matter. This settlement, really
on the eve of being effected by means of the card, he voluntarily throws
aside, and leaves the matter all open — to rest on a correspondence that
Dr, Parker distinctly dissented to in its present form, and only encour
aged the hope that it might be a basis of future settlement. And this,
too, when he was just leaving home for an absence of several weeks at
the West, and could not possibly call on Dr, Parker again. This is too
absurd to be believed, and can be explained only by the supposition that
Mr. Beecher understood him to agree to the letters, when, in fact, he
" told him distinctly that they must be modified." But can it be that Dr.
Parker could have thus expressed his dissent, and Mr. Beecher not have
known it ? And can it be that Mr. Beecher would fail to get his explicit
assent or dissent to the letters, and in such a manner as to leave no room
for doubt ?
4. If Dr. Parker told Mr. Beecher " distinctly that the letters would
have to be modified," and could never have been induced to sign them as
they were, or to accept of Mrs. Stowe's letter as satisfactory, is it not in
the highest degree absurd that Mr. Beecher should have sent them to
Mrs. Stowe for approval, when, after obtaining that approval, they
would have to be altered to suit Dr. Parker, and sent on a second time

H. W. BEECHER AND REV. DR. PARKER.

85

for her approval 01 the modifications, making the first act an entirely
nugatory and foolish one ? It is perfectly clear that Mr. Beecher would
have insisted that Dr. P£rker state the modifications which "must be
made," and that his side of the correspondence be definitely settled be
fore the letters were sent to Mrs. Stowe. It is absurd, too, that Mr.
Beecher should have gone to Mr. Butler, and that, too, by agreement
with Dr. Parker, as the latter admits, for his approval of the letters in
their present form, when Dr. Parker "could never have been induced to
sign them as they were, or to accept of Mrs. Stowe's letter as satisfac
tory." This fact is enough to put the question at rest forever.
5. Another remarkable item of evidence on the point in issue has
recently been furnished by Dr. Parker himself in his letter to Professor
Stowe of June gth, and which had been overlooked until a copy of it
was pubUshed by him. This letter seems to have been written shortly
after the interview with Mr. Beecher. (At least Dr. Parker claims this,
and probably correctly ; but, if so, there is a mistake in the date, as the
interview occurred on the loth of June, and the letter is dated the day
before.) In it he says ; " Your very kind note of the 7th has just come
to hand. But an hour before receiving it I had a friendly interview with
the Rev. H. W. Beecher, an interview that seems to me to promise an
amicable arrangeinent." Now, let it be borne in mind that Dr. Parker
has from the first been making an effort to get a satisfactory acknowledg
ment from Mrs. Stowe, He frequently uses the expression that all he
demands is simple justice, to be set right before the pubhc, and the like,
showing that he was the party asking something of Mrs. Stowe, rather
than Mrs. Stowe of him. In the interview with her brother, her card,
offered by her as her ultimatum, and which she directed to have pub
lished without alteration if Dr. Parker did not accept it, had been, con
trary to her directions, thrown aside and a correspondence substituted.
This correspondence Dr. Parker (as we claim) approved, but it was
wholly uncertain whether Mrs. Stowe would approve it, though highly
probable that she would. It is accordingly sent to her with her brother's
recommendation. Very soon after Dr. Parker writes the above letter to
Prof. Stowe, and in it speaks of the interview as " seeming to promise an
amicable arrangement. " Now, what is this but the language of one expect
ing with some confidence a favorable conclusion, which he much desires,
from another — of one waiting for something outward and independens
of himself, rather than for a decision of his own mind ? At any rate, it
it at all the language of one who had already made up his mind that he
could never be induced to sign the letters as they were, nor be satisfied
with Mrs. Stowe's letter ? Remember that it is not pretended that Mr.
Beecher gave Dr. Parker any encouragement to expect any modification
of the letters or any further concession. The question is pending with
Mrs. Stowe whether she will adopt the letter written in her name. In

86 REMINISCENCES.
these circumstances Dr. Parker writes to her husband, not only that he
hopes for an amicable arrangement from the interview, but that he
" desires nothing but the simplest and plainest justice, and will not
intentionally make a particle of unnecessary trouble." Is this the lan
guage of a man who had just come out of an interview with the feeling
that he could never be injluced to sign the letters as they were, and who
does not pretend that any encouragement whatever had been given him
that they would be modified, and who had just " told Mr. Beecher dis
tinctly that they must be modified," or is it the language of a man who
is in a good humor and is waiting in confident expectation for the assent
of the other party to terms of settlement already acceded to by him —
that settlement having long been an object of desire and pursuit, and
now so nearly and probably attained ?
So much for the evidence furnished by the conduct of the parties, and
by the probabilities of the case, which, as the parties contradict one an
other and Mr. Butler's letter throws no hght on the question (since his
expectation that the letters would be further passed upon by Dr. Parker
was grounded, as is admitted, only on his own conjecture, and not on
anything said by Mr. Beecher), is the only reliable e-vidence in the case.
But it is said that Dr. Parker could have had no motive for denying the
letters if he had in fact approved them, and that this absence of motive
is a strong fact in his favor. On this point we will say a few words.
1. The inquiry after the motives is generally important in cases like
the present ; but the absence of any discovered or plausibly-conjectured
motive is never sulficient to disprove a fact that is sufficiently proved by
other evidence, nor to warrant the conclusion that some secret and unsus
pected motive may not have existed.
2. If no motive can be discovered, then this fact must be simply set
off against the absence of all conceivable motive on the part of Mr.
Beecher for the conduct with which he is charged.
3. We can suggest the following as a possible motive : It would be
an object with Dr. Parker, for the sake of enhancing damages in his
suit, to make the injury received appear as aggravated as possible.
Nothing would serve this purpose better than to convict Mrs. Stowe and
her brother (acting as her agent) of this fraud. We can see at once that
if Dr. Parker had succeeded in proving these letters a forgery, and then
had gone on with his suit, this inexcusable wrong would have added
immensely to his damages. Every lawyer knows this to be a common
artifice of unscrupulous litigants. But we think Dr. Parker incapable of
such dehberate villainy as this, and suggest it only to show that a motive
strong enough may be conjectured with some plausibiHty. The real ex
planation we think to be the following :
4. The interview. Dr. Parker says, was a friendly one, and Mr.
Beecher says that they were in the best humor. Both parties were

H. W. BEECHER AND REV. DR. PARKER. 8/
sincerely desirous of a settlement, and Dr. Parker was wiUing, with
Christian magnanimity, to accept of easy terms. He is in a persuasible
mood. Mr. Beecher, as thousands can attest, is a little magnetic in his
influence. In these circumstances Dr. Parker, perhaps unwarily, assents,
but fully assents, to the letters which he now disapproves and disavows.
He is satisfied, and thinks no more of the matter till they are published.
When the letters appear, his friends (some of them maliciously disposed
toward the other party) express their surprise that he could have assented
to such a settlement.
As illustrations of the mode in which his friends probably " dealt"
with him, we would cite the following : The Christian Observer of
Philadelphia, in an editorial under date of October 2, 1852, says : " We
read the letters with amazement ! We were surprised that Dr. Parker
should permit Mrs. Stowe or any one ' to set ' him ' right before the
public' in the style of Mrs. S.'s letter, or that he should ever ask to be
^allowed' to publish such a letter." The New York Observer, in an
editorial under date of October 7th, says; "The publication of these
letters took the friends of Dr. Parker by surprise. Many had feelings of
profound contempt for a man who could sign himself ' yours, with un-
' abated esteem,' for a woman who had pursued the course of Mrs.
Stowe," etc.*
Dr. Parker could not but be affected by such opinions from his
friends. He at once tells them that he did not fully assent to the letters, —
expected some modification of them, — had no idea that they would be

*Lest the foregoing paragraph should be misunderstood, I add a -word of
explanation. These extracts are from papers of later date than Dr. Parker's
denial to Professor Stowe of any authority given Mr. Beecher to publish the
letter. I refer to them only as showing the feeling of his friends as they read
the two letters published by Mr. Beecher, and which they undoubtedly ex
pressed freely to him when they met him. There were undoubtedly comments
of the same general character in the New York papers at the time, but I did
not, when I wrote the article, take the trouble to look them up. There can be
no doubt that he at once encountered severe criticism from his friends, for
what they regarded as his pusillanimity in signing the letter. All this must
have operated on his mind, and led him a few days later to write Professor
Stowe as he did. Mrs. Stowe's reply, leaving the whole matter to her brother
to deal with, led Dr. Parker to postpone all action in the matter, as Mr.
Beecher had gone West and and would not return for several weeks. When
finally he did return, Dr. Parker, instead of communicating with him, after a
while published a, card, disavowing the letter and denying Mr. Beecher's
authority in the matter. This brought the matter before the pubhc, and it
was at once taken up and commented on by all the public papers, as we see it
to have been by the extracts I have given from papers of October 2d and 7th.
The legal argument of Mr. Butler, Dr. Parker's counsel, appeared m the New
York Observer of October 14th.

88 REMINISCENCES.
pubhshed till he had seen them again, etc. He dwells on this thought
till he brings himself almost, perhaps quite, to believe it, and finally gets
committed fully to this assertion, and so has to stand by it now. This
supposition accounts perfectly for what must have seemed to most people
an unaccountable fact, namely: that he did not at once come out with a
card disavowing the correspondence. His letter to Professor Stowe of
June 30th, six days after the pubHcation, in which he says that he does
not like to do this, as they may have been pubhshed by mistake, fur
nishes no sufficient explanation, as he could have stated this in his card,
thus correcting his own position before the public and charging no im
propriety on the other party. Especially would he have done this when
Mrs. Stowe referred him in reply to her brother, who was to be absent
for several weeks longer, during which time the error could not be cor
rected unless in this inoffensive manner by himself. This is the more
striking when we consider that he finaUy gave the matter publicity in
the worst possible form, without ever having ascertained whether they
were published by an innocent mistake, when he knew that Mr. Beecher's
failure to write him on his return might be owing to forgetfulness, or
possibly to the neglect of Mrs. Stowe to communicate with him on the
-subject. It seems to us that he wrote to Professor Stowe, thinking that
Mrs. Stowe, not informed of the particulars of the interview with her
brother, and not able to ascertain them easily in his absence, would prob
ably at once, under her husband's advice and in a spirit of conciliation,
agree on a revocation of the letters, and a public card to that effect, ex
plaining the matter as a misunderstanding, and that Mr. Beecher, on his
return, would not think it worth while to disturb the arrangement. But
her reference of the matter to her brother — the very man whom he
wished to avoid, and of whose absence he was attempting to avail him
self — completely defeated this object. This explains why he did not
follow up the matter with Mr. Beecher on his return, but preferred to
leave himself in (what he regarded as) a false and mortifying position
before the public for two months longer rather than to meet him on the
subject. It is true he had reason to expect a communication from Mr.
Beecher ; but in such a position Dr. Parker would not be very likely to
stand on ceremony, or wait long for such a communication. If conscious
of being in the right, he would have gone at once to Mr. Beecher, Thus
the matter stands, — Dr, Parker all the while reluctant to take it in hand
till the unwise eagerness of his friends gets it before the public, and he
is thrown into a necessity of abandoning his indecision and assuming
boldly his present attitude.
We sincerely believe this explanation of Dr. Parker's conduct to be
the true one. But, if we are mistaken, it does not affect our previous
argument.

Sl/SAN B. ANTHONYS FIFTIETH BIRTHD A Y.
Mrs. Stowe a few days afterward sent me this note:

89

Dear John : — I have just read your defense of Henry against Dr.
Parker's charge. It is the best piece of bricklaying I ever knew. I
cannot thank you enough for it. Affectionately, H. B. s.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY'S -)OTI-I BIRTHDAY.
Miss Anthony became fifty }'ears old on the isth day of
February, 1870. She had for many years been devoted to the
cause of woman suffrage and a leader in the movement, and
had had the earnest sympathy and aid of my wife in that service.
A Mrs, Phelps of New York city, a lady of wealth and culture,
was a strong friend of her personally and of her cause, and gave
an elegant reception to her and her friends on the occasion.
My wife left home to attend it at noon on the day before, stop
ping at New Haven over night, and getting to Mrs. Phelps's
house about ten the next forenoon. I was intending to devote
the 14th to some important and absorbing law work in my study
at home, and had just got fairly started upon it in the forenoon
when 111}' wife came in with the earnest request that I would
write some humorous lines for her to read at the reception.
She had an unbounded faith in my power to turn off such
lines on almost any subject and upon very short notice. With
a great desire to please her, I pushed my law papers aside and
appealed for inspiration to the muses. Alas, my appeal was in
vain. My mind was so possessed by the law matter that had
got rightful possession of it that I found it useless to try to
break awav, and especially to escape into the field of fancy, and
finally went back to my law. Just before dinner my wife
looked in to see what I had written, when I had to tell her of
my total failure. She was greatly disappointed, but accepted
what seemed the inevitable, and after dinner went to the rail
road station to take passage for New Haven. After she had
gone I went back to my law, but felt so much touched by her
disappointment, and by her look of half reproach, that I found
no attraction in my law, and, finding that if I could send her a
poem by the six o'clock mail it would get to New York just in
season for her to find it on her arrival at Mrs. Phelps's the next
morning, I went to work with a will to accomplish this very

go REMINISCENCES.
gratifying result. I had my son, then a lad of fifteen, hold him
self ready to run in to the post-office with it, and by half-past
five I had written and copied the poem, and he posted it in
season for the evening mail, and the next morning my wife,
to her great surprise and gratification, found it waiting for
her when she got to Mrs. Phelps's. The poem was read by
her at the reception, was exceedingly well received, and was
afterwards printed in a periodical which Miss Anthony pub
lished. It would hardly be worth inserting here, but for the
circumstances which give it a picturesque framing, and a place
among the pleasant reminiscences of my life. Here are the
lines: For the Fiftieth Birthday of S. B. A., February 15, 1870.
What ! Fifty years ! Who would have guessed it !
You shouldn't, Susan, have confessed it.
Yet so it must be. Fifty years
Have smiled their sunshine, wept their tears,
Since, cold with frost and white with snow,
With wintry winds the news to blow.
The earth gave welcome, glad yet wild,
To thee, her own prophetic child.
Were there no portents, no wild throe
Of nature, fifty years ago ?
No quakes of earth, no clash of stars,
As earth received our maiden Mars ?
Ah none there were ; yet I feel sure
Thy Quaker mother, calm, demure,
Wondered sometimes at thy unrest,
And feared thou wert a babe unblest.
She thought 'twas stomach-ache, it may be.
Or other common ill of baby,
And little dreamed what thou wert dreaming,
Nor weened what thou, unweaned, wert scheming.
Ah, fearless Susan, even then
Thou saw'st in dreams us horrid men —
Our laws made only for aggression.
Thy gentle sex in sad repression.
The boys unlovely, girls unloved ;
No wonder thy young heart was moved,
And that thou vow'dst an infant vow.
Which thou has kept from then till now,
To keep us savage men indicted
Until that dreadful wrong- was righted.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY'S FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY, gj
Susan, thou well that vow hast kept ;
No nun in lonelier cell e'er slept ;
On lonely ways thy walk thou'st taken ;
All common earthly joys forsaken ;
— Sweet home, to none more dear than thee.
The charm of prattling infancy.
All that thy loving heart could bless.
Thy heart of rarest tenderness.
Well, Susan, thy success is sure ;
No hoary wrong can long endure,
When faith and courage such as thine
Are consecrate on such a shrine.
Thy faith and courage shall prevail
Against out jointed coats of " male,"
And we shall find how great the blunder
We didn't long ago go under,
And (gospel lovers) help displace
The reign of law for that of grace.
That time will come ; may I be there to see.
That time will come ; and there may Susan B.
THE GREAT ROTHSCHILD AT PARIS.
In the summer of 1857 I spent several weeks in Paris, and
while there went with a lady friend to St. Germain. On our
way back we stopped at Meudon, for the purpose of visiting
the tomb of Josephine at Rueil, about two miles from Meudon,
an omnibus running there from the station. On our way back
there sat next me in the omnibus a portly man of about sixty,
whose features were of a decidedly Hebrew cast, who, seeing
that I was a stranger, very politely pointed out to me one and
another object of interest on our way. He spoke very good
English. On arriving at the station an official at the gate re
fused to aHow my companion and myself to go through upon
our tickets, stating in his rapid French some objections that I
could not understand, and in my poor French could not per
suade him out of, the point being apparently that we ought not
to have stopped on our through tickets without some memoran
dum from the conductor. In the emergency I thought of my
Hebrew friend, who was near, and appHed to him. He went
with me to the gate-keeper and before he had hardly spoken
the gate was opened and we were let in with a very deferential

92 REMINISCENCES.
bow from the gate man. I turned and thanked the Hebrew
gentleman and we passed in. While we were waiting in the sta
tion for the train to come along a lady, who had witnessed the
proceeding, said to my lady companion, " Do you know who
that gentleman is who got you in ? " She said she did not.
" Why (said she), that is the great Rothschild." So I had had,
to negotiate my little matter with the gate-keeper, the great
financier to whom kings and emperors go in their straits.

REV. DR. BURTON.
It has been a great felicity of my life to have known Nathan
iel J. Burton. Pie was my pastor at Hartford for many years,
and during most of that time I was one of his deacons. I have
never in my life heard the English language used with such
elegance and power. His vocabulary was so full and rich that
he could take his choice as he wrote of all the available words
of the language, and never failed to use that word which, above
every other, even in the finest shades of meaning, fitted his pur
pose. He was a man of a strong, deep nature, inclined to self-
. depreciation, and sometimes to depression, but wonderfully
.open to inspiration, and rising under it to the highest range
¦of thought and speech. He was also one of the most delight
ful of companions, with a marvelo'us faculty of narration and
characterization. He and his wife were members of our
family for nearly two years. During this time we had at table
a perpetual flow of humor, to which Mrs. Burton contributed,
she being one of the brightest and wittiest of women. He was
especiall)' felicitous in narrating his own experiences and
observations, but never was a mere story-teller. That part of
our table or evening entertainment usually and unfortunately
fell to me; but his contribution as a hearty laugher did more
for the general amusement than any story-telling could do,
¦for it was of that infectious kind that invariably put the table in
a roar. Any one coming in while he was in a hearty laugh
¦would find himself laughing with us in spite of himself, with
out having any idea what we were laughing at. Nothing
could exceed the hilarious times that we had together. A
stranger, certainly a sanctimonious one, would have had his
doubts whether such an inclination to hilarity was consistent

REV. DR. BURTON. g3
with the deep, earnest religious thought and feehng that after
all was the predominating feature of his life, and I trust was
not wholly wanting in mine. I can see no such inconsistency.
He was a man of the greatest tenderness of heart, and was
especially fond of little children. He could hardly pass a
baby wagon in the street without stopping to look at the
baby and often to talk to it. His manner at baptisms and at
the funerals of little children seemed like the infinite tenderness
of the divine heart.
In the spring of 1867 I went to Florida with him, going by
a sailing vessel to Savannah and returning by a steamer from
Charleston. We were gone about six weeks, and in an account
of his tour, which he gave his people at an evening meeting,
he spoke of it as the pleasantest tour he had ever taken. After
wards, in 1872, we traveled in Europe together for several
months. Nothing could exceed his agreeableness as a travel
ing companion. He took in the sentiment of things every
where and was filled with it — the vastness and restlessness
of the ocean, the grandeur of the Alps, the picturesque quaint-
ness of old Enghsh streets and by-ways, their historical asso
ciations, and the places where great events had occurred, es
pecially great events of patriotism and courage and self-
sacrifice. I never knew a man more easily and profoundly
affected by these things, and he was constantly increasing by
them his rich store of material for his sermons and addresses.
He was very sensitive to the moods of nature and nobody had
such an ear for its voices. I have known him to sit an hour
in the woods with a friend, while neither spoke to the other,
and at the end of the hour say — " AMiat a good time we have
had." With all his wonderful power of speech and writing, there
was yet in him a degree of inertia that constantly made him
put off the preparation of his public addresses until he felt the
irresistible pressure of an absolute necessity, and then he
would arouse himself and astonish his friends by his power of
execution. This is really a not uncommon qualitv of genius
When passing a pleasant evening with congenial friends (and
nobody enjoyed such occasions more), he seemed unwiHing
to break awav, and, if left to himself, would chat for half the
night, forgetful of parochial and pulpit claims upon him, and
with full knowledge that he must pay for the luxury by super-

94

REMINISCENCES.

human effort by and by. Some of his greatest successes were
accomplished under such a strain, when the case seemed al
most a desperate one. Many iHustrations of this habit and
quality could be given, but a single one wiH suffice. At the
Yale College commencement in 1870, he was appointed by
the General Association of Connecticut to deliver at the next
commencement the sermon known as the Concio ad Clerum,
the subject, always prescribed, being in this case some branch
of the Sabbath question. Another clergyman was, in ac
cordance with custom, appointed as his substitute. The fol
lowing college year had nearly reached its end and the next
commencement was less than two weeks off, and he had not
put pen to paper in the preparation of his expected sermon.
When now he saw the time for its delivery so near at hand, he
felt as if he could not undertake to write it, and sent a letter
to the secretary of the association at New Plaven, requesting
him to notify his substitute of the fact. The secretary wrote
him that it would not do at so late an hour to throw the duty
on his substitute, and that they must rely on him for it.
This was while he was a member of our family, and my wife
and I had done what we could to persuade him to undertake
it, but without success. We pressed him all the harder on the
receipt of the secretary's letter, but it got to be the Friday
night before the Monday evening, when the sermon was to be
dehvered, and he had not yet begun upon it. At last he said
that if we would get a supply for his pulpit the following Sun
day he would devote that day to writing it. My wife said at
once that she would set out the next morning to find a supply.
She took a carriage Saturday morning, and, before noon, came
back with the report that she had secured two clergymen for
the purpose. Still Mr. Burton did not feel in the spirit of
work, and did not begin till Sunday morning. He then sat
down to it and wrote all day. The next day (Monday) he
wrote till noon, then took the train to New Haven, and all
the afternoon wrote in his room at the hotel ; and in the even
ing he delivered a magnificent discourse, before a full house
of clergymen, who gathered around him at the close of the
services to tell him of their admiration. Among others. Rev.
Dr. Leonard Bacon hurried up and said, " Why, Burton, where
have you been all these years, that we haven't known more
about vou?" It was spoken of throughout the state as a

REV. DR. BURTON. c
wonderful performance. It was long, and easily made two
sermons, which he afterwards delivered in his own pulpit
I have called him Mr. Burton up to this point. He, soon
after, received a doctorate of divinity from some college I
forget what one. No degree was ever more worthily de-
stowed. I have spoken of his remarkable vocabulary and of the ele
gance and power of his language. I cannot forbear to give
my readers a specimen of it by a brief extract from his address
on the death of Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon, a mighty man among
the Congregational clergy of Connecticut. It was delivered
before the General Association in 1882, and is to be found in
the pubhshed volume of Dr. Burton's " Yale Lectures and
other Writings," at page 441. It is as follows:
It has been said that falling in love amounts to a Hberal education,
and I put it do-svn, therefore, as the first thing wherein I was profoundly
beholden to this man, that he furnished me an object on which, to
pour myself forth in a practically unlimited way. In my judgment the
principal thing in the world is its men and its women. Great and dear is
this green month of June ; great the overarch of heavenly blue ; great
the careering night with its embelHshment of stars; great and solemn the
outstretch of astronomic spaces ; great, and also bewitching, that ever
lasting march and miscellany of phenomena which constitutes our
environment here. Nevertheless, let the heart speak, and the greatest
interest in God's whole round of fascinations is the people. Multitudes
of them I have never gotten hold of in any ¦visible way ; but I take a
sense of them stretching away beyond my horizon, and I have a feeling
of their company present and to come. Many of them to whom I do
have access are not superfinely made up, but, then, no more am I ; so
that they and I have a good deal of mutuality, and I humbly look for
more ; but among the many of all sorts who constitute the grand total of
mankind, there emerges now and then some bulky personage, — bulky
and balanced and supreme, and full of the very energy of God, in whom
is summed and typified the scattered potentialites of man ; so that the
rest of us spontaneously take him up and point to him, saying : " There
we are ; there play our thoughts, orderly and beautiful ; there moves our
majesty ; there shine we at our best ; there is told forth the ultimate
stature of man on earth." . . .
We look to young men for these hero-worshipers in the main, but
a number of times in my later years I have found myself caught in the
same gracious fury ; and I have always been grateful to Dr. Bacon that
he was born of such a sire, and so diligently amplified himself as his
many years went on, and built himself up so four-square, proportionate.

96 REMINISCENCES.
and solid in character, and, withal, made so few mistakes, that I could
dwell upon him in my heart with more than contentment, could fire up
over him on occasion in a total conflagration of good feeling, and can
contemplate him now in his completed life as one looks back to some old-
time masterpiece, some picture, some poem, some cathedral, some ora
torio. Oratorio I say, for a well-rounded and true life is really a musical
product ; it touches us as melodies touch us ; it has in it the secret law of
harmonies ; it coasts the infinite, as all great music does ; it takes di
verse ranges of expression, and it is an organized unit of life most im
pressive and delightful to the beholders,
Dr, Burton spent a year in Europe in 1868 and 1869. While
abroad he wrote a series of letters to one of our Hartford
papers, which were read with great interest by his many
friends, and extracts from which were printed in the volume
of his " Yale Lectures and other Writings," from which I have
already quoted. I cannot give a better idea of his pleasant
style of narration, with pen or tongue, than by inserting a
paragraph from one of those letters telling of a night that he
spent with a Catholic priest at Zermatt on the Swiss mountains.
He had walked alone from Visp to Zermatt, about twelve miles.
He seems, as he entered Zermatt, to have had the company of
a German, who could talk a little English, or to have fallen in
with him there. It was now Saturday evening in the month
of October.
Arriving at Zermatt just at nightfall, I found the two hotels closed
and nailed up for the season, and the rest of Zermatt nothing but log
huts and the like, where cows hold the parlors and spare rooms and a
man holds up where he can. It was Saturday night, too, and my Ger
man kindly informed me (for German is the language of that region) that
no one in the place spoke English ; and I knew to a certainty that I did
not speak German, So much for traveling in the Alps in October, How
ever, under a certain inspiration, I happened to think of the CathoUc
priest, and remembering that that class do not ordinarily have a very
numerous wife and family, so that their homes are not very overrunning,
and remembering with what care they hunt a soul among the mountains,
I considered it not unlikely that the Zermatt father would take me in for
a single night. So I said " Priest" to my German, and he led the way
to the rectory, and went in and told my story, I following aud standing
in mute appeal while he did it. Whether it was his German or my face,
or a special providence, I do not certainly know ; but the round-faced
good father motioned to me with smiles that he would accept me, and I
then motioned with smiles that I would accept him. So I sat down, and

REV. DR. BURTON. gy
after a considerable period of silence, his silence being conducted in Ger
man and mine in EngUsh, I took from my pocket three Httle lexicons
(German, French, and English), which I always carry with me in these
foreign countries, and tumbled them down before him in hopes that he
would find something in them that he could say. After a few minutes'
search he looked hard at me and said : " Coffee ? " I shook my head for
" No." In the course of five minutes more of search, he faced me again
and said : " Eggs ? " I said " No," and then proceeded to shake my head
steadily for the next three minutes, which he soon understood to signify
that I did not want anything at aU. So that was settled. Pretty soon,
and after a little skirmishing, I pointed to myself and said, " Priest."
He evidently thought I Hed. Then I pointed to myself and said,
" American priest" ; but he looked me over, and didn't find the proper
ear-marks of any sort of priest, and was not a bit moved by what I had
said. He knew I was an impostor. His face showed that that was his
opinion of me. It was unfortunate that I had used the word "priest"
perhaps. At last I raised my voice, pointed to myself the third time,
and said, " Protestant priest" ; and instantly he sprang to his feet and
took my hand, and shook it in a prolonged and cordial manner. We had
now reached open saiHng ; so I took out my passport, written in French,
which he could understand, and gave it to him, and thus he got my name
and exact place of residence, and a general assurance that I amounted to
something. From that we went on the whole evening talking through
the lexicon, and gesturing and laughing when we failed altogether to
understand each other, his housekeeper, a powerful woman, pausing
occasionally in the middle of the floor as she passed through to witness
the show. At last I started for bed, assuring him by pointing to the
figure 6 on my watch that I should leave for St. Nikolaus at that hour
in the morning, and saying to him that he would be in bed by pointing to
his bed standing there in the room, and laying down my head in my hand
and shutting my eyes. And as I thought I might not see him in the
morning, I filled my hand with coin and extended it to him open, that he
might take what he liked. He hesitated, and took a single piece. But I
still held it out, and he took one more. Then I shut it, thinking the fun
had gone far enough, — just far enough. I slept well enough in his little
house, all browned by the weather, with brown boards inside, and great
stones on the roof, and the fairest of white curtains to keep Matterhorn
and the rest of them from looking right into my face while I was asleep ;
and in the early morning, after giving him my card and taking his, I put
out into the cold and windy valley, he following me to the gate with his
prayer-book in his hand (as his Httle church in the yard was already call
ing him and his villagers to early prayer), and bidding me adieu several
times over ; I liking him, and he, I hope, liking me ; I having testified of
my confidence in him by appealing to him in my necessity, and he hav-

98 REMINISCENCES.
ing signified his confidence in me by opening to me his doors ; he thinking
me a poor heretic, I suppose, and I thinking him one, though I thought
he was a good-looking one, and did not care a brass farthing, in fact,
whether he was a heretic or not just at the moment when I felt the
pressure of his kindly hand in farewell, and as I took a final look at
the chimney of his old house as I went over the hiU. I'm afraid the
fellow will get into heaven in spite of his Catholicism ; and Zermatt, be
ing fifty-five hundred feet above the level of the sea, he is about half-way
there now. The other half ¦wiU be the tug for him; but he'll make it, I'm
inchned to think.
Mr. Burton died on the 13th day of October, 1887, in the
62d year of his age. He has left no mourner, outside of his
immediate family, to whom his death brought a greater be
reavement and a more abiding sorrow than it brought to me.
I find in the volume of his addresses the following frag
ment, with no explanation of the occasion of its being written
or in what connection. I take it to be a soliloquy of some in
tense mood in his later years. It makes a fitting conclusion
of this notice of my deep-souled friend.
Heaven is rest and joy, and it requires the heart to interpret that and
grasp its immeasurable meaning. Oh ! when I am tired; when my body
is unstrung and mj' soul is jaded, and my hopes flag and my ambitions
flicker in their socket; when the night does not refresh me, and the
morning does not cheer me ; when the song of birds is hea^vy music,
and aU the trees of the field seem chastened, and the brooks are weary
and creep and g^gle and lament ; when the beauty of women is vanity
to my eyes, and I can see no dignity in the faces of men ; when the
friends of my youth are scattered and dead, and my eyes are evermore
striving to look beyond the distant horizon as for some country far away;
when long-gone forms crowd my memory, — the }-oung, the old, the
beautiful, the reverend ; when my sympathies are pensive and retro
spective, and I live with the dead whom I knew more than ¦with the
li^ving whom I know ; when the winds complain and sob at my casement
all the day ; when the love and the hate, and the efforts and delights of
men seem small and empty, — oh ! when I am tired, and sad, and worn
out, I know what is intended by the promise of rest and joy in heaven.

CAPT. BAk'FR. QQ
CAPT, BAKER,
In the eariy summer of 1867 Rev, Dr, Burton and 1 fell in
with Capt, Obed Baker-, who was master of a bark in which we
sailed from New York to Savannah. Dr. Burton, as I have
stated in the last chapter, was my jiastor, and we were very in
timate fricnfls. After his death, in the fall of 1887, I wrote
for one of our Plartford papers an account of our voyage with
Capt. Baker, and of my later acquaintance with him. The
whole was a very pleasant experience on my part, and I can
not do better than insert entire the article as it appeared.
About twenty years ago Dr. Burton and the writer went to Florida
together, being gone about six weeks. We went by sailing-ship from
New York to Savannah, being ten days on the passage, it being a part of
our object to have the voyage. The captain of the vessel was a Cape
Cod man, about forty-five years old, who had followed the sea from his
boyhood, and was now a fine specimen of a thorough sailor. He had at
first been unwilling to take us, as he did not usually carry passengers,
and doubted whether he could make us coniTortable ; but he yielded to
our urging, and we found our accommodations very satisfactory. The
captain was very attentive to us. He was fond of telling stories and
of hearing them, and we spent many hours with him in that beguiling
occupation. He held perfect command of his crew without ever being-
boisterous, and, though not at all a religious man, he was free from the
habit of profanity that is so common among seamen. We judged him
to be a man of respectable life, and he was greatly attached to his wife
and children, whose photographs he took much pleasure in showing us.
The second day out we suggested to tlie captain that, as one of tis
was a clergyman and the other a deacon, we have a blessing asked at
our meals. He readily acceded to it. There were four of us at table, — the
captain and mate, and Mr. P)urton and myself, we being the only pas
sengers. Each meal for the rest of the voyage was prefaced by a " grace."
Our third day out was .Sunday, and we pro|)Osed to the captain that we
have a religious service on the quarter deck, to which the crow should be
invited. He cheerfully aciiuicsced. So the crew was called aft, and the
captain and mate attended with them. Mr. Burton read a chapter in
the Bible and made a prayer, and I then gave the sailors a fifteen-min
utes' talk. I had in my youth spent nearly two years upon the ocean, and
was able to talk to thera in the vernacular of the sea. The second Sun
day we had a like service.
After reaching Savannah we spent two days on shore, and before we
left went back to the vessel to take leave of the captain, to whom we had
become really attached. In our talk with him he said that he had enjoyed

lOo REMINISCENCES.
our company greatly, and that if either of us desired to go with him again
to any part of the world where he was bound, he would be glad to take
us for the mere cost of our board. We, in closing, told him of the great
interest we felt in him, and appealed to him, with an earnestness that
came from the depths of our hearts, to become a, rehgious man. He
thanked us for our kindly interest, but I could not see that much im
pression was made upon him.
I did not see the captain again for two years or more, when I met him
in the street in New York. He seemed greatly pleased to meet me, in
quired after Mr. Burton, and told me he was having a new bark built, of
which he was to own a share, and in which he had had two commodious
state-rooms constructed for passengers that would always be open to us.
He added that they should probably have to name the vessel after a per
son who had taken the largest share in it ; but that, if he did not insist
upon it, he should call it the " N. J. Burton." As a matter of fact, the
vessel had finally to take the name of the principal owner.
I heard nothing more of our captain until three or four years later,
when, on inquiring at the shipping office in New York where he always
reported, I learned that, in the general collapse of our shipping interests,
he had lost all he had, that the vessel had been sold to pay its debts, and
that he had gone back to his home on Cape Cod. I at once wrote him
there, and got the following reply :
"Dear Friend Hooker: — Yours is at hand. I was glad to hear
from you. I am happy to say that I am in good health. I should be
very glad to see you at any time you can make it convenient to come this
way. I have thought of our passage often, and the agreeable company
I had with me. Please give my love to Mr. Burton. If I ever come that
way I shall take particular pains to see him and hear him preach.
' ' In relation to my worldly affairs : I went to sea until I lost all I
had, and more than all I owned, as I was responsible for the gain or loss
on one-half of the bark. The interest and the insurance, with the dull
times for vessels, ran me out, I came home and settled up my affairs,
and have nothing. I shall be forced to go to sea again if I can get a
vessel, which it is not easj' to get without money to buy an interest.
" However, I do not complain. Before I left the sea, about two-
thirds the way across the Atlantic bound to Gibraltar, — the time and
place I never shall forget, — I found a rich Father, the owner of the cat
tle on a thousand hills. Through the riches of His grace I was led to
the only true source of peace and happiness, in being born again through
our Lord Jesus Christ, to be washed from all sin by the shedding of His
blood. And God in His love has kept me at the cross from that time to
this, for my own good and His glory. You know all I would say on this
subject. It is a story that never can be told in this world.
' ' Please write me when you get this.
" Yours, as ever, Obed Baker."
I wrote him at once, and promised to go and see him. The next
summer I went to his Cape Cod home, and found him full of faith and
peace. I stayed with him over night in his little cottage, which a sav
ings bank was to take possession of in a few days under a mortgage

THE DANSVILLE SANATORIUM. loi
which he had no means of paying. He had borrowed the money to
put into the vessel he had last commanded. I went almost wholly to
hear him tell the story of his religious experience. It was a very interest
ing one. His disgust at a profane and irreligious passenger, the only
one he had, drove him to reflection as to his own condition, and in the
solitude of his state-room, and the wider solitude of the ocean, he prayed
for light and guidance, and they were given him.
It must not be inferred that the captain's acquaintance with us had
any determining influence upon his life. I have said that he was fond of
his family ; his wife was a pious Methodist. Many influences combine
to produce such results. I am thankful if we contributed even a mite
towards this one.
The captain never went to sea again. Our shipping interests were
too depressed to offer him a place, and he had no money to buy one. He
was unfortunate, too, in having had no experience in work ashore, except
perhaps in some of those callings that are connected with shipping, and
which then shared the depression of the latter. He died not long after,
but died in unabated faith and peace.
Great souls I have no doubt pressed around Dr. Burton as he entered
the spirit world ; and when they had had ample time for their greeting,
I feel sure that one modest, unassuming, but delighted spirit came up,
and gave him a tearful and hearty welcome, and a sailor's grip of the
hand. THE DANSVILLE SANATORIUM.
I spent the summer of 1880 in Dr. Jackson's Cure at Dans-
ville, in the state of New York. I needed rest and renovation,
and found them there. I have rarely enjoyed a summer more.
It was one of absolute idleness, which had generally been in
tolerable to me, and of very great social enjoyment, the other
patients being very largely people of education and intelh-
gence, and often clergymen and other professional men, and
many among the women being teachers. There was an utter
absence of all affectation or show, and we lived together in a
very simple and unceremonious, yet very decorous way. Dr.
Jackson, who started the establishment and had conducted it
for many years, had had great success in dealing with the
cases that came to him. He gave no medicine, but relied
wholly on diet, baths, and massage. He was now quite old,
and was just about to give up the care of the establishment
to his son, the present Dr. Jackson, who, with his wife, a
well-educated and experienced physician, and some other

I02 RE.MINISCENCES.
medical aid, is now carrjdng it on. There was at this time a
magazine, devoted to the matter of health, and called " The
Laws of Life," published monthly by the institution, which
had a large list of subscribers, made up mainly of old patients
of the institution. The main building was three stories high,
and about one hundred and fifty feet in length, and had now
stood many years. Not far from it and connected with it by a
covered passway, stood a modern building of considerable
size, which contained a large hall, in which lectures were de
livered and public meetings held, and where a chaplain, kept
by the institution, preached every Sunday, or procured some
clerical patient to preach. A prayer-meeting was held there
every Thursday afternoon, and once a month a meeting of all
the patients in what was called a " Health Convention,"
at which one and another told of his progress in health, the
speeches frequently running into the humorous and giving us
generally a very entertaining hour. At one of these conven
tions a refined young lady from Brooklyn, N. Y., told how she
came two years before completely broken down in health from
fashionable living, and had now grown to be the vigorous
woman which we saw her to be. She had not been home dur
ing the two years, and told us how her sisters would probably
turn her around and comment sarcastically on her large waist.
But she said she was glad it was so large in spite of their
criticism. When she sat down I made a short speech, in the
course of which I begged our friend who had just spoken to
remember for her comfort that it was Judas Iscariot who said,
"Wherefore is this great waste?" The family met every
morning for family prayers, which were attended by nearly
all the patients, and were very pleasantly conducted, all who
felt disposed taking their turn in presiding. The patients
generaHy were people of moderate means, earning their liv
ing in the world, and were almost all progressive thinkers and
earnest in moral purpose. No fashionable people came there,
none of the sort that frequent Newport and Saratoga, and
make an offensive show of their money and pride; but it was
a society that I enjoyed beyond any other that I had met with
in any place of public resort. I ought to state that many old
patients, now in health, came back to enjoy a summer's rest
there, while often with an invalid came a husband, or a wife.

THE DANSVILLE SANATORIUM. 103
or a daughter, as a companion, making a large proportion of
our family mere summer visitors, but of a most congenial sort.
I made here some friendships, especially among women whom
I met there, that I shall always cherish.
Two years after I left the institution, the main building,
which, as I have said, was built of wood and quite old, was
burned to the ground, the occupants all escaping, but very
little of value being saved. By great effort Liberty Hall was
saved, and a meeting was the same day held in it, in which the
old doctor made a ringing speech, declaring that the Cure
would certainly rise out of the ruins in new beauty and strength.
Notice of the fire was published far and wide, in some of which
the familiar term applied to such a fire, " gone up," was used.
I at once wrote the following verses and sent them to Dr. Jack
son, and they were printed in the next number of the " Laws
of Life," which was devoted to an account of the fire and to
friendly communications received from old friends of the in
stitution. They were as follows:
Gone Ur, June 26, 1882.
" Gone up," dear old Cure, in the clutches dire
Of the flery dragon ;
As Elijah went up with his steeds of fire
And flame-wrapt wagon.
You had seen the old Doctor grow old and retire,
And you must go too ;
So you burned yourself up on a funeral pyre.
Like a widowed Hindoo.
Old home of the best sanitarian science !
You dear old rookery !
We mourn for you gone, with your many appliance
For common sense cookery.
We mourn you for all your dear old memories
Of a life ideal ;
And for all your hate for nonsensical flummeries.
And things false and unreal.
But stands the old hall, of free-speaking fame,
The ruins among ;
The maddened sweep of the greedy flame
Could not silence her tongue.

I04 REMINISCENCES.
And from her goes forth no word of gloom,
But a trumpet voice,
That declares the dry bones in living bloom
Shall again rejoice.
For thou, dear old building, wert only the shell
Of the grand old Cure ;
The child has not breathed that shall hear its knell.
Nor the oak in the acorn begun to sweU
That shall longer endure.
Before October, 18^3, a massive and capacious fireproof
building of brick had been erected in the place of the burned
buildings, and the first day of that month was assigned for a
meeting of the friends of the institution for its dedication.
The new building was much larger on the ground than the
old one, was five stories high, and was supplied with every
modern convenience for such a cure. I attended the meeting
for its dedication, and read some lines which I had hastily
prepared, and which I thought appropriate and reasonably
entertaining. They were an address to Hygeia, the Goddess
of Health. The meeting was largely attended, and many in
teresting and some very entertaining speeches were made.
I was assigned for the late afternoon, and was immediately
preceded by a Dr. Whitaker, who spoke of the importance of
making the institution a pre-eminently Christian one, and
closed by declaring that, " We come here to dedicate this new
building to God and not to the heathen Goddess of Health."
My name was called and I arose to do the very thing that Dr.
Whitaker had just been reprobating. I stated the subject of
my poem and prefaced the reading of it by begging the au
dience to take my heathenism in a Pickwickian sense, or else
to remember that we were in Liberty Plall, where even a
heathen had a right to be heard. My lines were as follows:
To Hygeia, the Goddess op Health.
Fair Goddess, who on Eden once descended.
Thou should'st thenceforth with human life have blended ;
But blundering Adam had a dreadful fall.
That, spraining all his joints, has lamed us all.
And now our lives are one perpetual moan ;

THE DANSVILLE SANATORIUM. 105
Indeed, we hear " the whole creation groan " ;
Man's but a bundle of sore ills and woes,
All through, from top of head to tip of toes ;
His eyes are made half useless by myopia,
His crowded toes a perfect cornucopia ;
His knees are shaky and his back in pain,
His nose is sneezy and befogged his brain ;
His liver strikes, and takes a surly rest,
His stomach joins the strike and won't digest ;
His temper grows suspicious and splenetic :
His troubled dreams are all of woe prophetic ;
His bloom of face is half consumption's hectic,
And at his best he's but a sour dyspeptic.
Dreadful these woes, yet ages has he had 'em,
On thy account, thou wretched father Adam ;
And Eve's as well, for she, thine own der/iJative,
Began by breaking God's command prohibitive.
But thou, Hygeia, hast great gifts for men,
Ahd we would woo thee back to earth again ;
For thine abode this palace we have reared,
On this fair hill, so long to thee endeared ;
Here where thy Prophet toiled so long and late,
His life to thy high service consecrate ;
Here where, sustained by truth and iron will,
He fought for thee, and stands thy champion stiU.
All honor to the brave and grand old Doctor !
No pill inventor, nor of drugs concocter ;
Who found his remedies in nature's wealth.
And to a code reduced the laws of health ;
And made his title as a prophet sure
By wonders wrought, by miracles of cure ;
And when wise ignorance smiled and grew satirical.
And sneered at ah his methods as empirical,
He only added miracle to miracle.
In this grand pile be double honors blent ;
Hygeia's palace and his monument.
And where in all the wide world can be shown
A spot more worthy, for Hygeia's throne?
Where could her palace on a lovelier scene
Outlook, than on these meadows broad and green ?
On what fair height could its fine majesty
So well display itself to charm the eye ?
What hill e'er stood as guard o'er vale more sweet ?

I06 REMINISCENCES.
What vale e'er knelt at nobler guardian's feet?
Not fairer fair Mt. Ida her watch kept
Over old Troy that in her shadow slept ;
Nor Mt. CyHene o'er Arcadian Greece,
Nor Athos o'er the ^gean Cyclades.
And then these woods, all up the ascending mount,
With winding walks, and seats, and gushing fount ;
Inviting all to take their clambering way
Into their shade from out the garish day ;
These woods, as lovely as a poet's dream.
Worthy of Plato and his Academe ;
Not old Parnassus, famed as Muses' haunt.
Had charms that poet's verse could better vaunt.
For thee, thy hall, oh Goddess, in its pride
Of strength and beauty, opes its portals wide ;
Here come and for the centuries abide.
Its walls no storm can shake nor fire consume ;
Massive, it waits as for the final doom.
Here, as the ripened ages pass away.
Let earth be blessed by thy benignant sway.
Banish the sins with which the earth is rife.
And raise men to a purer, nobler life.
Breathe o'er our troubled souls thine heavenly calm,
Life's arid wastes shade like a shadowing palm,
And for its moans, fill earth with an exultant psalm.
LOOSING THE ASS.
When I removed to Hartford my wife and I became mem
bers of the Fourth Congregational Church, of which Rev. Wil
liam W. Patton was pastor. A few years later, about 1855,
a Congregational church which had been organized in Chicago
desired to obtain him as its pastor, and sent a committee to con
fer with him, and to lay the matter before the members of our
church. Congregationalism had never been established in
Chicago, and Mr. Patton was regarded as a very desirable
clergyman for the enterprise. At the head of the committee was
a Mr. G., a native of West Hartford, in this state, who
went west in early life as a Congregational minister, but who
had for many years been Hving in Chicago as a retired clergy
man on a comfortable property left him by a brother. He was
now old and not very vigorous, but full of earnestness in the

THE ONION STEALER. 107
effort to establish a Congregational church there. Mr. Patton
himself thought favorably of a removal to Chicago, but de
sired, as did the committee, that his church should fully ap
prove of the arrangement. A meeting of the church was,
therefore, called, and very largely attended, and was addressed
by Mr. G., who told of their need of just such a man as
Mr. Patton, and of the field as one of great usefulness for him.
He spoke in an appealing and rather tremulous voice, and
wound up by saying, " Brethren, you remember how, when
our Lord was about to make his triumphant entry into Jerusa
lem, he sent forward two of his disciples for an ass that they
would find tied, and just so he has sent us; and, as he told
them, if they were asked why they loosed the ass, to say that
the Lord had need of him; so say we."
It was fortunate that a literal application of the illustration
to our good Mr. Patton was not generally thought of by the
audience, else there would have been an outburst of laughter.
As it was, I found it difficult not to lead off in one.
THE ONION-STEALER,
Mr. tienry Mygatt of Farmington, an old friend, called
at my office in Hartford some thirty years ago, and while there
I asked him to go over with me to the court-room across the
way, where a trial for murder was going on. He did so,
and we sat some half hour listening to the trial. I forget the
name of the accused man. After we came out Mr. Mygatt
said that he well remembered the man on trial, and told me
this story:
The man lived in Wethersfield when he himself was a boy,
that being his own birthplace, and was the mate of a small
sloop that belonged in Wethersfield, and ran with cargoes of
country produce to New York. His father let him go on the
sloop on one of her trips to Naw York and back. He -was
about ten years old, and it was a novel and very interesting
experience to him. The sloop was loaded with onions, tied
up in strings, with a large onion at the bottom and tapering
up to quite a smaU one at the top. When the cargo was taken
out at the dock in New York the mate went below to pass the
onions up through the hatch to a man on deck, who received
them and passed them on to another. The mate, thinking

I08 REMINISCENCES.
himself not observed, broke off the large onion on each string
as it passed through his hands, and threw it into a large basket
that he had behind him. The boy, however, was where he
could see it all, and was astonished at the dishonesty of the
mate, for he saw clearly that it was steahng, and of a very
base kind, as the mate had charge of the cargo for the owners.
The incident made a great impression on his mind, but his
father soon after removed from Wethersfield, and he had never
seen the mate since or known of his history, till he now saw
him in the prisoners' dock on trial for murder. The man was
convicted on his trial and sent to the State Prison.
I have often told this story in Sabbath-schools as an illus
tration of how little beginnings in crime lead finally to great
crimes, and to the State Prison or the gallows; and as such an
illustration it is worth preserving.
A SUMMER IN GUILFORD.
The summer of 1889 my wife and I spent at Nut Plains, an
outer district of the town of Guilford, in this state, and about
two miles from the village. The house was a large, hospitable-
looking farm house, that was some hundred years old, and had
been the home of the Foote family, in which Rev. Dr. Beecher
found his first wife, and which now belonged to and was occu
pied by a descendant of the family. Great trees between the
house and the street, and along the highway, gave the place an
attractive look, and marked it as an old home of thrift and com
fort. The Foote family was one of uncommon intelligence
and refinement, and the large parlor with its great fireplace
had been the scene of frequent and notable gatherings of in
teresting members of the family and their friends. The place
was full of rich and inspiring associations.
Back of the old farm house and along the highway there
lay a wide stretch of farm land, that in its better days had been
highly cultivated and productive, but which now, in the less
prosperous condition of farming interests, was still veiy in
viting to the city wanderer, and was made picturesque by the
flowing through it of a large brook, or small river, which
crossed the street some twenty rods below the house, the
ground gently descending to it, in which a boat was kept for
the diversion of the family and its visitors, and which, where it

A SUMMER IN GUILFORD. 109
passed through the wide pasture higher up, made a place for
the cows to wade in in a hot day, adding a charming feature to
the landscape.
Our great enjoyment of the place and the people is well ex
pressed in the following extract from a letter written by my wife
near the close of the summer, to our daughter, then in Europe:
We have really had an ideal summer. The absolute peace of this
country home and congenial household has been restful beyond measure,
and to be able to wear a morning dress all day long, not expecting a
call from one week's end to another, you can see for yourself what this
must be, L  , the mother, is an uncommonly interesting woman ; so
graceful in form and motion that to see her pick beans and flowers alter
nately in her home garden, and cooking the one and arranging the other,
both with deft hands, is a pastoral study ; while our table chat with the
Cambridge scholar and her bright young sister, the mother keeping up
her part, is worthy of the old Nook Farm days. It is deUghtfuI to see
how good blood tells. These Footes are a people by themselves in their
literary accomplishments, their good sense and fine breeding, and this old
homestead almost talks to you from its very walls of the days gone by.
I never felt more sure of spirit companionship of the highest order, and
your father thinks few parlors in all the land have gathered a more noble
company. I do hope you can spend a. month at Nut Plains some time,
and read the autobiography of your grandfather Beecher on the spot
where so much that is interesting in his life occurred.
While we were at the farm my wife wrote Mrs. Stowe of
our enjoyment of the place, and told her how our little grand
daughter, Isabel Hooker, who spent some time with us there,
found constant delight in wandering over the fields, and es
pecially in playing about the stream, and spoke of the pleasant
memories that she herself must have of the place, as she in her
childhood had often made long visits there. Mrs. Stowe's
memory of later events was beginning to fail, but she had a
clear recollection of incidents of her early life, and it was pa
thetic to observe how, as she lost her hold on present things,
she dwelt with delight upon those which had impressed her in
childhood. Soon after writing her my wife received from her
the following letter : Wednesday, Aug. 14, 1889.
My precious Sister:
I have read your note over four times. I wish I could be with you in
your pleasant visit at Nut Plains, where some of the most joyous days of

IIO REMINISCENCES.
my childhood were spent. All the things that you mention I have done
over and over again when I was a wild free young girl, and never got
tired of doing them. The room I slept in for the most part was the first
right-hand room as you get to the top of the front stairs ; the second was
the spare chamber for company, where many long-remembered pleasant
people lodged, among others a Miss Mary Caldwell, very beautiful, and
very sweet and kind to me. The room directly facing the head of the stairs
was Aunt Harriet's and Grandma's. It had two large comfortable beds
for them. I sometimes slept with Aunt Harriet in her bed and always
enjoyed it, as she kept me so nice and warm. Then there was the colored
woman. Dine. She was a great friend of mine and we had many frolics
together. She told me lots of stories and made herself very entertaining.
Then there was the graveyard on Sandy Hill, the other side of the
river, where I often walked. It had a picket fence all around it then, with
a gate, so that I could easily get in and read the inscriptions on the grave
stones. Yes, I did enjoy all the things that you say Isabel enjoys, and enjoyed
them to the full, especially throwing stones into the river from the bridge.
Sometimes I varied this by throwing in chips and bits of paper, and
watching their downward voyage.
Well, dear sister, I must close. When you come back no one will
welcome you more warmly than Your loving sister, Hatty.
My wife soon after wrote her brother. Rev. Dr. Edward
Beecher, then living in Brooklyn, New York, a long letter
about our life at Nut Plains, and enclosed Mrs. Stowe's letter
for him to read. He wrote the following letter in reply:
Brooklyn, Aug, 22, 1889,
My dear Sister -
I have read your good long letter from Nut Plains with deep interest
and thank you for it. It recalls vividly the scenes of my early childhood.
At seven years of age I went there from Easthampton, L, I,, and after
that I went there again and again. But Grandmother, Aunt Harriet
and Uncle George are there no more to greet me as of old ; they have
gone to a better world, I recall as with present vision all the scenery to
which you refer and the Httle river, I should be glad to see them again.
So, too, the little graveyard rises before me and recalls past years and
relatives. I should be glad to attend the fifth semi-centennial of Guilford in
September, and have been specially invited to come. What I shall do I
have not decided.
All that sister Harriet says as to memories of the past at Nut Plains

THE WOMEN FOUNDERS OF NEW ENGLAND, m
expresses my own feelings, That mother Roxanna will bo at the semi
centennial aiul an illustrious multitude with her, as you suggest, I do not
doubt. Love to all; from your affectionate brother, Edward Beecher.

TIIK WOMEN FOUNDERS OF NEW ENGLAND,
111 October, 1883, the Center Congregational Church of
Hartford celebrated its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary.
This church was that of which i-^ev. Thomas liooker was the
pastor, and which he had led across the wilderness from New
town, now Cambridge, in Massachusetts. The celebration
was held in the Center Church, and lasted two days and even
ings, a very large assemblage attending each of the services.
A large picture by Cole was placed conspicuously in front of
the gallery, representing- the members of the church making
their way through the wilderness, with their pastor at their
head, and his wife borne on a litter.
Mr. William R. Cone, who had been appointed to preside
at the meetings, had requested me to be sure to attend and to be
prepared lo make a speech at one of the evening sessibns, and
I had ]iromiscd him that I would do so. But about two weeks
before the celebration I went to Dansville, in the state of New
York, to attend a gathering of the friends of Dr. Jackson's
Sanatorium there, at the opening of a large new building
which had been erected in the place of one burned the year be
fore. Of this 1 have spoken in an article on that institution.
a)\te, \). 101. While there, just as T was about' to leave for
liome, 1 was taken quite ill and was confined to my bed for
more than a week, and until after the celebration at Hartford
had gone by. T was greatly disturbed by my inability to bo at
Hartford on so interesting an occasion, and at last resolved to
write some lines to send on and have read by some friend for
me. I at once set about writing them in pencil on my bed,
and was able to sit up long enough to copy them in a readable
hand. T mailed tliom. with a brief line, to my wife, who re
ceived them on the afternoon of the second dn>-. and they were
read the following evening before a crowded house by mv son,
Dr Hooker His brief siiecch, with the lines, was printed in
the published report of the i^roceedings, from which T take the
following account of wliat occurred;

112 REMINISCENCES.
Mr. Cone said . Mr. John Hooker, a worthy descendant of the first
pastor of this Church, we hoped to have heard to-night, that we might
from this living link imbibe somewhat of the spirit of his ancestor, the
Rev. Thomas Hooker. His health does not permit him to be here, but I
will call upon his son, Dr. Edward B. Hooker.
Dr. Hooker said : It is a matter of regret that Mr. Hooker is not
here to say himself the word that should be spoken by a descendant of
Thomas Hooker. But as it is fitting on this occasion that some one
bearing the family name should speak, to me a few hours ago was releg
ated the duty of saying a few words.
And the thought that comes to me, after laying flowers on our an
cestor's grave, after contemplating the shaft raised to the memory of the
noble men who came with him and on which is inscribed their names,
after listening to the address of the afternoon, is this : While honoring
the fathers trom whom we have come, we must not forget the mothers.
They alike braved the dangers and endured the privations of that early
time ; their earnest prayers and cheering words sustained the men in
hours of distress and gloom.
That courageous woman, borne tenderly on a litter, too weak to walk
or ride, too brave to be left behind, may well be compared to the Ark of
the Covenant which the children of Israel bore with them in their journey
through the wilderness to the promised land. She was really a sacred
emblem of all that was pure and holy, And the women founders of New
England, unknown to fame, were really the conservators of the purity
and spirituality of the church and society, and to them we owe as great
a debt as to the grand men whom history loves to commemorate and
honor. Let us, therefore, honor our fathers and our mothers, that our days
may be long upon the land which the Lord our God hath given us !
Filled with the same thought, my father, unable to be present, has
sent me these lines to read :
The Women Founders of New England,
Ye grand men of our early day.
Who here for freedom made a way,
With faith and prayer and quoten Word,
Yet coat of mail and girded sword ;
Who laid in strength the founded State,
And o'er it sat to legislate ;
And oft in magistracy stood
Before th' admiring multitude ;
Who felt th' inspiring sense of power
And thrill of the ¦victorious hour ;
And saw afar that grateful fame

THE IDEAL WOMAN. U,
Would cherish every hero's name ;
— The schoolboy at his lesson reads
Th' inspiring record of your deeds ;
The public eye on canvas sees
Your conflicts fierce and victories ;
The monumental shaft is reared
To keep your names for aye revered.
But there were hearts of purest gold
Whose tale of courage ne'er was told ;
True heroes, who no armor wore.
Yet shared the perils that ye bore ;
Braving, with courage none the less.
The savage and the wilderness ;
Clothed with no power in church or state,
No word in worship or debate ;
With faith-Ut brow and helping hand.
Asking but by your side to stand ;
Who had no hope a later day
Its tribute of renown would pay ;
Who made their sad self-sacrifice
Before no world's admiring eyes ;
Of men's remembrance thinking not,
Content to toil and be forgot.
Ah, when the heroes of that time
Are numbered on God's book sublime.
High on the roll of that true fame
Many a gentle woman's name,
Which earth had cared not to record.
Shall stand writ Valiant for the Lord.
THE IDEAL WOMAN.
The Union Signal, a paper published in Chicago by the
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, sent private requests
to a number of gentlemen to give sketches over their names
of what they thought the " Ideal Woman." I sent the follow
ing, which was soon after published, with others, in the paper,
and was copied by other papers. It is so honest an expression
of my real opinion that I think no one will regard it as out of
place here.
No man ever grew up with more reverence for a fine woman than I
1 have never lost that reverence; but my idea of what constitutes a fine

114 REMINISCENCES.
woman has materially changed. I used to think her essential qualities
in youth were sweetness, delicacy, and modesty, and in after life, a home-
loving wifeliness and Madonna-like motherliness. Fifty years of observ
ation and reflection have taught me that a woman grows nobler and truer
to herself and all her obligations who, still faithful and loving in her
home relations (for her heart will always be there), is yet full of intelU-
gence on all matters that are interesting the public, — full of a sense of
the value of her sex in its relation to social progress, — full of an apprecia
tion of her rights as a human being, inspirable by inspiring thoughts and
influences, and a power for good in the community in which she lives,
and perhaps in that larger community that makes up the nation to which
she belongs.
She is to me the noblest woman who, without mere personal ambition
or self-seeking of any sort, and with a great spirit of helpfulness toward
all the wronged and suffering, limits the field of her work only by her
ability and opportunity, making these and not any conventional rules the
test of what God meant that she should do. That a woman may be all
this and yet not lose a particle of her wifeliness or motherliness, or of her
sweetness and delicacy, is a matter of absolute knowledge with the
writer.

ADDRESS AT REV. DR, PORTER'S SEMI-CENTENNIAL AT
FARMINGTON.
The fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of Rev, Dr, Noah
Porter over the Congregational Church in Farmington was
celebrated on the 12th of November, 1856, I had been bap
tized by him and brought up under his most wise and inteUigent
ministry, and was invited to attend and take a part in the pubHc
exercises, I was then Hving in Hartford, The old church was
compactly fihed by his parishioners and friends, and he de
livered a sermon of great interest in the forenoon, A boun
teous collation was prepared by the ladies of the church for the
noon recess, and the afternoon was devoted to public addresses.
There was a large representation of the clergy of the neighbor
ing towns, as weH as of old parishioners of Dr. Porter who lived
at a distance. The sermon of Dr. Porter and the addresses de
livered were afterwards printed in a pamphlet, which is pre
served by the Farmington people with much interest.
Prof, Denison Olmsted of Yale College was the speaker
next before me. The fact that he was a professor of astronomy
explains some of my allusions to him. He remarked, bv way
of introduction, that he had not the honor of being a native

ADDRESS AT DR. PORTER'S SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 115
of Farmington, but that, when eight years old, he accompanied
his mother from East Hartford, the place of his birth, to her
new home in Farmington, where he lived the rest of his child
hood, and that he did not know till then that the worid was so
large. At the close of his address, which was full of interest
ing reminiscences of that early time, I was called on by John
T. Norton, who presided, to address the assembly. The
speakers who preceded me had occupied the pulpit, but when
I arose to speak I asked the chairman to allow me to stand in
the deacons' seat below the pulpit, but he insisted that I should
go into the pulpit. My remarks, as they appear in the pamph
let, were as follows :
Mr, Chairman: —
You have persuaded me against my better judgment to occupy the
pulpit for my few remarks. The deacons' seat is all that, in this house
and on an occasion so suggestive of old recollections, I had supposed my
courage would be equal to, and as the old awe of my childhood is reviving
within my breast, I feel that my undertaking is one of no little peril.
Our friend, Professor Olmsted, has just told us that, while he cherishes
fondly the remembrance of his early life in Farmington , yet he can not
claim the honor of a birth here, I am one of those whose pride and privi
lege it is to have been born here, and that birthright I shall never sell or
surrender. I love this ancient town. It seems to me that no hills ever
looked down upon so beautiful a valley — as if no valley ever looked up
to so beautiful hills. I love its people ; I love its history ; and as Paul
claimed his birthright as a Roman citizen, so shall I, wherever I may be,
always proudly claim my birthright as Farmington-born. Our friend
has also told us that when he came with his mother from East Hartford,
his birthplace, to Farmington, he was surprised to find the world so
large. It is a great comfort to us of so little knowledge, and a great
encouragement to all young learners, that one whose telescope nightly
penetrates infinite space, and who knows more about Neptune than some
of the old settlers know about Farmington, should once have been so
ignorant of the limits of even this little earth as not to know it was so
large as from here to East Hartford. And how fitting that one who has
thus known both extremes of knowledge should come here to speak
words of eulogy of one who has known both extremes of moral goodness,
who, beginning with original sin, which is something worse than the
negation of all good, has gone on in goodness till he has attained a point
of moral excellence beyond which a mortal cannot hope to pass.
An occasion Hke this suggests much that is grave; but the committee
of arrangements, a few minutes ago, sent me word that they must depend

Il6 REMINISCENCES.
upon me to be humorous in my remarks. A very pleasant suggestion,
coming with such authority, to one who is just rising to speak with his
mind all charged with most solemn matter, and who was hoping that at
least in so clerical a presence as this he might pass himself off for a grave
and solemn man. The occasion, however, has put to flight most of the
fledglings of mirth. There is too much humor in my eye for humor in
my heart. Dry wit needs a dry eye.
After all, I suppose, whether I am grave or mirthful, so long as I
speak at all, I shall have answered the purpose for which I was called to
this duty to-day. I suppose the real object in bringing me out, as also
brother Clarke, whose name I see is on the programme, and perhaps
some others who were born and brought up in this village, is that we
may show to this assembled multitude and to all these strangers what
excellent boys have grown up under Dr. Porter's preaching. It is only
one of the modes adopted by the committee of doing honor to him whom
we all delight to honor. The mode is ingenious, and I am very confi
dent will be successful.
Prof. Olmsted told us of his early recollections of the old pulpit, with
its heavy green hangings, the great sounding board, and the high, square
pews. All these things in the form in which our fathers' fathers left
them, before modem improvement had profaned the ancient sanctuary,
are most vividly impressed upon my imagination. That high pulpit,
with the great curtains of the arched window behind it, and its heavy
trimmings, seemed to my infantile fancy to " outshine the wealth of
Ormus and of Ind," And the huge sounding board! I never fuUy
fathomed the great depths of its meaning, I supposed it represented
something that St, Johu speaks of in the Revelation, probably the third
heavens; but I could- never determine exactly what. And the great,
high, square, unpainted pews ! How fresh is my recollection of them !
The sides were so high that we children, who generally sat on the foot-
benches in the middle, were in little danger of having our attention dis
tracted by observation of what was going on in the outside world. It is
said that truth lies at the bottom of a well, and if so, we little urchins on
our low foot-benches might well be regarded as burrowing after it.
And that day was the day of cold meeting-houses, and of foot-stoves,
I remember well how I used to carry my mother's foot-stove to and fro
on many a winter's Sunday ; and I have a most vivid impression of one
winter Sabbath when our pew was very full and I had to sit during all a
very long service on a foot-stove, and the great inconvenience I experi
enced therefrom. My sensations seemed to contrast strongly with those
of the ladies near me, who, wrapped in their furs, yet shivered from
want of the heat which I was so reluctantly absorbing. ' ' My heart was
hot within me." My indignation almost boiled over. But I had self-
command enough to preserve a serene and sanctimonious countenance
suited to the solemn character of the place.

ADDRESS AT DR. PORTER'S SEMI-CENTENNIAL. 117
I have often thought that our modern system of heating our churches
is furnishing us physical comfort at great moral sacriflce. Now the super
abundant heat makes the minister languid and the audience sleepy;
while in old times the people were too cold to sleep, and the preacher,
unable to wrap himself up so closely as his hearers, was compelled to
gesticulate earnestly to keep himself warm ; thus producing a great im
pression on his audience. It was like the master of assemblies hitting
heavy blows with his hammer on the nail he was driving. It must have
been some such preaching as this, in one of the high and box-like pulpits
of that day, that led a little giri, taken to church for the first time, to ask
her mother on her way home " why they didn't let that man out when he
was trying so hard to get out and hollering so,"
My early impressions of Dr, Porter are of a most holy and venerable
man, I remember him in the pulpit on Sunday,— in the Sabbath-school,
coming in just at the close of our recitations, to talk to us children, or
occasionally coming a little earlier and hearing some of us recite, — and
in our schools of a Saturday forenoon, catechizing us. He was then a
young man, yet to my childish fancy older and graver and more solemn
than he looks to-day. He was then plain Mr. Porter, yet is in no manner
magnified to my maturer imagination by the doctorate. How I remem
ber my awe of him as the high priest of our sanctuary. I shall never see
another so holy a looking man while I live.
And I have a most pleasant early recollection of our good Mrs, Porter,
She is here with us but will not forbid my alluding to her. She reigned
not merely by constitutional right, as the wife- of our pastor, but by a
more direct and not less divine authority, through her hold upon our
hearts. She will not be offended, I know, when I tell how well I remem
ber her cookies. I used often, of a Saturday afternoon, to go to Dr, Por
ter's to play with a son of his who was my schoolmate, and at such times
good Mrs, Porter never used to forget the injunction to " feed the lambs,"
As I was partaking of the elegant collation at the hall this noon, it
occurred to me that while the good Doctor had been inculcating religious
truths, his good wife had with plentiful moral inculcations mingled a
good deal of practical instruction in domestic matters.
But those good old days have passed away. The old pulpit has gone,
with a good deal of the theology that was once preached in it. Let
them both go. The pulpit inspired me with awe, but some of the theol
ogy with a deadly fear ; a fear which, thank God, has since given way to
a more intelligent trust and to some measure of that love that casteth out
fear. The old high pulpit has gone, and in the place of it we have this
razee. The old square pews have slipped out of sight. The old sound
ing board has come down (or gone up, I hardly dare say which), and
with them have passed away men and women dear to ihy early years, —
figures in a grand old picture, — to be succeeded by others still more

"^^p

II 8 REMINISCENCES.
dear, or represented by a few still living, and who have grown only
more dear and venerable. Beautiful things of the past have gone ; but
beautiful things of the present have come. It is all fitting, all well
allotted, all pleasant and beautiful, I would make no change. Our
good pastor, upon whom I once looked with childish awe, has long been
to me an object of manly and familiar love. The child's awe is pleasant
to lo«k back upon ; the familiar love is pleasanter to possess,
I should love to occupy some time in notices of some of the venerable
men of my early and later recollection, and it was to this point that I had
purposed to direct my few remarks when the mandate of the committee
reached me ; but, as others are to speak, and there are but a few minutes
for each of us, I' will deny myself the pleasure and relieve you of what
might be in my hands the tedium of such discourse, and close with sim
ply saying of our beloved Dr, Porter, — to me one of the earliest remem
bered and the latest cherished of them all, — may he return late to heaven;
may his declining years be illuminated by the beckoning rays of the
waiting glory, and may his departure be, whilst amidst the lamentations
of his people, yet in the fullness of his own joy. And in heaven may we,
his people, be permitted again to sit at his feet, our clearer vision only
showing us new reason for venerating and loving him,
CHIEF JUSTICES WILLIAMS AND STORRS',
Judges Williams and Storrs were judges of great ability,
and probably the ablest chief justices that we have had upon
the Supreme Court of our state. While both were so superior
and filled so well the high judicial positions which they held,
they were strikingly unlike in their mental characteristics and
habits. Judge Williams had retired before I became the re
porter of the court, in January, 1858, but I held that office
under Judge Storrs' for over thre6 years. I thus came to know
him well, but ? had often argued cases before Judge Williams
in both the Superior and the Supreme Court. Judge Storrs
died on the 2Sth of June, 1861, at the age of sixty-six. Judge
- Williams^died on the 1 5tli day of tlie following December, at
the age of eighty-four. Obituary notices of them, prepared by
me, were printed together in the 29th volume of the Connecti
cut Law Reports, and were followed by a comparison of them,
and a contrast of their more striking peculiarities. This
sketch, now buried in the appendix of the half-antiquated
volume, may be of interest to many of the readers of these
reminiscences, and I therefore give it a place here.

CHIEF JUSTICES WILLIAMS AND STORRS. 119
In bringing into so close proximity these brief notices of Chief Justice
Williams and Chief Justice Storrs, both so eminent in the exalted posi
tions which they occupied, it becomes very natural to compare them, and
to throw into contrast their more striking individualities. While belong
ing in common to the list of great chief justices, they were yet very dis
similar. Indeed, two men of superior intellects and of the same general
tenor of life could hardly be found more unlike in the leading character
istics of their minds. That of Judge Storrs was polished in the highest
degree by classical study and a lifelong familiarity with the best English
literature, and his utterances were always in the most elegant diction of
the schools. The mind of Judge Williams had derived fro* his boUegi-
ate education little but discipline, and he generally spoke and wrote in a
condensed and vigorous Saxon, with little regard to the balance of his
sentences or the grace of his periods. Judge Storrs had a mind of extraor
dinary penetration that could look down the deepest abysses of thought
without agitation, and could explore the profoundest depths without los
ing its way. Judge Williams saw whatever he was looking after without
seeming to search for it, the nearer and the remoter all coming before his
mind alike, as obvious truths which it was a matter of course for every
body to see. The mind of Judge Storrs was stimulated and excited by
the adventurous character of any mental exploration ; that of Judge
Williams found everything so plain before him that he was never excited
by any consciousness of great intellectual effort, Judge Williams came
to his conclusions by a single step, and with something like intuition, and
looked about afterwards for his reasons, and then, less to satisfy his own
mind than to convince 'his associates on the bench or the public in his
written opinions. Judge Storrs, in seeking his results, moved along
down the line of a close logic, and reached his conclusions by a prior con
sideration of the reasons. The writer can hardly conceive anything
more exquisite than the movements of his mind, as it was feeling its way
along through a maze of peirplexities, iq. the consultations of the judges
which it -was his privilege to attend as reporter of the court. Both were
men of strong common sense. With Judge WiUiams this common sense
. dictated the result and left his reason to defend it ; with Judge Storrs
logical reasoning worked out the result and then an almost unerring
comipon sense came in to test it, and to prevent the too common mistake
of taking what seems a necessary logical conclusion as a safe and correct
one in so practical a, matter as the administration of justice, The mind
of Judge WiHiams was eminently practical ; that of Judge Storrs more
inclined to the speculative. The one. would have macle a successful
worker in almost any department of labor that required a vigorous and
self-reliant intellect ; the other would have made a philosopher of the
best age of philosophy. Judge Storrs had read law more extensively, and
was more famihar with the whole range of law as a science ; Judge Wil-

I20 REMINISCENCES.
liams had dealt with it as a practical thing, rather inhaling it as an
atmosphere in which he lived, than systematically pursuing it as a study.
Judge Williams rarely hesitated in his conclusions, and if he did, seemed
to desire only time for reflection, and to care little for consultation with
others. Judge Storrs worked easily to his conclusions, but was always
glad of an opportunity to compare his views with those of his brethren.
Judge Storrs would sometimes let considerations of policy enter his mind;
Judge Williams never. The mind of Judge Williams seemed to work by
a law of its own, so that even without the control of his high moral quali
ties it could hardly have gone astray; that of Judge Storrs seemed to
involve the whole aggregate of his faculties, so that with a bad heart he
would have made an unsafe judge. Where a case seemed to Judge
Storrs imperatively to require a decision which some general principle
seemed almost as imperatively to forbid, he would find his way to the
predestinated result with surprisingly little injury to the general princi
ple. The writer hardly knows what Judge Williams would have done ;
but he thinks he would have drawn upon his courage more than upon his
ingenuity. The manner of Judge Storrs on the bench was more courte
ous and affable. The quiet firmness of Judge Williams approached very
nearly to sternness ; yet the former would often, especially in his later
years, manifest an impatience under a lengthy argument that the latter
would never have shown under an inexcusably tedious one. Judge
Storrs was never very fond of work, and in his later years was a little
too much inclined to avoid it. Judge Williams never knew what self-
indulgence was, and worked through the allotted hours with no thought
of his own ease. Judge Williams must have made an able judge at the
outset. To Judge Storrs the training of judicial experience was more
necessary. The judicial qualities of Judge Storrs would be called splen
did, — a term which seems hardly appropriate in such a connection, yet
is perfectly applicable here ; those of Judge Williams were great in the
true sense of the term, but with no quality of brilliancy. Both brought
honor to the exalted office which they held, and have left to their associ
ates and to the profession, not merely great examples for imitation, but
a burden of increased responsibiUty in preserving the high character of
the judicial office. MY DESIRE FOR A JUDGESHIP.
While pursuing my legal duties, and especiaHy as I began
to get into a respectable practice, and better able to take the
measure of myself, I conceived the idea of fitting mvself
thoroughly for, and ultimately obtaining, a seat on the Supreme
Court of the state. This became my sole ambition. I would
not have gone to the United States Senate if I could have had

MY DESIRE FOR A JUDGESHIP. 121
an unanimous election to it. My taste ran wholly to the law.
Still, I had no idea of attaining the position for many years,
if at all, as it was then the practice, more than now, to place
our older lawyers on our highest court, a practice which seemed
to me a very proper one. My present opinion is that it is better
to take for judicial positions our young men, who have good
judicial qualities, and let them learn the trade and perfect
themselves by experience, beginning in our courts of lower
grade, and passing in gradation to the higher. With all my
ambition for a judgeship I felt that, if a vacancy should occur
when I was of proper age, I could not become a seeker of the
office, but it must substantially fah into my hands. It had be
come a fixed principle with me that I would never raise my
self an inch by putting my foot on another man's neck. I
therefore kept on my legal practice, with no fret over this
matter, and no knowledge on the part of my professional
brethren that I had any thought in this direction.
Thus things stood when, in January, 1858, I was offered
by the judges of our Supreme Court the place of reporter of
its decisions. This office I accepted, and found it greatly to
my taste. It was a great pleasure to me to hear the best
lawyers over the state argue pure legal questions, and, greater
still, to hear the cases discussed by the judges in consultation.
There could not be a better law school, and I availed myself
of its opportunities with great avidity. I felt like postponing
aU thought of a judgeship until I had perfected myself in the
law in the position that I was in.
In June, 1861, Chief Justice Storrs died very suddenly.
Judge Hinman, then the next senior judge of the court, would,
as a matter of course, be elected to the chief justiceship but
this would leave a vacancy in the associate membership of the
court that would be filled from the outside. The Legislature,
then sitting at Hartford, was just closing its session, and there
was no time for the ordinary canvassing to determine who
should be elected to fill this vacancy. The death of Judge
Storrs had been announced in both houses, and eulogistic ad
dresses made, and it was understood that the Republicans.
then a majority of both houses, would that evening determine
whom they would the next morning elect. Some Hartford
gentlemen, I learned, were interesting themselves in secunng
9

1 2 2 REMINISCENCES.
my election to the place, and I went into the city to ascertain
what was being done. I there learned that it was the nearly
unanimous determination of the members to elect me the next
morning. I was extremely perplexed over the matter. The
very position that I desired was, without a suggestion from me,
brought to me as a free gift. I could not conceive an election
under more favorable circumstances. On the other hand, the
matter had come up suddenly, and with no time for considera
tion on my part, while I desired greatly to avail myself a few
years longer of the great advantage that I had for learning law
in my position as reporter of the court. On the whole, I dared
not venture yet upon the judgeship, and told the leading mem
bers that I could not accept the office. The next morning
both houses elected Thomas C. Perkins of Hartford, who de
clined the appointment. They then elected Judge Thomas B.
Butler of the Superior Court, and Elisha Carpenter to a judge
ship in the Superior Court to fill the vacancy made by the
promotion of Judge Butler. The former made an able judge
of the Supreme Court, and, ultimately, its chief justice, and
the latter began a judicial career which lasted for thirty-two
years, and was one of great visefulness and honor.
In 1864 Judge Sanford of the Supreme Court died. The
Legislature was then in session at New Haven, and there was
ample time for fihing the vacancy with deliberation. At that
time Mr. H. K. W. Welch, one of our best lawyers, was a mem
ber of the House of Representatives from Hartford. He was
a fine man and one of my best friends. I had known before of
his ambition to get upon the Superior Court, and I now learned
that he was fairly and honorably availing himself of his oppor
tunity, as a member of the House, to get a nomination by the
Republican caucus for the vacancy on the Superior Court
that would be created by the elevation of Judge Park of that
court to the Supreme bench. His plan of having Judge Park
appointed to the higher court necessarily involved my exclu
sion from that place. There were, in fact, several aspirants
to a place on the Superior Court, ah of whom favored the eleva
tion of Judge Park to the Supreme Court. This created a
combined interest against my nomination to the Supreme
Court. I kept no Watch over the matter, and am not certain
who the other aspirants and their friends were. At this time.

My DESIRE FOR A JUDGESHIP. 123
a lawyer, who was a member of the Senate, wrote me, " It
needs only an assent on your part to give 3'ou an unanimous
nomination," and proceeded to urge me to assent. Soon after
Richard D. Hubbard, who had been attending hearings at
New Haven, came up to liartford and to my house, expressly
to get my consent to the use of my name, and said that all the
profession desired my appointment, but that it was the general
opinion that I would not accept it, and that all that was wanting
was a favorable word from me. It seemed to me that the time
I had waited for had come, and that it was best for me to take
the office if I was not thereby doing a great disfavor to my
friend Welch, and I told Mr, Hubbard that I would at once
see Mr. Welch, and if he consented to yield the opportunity to
me I would allow my name to be used. Mr. Welch was the
next day to return from New Plaven for the week, and I went
in to see him. I stated the whole case to him, and my utter
unwillingness to disoblige him. He said that it had been for
years his ambition to get upon the Superior Court, as it had
been mine to get upon the Supreme, and that what seemed to
him his opportunity had now come, and was, he thought,
within his grasp; that he felt sure of the nomination of the
caucus, after it had nominated Judge Park for the higher court,
and that he would feel that I brought him under a great per
sonal obligation to me if I should not interpose in the matter.
I felt entirely unwilling to take any attitude that would em
barrass his plans, which seemed to me well laid and sure of
.success, and I so told him. I at once wrote Mr. Hubbard,
not wholly abandoning my candidacy, but placing such condi
tions and qualifications upon it that he wrote me that it vvas
equivalent to refusing the office, and left him no opportunity
to make any effort in mv behalf. The caucus was called eariy
the next week, and Judge Park was without serious opposition
nominated for the Supreme Court. This ended all personal
interest on my part in the contest, but I was compelled to wit
ness the discomfiture and great disappointment of my friend
Welch, for, when the ballot was taken on the nominee for the
Superior Court vacancy, he was defeated. I never, however,
regretted that I had stepped aside for him, for if I had been
elected I should always have felt that he might have had the
place but for me, and should not have enjoyed the position

124 REMINISCENCES.
thus obtained. I felt this to be my final opportunity to go
upon the Supreme Court, and declined the nomination with
that feeling.
My ambition for the place was not a mere conceit that I
should fill it well, but I had been urged to it by numerous letters
from some of the ablest lawyers over the state, and had been
strongly advised by the judges of the Supreme Court to go
upon the court whenever there was an opportunity, and I am
certain that I should have been warmly welcomed to their
companionship there. I received a letter a few days later from
Judge WilHam D. Shipman of the U. S. District Court, in
which he expressed his regret that I was not elected to fill the
vacancy, and the leading members of the profession, as I met
them about the state, of aH political parties, expressed to me a
like regret, and said that I would have been unanimously
nominated if it had not been an understood thing that I would
not accept.
It is a little aggravation that I might in all probability have
attained the chief-justiceship. Judge Park became chief jus
tice in 1874, and Judge Butler, who went upon the court when
I might have done so in 1861, became chief justice in 1870, the
latter being at the head of the court four years, and the former
fifteen years. Though the ambition of my life was defeated,
yet there are good reasons for all that happens, and I have no
doubt I have been a happier man, and as much respected, and
very likely have had more friends, which is better than all the
rest, for remaining in the less laborious and less responsible,
and yet very enjoyable position, of reporter of the court. And
besides, I do not feel at all sure that I should have made a suc
cess as a judge. MY SUPREME COURT REPORTERSHIP.
In January, 1858, I was appointed by the judges of our
Supreme Court the reporter of the court. The place had been
held for the three years next preceding by William N. Matson,
who now resigned. The duties of the office were very much to
my taste, and I readily accepted the appointment. The Connec
ticut Reports had then reached the 25th volume, a part of
which had been prepared by Mr. Matson, and was being

MY SUPREME COURI REPORTERSHIP. 125
printed under his superintendence. I completed this volume,
and, with an explanatory note, issued it as my first. I held
the office until January, 1894, thirty-six years, having during
that time got out thirty-eight volumes. At the October term
of the court at Hartford, in 1893, I handed in my resignation,
which was as follows :
To Chief Justice Andrews and the Associate Judges of the Supreme
Court of Connecticut:
I hereby resign my office of reporter of judicial decisions, the resig
nation to take effect, with your assent to the delay, on the ist day of
January, 1894.
In retiring from this office, which I have held for thirty-six years,
I desire to express my sense of obligation to you and your predecessors
for keeping me so long in office, and for the familiar and exceedingly
pleasant companionship to which I have from the first been invited.
I wish to express also ,my great respect for the court and for the mem
bers who have composed it, and who seem, as I look back over the
years, to be a constandy moving procession. I have reported the de
cisions of seven chief justices and fifteen associate judges. My at
tachment to some of them has been very great, and it has rarely
occurred that one has left the bench, or above all has passed from
earthly life, without a feeling of personal bereavement on my part.
Now that I am the one to withdraw, I leave my best wishes for your
welfare and happiness. " Respectfully and truly yours,
John Hooker."
This I handed to the judges in their room before the open
ing of the court. On the opening of the court the chief justice
read it and the following response on the part of the judges:
" In accepting the resignation of the reporter, the judges of the
court desire to express not only their high appreciation of his services
to the state, but the warm sentiment of regard and attachment which
he has inspired not only in them, but, as they well know, in their pre
decessors in office, during a long course of years.
" Mr. Hooker began his labors as reporter in 1858, and by far the
greater part of the whole series of Connecticut Reports has been his
work. From the first to the last of these volumes he has shown a
rare mastery of the power of analysis and discrimination, as well as of
concise statement and clear expression.
" The judges part from him with sincere personal regret and only
consent to his retirement at his earnest and repeated request."

126 REMINISCENCES.
The chief justice then announced that the bench had ap
pointed James P. Andrews to succeed me, his appointment to
take effect on the first day of the following January.
I ought to state that in making out the seven chief justices
whose opinions I had reported, I included Chief Justice Waite,
who retired just before my appointment, but a part of whose
opinions came into my hands to be reported. The other six
chief justices were Storrs, Hinman, Butler, Seymour, Park,
and Andrews. The fifteen associate judges were Ellsworth,
Sanford, Dutton, McCurdy, Carpenter, Phelps, Foster, Loo
mis, Pardee, Beardsley, Granger, Torrance, Fenn, Edw. Sey
mour, and Baldwin.
My connection with the court for so many years was ex
ceedingly pleasant to me, as was also the opportunity it gave
me to make the acquaintance of the lawyers all over the state,
and to listen to the arguments of the ablest counsel in many
cases of great interest.
It was not long before later appointed judges were my
juniors, and for the last twelve years of my tenure of the office
I was older than any of the judges. When I was appointed
the judges were Chief Justice Storrs and Judges Hinman,
Ellsworth, and Sanford. They at once took me into a
familiar personal relation, and very soon recognized what they
regarded as a special faculty for dealing with puzzling ques
tions of law. The familiarity to which I was thus invited
continued and increased as I grew older, and for the last half
of my thirty-six years in the office I had an exceedingly en
joyable companionship with the judges. The judges of this
period were Chief Justice Park and Judges Carpenter, Loomis,
and Pardee, with Judges Granger and Beardsley a part of the
time in the court, and coming less than the others into the
" family," as we called it. To the ordinary very interesting
incidents of a session of the court were added this pleasant
social feature, and the frequent meetings of the judges at the
capitol for consultation were occasions of much hilarity until
they settled down to business. All were very responsive to
humor, for which my modest store was always taxed, to which
Judge Loomis was always ready to contribute, and to which
Judge Pardee, never leading off in saUies of his own, yet re
sponded with the keenest and pithiest wit of us all. In this

MY SUPREME COURT REPORTERSHIP. 127
judicial family I had all the recognition of a member. I
was frequently asked to help disentangle some almost im
penetrable complications of facts and law, and to refer them
to decisions in our own and other courts that bore upon the
cases. I also wrote a large number of opinions, sometimes
in cases of special difficulty, and sometimes only to help some
judge who was ill. I find that there are in the volumes which
I published over fifty opinions which I wrote. These opinions
were always read carefully to the judges and considered by
them. They had nothing to do with the deciding of the case.
That had already been done and the preparation of the opinion
assigned to one or another of the judges, who adopted the
opinion which I wrote as his own. One of the most interest
ing and difficult of the cases in which I wrote the opinion,
and to which I should refer with most satisfaction as showing
my mode of doing such work, is the case of Andreas vs. Hub
bard, 50 Conn. R., 351, a chancery case of great perplexity and
difficulty, in which the opinion was written for and stands in
the name of Chief Justice Park. I also wrote the opinion in
the case /)/• re Mary Hall, 50 Conn. R., 131, which sustained
her application to be admitted to the bar. This also stands in
the name of Chief Justice Park.
I felt much doubt whether it is right for me to state these
facts, and, if right, whether it is in good taste, and asked the
opinion of my warm friend. Judge Loomis, who is the sole
survivor of the judges of that time, and he wrote me the foHow-
ing letter a few days later: Hartford, June 30, 1897.
My Dear Mr. Hooker:
You ask me whether it will be entirely proper for you to refer in
your Reminiscences to the very intimate relation in which you stood
to the judges of the Supreme Court when you was its reporter. Dur
ing my time on the court you were older than any of the judges, and
we were all glad to have you present at our consultations and to avail
ourselves of your long familiarity with legal principles and reported
cases. While we should all have been very sorry to lose you from
the reportership, for which you had a special aptitude, we should have
felt great satisfaction in seeing you on the court, even at the head of
it, where, I believe, you would have been had you not, with character
istic generosity, withdrawn your candidacy in favor of a friend, I

1 28 REMINISCENCES.
can see no harm that can come from a knowledge of these facts, and
good reason why you should have the credit of them.
Very truly your friend,
DwiGHT Loomis.
There are special reasons why I desired to give to the pub
lic the facts which I have stated. My whole taste was for the
law, I found myself specially adapted to the understanding
and applying of legal principles, my sole ambition was for a
seat on the Supreme Court. I twice had such a seat pressed
upon me when, for reasons that were decisive with me, I de
clined it, and I had spent my life in the subordinate and un
noticed position of reporter of the court. If I had gone upon
the bench when I had the opportunity I should in all proba
bility (" undoubtedly," the judges told me) have been at the
head of the court for several years. If I had been appointed
to that position, which I consider the most honorable in the
state, far more so than the governorship, my family would
have had the pleasure of that high association with my name.
It would have been a pleasant memory for me to leave. It
would not have been without gratification to me in my old
age, though for that I care but little.
In closing I find I can give a pleasant illustration of Judge
Pardee's humor, which, as I have before said, was always re
sponsive, and never intrusive or merely spontaneous. As I
grew old I occasionally yielded to the inclination to doze at my
desk in the court-room. This was a very venial offense, es
pecially in one in my position, where there was no responsi
bility for the decision of the case that was being argued. At a
social gathering to which I was invited with the judges the
matter of my relation to the court was spoken of. T remarked
that I was the Homer who recorded in a legal epic the
achievements of the judicial Agamemnons. " Yes," said
Judge Pardee, " and aliquando bonus Homcrns dormitat."
Note, I cannot find a better place than this to mention, what I
desire to state somewhere, that in the reprint of several of the volumes
that I issued most serious errors of type occur, which .most persons
who notice them will be likely to hold me responsible for. Among
others is the occasional printing of Judge Sanford's name with a rf in
the middle. I beg the profession to remember that I am in no manner

SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP 129
responsible for those errors. There were some errata noticed in my
original volumes, but these were all corrected in the reprints.
SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP,
During the thirty-six years that I held the office of re
porter of judicial decisions I kept note-books in which I en
tered everything pertaining to the cases tried, and made notes
of incidents in court or pertaining to the court which seemed
worthy of preservation. It has occurred to me that I might
make an interesting chapter of these incidents. Many of
them are entertaining and some of them are quite serious in
their character. I think the members of the legal profession
will be glad that I have gathered and preserved them.
When I entered upon the office in 1858 Judge Storrs was
chief justice. He was a man of very fine classical culture, as
well as of a most thorough knowledge of law, and presided
over the court with great elegance and dignity. One of the
earliest terms of the court was held at Norwich. The court
house at that time (it was soon after burned) was on one of the
upper streets of the city, making a laborious climb for the chief
justice, who, with only ordinary height, carried considerably
over two hundred pounds of flesh. One day the judges, on
their way up together for the afternoon session, decided a case
from Fairfield County that they had fuHy discussed before, but
had not finally disposed of. I was not with them, but soon
after I got into the court-room the chief justice leaned over
the bench and handed me the following note :
'' Super viam dolorosam inter Waureganum hospitium et templum
justitiae, Suprema Curia pro Correctione Errorum decidit advisare
Superioram Curiam pro comitatu Fairfieldiae, ut in casu Solomon vs.
Wixon novus trial debet concedi; et Park, Judex, scribet curiae
opinionem." After I had read it he said that he could not think of any
Latin for " new trial," and I must write in the proper word.
I asked him if " nova quaestio " would do. He thought it
would, and I wrote it in, and copied the note in my book. I
thought, however, on more reflection, that " nova auditio "
would have been better, but I let it go as it was.

I30 REMINISCENCES.
His description of the steep street as a " via dolorosa "
shows what it was to him to climb it. On the way down one
day he was trying hard to hold himself back, when he said to
me that he ought to wear a breeching to go about the Norwich
streets. Judge Ellsworth one day said of the city that you
step out of one man's cellar into another man's garret. But
as a compensation for this difficulty of climbing its steeper
streets, Norwich is the most picturesque city in this state, and
I think in all New England.
It has from the first been the custom, and is so still, to have
the terms rf the Supreme Court opened with prayer. Judge
Storrs told me that, a short time before, in opening a term at
Brooklyn, then the shire town of Windham County, Rev. Mr.
Tillotson, a Congregationalist clergyman of Brooklyn, prayed
that God would be with the judges " and overrule all their de
cisions." The court was sitting at Middletown in 1858, and a case
came before it in which one Brainerd was plaintiff and in which
he sought to have a sale set aside into which he had been
fraudulently drawn by the defendant. Brainerd claimed to be
weak-minded and to have been imposed upon by the defend
ant; and a committee to whom the case had been referred had
found that he was weak-minded. Charles Chapman was his
counsel, and he had pressed this point. Charles Tyler for the
defendant claimed that he was a shrewd, money-making fel
low and sharp enough to cheat any lawyer in the room who
should try to make a bargain with him. While Tyler was
speaking, Brainerd came in and sat down by Mr. Chapman.
Tyler stopped and looked around at the two, and then said to
the court: "There now — there is the very man himself.
Nobody who should look at these two together would hesitate
a moment to say that Brainerd is much the most intelligent-
looking of the two."
In a consultation in 1858 over a usury case. Judge Storrs
told of a case in the state of New York, where the statute was
so plain that the jury were compelled to bring in a verdict
against the plaintiff, while the justice of the case and their
sympathies were all with him. While compelled to sustain the

SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP. 131
defense, they expressed their opinion of the defendant by a
verdict that they " found the issue for the defendant and that
he was a great rascal." He also quoted a remark of Dr.
Dwight's in one of his college sermons, that " all reason was
against usury laws, but all experience in their favor."
In a consultation on a will case in i860. Judge Storrs said
that Chief Justice Daggett used to say that in Connecticut a
win was good if it was made at any time before the bell began
to toll for the funeral.
In the suit of Persse & Brooks vs. IVatrous, argued in the
Supreme Court in 1861, the plaintiffs were the owners of a
water power in Windsor Locks and of a miH upon it. One of
the lawyers remarked that it was a fair presumption that the
partner Persse furnished the money and the partner Brooks
the water power.
Here is a judicial remark upon a practical question in legis
lation that is worth preserving. In the course of an argument
before the court in 1861, Mr. Parsons was speaking of the
difference between public and private acts in the mode of
passing them, when Judge Ellsworth remarked that private
acts, appropriating money or making grants, are generally
passed without being sent to the governor for approval; but
that Governor Wolcott always claimed that all the action of
the legislature on private resolutions and grants should be
submitted to the governor. He said, however, that they were
not in all cases, even in Governor Wolcott's day, and have very
generally not been since. Here Mr. Hubbard remarked that
the governor had lately in some cases taken it upon him to
veto private acts. Judge Ellsworth replied: " I know it, but
the question has not been settled whether his veto amounted
to anything." In a case argued by Mr. Hungerford at Hartford, a party
to whom certain real estate had been conveyed, finding a dis
advantage in the ownership, as it involved certain liabilities,
had executed a formal disclaimer of title and put it on record.
Mr. Hungerford contended that the disclaimer had no legal
effect, and said it reminded him of a story he had heard about

132 REMINISCENCES.
how a man secured his neighbor's fat turkey. He took the
turkey to the neighbor's house and told him he was looking
for the owner; that the turkey had flown into his parlor and
broken a looking-glass worth twenty-five dollars, and he
wanted the owner to pay the damage. " Well," said the
owner, "don't bring him here; he don't belong to me." So
the man took him home and roasted him for his dinner.
Sometimes a little secret history of official proceedings is
interesting. I find a note in my book giving the following ac
count of a proceeding on the part of the court which called out
considerable comment at the time. It was in June, 1867.
The legislature was in session and had before it a bill for tax
ing the income from United States bonds that were themselves
exempt from taxation by the terms upon which they were
issued by the general government. The validity of the act
was questioned and a concurrent resolution was passed by
the two houses requesting the judges of the Supreme Court
to give an opinion on the subject. The court was then in ses
sion and at noon on the day the resolution was sent to them
the judges gave the matter some consideration and decided
to excuse themselves from giving the opinion requested. I
was not present at their discussion, but the chief justice re
quested me during the afternoon session to prepare a decorous
reply to the legislature with reasons for their declining to give
the opinion. I asked him what reasons were to be given.
" Oh (said he), you must think them up. Write the best thing
you can and hand it up to me, and I will read it to the judges.
It is not a proper thing for us to do — that is the whole of
it." The afternoon session was just commencing, and a case
came on at once for argument, and I was compelled to think
the matter out with a vociferous lawyer making a speech
directly over my head. I took paper and pen and worked
through the task in a little over an hour. Here is what I
wrote :
To the Honorable General Assembly, now in session:
The undersigned, judges of the Supreme Court of Errors, have
had under consideration the resolution of your honorable body re
questing the opinion of the judges as to certain proposed legislation

SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP. 133
for the taxation of the income of the bonds issued by the United States
and held by inhabitants of the state.
There are in our minds so strong objections to the practice of
asking, on the part of the legislature, and of giving on the part of the
judges, opinions in advance as to the validity of contemplated legis
lation, that we feel it to be our duty, without intending any disrespect
to your honorable body, to decline to give the opinion requested.
I. Such action on our part would be clearly extra-judicial. It
would be a case purely of advice and not of judgment. There are
no parties, before us and nothing for us to adjudicate in any sense of
the term,
2, Our action being extra-judicial, and really rather our individual
than oflicial action, it cannot be of any binding character whatever.
No judge of the Supreme or Superior Court, in any case hereafter be
fore him, would be bound by our opinion. We ourselves should not
be bound by it. Being merely advice it would be in contemplation
of law, and probably in tact, of no more authority than the opinion
ot any other five experienced lawyers; except, perhaps, as we our
selves if sitting upon any such case might be inclined to adhere to
an opinion which we had expressed,
3. So far as our opinion would be regarded as having authority,
and so far as we ourselves would be influenced by it in any future case
before us, there are the more serious objections to our giving such an
opinion upon a purely cx-parte hearing, with no arguments of counsel,
no searching investigation of the principles involved, and only the con-
¦clusion that we can best arrive at upon a comparison of our several
impressions nn the subject in a consultation among ourselves,
4, There are grave reasons for regarding .such extra-judicial action
as invalid, both from its conflict with our judicial duties and from its
conflict with the legislative duties of your honorable body. As to the
latter it is clear that the judiciary cannot properly mingle in, or in any
w.iy interfere with, your separate and independent rights and duties of
legislation. As to the former it is very clear that any expression of
¦opinion on our part becomes a prejudgment of a question that may
come before us or other judges of our courts for adjudication between
litigating parties, where the parties would have a right to our un
biased judgment. It is believed that in the states where the practice pre
vails there is some constitutional provision for it. In one of the states
where there was a statute authorizing either branch of the General
Assembly to submit questions with regard to the validity of legislation
to the Supreme Court for its opinion, the judges were of the opinion
that the statute itself was unconstitutional.
5. It is, perhaps, proper that a word should be said with regard

1 34 REMINISCENCES.
to the precedents which already exist for such action in this state.
In two instances within a few years the opinion of the judges as to
the validity of acts or proposed acts of the legislature, has been asked
by the legislature and given by the judges. Both these cases were of
acts of great importance, the one affecting the right of voting, and
the other of citizenship, where an immediate opinion was needed, and
where the points involved could not well be reached by ordinary litiga
tion. Both were cases where we might without impropriety or any
offense have declined to give the opinions requested; but we thought
it better, without intending to establish or confirm a precedent, to
give the opinions.
We beg your honorable body to accept, in the assurance that noth
ing disrespectful is intended, our conclusion to decline to give any
opinion upon the question submitted to us.
I supposed that of course the judges would read the paper
over and make suggestions, which I should embody in a sec
ond draft, but they all accepted it as it was, without changing a
word, and it was at once signed by the five judges and sent to
the General Assembly. The judges who signed it were Hin
man, C. /., and Butler, McCurdy, Park, and Carpenter.
On the 19th of November, 1867, I made the following note
in my reporter note-book:
The judges, reporter, and two or three members of the New London
County bar, dined to-day with Judge Park. We had a fine dinner and
an unco,mmonly pleasant time. Mrs. Park is a beautiful woman and
very attractive in her manners. Judge Carpenter had brought on his
wife and was staying at Judge Park's. The house is delightfully
situated on the high bank on the east side of the Thames, about a
mile from the center of the city, at what is called Laurel Hill. The
view of the river from the house is very fine.
In a case at New Haven, while Judge Dutton was at the
bar, he appeared for an ignorant Irishman to resist an applica
tion for a new trial. The counsel for the plaintiff in error
made the opening argument, and when Mr. Dutton rose to
reply the chief justice said : " We do not care to hear you, Mr.
Dutton." Upon this his client arose, and, walking to the
front, said he should insist on his right to be heard, that he
was there with a good case, and that it was the duty of the

SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP 135
court to hear him. He kept on, growing more and more
earnest and voluble as he proceeded, and it was all that his
counsel could do to convince him that the court had decided
the case in his favor, and to induce him to sit down.
In a case at Bridgeport the counsel for one of the parties
had stated in his brief that his client had been " commorant "
in certain places named, applying to him the term " com
morant " half a dozen times in his brief of two pages. The
printer had in every case printed it " cormorant," and the
counsel had failed to notice the error until the copies were dis
tributed among the judges.
Chief Justice Hinman died February 21, 1870, at the age
of sixty-eight. At a meeting of the Hartford County bar, at
which addresses were made by several of the lawyers, I said a
few words, which I find reported in a paper of the next day.
I cannot better give my view of the judge's character, or the
circumstances of his last illness :
Mr. Chairman: I think the hearts of us all are touched by the death
of Judge Hinman. We have long been familiar with his presence in
the Superior Court, and as the presiding judge of the Supreme Court,
and he has had in a very large degree our confidence as an able and
upright judge. I feel myself that I have sustained a personal loss in
his death. As reporter of the court for the last twelve years, I have
been probably more familiar with him than most members of the bar.
While he was not a man with whom I should have naturally formed
an intimate friendship, for we disagreed about almost everything but
law, yet brought by my official duties so much into his society I came
to respect and esteem and love him, and we have been for several years
very warm friends. We talked up very frequently and very good na-
turedly almost everything that we differed about, from politics to Con
gregationalism and Episcopacy. As a judge he was remarkable for his
vigorous common sense. I have never known a man who had more. A
bench composed of several judges,fas is ours, contains men of various
mental constitutions, and such a man as he forms an indispensable mem
ber of such a court. At the end of a long consultation among the
judges he would come in with a vigorous, incisive and decisive common
sense that seemed to settle the question. He had a large knowledge of
law (for as he told me, he never forgot what good law he had once
read), and was always able to refer readily to the principle that was to
govern a case, and yet his opinion seemed to be rather the expression of

1 36 REMINISCENCES.
common sense than of law. He had no fondness for legal casuistry,
and a not very nicely discriminating mind. His honesty seemed to
be rather constitutional with him than to come from any very nice
conscientiousness. He seemed to go right because he could not help
it. After hearing a complicated case, it seemed as if he had only to
shake his head, and let his brain settle to a level, and the case was
decided and decided right. He never seemed to have an anxiety as to
how he would come put, as he felt sure he would come out about right,
and he never worried himself very much afterwards for fear he might
have gone wrong. His very freedo.m from anxiety was a guarantee
against any perturbation of his mind or error of his .judgment.
He was taken ill at New Haven while the Supreme Court was in
session there two weeks ago to-night, and the next morning was ad
vised by a physician whom he called in to go home, as he might be
ill for a few days, though no one supposed the matter to be serious.
He was to take the eleven o'clock train, and I left him at the hotel
and went into the court-room at nine. A little before eleven I went
to the hotel to help him off and to go with him, if he desired, to the
railroad station. I had some pleasant talk with him as I was helping
him pack his carpet-bag, but as he thought there was no need of
my going to the station with him, I took leave of him there. The last
thing as I was going I said to him, " Well, Judge, I hope this illness
won't amount to much, but I have always feared that some short ill
ness would carry ypu off. There must be a last time and that generally
comes when we don't expect it. Now I want to feel that you are ready
to go." " Oh," said he, " Mr. Hooker, I believe I am ready. Good
bye." And these were the last words that were ever exchanged be
tween us. I supposed that he was getting better, and was taken en
tirely by surprise on hearing of his death last evening. I am sure the
bench has lost an able judge. I know that I have lost a good friend.
Chief Justice Butler died on June 8, 1873. He had been
hopelessly ill, , and had sent in his resignation three weeks
before his death, so that the legislature, which was then near
the close of its session, might select liis' successor.. .The
legislature at once elected Judge Origen^S. Seymour of the
Supreme Court to the place of chief justice, and Judge John D.
Park of that court to be chief justice on Judge Seymour's be
coming seventy years of age, which would be on the 9th of
February, 1874. The new chief justice presided at the June
term of the court at Litchfield, where he resided, and on the
'evening of the first day gave a tea party at his house for the
court and its attendants. I find this note under date of June

SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP. 137
iith in my note-book: " A very pleasant tea party last even-
mg at Chief Justice Seymour's. Present all the judges and
myself and wife; also Mrs. Judge Carpenter, George C. Wood
ruff and wife, Edward W. Seymour and wife, and Judge Sey
mour's family, consisting of himself and wife and his daugh
ter, a very pleasing and agreeable lady." My wife and I had
driven up in a private carriage, and after the term closed
started westward on a month's journey.
Chief Justice Seymour retired on the 9th of February,
1874, ahd Judge Park became chief justice. His last term
was that held in Fairfield County on the 27th of January of
that year. The bar of Fairfield County gave him an elegant
banquet on one of the evenings of the term. There were pres
ent the governor of the state. Judge Park, the chief justice-elect, '
the other Supreme Court judges, the reporter, several of the
judges of the Superior Court, Judge Woodruff of the United
States Circuit Court, and a large number of the members of
the bar, including several from other counties. Mr. James
C. Loomis presided, and after the supper was over made the
opening address. He gave as the first toast " Our Chief Jus
tice." To this Judge Seymour responded as follows:
I stand here to-night on the eve of separation from pursuits to which
during a long life I. have been devoted. I have enjoyed my pro
fessional life at the bar and on the bench, and I do not and cannot
look with indifference upon my approaching separation from these
duties. I, however, make no quarrel with the constitutional provision under
which my retirement' takes place. "The days of our years are three
score years and ten; " when those years are accomplished, nature craves
,a brief period of repose between, on the one hand, the active duties. of
life, and its final close on the other.
I submissively bow. therefore, to the law of the land, believing it
to be in harmony with the law of nature, but at the same time I
cherish the memories of professional life, and part from it with fond
regrets, and I will occupy your time a few moments this evening in
suggesting ~some particulars wherein the lawyer's life among the varied
pursuits of mankind is regarded by me as a favored one.
I was admitted to the bar in my native county of Litchfield in 1826,
and I at once found myself in possession of a privilege which I then
thought might be peculiar to myself, but which I afterwards found was
common to all young lawyers, to wit, the privilege of fellowship on free
10

138 REMINISCENCES.
and easy terms with the elder brethren. I well remember the pleasure
of these associations and the help I derived from them. It is pleasant
to recall the names of the giants in those days when I was a stripling —
Bacon, Miner, Huntington, Beers, Boardman, the Churches, and Smith.
When I found myself in a snarl, and that happened to me semi-daily,
I always found relief in the ready and cheerfully given counsel of these,
my venerable seniors.
It is a truth familiar to us all, that lawyers, young and old, high and
low, rich and poor, associate together with great freedom; not perhaps
that we love one another more than the medical faculty, but our busi
ness brings us constantly into association with our brethren; our labors
are not isolated, but performed in public and in each other's company,
whereby we become thoroughly acquainted with each other. No .man
can conduct a complicated cause in court without showing to his breth
ren what manner of man he is. If he has mind, industry, learning, and
culture, he shows it; his temper and disposition will show themselves.
If he has integrity and truthfulness in him, they will appear. If, on
the contrary, he is a sham, everybody will see it. The practice of chang
ing partners as associate counsel brings lawyers into the most intimate
relations with each other. It is amusing to notice gentlemen who are
opposed to each other in the morning almost to personal altercation,
in the afternoon engaged as associates, and at once as familiar and inti
mate with each other as the Siamese twins. We become therefore thor
oughly acquainted with each other and wear no .masks in each other's
society. In this connection, if time allowed, I would like to describe the bar
meetings of olden time, which had a lingering existence fifty years ago,
but those old-fashioned gatherings could not be conducted on temper
ance principles, and upon the advent of the temperance reformation they
" took the chills " and died out. But the chief attraction of the profes
sion Hes in the inherent dignity of the law itself, controlling as it does,
by its silent power, the moving masses in all their various relations
and interests — in the equity, calm wisdom and dispassionate justice
of its precepts — in its noble history in the past, and in the services
and accomplishments of its living professors.
The bar has always drawn to itself the best talent and highest culture
of the country, and hence the contests of the bar, conducted by skillful
and learned counsel, furnish scenes of intense and instructive interest.
The marvelous and varied powers of the human mind are in these con
tests called for and developed in a manner and to an extent unequaled
on any other arena.
I readily recall many such scenes, as lively and dramatic as the
inventions of Shakespeare's genius. I would not be understood, how
ever, as saying that the court-room was exactly " paradise regained."

SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP. 139
The scenes are generally animated, spirited, and varied; sometimes,
however, dull and stupid, sometimes disgusting, exhibiting human
nature in its most revolting form; and the members of the bar have
much thankless labor, many sleepless nights and bitter disappointments.
But it is in his library that the true disciple of the law finds his
highest satisfaction. He can here interrogate the masters of juris
prudence, ancient and modern, upon the matter he has in hand, and
will seldom fail of getting an appropriate answer. I yield no blind
obedience to authorities and precedents. Law is a progressive science.
When it is said that law is the perfection of reason, it is not to be
understood that all the utterances of judges and jurists are such. There
are mistakes and errors in the past which the present may correct, and
there are mistakes and errors in the present which it is to be hoped
the future will correct, but, taken as a whole, a law library is replete
with sound truths, applicable more or less directly to the various living
issues pending before the courts, not mere abstract truths worked out
in the closet, but truths upon which learned arguments have been heard
at the bar, and learned consultations had by the bench, so that all
available learning on the subject is brought forward and has received
its due weight. It is diflicult to overestimate the value of the well-
weighed opinions of such chancellors as Hardwick, Eldon, and Kent,
and of such judges as Mansfield, Ellenborough, and Marshall,
Among the most cherished memories of my professional life is
the intimate acquaintance which I have enjoyed with all the eminent
jurists who have adorned the bench of the state during the last fifty
years, I need not recite their familiar names in this assembly, but you
win permit riie, occupying the position I do, to repeat the names of
those who have filled the high office I am about to lay down, nomina
clara, each of which upon bare mention suggests all the virtues pertain
ing to their high judicial position.
When I came to the bar the chief justiceship was held by the learned
Hosmcr, followed in quick succession by Daggett, Williams, Church,
Waite, Storrs, and Hinman, and then by my immediate predecessor,
the lamented Butler, companion, friend, brother. In this, his native
county, he needs no eulogy from me. In the reports of his judicial
opinions he has raised to himself a monument, aerc pcrcnni}ts. Allow
me in conclusion to propose as 5t toast, " The memory of the honored
dead of the bench and bar of the state,"
This toast was drunk in silence, all standing. Governor
Ingersoll replied in a most eloquent speech to a toast to the
"Governor of the State." Other addresses were made by
Judge Park, the new chief justice. Judge Foster, Judge Wood
ruff of New York. G. H. Hollister, and Mr. White of Dan-

I40 REMINISCENCES.
bury. Mr. Sumner of the Bridgeport bar, who was judge of
probate for the district, read the following poem, which he
said had been written the day before at the suggestion of a
leading member of the bar:
I knew, I knew, these lively chaps would stop at nothing short
Of seeking in this deadful strife the court of last resort;
In other words, the court that Waits the drainage of life's cup,
And then inquires for all his pranks how .much the man " cuts up,"
I tell you when you probe the Court of Probate, you shall find,
In consequence of consequence, it isn't far behind;
It wants a man of parts, be sure, to understand the rules.
To care for all the widows and the infants and the fools,
I magnify my office then, as everybody should.
And say that, in a quiet way, I am doing heaps of good;
It's all the speech I'll make for my constituents' dissection,
You'll see in only two months hence there'll be a new election.
But this is neither here nor there; I chiefly rise to say
How pleased I am to meet our proud fraternity to-day.
And help entwine a graceful wreath around his honored brow.
Who, having fought a noble fight, puts off his armor now.
Thrice blest the man who, counting up his three score years and ten.
Presents a model in himself unto his fellow-men;
And in the plenitude of all his varied, ripened powers,
Beholds a gladsome retrospect of unncglccted hours.
And gazing forward can discern a pleasant pilgrimage
Adown the smooth declivities of a serene old age;
Assured that when his day is done, he shall but sink to rest,
As summer sun, with all his radiant banners, in the west.
E'en such the .man whose patriarchal presence here we greet,
As round the festive board to-night his fond disciples meet,
To here pronounce o'er him our benedictive word, " Well done! "
And for ourselves uplift the prayer, " God bless us every one! "
Let wiseacres and shallow fools deny the truth who can,
The thorough lawyer can but be, and is, the thorough man;
What cultured gifts must all combine and in his being blend.
Not all mankind I ween are fit to gauge or comprehend.
What arduous toil, what anxious care, how vigorous the school
Wherein our jealous mistress holds us subject to her rule,
Is ours who strive our best within this sphere of life to go.
Let those, and those alone, recount, who best can feel and know.

SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP. 141
I've made a brief upon this point, and from statistics say.
The lawyers, of professionals, do most for smallest pay;
The average lawyer — overhaul the record and be sure —
Works always hard, lives pretty well, and goes to Heaven poor.
And yet we lead a pleasant life, the company is good.
And gentle fellowship obtains within our brotherhood;
Exceptions but confirm the rule, and, take us all together,
A nobler band, I dare declare, were never bound by tether.
And all the world, whate'er it says, respects the legal calling,
And must confess that but for us its state would be appalling.
The very man who finds in our pursuit the biggest flaw,
If he can boast a boy with brains, will have him study law.
My time is up — a health to all; and unto him, ere while,
Our honored chief, who now returns to join the rank and file.
Long life — and when in heavenly courts he stands at last, be then
His children's children's proudest boast — illustrious Origen!
At the same session of the court in Fairfield County the
case of Bailey vs. Bussing was argued. Mr. H. S. Sanford,
one of the counsel, in his argument remarked that the case had
been in court eighteen years, and was now carried for the
fourth time to the Supreme Court, and commented on the at
tenuated thread of life that was left to it. He then said:
" The late Chief Justice Storrs in one of his opinions quotes,
very pertinently, two lines from one of Watts's hymns. So in
this case I go to the same authority for two fines that bear very
directly upon the present case:
" Oh, Lord, on what a slender thread
Hang- ever last ing things."
The quotation made by Judge Storrs is in the case of Hoyt
vs. Smith, 27 Conn. R., 68.
At the next session of the court at Norwich, Judge Park,
now chief justice, invited me to dine at his house, and I find
this entry under date of March 11, 1874:
" I took dinner at Judge Park's, .meeting there Judge Carpenter,
who is staying with him, Webster Park, the judge's brother, and three
ladies who had been invited. An excellent dinner and a sociable and
enjoyable time. Mrs. Park is a beautiful woman, and full of vivacity,
and fond of hospitality. The judge is full of plain common sense and
bears his new honors as chief justice very modesdy."

142 REMINISCENCES.
An incident that would have come very pertinently in my
chapter on Charles Chapman would have been overlooked en
tirely but for a newspaper account of it which was published
in 1874, and which I had preserved at that time in my note
book. The case of Collins vs. Hall was tried in the Superior
Court at Hartford in 1843, Mr. Chapman being counsel for
the plaintiff and Governor EHsworth for the defendant. This
was some time before Governor Ellsworth went upon the
Supreme Court, and while he was in general practice. The
suit was brought to recover the value of a horse called " Black
Prince." Mr. Chapman was always in his element in a horse
case and brought all his skill and all his wit to the service of
his client in this case. It appeared that the horse had been
employed for many years in carrying the mail from Hartford
to Barkhamsted, and later was turned out to fatten in a pas
ture, and finally by some means came into the hands of the de
fendant. The plaintiff, the original owner, had never got his
pay for him, and brought this suit for it. Mr. Chapman had
been extolling the horse extravagantly, and Governor Ells
worth in reply advised him to write a suitable epitaph for such
a rare horse. Governor Ellsworth had been governor of the
state for four successive years, but was finally defeated for the
first time in 1842. The winter following, and just before this
trial, his horse had run away with a sleigh dragging at his
heels, and before he could be stopped had plunged into the
Connecticut River and was drowned. Mr. Chapman, after
the suggestion that he should write an epitaph on the horse,
took his pen, and before Governor Ellsworth had finished his
argument wrote these lines, which in his closing argument he
read to the court and jury :
A faithful steed who long had served,
And never from his duty swerved.
Had drawn for years o'er hill and dale
The Hartford and Barkhamsted mail;
Who never in his youth or prime
Was even once behind the time,
And e'er, though always poorly fed.
Was proud and stately in his tread;
At last was taken from the stage
Because of his advancing age,

SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP 143
And turned to range and feed at will
Upon a barren Hartland hill.
He fattened there, grew sleek and nice,
And would command 'most any price,
When he, in latter part of fall,
Was led away by David Hall.
The owner never since that day
Has seen the horse or got his pay.
And thinks it don't surpass belief
That the " Black Prince " has died of grief.
Just so another prouder horse,
Whose master had run off the course.
So deeply mortified vv'as he,
He sought the bottom of the sea,
By plunging in the river's bed,
And that proud horse, he, too, is dead.
During the March term, 1876, at Norwich, I had one of
my not infrequent dinners at Judge Foster's. I find this note
in my book: " Had a very pleasant dinner party at Judge
Foster's, consisting of Judge Loomis, who is staying with
Judge Foster, Judge Pardee, and myself, Mrs. Foster being
the only lady present. Mr. Halsey was invited, but was not
able to come. Nobody does up such hospitalities quite so
handsomely as Judge and Mrs. Foster." The judge was liv
ing very handsomely in a fine residence in the upper part of the
city. Judge Foster had a remarkable verbal memory, and was
able to quote largely from the standard poets and the English
and Latin classics, greatly enlivening his conversation, which
was always brilliant, by the most apposite quotations. Dur
ing the September term of the court in Bridgeport in 1876
one of the counsel in arguing a case quoted the well-known
passage, " The discretion of the judge is the law of tyrants,"
and ascribed it to Lord Brougham. After he had finished his
argument, Judge Foster called his attention to his error in
ascribing the passage to Lord Brougham instead of Lord
Camden, and then gave the entire paragraph from memory,
as follows: " The discretion of a judge is the law of tyrants.
It is different in different men. It is casual, and depends
upon constitution, temper, and passion. In the best it is

144

REMINISCENCES.

oftentimes caprice; in the worst it is every vice, foHy, and pas
sion to which human nature is liable."
Judge Foster retired on the 13th of November, 1876, hav
ing attained the age of seventy. I find this note with regard
to the matter in my book: "Judge Foster's retirement is a
cause of general regret, and to me of absolute sorrow; I have
come to feel so great an attachment for him and to enjoy his
society so much."
I find this note in my note-book, under date of May 30,
1877, the May term of the court at Litchfield having closed
the day before: " The judges and reporter spent all the fore
noon in looking over the magnificent ' Echo Farm ' of Mr.
Starr, a mile east of the vihage of Litchfield, upon his invita
tion, partaking of a very nice collation of coffee, ice-cream, and
cake just before we left. The farm is very interesting — mag
nificent improvements, splendid stock, the finest of farm-build
ings and machinery. Mr. Starr is wealthy and an earnest
Christian man. It was a visit of great interest to me."
At the January term in Hartford in the year 1878 I have
a note of the attendance of the court upon the inauguration of
Governor Hubbard. It was the last session of the General
Assembly in the old State House, and near the last of the ses
sion of the Supreme Court in the court-room there. The
judges went up to the Representatives' Hall over the court
room in a body, with the reporter and clerk of the court, the
sheriff preceding, and took seats that had been reserved
near the speaker's desk. Lieutenant-Governor Loomis pre
sided over the joint convention of the two houses. Speaker
Briscoe sitting by his side. The governor soon came in with
his staff, the latter in full military dress, and after a prayer by
Rev. Mr. Parker of the South Church, Governor Hubbard
read his message, a most admirable document. A little be
fore five the judges returned to the court-room and proceeded
with a hearing that had been suspended. My admiration and
affection for Governor Hubbard made the occasion one of
great interest to me.
During the same term at Hartford, the judges and reporter
were invited to go at 2 o'clock to Colt's Pistol Factory to see

SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP. 145
the operation of the Catling gun, then gaining great notoriety,
under the explanation of Dr. Catling, the inventor. Carriages
were furnished for us and we went down after dinner, getting
back at twenty-minutes before four. We were greatly in
terested in observing the working of the gun and hearing the
explanations. At the January term in liartford in 1879 the Supreme
Court met for the first time in its fine hall in the new capitol —
a large and elegant room. Rev. Mr. Twichell of Hartford
opened the session with a dedicatory prayer.
The term at Bridgeport in October, 1880, was made pain
fully memorable by the fact that Judge Carpenter had just had
a stroke of paralysis, and was lying in a critical condition.
Judge Hovey of the Superior Court was called in to sit in his
place. At the term held at Hartford in May, 1882, the celebrated
case of Mary Hall's application for admission to the bar was
argued and decided. This was but fifteen years ago, and yet
such is the progress of public sentiment in favor of opening
all professional and industrial pursuits to women that such an
application would now encounter little opposition, and per
haps attract but little attention. It was then regarded as of
very doubtful result. Many lawyers who would not have ob
jected to the enactment by the legislature of a law authorizing
the admitting of women to the bar, were yet very strongly of the
opinion that such a statute was necessary. It had been so de
cided in Massachusetts, in Illinois, and by the Supreme Court
of the District of Columbia. Our statute authorizing the ad
mission of attorneys was, with no important changes, nearly
two hundred years old, and made no distinction of sex, but
substantially authorized the appointment of any person found
qualified. Of course it was claimed that that statute had
never contemplated the appointment of women, and this had
to be conceded. Miss Hall had been examined in the regular
way by the committee of the bar, who had reported to the bar
that the examination was satisfactory, and the bar had voted
to admit her, subject to the opinion of the Supreme Court on
the legal question whether, as a woman, she could be admitted

146 REMINISCENCES.
under the statute. The bar also appointed two of its members
to argue the case, Mr. Thomas McManus in favor of the ap
plication, and Mr. Goodwin CoHier against it. Judge Beards
ley, before whom the case came in the Superior Court, reserved
it for the advice of the Supreme Court. When the case came
on in this court I argued it, on behalf of Miss Hall, with Mr.
McManus, and Mr. Collier made an elaborate argument on
the other side. It was heard on the 5th of May, and the judges
held it under consideration tiU the I9tli of July, when they de
cided in her favor, Judge Pardee alone dissenting, and he only
on the ground that a new statute was necessary. The judges
who constituted the majority were Chief Justice Park and
Judges Carpenter and Loomis. Judge Beardsley of the
Superior Court, who sat at this term in place of Judge Granger,
who was unable to attend, was absent during the argument of
this case, but told me afterward that if he had been present he
should have been in favor of granting Miss Hall's application.
This decision was a great step in the direction of the recogni
tion of the rights of women.
In June, 1891, Judge Loomis retired, having reached the
age of seventy. He resided in Rockville, in Tolland County,
and the bar of that county gave him a banquet in Rockville at
which the other judges and the reporter were invited, and a
large number of the older lawyers from the other counties.
Mr. B. H. Bill presided, and after a very handsome opening ad
dress presented Judge Loomis, who spoke as follows :
Mr. President and my Brethren of the Bench and Bar:
I wish I could frame my response in as elegant a manner as the reso
lutions just presented have been framed and engrossed by the Tolland
County Bar. I heartily thank its members for this beautiful testi
monial, and I thank you all for this striking manifestation of your
affection and esteem, which has deeply touched my heart and kindled a
gratitude that can never grow cold. I also owe you many thanks for
your kindness in the past. During the twenty-seven years that I have
continuously occupied a seat upon the bench, I have been treated with
great consideration and respect by all the members, young and old,
of the bar of the state, and by all my brother judges without a solitary
exception. Whatever measure of success I may have attained on the
judiciary, I owe in no small degree to the stimulus and encourage
ment you have thus afforded. And yet, while I confess the pleasure

SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP. 147
and satisfaction your kind appreciation has given and will give me
during the remainder of my Hfe, I feel unworthy the high praise you
have so freely bestowed,
I have always carried in my mind a lofty ideal of what a judge should
be, and yet at the same time I have felt an humiliating consciousness of
falling far short of my ideal; and were I called upon to decide the
question, I should have to find that your commendation fits the ideal
judge better than the real one. My ideal judge is one possessing rich
and varied stores of learning; a conscience void of offense toward
God and man; a patient judgment, unclouded by prejudice or passion;
a love of truth whatever it may be as it comes from the lips of witnesses
or from books of the law; and a moral courage that disdains the least
intimidation, and rejects as unlawful intrusion all outside advice or
influence not fairly belonging to the case. This last qualification was
grandly illustrated by Lord Chief Justice Coke, who, in the reign of
James the First, resisted so manfully the unjust assumption of kingly
prerogative. The following question was put in behalf of the king
to the judges:
" In a case where the king believes his perogative or interests con
cerned, and requests the judges to attend him for their advice, might
they not stay proceedings till his majesty has consulted them?"
Most of the judges made haste to say " Yes, yes, yes," but Chief
Justice Coke said: " When the case happens, I shall do that which shall
be fit for a judge to do! "
Could I have realized the fond picture constantly in my mind and
heart, I should have been much better satisfied with my career as a
judge. As my official life work is finished and all further opportunity
for me has been foreclosed, I now turn hopefully and confidently to
.my beloved brethren still on the bench to avoid my many mistakes
and to realize the lofty conceptions of the judicial office which I have
portrayed. I have always had a high regard for the legal profession,
and my ideal of the true lawyer is almost identical with that of the
judge. The lawyer needs the same rich stores of learning, the same
conscience and love of truth, the same manliness and disdain of in
timidation. And having this high conception of the legal profession,
I have always combated the unreasonable prejudice which has at
times existed against it. This prejudice must have been strong in
Shakespeare's time, as evidenced by the dialogue between Dick, the
butcher and Jack Cade. Says Dick, " The first thing we do let's kill
all the lawyers." Says Cade, " Nay, that I mean to do. Is not that
a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made
parchment' That parchment being scribbled over should undo a
man. Some say the bee stings, but I say 'tis the bee's wax, for I did
but seal once to a thing and I was never mine own man since.

148 REMINISCENCES.
Our own colonial records also afford evidence that the general court
had grave apprehensions on account of the prospective increase of
lawyers, for in May, 1729, an act was passed, with a preamble, reciting
that many persons of late had taken upon them to be attorneys at the
bar, so that quarrels and lawsuits were multiplied and the king's
good subjects disturbed, and providing " that there shall be in the
colony eleven attorneys and no more, viz. : three in the county of Hart
ford and two in each of the other four counties."
I ought to remark that the medical profession as well as the legal
has been the object of popular prejudice, and of a similar character.
Dr. James Hamilton has said of his profession: "When people are
ill they call us in like angels, but when they are well they kick us out
like devils.'' Since my admission to the bar I have noticed with
pleasure that this prejudice has been gradually growing less and less,
till now it has almost disappeared.
In this connection it may not be inappropriate to relate an incident
of my early practice in this town. As in the contemplation of the
constitution I am approaching my legal dotage, a little legal anecdotage
may be expected. When I came to this town in 1847 these valleys
and rocks had never heard the voice of a resident lawyer, and as I
came without any previous call from the people I was for a time looked
at through the blue haze of distrust and apprehension. Soon, how
ever, I had a client, and brought a suit before a leading justice in the
Vernon part of the town. The defendant, true to the instincts of the
people, scorned to employ a lawyer, and so he conducted his own case.
I opened and closed the argument with zeal, if not according to
knowledge, and as I sat down there was a hush in the room to hear
the decision. The justice said, " I give judgment to the plaintiff," and
a feeling of satisfaction and pride was just rising within when I re
ceived a sudden shower-bath from the stern utterance of the justice,
who, looking me in the face, said: " I decide this case for the plaintiff,
but it is not owing to anything you have said, sir." I doubt whether
this incident can fairly be cited to illustrate an unreasonable prejudice
against the legal profession, for I remember that, like many a young
lawyer of that day, I talked very loud, although I stood not over four
or five feet distant from the justice whom I addressed.
Chief Justice Tindall was once asked whether he regarded a certain
person as a sound lawyer, and he replied: " You raise a doubtful point;
whether roaring is unsoundness? " With me it was a manifest case
of roaring, but it was sound!
I remember another thing also calculated to excite prejudice; I
drew a very long writ containing .many different counts for the same
cause of action, I ought to congratulate myself for getting off so well.
I was much amused recently on reading the record of a case against

SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP. 149
an English lawyer, decided in 1596, who was tried for using too many
words! — a most improbable oft'ense from our standpoint, especially
in the Supreme Court, where so much is submitted on briefs. The
record alluded to shows that the offending barrister had made a repli
cation covering 120 sheets of paper, when sixteen would have been
ample. The judge who called him to account and found these facts,
ordered that the offender be taken into custody, and that a hole be cut
in the replication and his head thrust through the hole, and that he be
led around bare-headed and bare-footed with this enormous replication
hanging about his neck, written-side out, and that he be set at the
bar at each of the three courts around Westminister Hall, and in addi
tion he was ordered to pay a heavy fine.
Since the passage of our new Practice Act, which was designed to
simplify proceedings, I have noticed that the pleadings are much
longer than they were under the common-law system; but there is no
danger, I trust, that any pleader will equal the English precedent in the
face of such a warning. Much prolixity comes from hasty work and
from the feeling that too much is always safer than too little. This is
applicable to pleading, not to a banquet. Upon this principle a lawyer
in drawing a complaint against a common carrier, set forth the duty of
the carrier in the words of the law, that he must carry safely and make
good all losses except those arising from the act of God, etc.; then he
alleged that the loss was not caused by the act of the aforesaid God,
but solely by the act of the defendant. Our ideals, whether as judges
or lawyers, make no provision for mistakes, but " to err is human,"
and judges are as thoroughly human as lawyers, and hence our mistakes
are many.
In my early practice at the bar, there lived in this town within a .mile
of the place where we are, a man by the name of Bruce, who carried a
very homely person but a very level head. He often served as juror —
usually as foreman. I brought a pauper case to the County Court.
There was at the time a vacancy in the judgeship of this county, and a
judge from an adjoining county^ presided. Bruce was foreman of the
jury; I had perfect confidence in my case and presented it as well as
I could. But the charge was direcdy against all my positions, and I
thought I was gone up sure, but felt some relief when the jury re
ported that they were not agreed. The judge warmed over his charge
again and again and sent the jury back for further consideration, till
they came in the third time still " not agreed," when they were dis
charged from the case. Anxious to know what snag had got into the
case I asked some of the jurors how they stood, and they said they were
all for the defendant except Bruce; that they tried hard to induce him to
agree on a verdict for the defendant, telling him that he was bound to
take the law from the court, but he replied that he knew he was bound

1 50 REMINISCENCES.
to take the law from the court, but he was not bound to take damned
nonsense! I do not believe there is a state in the Union where the relations of
Bench and Bar are more agreeable and harmonious than in this state.
I hope and trust it may always be so. If a judge harbors ill-will
towards counsel or counsel towards the judge, some injustice is the sure
result and the dignity of the court will be greatly impaired.
Of course, a little pleasantry is permissible, and is not inconsistent
with proper dignity, A case was on trial before a Judge Green, when
counsel cited as an authority upon the point in issue, " Browne on the
Statute of Frauds," but he pronounced the name of the author,
Browne-e, when the judge suggested that he ought not to sound the
¦¦ e,'' saying that his own name (Greene) ended with an " e," and he
asked the lawyer how he would pronounce that. The lawyer replied:
" That depends upon how your honor decides this case."
Owing to the lateness of the hour and the general interest to hear
our distinguished friends who are present, I forbear making the further
remarks I had contemplated and will only add that in my retirement
I shall have to forego the pleasure of your friendly greetings as often
as I have heretofore enjoyed them. But I shall keep you all in fond
remembrance and cherish to the last hour of my earthly life a lively
interest in everything affecting the honor and dignity of the bench
and the bar.
On the Sth of August, 1891, occurred the golden wedding
of my wife and myself. I shall devote a chapter by itself to this
occurrence. The judges of the Supreme Court were holding
a meeting for consultation at the capitol all day, and in the
afternoon came in a body to the hall where our friends were
gathered, to participate for an hour in the festivities of the oc
casion. There were also present ex-Chief Justice Park and
Judge Loomis.
Edward W. Seymour, a son of Chief Justice Origen Sey
mour, and one of our most eminent lawyers, was appointed
a member of the Supreme Court in 1889, and discharged his
judicial duties with great ability. On the i6th of October,
1892, he died very suddenly at Litchfield in the sixtieth year
of his age, after an acute ihness of only twenty-four hours.
His funeral took place at Litchfield, October 17th, and was
largely attended. My own personal relations with him had for
a long time been very pleasant, and his death was to me a per
sonal affliction. My wife went up with me to attend the

SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP.

151

funeral. A very warm tribute to his memory was written
by Judge Fenn in a Winsted paper, which is weH worth pre
serving and which I copy here:
" Last Sunday morning at Litchfield there passed from weekday toil
into Sunday rest, fro.m work so consecrated that it was worship, into
eternal peace, as pure a soul and as gentle as ever parted from earth
to enter heaven. One who speaks from a torn heart because he loved
him living, and loves him dead; one who met him in delightful social
intercourse four days last week, the last time on Friday, in seeming
health, full of life and its interests, and to whom the telegram an
nouncing his sudden death came with shocking agony, can neither be
silent nor speak with a calm dispassionate utterance, in such an hour,
Edward W, Seymour lies dead at the age of sixty in the town in
which he was born, and on the street where he had always lived. The
oldest son of the late Chief Justice Origen S. Seymour, he inherited
the rare judicial temperament, the calm, candid, impartial judgment,
the love of mercy-tempered justice, so essentially characteristic of his
father. Educated at Yale College, a graduate of the famous class of
1853, studying law in his father's office, entering into partnership with
him, early and frequently called to represent his town, and later his
senatorial district, in the General Assembly, a useful member of Con
gress for four years, having in the meantime, by devotion to his pro
fession, as well as by natural ability, become the acknowledged leader
of the bar in the two counties of Litchfield and Fairfield; certainly it
was the principle of natural selection which, three years ago, led to
his choice as a member of our highest judicial tribunal, the Supreme
Court of Errors of this state. While of his services upon that court
this is neither the time nor place to speak with fuHness, it has been the
privilege of the writer to know them somewhat thoroughly, and be
cause of such knowledge he can the more truly bear witness to the
rare spirit of fidelity to duty, to justice, to law, as a living, pervading,
and beneficent rule of action, with which, whether upon the bench
Hstening to and weighing the arguments and contentions of counsel,
in private study, in the consultation room, or in the written opinions
of the court which bear his name, the high duties of that great office
have been sacredly discharged. When Chief Justice Seymour died,
Governor Richard D, Hubbard, in a public address, declared: " I think
we can all say in very truth and soberness, and with nothing of ex
travagance in eulogy, that we have just lost the foremost, undeniably
the foremost, lawyer, and, take him for all in all, the noblest citizen
of our state," If it be too much to say this of the son whose years
were almost a score less than those of the father, surely it is not too
much to affirm that never did son tread more worthily in the footsteps
of an honored parent, and never did untimely death break. truer

1 5 2 REMINISCENCES.
promise than this which has deprived our state of those years of
ripened usefulness, which would have made the career of the son as
fruitful in honor and all good, and good to all, as that of the sire.
But God knows best. Certainly, to him who lies crowned with the
beatitude of Christ upon the pure in heart, it is well."
Judge Fenn, who wrote this eulogistic notice of his friend,
has been with him in the spirit world since the summer of 1897,
So the prcSession moves on.
I have referred in a former chapter {ante, p. 128) to a habit
in which I indulged myself in the later years of my reporter-
ship, of taking a few minutes' nap at my desk in the court
room, when the room was warm and the argument long and
tedious, and have mentioned there an exceedingly witty re
mark of Judge Pardee's about it. This habit was a subject of
frequent jocose allusion on the part of the judges, though their
own occasional lapses in this respect saved me from anything
but the most good-natured reference to it. I have too often
seen even a chief justice doze to feel any great compunction
about it. But Judge Granger, who was the humorist of the
court, at least so far as very ready but rather uncouth rhyming
was concerned, would very frequently toss me a squib about it
if he happened to find me napping. I generally handed him
up an answer. Some of these squibs I find I entered on my
note-book. One afternoon, during a very long and very
tedious argument, I fell into a doze with my head thrown back
from which I awoke myself by a snore. Immediately a paper
came down from the bench with this on it :
The clock pointed to the hour of four;
The lawyer read from books of ancient lore;
The reporter started up and said, " I snore! "
I at once handed it back with this written underneath:
The judge scowled at the lawyer — " What a bore! "
Then looked at the reporter with " Encore " ;
Then at the lawyer looked again and swore.
To this a few minutes later came the following rejoinder:
And all the court concurred, and swore
That never had there been a bore
That on their nerves so harshly wore,
And wished that they with John might snore.

SOME INCIDENTS OF MY REPORTERSHIP- 153
On another like occasion Judge Granger sent me the fol
lowing lines: .
John sleeps a strong sleep; no snooze can be deeper
Than the slumber that falls on this champion sleeper.
There is none that can beat him in sleeping by day,
Except the old chaps who are mentioned by Gray,
Who sleep 'neath the shade of the elm and the yew,
Unmindful of sunlight and moonlight and dew,
And heed not the fall of a state or a star;
So John sleeps along midst the din of the bar.
I scribbled the following reply, and handed it to Judge
Granger. It is to be observed that he was an enormous
smoker, always (except when sitting in court) having a cigar
in his mouth ; also that he was a great card player, and that he
was immensely fond of stories and jokes; and it must be con
fessed that he had no fondness for hard thinking :
In an easy arm chair sits
Judge Granger when at home;
Turning his feeble wits
To this and that by fits,
Wherever they choose to roam.
Now law, now cards, and now and then a " pome ";
With frequent savory drinks,
And most unsavory jokes;
One thing never.
He never thinks;
One thing ever.
He ever smokes.
Not long after this I caught Judge Granger in a sound
sleep in his seat with the judges, and drew a likeness of him as
he lay back with his mouth open, his appearance presenting a
most tempting object for a caricaturist. Underneath it I
wrote, "Taking ajudicial Attitude," and on his waking I
handed it to him.
On a later occasion he handed me down the following
lines, signing them " Hans Breitman ":
Oh, Shonny, how you vas?
Vy dond you gone to sleep?
Your hies dey seem to vink
Shust like you took some trink,
II

1 5 4 REMINISCENCES.
I dinks you petter sthop
And take von leedle naps,
'Twill petter make you veel,
Shust Hke some Scheidam Schnaps,
I might add many more extracts from my note-book of the
same general character with those I have given, but I have al
ready made my chapter too long. It has saddened me very
much as I have looked over my notes of the arguments of
counsel and the decisions of the judges, with my record of in
cidents of interest, to see how almost all the lawyers and
judges have gone over to the majority. Judge Granger has
been in his grave for nearly three years, and not one of the
judges of ten years ago is now living except Judge Loomis,
who several years ago retired and is now spending his old age
near me at Hartford. Not one of the judges, and I think but
three of the more recent lawyers, lived to my present age (82,
April, 1898). John T. Wait of Norwich is my senior by about
three years. With this exception, I am now the oldest lawyer
in the state, and I have for several years been the senior member
of the Hartford bar. My long life as reporter of the court has
been an exceedingly pleasant one, free from the anxiety that
counsel feel in the trial of their causes, and from the responsi
bility that lies heavily upon the judges, while the social life was
very enjoyable. There could not be better company than that
of the judges, especially in their consulting room and at the
tables of the hotels, while the cordiality of the members of the
bar throughout the state, with their occasional elegant hospi
tality, brought a large element of the holiday into my working
life. To one who is educated to the law, and who takes readily
to fine critical work, is satisfied with a fair salary, and has no
great ambition for a leading position and for fame, I know of no
more satisfactory life than that of a reporter of a Supreme Court
— a life very satisfactory as it passes and very satisfactory to
look back upon. I count it a felicity to have been called by
Providence to the very place that I filled for so many years, and
which I retired from when seventy-eight years old, against the
urgent request of the judges that I should continue still longer
in the office.

SOME OF MY JUDICIAL FRIENDS. 155
SOME OF MY JUDICIAL FRIENDS.
During the thirty-six years that I held the office of reporter
of judicial decisions I was on the most friendly terms with all
the judges of the Supreme Court. I have spoken in the last
chapter of our very pleasant personal relations. With Judge
Carpenter and Judge Loomis, who for many years lived in the
same city with me, and who both retired some time before I did,
I kept up a constant and very enjoyable intercourse. The
former died in the spring of 1897, and Judge Loomis is now the
last survivor of that pleasant company. He lives near me, and
it is one of the pleasures of my old age to chat with him. But
there were several other judges with whom I had a delightful
intimacy. There are obituary sketches of them aH in the law
reports, rnost of them prepared by me, but in my brief notice
of them here I intend to speak only of their personal qualities,
those traits that specially drew me to them, and which led them
to a ready appreciation, very lilvcly an over-appreciation, of
those qualities in me which commended me to their special
favor. Judge David C. Sanford was the first of the judges to
whom my heart went out with a real affection. He was elected
to the Supreme Court in 1854, and was, therefore, on the bench
when I became its reporter in 1858. He died in 1864, at the
age of sixty-six, after ten years of judicial life. During that
time he did excellent service as a judge, and acquired in the
highest degree the respect and confidence of the profession
and the public. But it was the moral side of his character
that specially drew me to him. He abhorred all wrong doing
and every transaction that bore any taint of fraud or even of
unfairness. It was so hard for him to conceive why any man
should do wrong that he was regarded as sometimes too
severe in inflicting upon criminals the penalties of the law.
Liquor selling stood high with him, as with me, on the list of
crimes. But in his social intercourse he was the most kindly
of men. I have often partaken of the hospitality of his delight
ful home in New Milford. Indeed, an intimacy grew up be
tween our families that was a source of great pleasure to us
both. He was a singulariy handsome man, yet seemed hardly

156 REMINISCENCES.
conscious of it. He was very modest and unassuming, deferen
tial in his manners, and very quiet in his demeanor. He was
not a brilliant man, nor of commanding ability, but as a judge
he brought to the service of the public an honest mind, great
patience in hearing cases, and thoroughness of investigation
and consideration in deciding them. We felt that on great
moral questions we stood side by side. As we met and shook
hands it seemed as if we were exchanging salutations as mem
bers of a brotherhood that the world knew little of, but which
we ourselves understood very well.
I find in my notebook under date of October 7, 1862, this
little entry with regard to a visit at his house. The court had
just closed a session at Danbury for Fairfield County: " I
rode from Danbury to New Milford on Tuesday evening with
Judge Sanford, and spent the night and the next forenoon at
his house. I had a very pleasant visit. I thank God for such
Christian men and Christian families. They are the salt of
the earth."
It was in the quiet of domestic life that his character dis
closed itself in its greatest beauty. He loved his home. The
ambitions of men he knew little of. Indefatigable in the dis
charge of those public duties which so frequently called him
from home, he returned thither with a love which no honors
of public life could impair. His thoughts lingered about the
earth as he was departing from it only because of those so dear
to him whom he left behind. On his deathbed he said to his
pastor: "The fear of death has passed away, and all my
attachments to the world are broken ; the only remaining affec
tion I have is for those I love best, and it is hard for one to de
part who is bound to earth by such ties as I am." While he
lay sinking gradually and waiting for death he said, " How
gently Christ is leading me," and again and repeatedly re
marked, " Plow gently I am let down." His family told me,
after his death, that while he thus lay waiting, he said, " Give
my love to John Hooker." His affectionate remembrance of
me when the earth was receding from his vision has ever since
dwelt with me as a great benediction.
I wrote an obituary sketch of Judge Sanford for the 32d
volume of the Connecticut Law Reports. With its closing
paragraph I close this brief notice of my friend:

SOME -OF MY JUDICIAL FRIENDS. 157
I knew him intimately, and know that he would have pre
ferred to leave behind him the record of a true Christian life
rather than that of an able and honored judge, and that these
pages should express and perpetuate his tribute to Christian faith
rather than ours to his honored memory. It is the happiness of
the writer that, in making it a tribute to both, he can indulge his
own love for the man and for the faith which adorned his life.
Judge LaFayette S. Foster was one of my special friends.
He was at almost every point unlike Judge Sanford, yet both
were very dear friends. Judge Foster was an elegant gentle
man, a man of the world, familiar with pubhc men and pub
lic positions, a brilliant conversationalist, and an able and
impressive public speaker. He had three times in his early
professional life been the speaker of our state House 01 Repre
sentatives, had been in large professional practice in the eastern
part of the state, and for the twelve years before he took a seat
on our Supreme Court had been a senator in Congress from
this state, and for a part of the time the president pro teni of the
senate. He enjoyed public office and his intercourse with
public men. With all this he was a man of the highest moral
tone and unapproachable by any corrupting influence. I had
known him in a general way for several years, but it was not
till he came upon the court in 1870 that I became intimately
acquainted with him. He was at that time sixty-four years old.
I was ten years younger.
Judge Foster had just before married as his second wife
Miss Martha P Lyman of Northampton. She was a woman
of striking personal beauty and of great elegance of figure. I
have rarely seen a woman to whom could better be applied the
words " Incedo regina,'' which Virgil puts into the mouth
of Juno. A pleasant little incident with regard to her
occurs to me, which ought to be preserved. It, was prior
to her marriage to Judge Foster. A man was on trial in
the Superior Court at Hartford for murder, and during an inter
mission of the trial she came into the court-room with a gentle
man friend. A few of the lawyers who were idling there knew
her, and came up to greet her, and among them was Thomas
Perkins, who was one of her special admirers. As we gathered
about her Mr. Perkins said, " Here is a poor fellow who has

158 REMINISCENCES.
kiHed one man, and is put on a trial for his life for it, but Miss
Lyman counts her victims by the score and no one thinks of
putting her on trial." Said another, " But the law requires
that she be tried by her peers; pray where will you find her
peers? " " Oh (said Mr. Perkins), the nine muses and the
three graces would just make a panel." " Ah (said the other),
but they would be disqualified by envy."
When Judge Foster came upon the Supreme Court we
found our way to each other very soon. Aside from our
official relation we got up a little fraternity of our own. When
the court sat at Norwich he often took me home to dine with
him, and frequently got up an elegant dinner for all the judges.
His long life at Washington, which his wife had shared with
him, had enabled them to entertain their guests with great ele
gance. When the court sat in the other counties my seat at the
hotel table was always next to his, except when his wife was
with him, when she sat next to the judge and I next to her.
I remember at one time at Bridgeport, one of our busiest
little cities, she came in from a walk and sat down to dinner.
I asked her where she had been. She said she had been about
the city, and that it seemed to her as if nothing was going on.
" Oh, Mrs. Foster (said I), it may have seemed so to you, but
it was only because everybody suspended business as you
went by."
Judge Foster was a graduate of Brown University at Provi
dence in the class of 1828, and took the highest honors of his
class. He brought from his classical studies a mind fraught
with classical associations, which were always at his service,
though never brought obtrusively into his conversation.
Whenever the judges dined out together he was always the
elegant man of the party, elegant in presence and manner and
speech. Yet he had no affectation of manner, nor any assump
tion of superiority. He was very appreciative of everything
bright in others and very responsive to others' wit, but he was
always a good listener and never an intrusive talker. In Eng
land he would have been accepted as the finest specimen of an
English nobleman. He had the best qualities of an English
courtier, but without a particle of the flexible morality that is
so generally imputed to that class of men.

SOME OF MY JUDICIAL FRIENDS. 159
I have mentioned in a former chapter {ante, p. 143) an in
stance of his recitation of a long paragraph from Lord Somers.
He was always able to correct the errors of the rest of us in
any niatter from the English classics, and to supply for us any
passage that we needed, and yet always without a particle of
pedantry or any apparent consciousness that he had done any
thing worth noticing.
Judge Foster retired from the court in 1876, on attaining
the age of seventy. He died four years later of a congestive
chill, after an illness of only two days. He had been in fine
health and I had reckoned confidently on his living to a good
old age. I had thought that in the leisure of our closing years
we should be much together, he renewing the bright talk of the
years gone by, and I listening to the stories, of which his mem
ory was full, of the events of an eventful professional and public
life. His knowledge of public men was very extensive and no
man could tell better what he had seen and known of them. It
is now eighteen years since I have heard that voice to whose
accents I listened with so much interest and affection. It is
a great comfort to know that I shall before long hear it again.
Chief Justice Origen S. Seymour was one of the judges
of the Supreme Court to whom I became greatly attached. He
was born in 1804, and died in 1881, in the seventy-eighth year
of his age, having retired from judicial life eight years before
on reaching the constitutional limit of seventy years. He was
born and always lived in Litchfield, the county seat of the most
picturesque county in the state. He loved its mountains and
forests and lakes, and no less the plain and sturdy people who
lived upon its hills. He had a great love of nature. The
beautiful landscape on which he daily looked was like daily
food to him. There were few things that he enjoyed more than
driving with friends over the charming region about Litchfield
and calling their attention to the beauty of the scenery. He
loved flowers. Flis growing crops, the ripening fruit upon his
trees, were watched by him with less of pecuniary interest than
of almost poetic enthusiasm.
While possessed of a rare knowledge of law and of almost
unerring judgment in the administration of it, it was the mani
fest kindness of his heart that brought so many men to

l6o REMINISCENCES.
love him. Pie was wholly without iM-ctcnsion. He was never
opinionated. He had no self-assertion. It would hardly be
possible for one to be more unassuming than he. It was in
a great measure this lack of all assumption that ga^¦e him such
a hold upon the people about him. Juries always trusted him
when at the bar. All who knew him felt certain of him as a
man of " simplicity and godly sincerity." His simplicity of
manner was but the natural garb of the simplicity of his heart.
Yet, with all this he had a rare shrewdness. He Avas a good
judge of human character and motives. Pie could not be im
posed upon Ijv pretenses and plausibilities. He saw through
such artifices as quickly as through sophistries in argument.
It was his general custom before lie came ui)Oii the court,
and while a member of it, to entertain the judges and reporter
at a bountiful supper at his house, where \vc met his wife and
family. These were very enjoyable and memorable occasions.
When the court sat at Litchfield I frequently took my wife with
me to enjoy a visit there. She was born in Litchfield, Rev.
Dr. Beecher being at that time settled over the Congregational
church there. Judge Seymour was an l'4)iscopalian, but had
been a warm friend of Dr. Beecher, and always had a warm
welcome for any of his family.
I conclude this sketch of the judge by quoting the closing
paragraph of a sketch of him which I wrote soon after his death
for the 48th volume of the Connecticut Law Reports. It tells
of his golden wedding in 1880, a memorable occasion, which
my wife and I attended with great interest.
On the 5th day of October, 1880, Judge Seymour and his wife
celebrated their golden wedding amidst their relatives and friends,
many attending from all parts of the state and some from other
states. The occasion was one of exceeding interest. It brought
into deserved notice the charming home life which, with its sup
port and solace and inspiration, had underlain his laborious pro
fessional and public life. Throughout the day, which was hallowed
by a tender and impressive communion service at the church in
the morning, the venerable pair, serene and saintly, received the
homage of reverence and affection ; while Nature, loved by them
both, seemed eager to show her gratitude by an unmeasured
tirbute of flowers. The autumn day was suggestive of the raced-

SOME OF MY JUDICIAL FRIENDS. i6i
ing year and of ripened Uves, and to him it proved far more than
the golden bound of the half century. Before the next autumn
came he had passed, in the beauty of his Ufa's completeness, from
the earthly into the eternal years.
Judge Dwight W. Pardee was the last of my judicial
friends with whom I came into a special companionship. He
was six years younger than I. He came upon the Supreme
Court in 1873, served two terms of eight years each, and re
tired at the end of his second term at the age of sixty-eight.
He died four years later at the age of seventy-two. It was in
the early part of his term that both Judge Seymour and Judge
Foster had retired, each dying soon after. Thus he was on the
court for sixteen years during my term as reporter. He lived
at Hartford, not far from the capitol, in which I had my office,
and was ver}' frequently at my room, partly as a matter of
friendship, but mainly to talk over his cases with me. He
rarely failed to come in and read to me the opinions he had
written, and to ask for my close attention and criticism. He
was a very able judge, but yet had a great desire to see how
what he wrote would strike another mind familiar with the
case. After his death I wrote a sketch of him for the law re
ports, which appears in volume sixty-three of Connecticut Re
ports. I intended, in these notices of my judicial friends, to speak
only of their moral and social qualities and particularly of those
traits of character which specially attracted me, but Judge
Pardee was a man of so great ability as a judge and of so fine
intellectual qualities that I depart from my rule so far as to
give a passage from my sketch of him which particularly de
scribes him in these higher relations.
Judge Pardee had in a high degree the judicial faculty. He
was never embarrassed by the complicated facts that overweight
so many of the cases that go to our higher courts. He was able
to precipitate, as by the touch of an alchemist, the questions of
law which they held in solution. With a quickness of apprehen
sion, often thought incompatible with a proper judicial delibera-
tiveness, he had a remarkable soundness of practical judgment
and a great sense of justice. Though never led astray by any
fondness for speculation, he had a rare faculty of dealing with

1 62 REMINISCENCES.
novel questions and exploring new regions of legal inquiry. He
had less book learning than some less able judges, but had a clear
comprehension of legal principles and a thorough mastery of the
law as a science. His opinions are written in language of great
condensation and vigor, which was often epigrammatic and quaint
in its incisiveness and point, always clear, always freighted with
meaning, and, without being in the slightest degree ambitious or
inclined to be ornate, was yet of a high literary quality. No
verbiage ever burdened anything which he wrote or uttered ; no
weak word or thought ever came from his lips or his pen. He
was quiet in his demeanor, not at all self-assertive or demonstra
tive, positive in his views, but never aggressive in declaring them,
a shrewd and intelligent observer of public men and public affairs,
but keeping his comments, sometimes caustic, always keen and
racy, for private conversation. He had a fine sense of humor, and
was often a witty contributor to the entertainment of a dinner
party or a circle of friends, but it was generally by way of reply
to the remarks of others and upon the suggestion of the moment.
He was never a talker in the ordinary sense of the word. He
was of the highest moral tone. No one ever imputed to him an un
worthy motive. He was a man of absolute and most scrupulous
integrity, and had the unlimited confidence of the public as such.
He was a liberal giver to worthy charities ; his gifts, often large,
being made where practicable in a way to avoid public observa
tion. No man could be more free from ostentation or pretense ;
none of plainer or simpler habits.
It was this man, of keen observation, of shrewd knowledge
of human nature, of sound judgment, of an eminent judicial
faculty, and, withal, of most kindly feeling, that I had for my
near neighbor and very frequent companion for the latter
years of my official Hfe. His house was a pleasant resort for
me, as well as my room a much-sought resort for him. It
is not strange that, as earlier choice friends departed, I should
have come to reckon with almost confident hope and with great
affection on a continuance of our friendship for many vears,
especially when retirement from all business should bring us
abundant leisure for it. His sudden death in 1893 was a great
shock to me. I was at that time at the World's Fair at
Chicago, and was not able to attend his funeral.
My sketch of Judge Pardee in the law reports closes with

JUDGE HUNT AND SUSAN B. ANTHONY'S TRIAL. 163
this brief personal paragraph, which expresses, better than I
can in any other way do, my great affliction in his death :
The death of Judge Pardee gave to the whole community a
sense of loss, but to the writer of this imperfect sketch of him it
brought a great personal bereavement and sorrow. We had been
pleasantly acquainted from our early manhood as brethren at the
Hartford bar, with a high esteem for him on my part ; but during
the sixteen years that he was a member of the Supreme Court, I
being then its reporter, there grew up between us a very fond
friendship. To no one, outside of my own family, did I look for
companionship in my declining years so much ^as to him. It is
with a sense almost of desolation that I think of his returnless
absence. And it is among my pleasantest thoughts that we shall
soon meet in a renewed and abiding companionship.

JUDGE HUNT AND THE TRIAL OF SUSAN B, ANTHONY,
Susan B. Anthony, the great woman suffrage advocate and
reformer, was tried for illegally voting at an election for repre
sentatives in Congress in 1872, in the United States Circuit
Court at Canandaigua in the State of New York, before Judge
Hunt of the Supreme Court of the United States. His conduct
of the case was so utterly against the law and so unjust and op
pressive that his name ought to go down to posterity with those
of Jeffreys and other infamous judges who have been pilloried
by history. I will do what I can to effect this. Immediately
after the trial I wrote and published the foUowing review of his
course, which I insert in these Reminiscences as worthy of a
place here and as putting on record my abhorrence of the
man. It is impossible to suppose for a moment that he could
have any doubt of the well-established principles of law
which he was setting at defiance; if he had such doubt, he was
totaHy unfit for a place in any respectable court.
In the recent trial of Susan B. Anthony for voting (illegally, as
was claimed, on the ground that as a woman she had no right to
vote — a point which we do not propose to consider, though we
have a very positive opinion in favor of her right), the course of
Judge Hunt in taking the case from the jury and ordering a ver
dict of guilty to be entered up, was so remarkable, so contrary to

1 64 REMINISCENSES.
all rules of law, and so subversive of the system of jury trials in
criminal cases, that it should not be allowed to pass without an
emphatic protest on the part of every public journal that values
our liberties.
Let us first of all see precisely what were the facts. Miss
Anthony ¦was charged with having knowingly voted, without law
ful right to vote, at the congressional election in the eighth ward
of the city of Rochester, in the state of New York, in November,
1872. The act of Congress under which the prosecution was
brought provides that, "If, at an}^ election for representative or
delegate in the Congress of the United States, any person shall
knowingly personate and vote, or attempt to vote, in the name of
any other person, whether living, dead, or fictitious, or vote more
than once at the same election for any candidate for the same
office, or vote at a place where he may not be lawfully entitled to
vote, or vote without having a lawful right to vote, every such
person shall be deemed guilty of a crime," etc.
The trial took place at Canandaigua, in the state of New
York, in the Circuit Court of the United States, before Judge
Hunt, of the Supreme Court of the United States.
The defendant pleaded not guilty — thus putting the govern
ment upon the proof of its entire case, admitting, however, that
she was a woman, but admitting nothing more.
The only evidence that she voted at all, and that, if at all,
she voted for a representative in Congress, offered on the part of
the government, was that she handed four bits of paper, folded in
the form of ballots, to the inspectors, to be placed in the voting
boxes. There was nothing on the outside of these papers to in
dicate what they were, and the contents were not known to the
witnesses nor to the inspectors. There were six ballot-boxes, and
each elector had the right to cast six ballots.
This evidence would undoubtedly warrant the conclusion
that Miss Anthony voted for a congressional representative, the
fact probably appearing, although the papers before the writer do
not show it, that one of the supposed ballots was placed by her
direction in the box for votes for members of Congress. The
facts are thus minutely stated, not at all for the purpose of ques
tioning their sufficiency, but to show how entirely it was a ques
tion of fact, and therefore a question for the jury.
Upon this evidence Judge Hunt directed the clerk to enter
up a verdict of guilty. The counsel for the defendant interposed,
but without effect, the judge closing the discussion by saying,

JUDGE HUNT AND SUSAN B. ANTHONY'S TRIAL. 165
" Take the verdict, Mr. Clerk." The clerk then said, " Gentlemen
of the jury, hearken to your verdict as the court has recorded it.
You say you find the defendant guilty of the offense whereof she
stands indicted, and so say you all." To this the jury made no
response, and were immediately after dismissed.
It is stated in one of the public papers, by a person present
at the trial, that immediately after the dismissal of the jury one of
the jurors said to him that that was not his verdict, nor that of
the rest, and that if he could have spoken he should have an
swered " Not guilty," and that the other jurors would have sus
tained him in it. The writer has no authority for this statement
beyond the letter mentioned. The juror, of course, had a right,
when the verdict was read by the clerk, to declare that it was not
his verdict, but it is not strange perhaps that an ordinary juror,
with no time to consider or consult with his fellows, and probably
ignorant of his rights and in awe of the court, should have failed
to assert himself at such a moment.
Probably the assumption by the judge 'that Miss Anthony in
fact voted did her no real injustice, as it was a notorious fact that
she did vote, and claimed the right to do so. But all this made it
no less an usurpation for the judge to take the case from the jury,
and order a verdict of guilty to be entered up without consulting
them. There was, however, a real injustice done her by the course
of the judge, inasmuch as the mere fact of her voting, and voting
unlawfully, was not enough for her conviction. It is a perfectly
settled rule of law that there must exist an intention to do an
illegal act, to make an act a crime. It is, of course, not necessary
that a person perpetrating a crime should have an actual knowl
edge of a certain law which forbids the act, but he must have a
criminal intent. Thus, if one is charged with theft, and admits
the taking of the property, which is clearly proved to have be
longed to another, it is yet a good defense that he really believed
that he had a right to take it, or that he took it by mistake. Just
so in a case where, as sometimes occurs, the laws regulating the
right to vote in a state are of doubtful meaning, and a voter is un
certain whether he has a right to vote in one town or another,
and upon taking advice from good counsel, honestly makes up his
mind that he has a right to vote in the town of A. In this be-
Uef he appUes to the registrars of that town, who upon the state
ment of the facts are of the opinion that he has a right to vote
there, and place his name upon the Ust, and on election day he

1 66 REMINISCENCES.
votes there without objection. Now, if he should be prosecuted
for illegal voting, it would not be enough that he acknowledged
the fact of voting, and that the judge was of the opinion that his
view of the law was wrong. There would remain another and
most vital question in the case, and that is, did he intend to vote
unlawfully? Now, precisely the wrong that would be done to the
voter in the case we are supposing, by the judge ordering a ver
dict of guilty to be entered up, was done by that course in Miss
Anthony's case. She thoroughly believed that she had a right to
vote. In addition to this she had consulted one of the ablest
lawyers in western New York, who gave it as his opinion that she
had a right to vote, and who testified on the trial that he had
given her that advice. The act of Congress upon which the
prosecution was founded uses the term "knowingly" — "shall
knowingly vote or attempt to vote in the name of any other per
son, or more than once at the same election for any candidate for
the same office, or vote at a place where he may not be lawfully
entitled to vote, or without having a lawful right to vote." Here
most manifestly the term "knowingly" does not apply to the
mere act of voting. It is hardly possible that a man should vote
and not know the fact that he is voting. The statute will bear no
possible construction but that which makes the terra " knowingly "
apply to the illegality of the act. Thus, " shall knowingly vote
without having a lawful right to vote," can only mean, shall vote
knowing that there is no lawful right to vote. This being so,
there was manifestly a most vital question beyond that of the fact
of voting, and of the conclusion of the judge that the voting was
illegal, namely, did Miss Anthony vote knowing that she had no
right to vote ?
Now, many people will say that Miss Anthony ought to have
known that she had no right to vote, and will perhaps regard it as
an audacious attempt, for mere effect, to assert a right that she
might think she ought to have, but could not really have believed
that she had. But whatever degree of credit her claim to have
acted honestly in the matter is entitled to, whether to much, or
little, or none, it was entirely a question for the jury, and they
alone could pass upon it. The judge had no right even to express
an opinion on the subject to the jury, much less to instruct them
upon it, and least of all to order a verdict of guilty without con
sulting them.
There seems to have been an impression, as the writer infers
from various notices of the matter in the public papers, that the

JUDGE HUNT AND SUSAN B. ANTHONY'S TRIAL. 167
case had resolved itself into a pure question of law. Thus, a legal
correspondent of one of our leading rehgious papers, in defending
the course of Judge Hunt, says : "There was nothing before the
court but a pure question of law. Miss Anthony violated the law
of the state intentionally and deliberately, as she openly avowed,
and when brought to trial her only defense was that the law was
unconstitutional. Here was nothing whatever to go to the jury."
And again he says: " In jury trials all questions of law are de
cided by the judge." This writer is referred to only as expressing
what are supposed to be the views of many others.
To show, however, how entirely incorrect is this assumption
of fact, I insert here the written points submitted by Miss An
thony's counsel to the court, for its instruction to the jury.
" First — That if the defendant, at the time of voting, believed
that she had a right to vote, and voted in good faith in that belief,
she is not guilty of the offense charged.
" Second — In determining the question whether she did or did
not believe that she had a right to vote, the jury may take into
consideration, as bearing upon that question, the advice which she
received from the counsel to whom she applied.
" Third — That they may also take into consideration, as bear
ing upon the same question, the fact that the inspectors con
sidered the question, and came to the conclusion that she had a
right to vote.
"Fourth — That the jury have a right to find a general verdict
of guilty or not guilty, as they shall believe that she has or has
not been guilty of the offense described in the statute.
This certainly makes it clear that the question was not " a
pure question of law," and that there was " something to go to the
jury." And this would be so, even if, as that writer erroneously
supposes, Miss Anthony had openly avowed before the court that
she voted.
But even if this point be wholly laid out of the case, and it
had been conceded that Miss Anthony had knowingly violated the
law, if she should be proved to have voted at aU, so that the only
questions before the court were, first, whether she had voted, as
charged, and secondly, whether the law forbade her voting ; and
if in this state of the case a hundred witnesses had been brought
by the government to testify that she had " openly avowed " in
their presence that she had voted, so that practically the question
of her having voted was proved beyond all possible question, still
the judge would have had no right to order a verdict of guilty.

1 68 REMINISCENCES.
The proof that she voted would still be evidence, and mere
evidence, and a judge has no power whatever to deal with evidence.
He can deal only with the law in the case, and the jury alone can
deal with the facts.
But we will go further than this. We will suppose that in
New York, as in some of the states, a defendant in a criminal case
is allowed to testify, and that Miss Anthony had gone upon the
Stand as a witness, and had stated distinctly and unequivocally
that she did in fact vote as charged. We must not forget that, if
this had actually occurred, she would at the same time have stated
that she voted in the full belief that she had a right to vote, and
that she was advised by eminent counsel that she had such a
right — a state of the case which we have before referred to as pre
senting a vital question of fact for the jury, and which excludes
the possibility of the case being legally dealt with by the judge alone ;
but this point we are laying out of the case in the view we are now
taking of it. We will suppose that Miss Anthony not only testi
fied that she voted in fact, but also that she had no belief that she
had any right to vote ; making a case where, if the court should
hold as a matter of law that she had no right to vote, there would
seem to be no possible verdict for the jury to bring in but that of
"guilty," Even in this case, which would seem to resolve itself as much
as possible into a mere question of law, there is yet no power
whatever on the part of the judge to order a verdict of guilty; but
it rests entirely in the judgment and conscience of the jury what
verdict they will bring in. They may act unwisely and uncon-
scientiously, perhaps by mere favoritism, or a weak sympathy, or
prejudice, or on any other indefensible ground; but yet they have
entire power over the matter. It is for them finally to say what
their verdict shall be, and the judge has no power beyond that of
instruction upon the law involved in the case.
The proposition laid down by the writer before referred to,
that " in jury trials all questions of law are decided by the judge,"
is not unquaUfiedly true. It is so in civil causes, but in criminal
causes it has been holden by many of our best courts that the jury
are judges of the law as weU of the facts. Pages could be fiUed
with authorities in support of this proposition. The courts do hold,
however, that the judges are to instruct the jury as to the law, and
that it is their duty to take the law as thus laid down. But it has
never been held that if the jury assume the responsibilitv of hold
ing a prisoner not guilty in the face of a charge from the judge

JUDGE HUNT AND SUSAN B. ANTHONY'S TRIAL. i6g
that required a verdict of guilty, where the question was whoUy
one of law, they had not full power to do it.
The question is one ordinarily of little practical importance,
but it here helps to make clear the very point we are discusshig.
Here the judge laid down the law, correctly we will suppose, cer
tainly in terms that left the jury no doubt as to what he meant ;
andhere, by all the authorities, the jury ought, as a matter of proper
deference in one view,' or of absolute duty in the other, to have
adopted the view of the law given them by the judge. But it was
in either case the jury only who could apply the law to the case.
The judge could instruct, but the jury only could apply the instruc
tion. That is, the instruction of the judge, no matter how author
itative we may regard it, could find its way to the defendant only
through the verdict of the jury.
It is only where the confession of facts is matter of record
(that is, where the plea filed or recorded in the case admits them),
that the judge can enter up a judgment without the finding of a
jury. Thus, if the defendant pleads "guilty," there is no need of a
jury finding him so. If, however, he pleads "not guilty," then no
matter how overwhelming is the testimony against him on the
trial, no matter if a hundred witnesses prove his admission of all
the facts, the whole is not legally decisive like a plea of guilty;
but the question still remains a question of fact, and the jury alone
can determine what the verdict shall be. In other words, it is no
less a question of fact for the reason that the evidence is all one
way and overwhelming, or that the defendant has in his testimony
admitted all the facts against himself.
The writer has intended this article for general rather than
professional readers, and has therefore not encumbered it with
authorities ; but he has stated only rules and principles that are
well established and familiar to all persons practicing in our courts
of law. This case illustrates an important defect in the law with
regard to the revision of verdicts and judgments in the United
States Circuit Court, In almost all other courts an application
for a new trial on the ground of erroneous rulings by the judge is
made to a higher and independent tribunal. In this court, how
ever, an application for a new trial is addressed to and decided by
the same judge who tried the case, and whose erroneous rulings
are complained of. Such a motion was made and argued by Miss
Anthony's counsel before Judge Hunt, who refused to grant a new
trial. Thus it was Judge Hunt alone who was to decide whether

I70

REMINISCENCES.

Judge Hunt was wrong. It is manifest that the opportunity for
securing justice, even before the most honest of judges, would be
somewhat less than before an entirely distinct tribunal, as the
judge would be prejudiced in favor of his own opinion, and the
best and most learned of judges are human and fallible; while if a
judge is disposed to be unfair, it is perfectly easy for him to sup
press all attempts of a party injured by his decision to set it aside.
The only remedy for a party thus wronged is by an appeal to
the public. Such an appeal, as a friend of justice and of the law,
without regard to Miss Anthony's case in any other aspect, the
writer makes in this article. The public, thus the only appellate
tribunal, should willingly listen to such a case, and pass its own
supreme and decisive judgment upon it.
The writer cannot but regard Judge Hunt's course as not
only irregular as a matter of law, but a very dangerous encroach
ment on the right of every person accused to be tried by a jury.
It is by yielding to such encroachments that liberties are lost.
LIFE AT NOOK FARM.
In 1853 I purchased, with Hon. Francis Gillette, who had
married my sister, a farm of a little over one hundred acres,
lying just outside of the limits of the city of Hartford, on the
Farmington road. It had belonged to William H. Imlay, who
had held it for thirty years or more, and was called " Nook
Farm," this name having been given to it because the river,
now called Park river, curved about the southern part of it in
such a way as to leave some thirty or forty acres within the
nook. At that time there was a comfortable farm house quite
a distance in the interior, but no other dwelling house. The
city limits were extended a few years later and the whole farm
taken into the city. It has now five city streets, well filled with
city houses, the southern part containing several factories.
I built a house for myself on a street which we opened and
called Forest street, Mr. Gillette occupying for three or four
years the farm house and later building a large and very pleas
ant house on the same street. The neighborhood where we
lived still kept the old name of " Nook Farm," and that name
remained a familiar one for many years, and has hardly yet dis
appeared. The early comers were generally family or personal
friends, and we lived Hke a little society by ourselves  each

.F. 54.

LIFE AT NOOK FARM. 171
of us making free of the others' houses, and each keeping open
house, and all of us frequently gathering for a social evening or
to welcome some friendly visitor, often some person distin
guished in political, literary, or philanthropic life, who had
come to some of our houses.
There was a curious thread of relationship running through
our little neighborhood. As I have already stated, Mr. Gillette
and I were the first settlers, and Mrs. Gillette was my sister.
Soon after came Thomas C. Perkins, an eminent lawyer of the
city, whose wife was sister of my wife. Then came Mrs. Stowe,
another sister, who at first built a house on another part of the
farm, but subsequently came to live close by us on Forest
street. My widowed mother early built herself a cottage next
my own house. Elizabeth, daughter of my sister Mrs. Gillette,
married George H. Warner, and she and her husband settled
close by us. Next came Charles Dudley Warner and his
brilliant wife, he being the brother of George H. Warner just
mentioned. Joseph R. Hawley, then my law partner, but since
a general in the war and senator in Congress, met at my house,
and afterwards married, Harriet W. Foote, a cousin of my wife.
They also settled in our immediate neighborhood. Rev. Dr.
Nathaniel J. Burton and his wife were for two years members
of my family, becoming famih' connections by the marriage
of my daughter to Dr. Burton's brother. This daughter also
settled close by us. Still later, Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clem
ens) built, and has ever since occupied, a residence near us,
his wife being the daughter of a very intimate and much loved
friend of my wife. I ought not to omit AVilliam Gillette, then a
boy growing up among us, the son of my sister, who has since
become distinguished as an actor and playwright.
A writer in the Hartford Post many years later wrote an
article on the life at Nook Farm. The old life had then essen
tially passed away. Some who filled large places in it had died
or moved away, while with the city's growth to the westward,
new families had come in and we had well-filled city streets in
the place of the strictly rural region of thirty years before. The
article is written by a very friendly pen, I think by one of the
editors of the paper, and speaks of my own family in so compli
mentary terms that I feel much doubt as to the good taste of

172 REMINISCENCES.
availing myself of it for my present purpose. But it is so
accurate in its description of the neighborhood life there, and
it is so pardonable that I should love to be well spoken of, that
I insert the article in full just as I find it in the paper:
In the social and intellectual life of this city Mr. Hooker has
borne no small part. Aided by his gifted wife, his home early
became the center of a group of cultured people, who recognized
in their host and hostess a charm of manner and grace of conver
sation beyond what is often permitted even the most cultivated to
enjoy. There are some persons in Hartford whose recollections of
Nook Farm and of its simple, gracious, and delightful hospitality
thirty years ago, are among the pleasantest of their social mem
ories. The place itself, sequestered and yet not remote, was
beautiful for situation, and furnished for comfort with a rare tact
and taste. Mr. and Mrs. Hooker were in their prime, — cheery,
radiant, optimistic, and full of sympathy with every intellectual
and moral movement that betokened progress. The faces and
figures and voices of their bright and beautiful little children
gladdened the household, and gave it an atmosphere of holy
domesticity. To be admitted into that family circle was to be made free
therein, for freedom ^vas its striking characteristic. Dullness
could not abide there ; whatever gift or talent one had was some
how eUcited and magnified. The brightness, versatility, and
ever-kindling intellectuality of the hosts were commingled with
such gentleness, sweetness, and Christian kindness that the
guests were ever stimulated, encouraged, and refreshed.
There was no gossip, but incessant discussion, keen but kindly
controversy, and the flashing to and fro of wit and humor. If
any person of promise came to Hartford then, he or she was
likely to be somehow drawn into that abode of truest culture.
There Nathaniel J. Burton was at home, and there for long
periods made his home, most loving and beloved. He was a
radical then in pohtics and religion. The -ndseacres could not
quite understand that brilliant, audacious, eloquent genius. But
at Nook Farm his great mind and great heart were understood.
His glory shone there.
When Charles Dudley Warner and his wife came to Hart
ford, it was the most natural thing in the world that they should
be "at home " with " the Hookers," and there they first disclosed

.F. 46.

6^7^

OUR GOLDEN WEDDING.

173

their intellectual and social charms. There was heard the im
perial power of her musical gift, and there was felt the power of
his keen, subtle, humorous intellect.
What evenings one remembers there in the society of such
men and women ! If Hartford has ever, before or since, had a
brighter, sunnier, healthier, more hospitable or quickening spot
than Nook Farm in those far-off days, it has been fortunate in
deed. Great clouds were gathering in the political sky, but the
inmates of that home regarded them with a faith and hope and
courage that were contagious. Great excitement and tumults
were abroad, but there was the peace of a certain glorious confi
dence in God and humanity.
Many a heart looks back to that time and that home with
profound gratitude for the privilege of freedom in such an
enlightened, cultivated, quickening, and altogether beautiful
household. The war, as it went on, drew all loyal hearts into
its vortex, and made great social changes. Head and hand were
busy, here or there, and, before they were aware, friends were
scattered, homes broken, and the old order changed. The hosts
went out into larger ways. The guests also. But they who
knew Nook Farm then can never forget it, —never cease to bless
it and its brilliant, noble hosts.

OUR GOLDEN WEDDING.
Our golden wedding, which occurred on the fifth day of
August, 1891, was of course a day of great personal interest
to us, but was also, through the large attendance of our friends
and the very kindly and extended public notice taken of it by
our cit\' papers, made an occasion of public interest, I shall
avail m'ysclf in the space which I shall devote to it, very largely
and perhaps wholly of notices of it given by the papers and of
letters from friends. My readers will, I trust, bear in mind that
the affection of friends easily runs into extravagance of expres
sion at such a time, and that even editorial tributes take on
something of the prevailing hue, while I am sure they will
pardon me for finding in all this overpraise the evidence of a
genuine and earnest love, and such love I value beyond all trib
utes to any intellectual ability. The Hartford Post, in an edi
torial notice of our golden wedding, after speaking of me pro
fessionally in a very friendly way, says:

174 REMINISCENCES.
Add to these attributes his wide acquaintance and the per
sonal esteem in which he is held, and it is no wonder that it can
be said of John Hooker that he is the best-loved member of his
profession in the state to-day.
No office in the gift of the people could give me the
satisfaction that I feel in enjoying in so large measure
the affection of mj' professional brethren and the public.
Another passage I cannot forbear to quote from an article
in the Courant, which pays, I fear, a too generous tribute to
those qualities which have brought to me the warm personal
regard of my fellowmen. I have never sought their votes
for office, but I willingly accept their suffrages in this form:
John Hooker's sterling probity, legal ability, and refined in
tellectual tastes, his ready wit, his literarj- gift in both prose and
verse, and his unstained and winsome personal character, have
long made him widely known, respected, and loved, not only in
Hartford, but throughout the state. In respect to his wit, he is
famous for his stories and sayings, his tendency in this regard be
ing once happily hit off by his commensal, the late Charles Chap
man, who declared him "a puritanical wag." Few come to his
years who are so universally valued and beloved of their fellow-
men, whose influence has made so unswervingly for righteous
ness. Numerous letters were received by us before the reception,
a few of which I will insert. I am sure the following will inter
est my readers: South Ashfield, Mass., July i6, 1891.
Dear Friends : — I shall not be able to "call" on the day of
your golden wedding, but will send my love with congratulations
and good wishes now, lest some mishap prevent me as the day
draws near. I mind well how you were made known to me in the
breaking of bread under your own roof-tree many years ago, and
can truly say that the glow I brought away in my heart has not
yet fallen away to white ashes. I can even tell you what we had
for dinner, — men's stomachs have a large memory, — but, better
still, I mind my warm and noble welcome. So I shall come again
in the spirit as a guest, and shaU know it is Bible-true that in all
true weddings like yours, when the golden wedding day comes
round by God's high grace, then the glory of the maiden of
twenty, shall we say, cannot be seen by reason of the glory

OUR GOLDEN WEDDING. 175
which excelleth in the good old wife of seventy, while hu,sband
and wife together are changed from glory to glory as by the
spirit of the Lord,
Time will have done this for you when the good day comes
round, and I only wish I could be there to clasp your hands and
say by that token what my pen cannot write.
Indeed, yours, Robert Collyer,
WooDMONT, Conn., July 21, 1891.
Dear Mrs. Hooker: — Of course I shall attend the golden
wedding, August 5th. You may make me groomsman, usher,
or helper of any sort.
It was forty-two years ago last May that I came to John
Hooker's office in Farmington, Conn., to study law, and made
acquaintance with his beautiful young wife, who, nevertheless,
seemed to me a very mature lady. It was my intention to spend
but one summer, or, at the most, but one year in the East, and
then go to Wisconsin with my beloved friend and classmate, Guy
McMaster of Bath, Steuben county, N. Y. I stayed in Hartford
and Guy stayed in Bath, dying there about four years ago, having
been long an honored and able judge, following precisely in the
footsteps of his father.
Thanks to the invaluable friendship of John and Isabella
Hooker, I went to Hartford under the best possible auspices,
and in due time, through them, met that very sweet and noble
woman, Harriet Ward Foote. You and John have every year
and every day since been the best and truest of friends, with
loving words of commendation for every honorable ambition and
brotherly and sisterly sympathy in every misfortune and afflic
tion. What a multitude of people thank God they have known
you both ! A great many of them are in heaven, but the others
will surely be well represented on the 5th.
Edith joins me in the heartiest congratulations and good
wishes. Sincerely yours, Joseph R. Hawley.
On the train going to Duxbury, Mass., July 28, 1891.
Beloved Queen Isabella : — Alas ! when you and the Apostle
John stand up to receive the congratulations of your world of
friends upon that golden day, I shall be in the national capital by
previous engagement of long standing, and so must miss one of
the rarest pleasures that ever beckoned to one, like a friend's

1 76 REMINISCENCES.
hand from the mirage of Delectable Mountains. Once I delib
erately lost the happiness of meeting James Russell Lowell, one
of my most beloved poets, because we temperancers were hold
ing a convention ; but it costs more to miss sharing in the joy of
an ideal pair whose Uves and work, whose purposes and achieve
ments, predict the perfectibiUty of horae and church and state.
I go to Washington on a Beecherian errand, —a Protestant sis
ter seeking the CathoUc Total Abstinence Society of the United
States, in annual convention assembled, to ask in my capacity of
fraternal delegate from the National W. C. T. U. , that these ear
nest men and women send fraternal delegates to our White Ribbon
Convention of the World's Women Temperance Workers in Bos
ton in November next. So I shall be consoled, although obliged
to miss the nectar and ambrosia of your golden feast, where wit,
wisdom, and great-hearted love for humanity will mingle, by the
reflection that in my work-a-day years I am trying to help carry
out the beautiful teachings of you and yours.
In common with all the intelUgent and, to some degree, right-
minded of the human race, let me send to our King John and our
Queen Isabella the love, the gratitude, and the good-will of one
who expects to be happier in heaven, as she has been on earth,
because you are there. Health, peace, perfection be your own,
here and beyond, prays Frances E. Willard.
The Hartford Courant of August i, 1891, four days before
the reception, contained the following cordial notice of it:
The social event of next week will occur on Wednesday
afternoon and evening, when John and Isabella B. Hooker will
receive their friends at the City Mission Rooms on Pearl street.
The occasion will be the fiftieth anniversary of their wedding.
In addition to the hundreds of invitations sent to people in this
city, one thousand have been mailed to those living in other
places in this country and Europe, and the response has been
such as to assure the attendance of a large number outside Hart
ford. The invitations read as follows ;
fohn and Isabella Baecher Hooker iordially invite their
fri^'uds to call on them [loithout presents) at No. 2^4 Pearl
St., Hartford, Conn., from ^ to g o'clock II\'dncsday,
August jth, — the fiftieth annizcrsary of their marriage.
1S41 — iSqi.

OUR GOLDEN WEDDING. lyj
While it was at first intended to make the anniversary, in
view of the generous size of the rooms, a formal reception, it is
now hoped that it wiU take the shape of an old-fashioned tea-
party, and one of the features will be the presence of the grand
children of the family friends. At five o'clock aU the little ones
wiU be served a supper in the lower hall of the building, and at
six o'clock the older folk wdl sit down to supper in the upper hall.
Mr. and Mrs. Hooker will receive, seated under a tastefuUy-
arranged bower placed in the large hall, thus preventing the
fatigue incidental on standing for so long a time. Above the plat
form will hang portraits of representatives of both branches of
the house, among them likenesses of older members of the
Hooker stock, of Mrs. Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher, a portrait
of Mrs. Hooker as a bride at twenty, painted by the Rev. Jared
Flagg, father of the Hartford artist, Charles Noel Flagg, another
of John Hooker at the time of his silver wedding, the painter be
ing Matthew Wilson, and an oil painting of Mary Hooker Burton,
who may be regarded as the patron saint of the City Mission, the
picture being the work of Caroline G. Rogers of Troy.
General Hawley will act as master of ceremonies, and will
no doubt make appropriate remarks at the supper. Music will be
furnished by Messrs. Richard and William Wander. During the
evening the guests will be handed a card, upon which are printed
the words of Dr. Bacon's fine hymn, beginning " Oh God, beneath
Thy guiding hand," which will then be sung by the company.
Another interesting feature of the occasion will be the pres
entation of a bride's loaf to Mrs. Hooker by the Equal Rights
Club of Hartford. This is in recognition of the fact that Mrs.
Hooker has been president of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage
Association since 1869. and Mr. Hooker its efficient and faithful
treasurer. The presentation will be made by Mrs. CoUins, the
mother of Dr, Peltier,
In one of the t-wo parlors wiU be gathered the representa
tives of the lady managers of the World's Columbian Commission,
of which Mrs, Hooker is a member ; in the other the distinguished
woman suffragists who wiU be present. Among those of the
former who wiU come may be mentioned Mrs, Trautman of New
York, first vice-president of the commission, :Miss Buselle of New
Jersey, Mrs. French of Massachusetts, and Miss Daily of Rhode
Island. Of the suffragists, Susan B. Anthony, Rachel F. Avery,
Caroline G. Rogers, and Mary S. HoweU, aU leading members of
the National American Woman Suffrage Association, will be on

1 7 8 REMINISCENCES .
hand to offer felicitations to their old-time and long-lived friends.
The Rev. Edward Beecher and wife will also be in attendance.
This anniversary of an old and honored Hartford family,
which on both sides of the house is so well represented and
adorned in the persons of Mr. and Mrs. Hooker, after a half cen
tury of good works and gracious living, is an event of unusual
interest, and doubtless a host of friends will give them a royal
greeting and hearty congratulations next Wednesday.
The Springfield Republican of August 2d contained the fol
lowing friendly notice of the approaching reception:
Next Wednesday will be the golden wedding day of as rare a
couple as Hartford knows and loves, that of Mr. and Mrs. John
Hooker, who will on that day meet their friends for a brief hour
of greeting and congratulation on having passed a half century in
each other's company as husband and wife, and for purposes more
far reaching than has fallen to the lot of the ordinary wedded
couple. It would be difficult to imagine a pair more widely dis
similar in the line of intellectual activities, or more closely united
in their earnest efforts for the betterment of the race, whether it
was for the abolition of slavery or the urging forward of the
reforms of the later days. John Hooker is to-day, without ques
tion, the best loved man of his profession in the state. . . But
if he is held in the highest esteem by the profession to which he
belongs, in the higher walks of social and intellectual life of the
city he has always had a place which few can hope to obtain.
His activity in all good causes, his independence in thought, and
his ready willingness to put forth that thought when needed, is
recognized, and no man is better known by those who have
benefited by his work.
The following card which I sent to the Courant on the 2d
of August, will perhaps make plain the thoroughly uncere
monious and democratic character which we intended to
give to the occasion :
To the Editor of The Courant :
To prevent misapprehension with regard to the golden wed
ding of Wednesday, please permit me to say to our friends that in
view of the very large number who have informed us that they
will attend, it is desirable that, if equally convenient, and es-

OUR GOLDEN WEDDING.

179

pecially if they bring children with them (which we desire), they
call in the afternoon between 3 and 6, leaving more room for the
many who can come only in the evening. Also, that the family
friends, the guests from out of town, and the ladies assisting in
receiving and at the tables, will sit down to tea together from 6 to
7, taking also that hour for rest. It is impossible, of course, to
make the invitation to this simple entertainment general. Then
from 7 to 9 we will receive evening visitors. Mrs. Hooker and I
reach out with great interest and sympathy towards young women
who, as teachers, as artists, as seamstresses, and clerks, and in
other industries, are supporting themselves, and often others who
are dependent upon them, and of these we have invited a large
number. The old servants of the family will be there as guests,
and the honest traders with whom we have long dealt, and their
wives and children.
The evening will close at 9, by the singing of hymns and a
prayer by the Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher. Any who call in the
afternoon will be welcomed again at this time if they choose to
come. The whole affair will be unceremonious, and there will
be no ushers. John Hooker.
The Courant of August 6th contained the following ex
tended notice of the reception which took place the evening
before :
The Hooker golden wedding reception, which took place
yesterday afternoon and evening at the City Mission rooms on
Pearl Street, was unique and one of the most noteworthy social
gatherings which ever occurred in Hartford, Seldom has a more
distinguished company of people been brought together in this
city, and in addition to this the whole occasion was marked by a
cordiality, spontaneous good-fellowship, and unconventionality
which made it enjoyable and significant. The arrangements were
noticeable for good taste and felicity of effecr, and reflect great
credit on the ladies of the City Mission, aided by Mrs, George
Warner and Mr. and Mrs. WiUiam Lorenz. Down stairs, Wright
Hall was used for a supper room, two long tables being spread with
sandwiches, cake, fruit, ice cream, and coffee, and the entrance
haU was prettily fitted up, as was the business office. Ascending
the steps, the large reception hall was given up to the inflowing
guests. At the farther end of this spacious room Mr. and Mrs.
Hooker sat on a dais over which evergreens were tastefuUy draped,

l8o REMINISCENCES.
while the dates 1841-1891 were prettUy worked below the green
ery in rustic lettering. Mrs. Hooker wore a dress of sUver-gray
sUk, with point lace overlaid with gold, the gown having been
made for her silver wedding, and her queenly and beautiful ap
pearance was subject of common remark throughout the recep
tion. Beside Mr. Hooker sat the venerable Dr. Edward Beecher,
and his wife occupied a similar position with regard to Mrs.
Hooker. The walls were gracefully hung with golden-rod, nas
turtiums and black-eyed susans and other blooms. The Lucy I.
Church parlors, opposite the large hall, were devoted to a family
picture gallery. Here hung portraits of John Hooker, of Isabella
when a young wife, of Mr. and Mrs. Hooker, parents of John, the
latter painting being retouched by the skillful hand of Mr. Charles
Noel Flagg, so that the dear old lady's face looked benignant
under silver hair, and of John Hooker's grandfather and grand
mother, these last being drawings. The west wall showed a
crayon of Mrs. Stowe, a painting of Uttle Isabel Hooker, daugh
ter of Dr. E. B. Hooker, by a Japanese artist; on the south wall
were two handsomely framed diplomas, certifying to the election
of Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Hooker to a membership in the Columbian
Commission; and in the east parlor was a large portrait of Henry
Ward Beecher.
Shortly after 3 o'clock the invited guests began to arrive, and
by 4 a large number of people were distributed among the various
rooms and halls. The number steadily increased up to 6 o'clock,
when there -was quite a thinning out, the nearer family friends, how
ever, and the relatives remaining. About half-past 5 Mrs. Virginia
T. Smith, in behalf of the Equal Rights Club of Hartford, made a
speech, presenting a bride's loaf covered with fifty shining gold
dollars. This cake was afterwards cut up into small pieces and
placed in envelopes, which were for the asking for all who wished
this souvenir of the occasion. Mrs. Hooker rose and responded.
She stated that Mrs. Collins, who had intended to make the pre
sentation, was unable to do so, but had written her a note in which
she said that it was better to give her old friends, the Hookers, a
Uttle taffy now than epitaphy hereafter. Mrs. Hooker referred to
the warm response which made all her ¦work and anxiety over the
reception doubly repaid, and she was followed by ;\lr. Hooker, who
made a characteristically witty speech, which was heartily ap
plauded. A cordial invitation was extended by the Hookers to all
who could to remain through the supper hour and to listen to some
quartette singing by jMessrs. Wander, Maercklein, Wright, and Bur-

OUR GOLDEN WEDDING.

181

dick. All these gentlemen rendered a number of songs with good
effect, and Mr. Wright of the Center Church gave several base solos,
his fine voice being much appreciated and applauded. A unicjue
feature of the evening was the presence of John Hutchinson, of
the famous old-time Hutchinson family of singers, who was intro
duced by General Hawley, and who gave, in a voice still clear and
sweet, some favorites of long ago, among them the banner piece
of the Hutchinsons, "The Old Granite State." After supper for
an hour there was a lull in the atttendance, and an excellent
opportunity was offered to circulate more freely, to meet and
greet the many famous and fine-looking men and women who
fell into groups, sat or stood or walked from room to room. Then
the numbers began to swell, and from 8 to 9 the rooms were
crowded with a brilliant assemblage composed of Hartford's lead
ing citizens, and of many from abroad known throughout the land.
Shortly before 9 o'clock General Hawley addressed the company,
saying that the reception would close by the united singing of the
hymns printed on cards which were handed to one and all, and by
remarks and a prayer by Dr. Edward Beecher. At the top of the
card in gold letters was to be read; " Golden Wedding Hymns,
1841-1891, J. H. and I. B. H." The hymns selected were Dr.
Leonard Bacon's "Oh God, beneath Thy Guiding Hand," and
Fawcett's " Blest Be the Tie that Binds." The hundreds present
took hold with a will, and the result was hearty and inspiring.
Then the aged Dr. Beecher, who only a few years ago mirac
ulously recovered from a serious accident, spoke with beautiful
.simplicity. It was, he said, a time of the loving sympathetic com
munion of friend with friend, of family with family, of warm
social intercourse. But the sunshine of God was needed over and
above this sunshine of friendship, and he believed that the divine
leading was to be seen in the coming of Thomas Hooker to Con
necticut, in his founding Hartford, and in the honorable and
blameless lives of these his descendants who were there present.
He followed his happy Uttle address by a heartfelt prayer, and
then gave the benediction, after which the gathering rapidly
broke up.
Thus closed an evening which it is safe to say those present
win long remember for its delightful informality and its atmos
phere of genuine brotherliness. It was just the kind of a recep
tion which draws people together in an uncritical spirit, and it
was a testimonial of the respect and love in which the leading
representatives of this old and honored Hartford family are held

1 8 2 REMINISCENCES.
by their fellow citizens and the country which they have made
better. Among the numerous friends from out of town who attended
may be mentioned the following - William M. Evarts and Miss
Evarts, WilUam Lloyd Garrison, John Hutchinson, the Rev.
Thomas K. Beecher, the Rev. Charles E. Stowe, Dr. Edward
Beecher and Mrs. Beecher, Miss Grace King, Miss Helen Clark of
Poet Lore, Mrs. Frank Osborne, regent of the Daughters of the
Revolution of Illinois, the Hon. Lynde Harrison and Mrs. Har
rison of New Haven, Judge V. B. Chamberlain of New Britain,
Professor Brown of New Haven, J, L, Hunter of Willimantic, B. H.
Bill of Rockville, Mrs. W. F. Rogers, president of the Equality
Club of Meriden, the Hon. S. W. KeUogg and Mrs. KeUogg of
Waterbury, Mrs. Julius Gay of Farmington, Dr. Bulkley of New
York, and Colonel and Mrs. Frank Cheney of South Manchester.
The World's Columbian Commission at Chicago was repre
sented by Mrs. Ralph Trautman, first vice-president, Mrs. John
Pope and Miss Ellen A. Ford of New York, Miss Mary E. Busselle
of Newark, N. J., Mrs. Jonas H. French of Boston, Mass., Miss
Charlotte Field Dudley of Providence, R. I., Miss Frances S. Ives
of New Haven, and Miss Couzins of St. Louis, secretary of the
board. Among the leading woman suffragists present were Susan B.
Anthony of Rochester, N. Y, ; CaroUne Gilkey Rogers of Troy,
N, Y,; Mary Seymour Howell of Albany, N, Y, ; Rachel Foster
Avery of Philadelphia, Pa,; Kate Trimble de Roode of Covington,
Ky.; Mrs. Edward Beecher of Brooklyn, N. Y.; Sara Winthrop
Smith of Cincinnati, O. ; Charlotte Porter of Philadelphia.
Among the hundreds of Hartfordites who attended the after
noon and evening receptions were noted General and Mrs. Hawley,
Judge and Mrs. Shipman, Professors Hart and Pynchon of Trinity
College, the Rev. Drs. Parker and Graham, the Rev. Frank L.
Shipman, the Misses Stowe, the Misses Ely, Mrs. Samuel Colt,
the Hon. WiUiam Hamersley, Mrs. John Parsons, and Mrs.
Webb, Dr. E. B. Hooker, Rodney Dennis, Atwood Collins, and
W. E. CoUins.
The Hartford Times of August 6th said:
A half century of happy wedded life; five decades of useful
ness; fifty golden years of love and labor side by side; these were
fittingly celebrated Wednesday afternoon by the Hon. John

OUR GOLDEN WEDDING.

183

Hooker and his wife, IsabeUa Beecher Hooker. It was such a
golden wedding as is not often seen and seldom, indeed, falls to
the happy fortune of husband and wife to celebrate. Some thou
sands of people were present, in the afternoon and evening; and
a more mixed and curiously representative gathering than that of
the evening, especially, is never seen. It was mostly a dress re
ception, and the general aspect of the great crowd was not merely
respectable and becoming, but fashionable and styUsh ; yet
mingled with the great stream were sub-currents and little surface
eddies of very plain, sensible, homespun folk, mostly of an elderly
aspect, and not a few celebrities from near and far. The most
striking and interesting person in the reception room (excepting,
of course, the bride and groom) was the Rev. Dr. Edward
Beecher of Brooklyn, author of The Conflict of Ages— -se^ elder
brother of Mrs. Hooker, born in 1804. Notwithstanding his age
Dr. Beecher seems in good health and vigorous j'et. Less than
two years ago, in a rude and violent crowd at a railway train, he
was thrown under the wheels and had one leg so badly crushed
that it had to be amputated; a trial which he bore with singular
cheerfulness and patience, and from which he rallied as quickly
as would most men of far fewer years.
A queer and quaint-looking elderly figure in the crowd was
John Hutchinson, one of the survivors of the Hutchinson
Family, of New Hampshire, vocalists, who with Judson, John,
Asa, Abby, and Jesse, and all the rest, used to give popular con
certs, along in 1845, and later. His long hair, almost white now,
fell down over his shoulders, parted behind in two divisions, and
an immensely broad Shakesperian shirt collar lay wide over his
shoulders. This quaint vocaUst gratified the large company by
singing some of the family's old and popular songs.
It was a notably pleasant gathering, commemorating a pleas
ant and unusual occasion, Mr, and Mrs, Hooker may well feel
gratified at such a demonstration of the interest and respect felt
for them by the people of Hartford,"
The Hartford Post of the same date said:
John and Isabella Beecher Hooker! These are the names
which Hartford honored herself in honoring Wednesday, Fifty
years have come and gone since their union was cemented. What
changes have taken place since then! How different the Hartford
of 1 89 1 is from the Hartford of 1841! And no two people have

1 84 REMINISCENCES.
given a greater impetus to the intellectual growth and broader
thought in Hartford that these fifty years show than Mr, and Mrs.
Hooker. Mr. Hooker comes of the best colonial stock, being the
sixth Uneal decendant of the Rev. Thomas Hooker, who founded
Hartford. He is a native of Farmington, this state, where he was
born AprU 19, 1816. His father, Edward Hooker, himself a grad
uate of Yale and a fine scholar, aided his son in his preparation for
college. Mrs. Hooker may also with reason boast of her colonial
ancestry, for on her mother's side she is a grandniece of Rufus
King, of revolutionary fame. She was born at Litchfield, Conn,,
February 22, 1822, and was four years old when her father, Lyman
Beecher, went to Boston, When she was in her 12th year her
family moved to Cincinnati, Dr, Beecher having been elected
president of the theological seminary. Four years later she came
to Hartford, where her sister, Mrs, Perkins, Uved; and here it was
that she first met Mr, Hooker,
The Courant of the same day contained the following edi
torial on the subject:
The reception held by Mr, and Mrs, Hooker yesterday in
commemoration of their golden wedding was an event which
Hartford will long remember. In spite of its occurrence in the
season when a large number of our citizens are absent from the
city, the attendance was immense and must have been deeply
gratifying to the noble and distinguished people thus honored.
The causes for such a gathering are on the surface. The name of
Hooker is an historic one in this community. Moreover, the
present representatives of the family have lived long, useful, and
unselfish Uves here and have won distinction in different fields of
activity. It was fitting and natural therefore that the completion
of a half century of their married joys and sorrows should be
signalized in a manner more public than is common on such occa
sions. It was also fitting that the country at large should furnish
its quota of kindred spirits, men and women, who have been of
benefit to their fellow creatures and have won a good name. But
while the gathering was remarkable for the brilliancy and fine
quality of the guests, it was also democratic in the best sense.
All classes met with the one desire to give honor where honor was
due. And the spontaneity and homeliness of some of the features
of the occasion were at once a testimonial to the native dignity

SOME FUR THER INTROD UCTOR Y MA TTER. 1 8 5
and simpUcity of the hosts, and a recognition of their worth on
the part of their cityful of friends and well-wishers.
Such testimonials from our journalists, and the great one
from the public in its large attendance upon our reception,
could not but be very gratifying to Mrs. Hooker and myself.

some further introductory matter.
I wrote my introductory chapter, giving an account of my
early life in Farmington, and had it put into type, before I pre
pared much of what follows it in the volume. I have since
thought of sundry incidents of that period of my life that wiU,
I think, interest my readers.
I will, first of all, correct an error in that chapter on page
( 1 yS- In speaking of the old crown that had since pre-revolution-
ary times kept its place at the top of the church spire, and
which was taken down about 1826, I stated that it had not been
preserved, but had disappeared and been lost. Mr. Chauncey
Rowe, a lifelong resident of Farmington, and a year or two my
senior, informs me that the crown was made of copper, and
that when it was taken down it was melted and made over into
a star, which was put in the place of the crown on the spire
and remains to this day. Mr. Rowe also informs me that the
shingles on the old church, which are still in service there
after more than a hundred and twenty-five years, are of pine
and not of cedar, and he gave me one recently taken from the
roof in making some repairs, which I am preserving with
much interest.
Among the incidents of my boyhood that greatly im
pressed me at the time, was a great Methodist revival. There
had been no church of that denomination in the village, and
I do not remember just how the interest was awakened, but I
think it began with the labors of some earnest Methodist ex-
horters, who held a series of meetings in a schoolhouse at the
north end of the village. It took in very few of the regular
Congregationalists, who were constant attendants on the
ministrations of Rev. Dr. Porter, but seemed to get hold of
almost all the laboring classes and poor people, the great ma
jority of whom rarely attended church, and it probably did
13

1 86 REMINISCENCES.
much good among them. The Methodist denomination is now
one of intelligence and respectability, with its institutions of
learning and well-educated ministry, but at that time it had,
at least in Connecticut, a low grade among religious denomina
tions as to the intelligence and social position of its members.
Their evening meetings, which, during the revival, were held
almost every evening, filled the schoolhouse to overflowing,
and were often attended by me with a boyish interest in what
seemed, and probably was, the extravagance of the perform
ances. Women spoke, in exhortation and prayer, as freely
as the men, an utter novelty to me then, but the beginning of
a vast improvement in the conduct of our prayer meetings.
Some very grotesque blunders were made by some of the
speakers. There was one who was very prominent among
them, and who came to be quite an authority in religious
matters. His name was Warren. He was a shoemaker by
trade, but had some time before taken up, as incidental, the
practice of Thompsonian medicine. Through this practice
he had come to be known as Dr. Warren. When the religious
excitement came along he was one of the first to be reached
by it, and he very soon became a vehement exhorter, after a
little while going to other towns, and becoming recognized as
one of the leading revivalists of the denomination. When he
began to preach he easily got the title of Reverend, and as he
had already that of doctor, he became Rev. Dr. ^^^arren. I
never heard a more impetuous exhorter. He spoke in a high
key, and would draw long breaths between his sentences that
could be heard over the room. I heard a plain Methodist
say of him that his ideas came so fast that he could not find
words for them ; still he made out to find big words as he wanted
them. On one occasion he was leading in prayer at a school-
house meeting, and prayed that God would pour out His spirit
on the town " as He poured out the water in the antediluvian
flood." There was one of the brethren who used to pray " for
the fatherless and the widowless." One young man was pray
ing to God in a most earnest way that they might all be pre
pared to die, and proceeded thus: " Oh, Lord, we don't know
when we shall be called away. ' Xerxes the great did die, and
so must you and I.' "

SOME FURTHER INTRODUCTORY MATTER. 187
The Methodists, with such help as they could get from their
fellow townsmen of other denominations, built a very modest
church on a corner of the village green, where I have often
joined them in worship, which, within a few years, has been
burned down. The Methodist clergy of the district used oc
casionally to hold their quarterly meetings there. One of
these meetings was the occasion of a very amusing incident.
The clergy were sent out for dinner among the Methodist
brethren and sisters, who always got up a special dinner for
them. One of the most devoted of the Methodist women was
Mrs. Fredus Reed, who took home two of the brethren for
dinner. Her husband was a hard drinking and exceedingly
profane man. He had that morning been arrested by a con
stable for profane swearing, and had been taken before a justice
of the peace to be tried, and the case had not been concluded
when Sister Reed sat down with her reverend friends to her
nice dinner. Soon after they began one of the clergymen said,
" Where is Brother Reed? " " He had some important busi
ness to attend to," said Mrs. Reed, " and could not be here."
" I am sorry," said the clergyman, " that Brother Reed should
let any business keep him from attending our delightful meet
ing and taking dinner with us now." " Well," said Mrs. Reed,
" it is some law business of importance, and he could not regu
late the time of it for himself." " What," said he, " does
Brother Reed go to kw? I am very sorry for that. I think
our Christian people should not go to law." " Well," said
Mrs. Reed, " if you must know, he's hauled up before a justice
of the peace for profane swearing."
This Fredus Reed was swept in by the great Washingtonian
temperance movement of about 1840, and signed the pledge,
and became one of the temperance exhorters. I remember
that at one time he was at my house in Farmington and was
talking about the certainty that he should always keep his
pledge. My wife said to him, " Mr. Reed, you must not trust
to your own strength, you must rely on God's help." He re
plied " I don't want God's help, nor that of anybody. I am
strong enough myself." " Then," said she, " you wiU surely
fall " " I have no fear of it," said he. It was not long before
he fell, and became a sot again, and so remained until his death
a few vears later.

1 8 8 REMINISCENCES.
When I was a boy there were several slaves left in Con
necticut, though I do not now remember seeing one in Farm
ington. The legislature, in 1784, passed an act making all
slaves born in the state after March i, 1784, free on becoming
twenty-five years of age, and in 1797 an act making all born
after August i, 1797, free at the age of twenty-one. Slavery
was not absolutely abolished until 1848, at which time there
were only six slaves surviving. There must have been in my
boyhood quite a number, as in 1830 one needed to be only
fifty-six years old to be a slave. Probably many had been
emancipated. Btit, though I do not remember to have seen
any slaves, I used occasionally to hear some of the old slave
holders tell about their experiences under the system. Gad
Cowles kept the principal store in Farmington. He must have
been born about 1780, and lived to be about seventy-five years
old. I remember his telling about his going after a slave to
Hudson on the Hudson River, which was a great port for land
ing cargoes of slaves as they were brought in. He bought a
stout, finely-built black man, about twenty years old, and,
putting a rope around his neck, tied the end of it to his saddle,
and, as he said, " trotted him all the way home." He described
him as a man he could not trust. " Why," said he, " I was
one day going to give the feUow a sound whipping with a cart
whip, and made him stand off so that I could get a good sweep
of the whip, when the rascal ran away, and it was two weeks
before I caught him again."
A very grotesque incident occurred about this time at
Gad Cowles's store. Farmington was not only the center of
a large trade with all the surrounding towns, but Gad's store,
as I have said, was the principal one in the village. It was in
a large brick block of two stories and a high attic. Each story
and the ceUar were filled with his goods, the attic being de
voted to agricultural implements. One day in the early sum
mer a young man from Burlington came to the store to buy
some farming tools, and Gad sent him up to the attic to pick
them out for himself. There was a trap door in the floor of
the attic, with another directly beneath it in the story below.
These both opened upwards, but they were old and a good
deal worn, The Burlington man, in walking about in his
stumbling way, came upon the upper trapdoor, which gave

SOME FURTHER INTRODUCTORY MATTER.

189

way under him, and let him down upon the next trapdoor,
which, in its turn, gave way and let him headlong down into the
store below. Gad was at the time waiting on a lady customer,
when the man came down upon them, striking a nest of brass
kettles, and bending them out of shape, besides breaking his
own ribs, as well as seriously injuring himself internally.
Gad, who was an irascible man, swore at him for his stupidity,
and said he wished there had been another trapdoor that
opened into hell. However, he was a very kindly man, and
when he saw how badly the man was hurt, he had him taken
over to his own house, where he kept him for half a year be
fore he was well enough to be taken home. He had a long
course of illness, and came very near to his death. At last,
about midwinter, it was thought it would be safe to take him
home, and his brother, who was stone deaf, came with an open
farm sled and a pair of horses, a feather bed and blankets being
laid upon the sleigh, that he might lie comfortably and be kept
warm. There was a good deal of snow on the ground, but a
warm rain had softened it aU and filled the brooks and ditches
with froth. On the way home the brother drove through one
of these brooks to water his horses. On getting to the gate at
home he called out to his two sisters to come and help get his
brother in. They came rushing out, and when they got to the
sleigh they said, " Where is he? " The brother twisted around
to get a back look, and saw at once that the sleigh was empty.
All were horrified, and the brother drove back on the road as
fast as he could. When he reached the brook where he had
watered his horses, he found the invalid lying in the water,
with his head just out of it, but wet through and almost frozen.
He was taken home, where he had a course of fever, which it
took him till the next summer to recover from. With the
warm weather of summer the poor man was able to get out
and walk about a little in the sunshine. Just after he began
to venture out he went to a neighbor's, where they were about
to hang a good-sized dog. Their barn was on a hillside, with
the roof on the back side coming to the ground, and a high
front on the other side. The dog had a rope around his
neck, which was brought over the ridge of the roof and
fastened to one of those frames that the joiners nail on such
roofs when they are shingling. Our invalid wanted very much

190 REMINISCENCES.
to see the whole proceeding, and climbed up to the ridge of
the roof, where he could see the dog pushed off and hanging
by the rope. But, alas, just as the dog was pushed off, and
his weight pulled heavil)- on the rope, the wooden frame flew
off and caught the poor man between the legs and carried him
headlong over the high side of the roof. The dog escaped un
hurt, but our invalid had some of his bones broken and was
laid up for another long spell of illness. I never learned any
thing of his later history.
The practice of private watching with sick people was in
vogue when I was a boy. I think such a thing as a trained
nurse was unknown in F'armington, if anywhere else. No
matter how desperately ill a person might be, his own family
took care of him during the day, and the neighbors came, one
after another, to watch at night. The family, during the day,
would engage the watcher for the night. I think the service
was always a neighborly gratuity, to be repaid in kind if there
should be need. I remember being requested when I was
fourteen to watch with Edward L. Hart, a schoolmate of about
my own age, and a nephew of Simeon Hart, who kept the
viHage academy, and with whom Edward made his home.
Edward was very sick with some kind of fever. I got to the
house about nine o'clock, was instructed carefully as to the
medicines to be given, and then was left alone for the night
in the sick boy's room. There were two medicines to be given
him alternately every half-hour, three drops of one and a tea-
spoonful of th.e other. I had an awful struggle with an al
most overpowering drowsiness, but kept awake and faithful
to my duties till about midnight. I was then administering
the regular medicine, as I supposed, when. Edward screamed
out that I had given him the wrong medicine, and I found that
I had given him a teaspoonful of that of which I should have
given him three drops. I supposed I had killed him, and at
once rushed up to Mr. Hart's room and burst in, exclaiming,
" Oh, I have given Edward the wrong medicine." Mr. Hart
sprang up and ran down stairs in his nightgown, and I ex
plained at once what I had done. The boy, in the meantime,
was bent up with pain. In a moment Mr. Hart gave him a
strong alkali (the medicine was a sharp acid), and the poor
boy was at once in a state of wild explosion, enough to have

SOME FURTHER INTRODUCTORY MATTER. 191
Strangled him, and it was a wonder how, in his weakness, he
lived through the strain. His condition was now so critical
that the family staid up and took charge of him for the rest of
the night, and I went home and to bed. The doctor was sent
for, and he said the treatment had apparently helped him by
clearing the foul niatter out of his stomach, and from that time
he began to get better, and before long was well.
In connection with this matter of private watching, a good
story is told of Governor Roger S. Baldwin when a young
man. My grandfather, who lived in New Haven, was quite
old and feeble, and friends of the family came at night to watch
with him. Mr. Baldwin, who was a near relative, took his
turn. He got there about bedtime, and the family explained
to him fully about the different medicines, and went to bed,
leaving him to his solitary watch. There were four different
kinds of medicine, one to be given every quarter of an hour.
Mr. Baldwin gave the old gentleman the first dose and then
seated himself comfortably in a rocking-chair, waiting for the
next quarter-hour to come. As he sat waiting he suddenly
opened his eyes and it was broad daylight. He sprang to the
old gentleman's bedside, expecting to find him dead, but he
was sound asleep. He woke him, and asked him how he felt.
" Oh," said he, " what a refreshing sleep I have had." This
was all the old gentleman needed, and he began to get better at
once. Mr. Baldwin did not like to have his neglect of his
patient known, and poured out into the slop-pail about as much
as he would have used if all the medicine had been properly
administered, and it was several years before the real facts
became known. The family, who had no suspicion what had
happened, were loud in their praise of Mr. Baldwin, as having
benefited the old gentleman greatly by his faithful care of him.
There is a further incident that I have always remembered
with much interest, and which is well worth preserving.
Horace Cowles, in my youth, was one of the immovably up
right men of the town. He had the public confidence in the
highest degree as a man of probity. No man could settle an
estate more inteHigently or more honestly, and he was often
employed in such services. But, with it all, he was not a
popular man. He held very strong views as to the enforce
ment of laws against crime, and was unyielding in his views

192 REMINISCENCES.
on matters of political and moral reform. Among those who
thoroughly disliked him was a very profane old gentleman,
who lived near the center, who seemed thoroughly to hate
him, and who could not refrain from sometimes assailing him
with insulting language as he went by. It turned out that all
this time this old gentleman, who had a large property, had
made his will, and had made Horace Cowles his executor. Mr.
Cowles dying before he did, he made a new will and appointed
some other person executor, but during those years of his
violent and insulting attacks upon Mr. Cowles he had not
dared to trust anybody else to settle his large estate.
I gave an important incident of my sea life in a former
chapter {ante, p. 27), and did not intend to speak of any other,
but a few matters occur to me as worth relating. I sailed from
New York for Canton in the barque Marblchead, about four
o'clock in the afternoon in May, 1838, going out of the harbor
side by side with the ship Brooklyn, bound, like us, to Canton.
We lost sight of her when it became dark, and the next morn
ing could not recognize her among the many sails that we saw
in the distance. We did not see her again until we made Java
Head, and were entering the strait between Java and Sumatra.
There we found the Brooklyn going with us, side by side,
as we had left New York harbor. We found, on exchanging
very cordial salutes, that she crossed the Hne the same day
with us, was off the Cape of Good Hope the same day, and
made the island of St. Paul in the Indian Ocean the same day,
and now had made Java Head with us, and yet we had never
seen her. This illustrates the difficulty of one ship pursuing
another over the broad ocean. Our cruisers in our late war
had a long pursuit after the Alabama, and for several weeks
without any success.
When we passed the Cape of Good Hope it was in July,
the very middle of the southern winter. We had snow storms
and cold rains, and much of the time very severe gales, and all
the while heavy we,ather. After leaving the neighborhood of
the Cape Verde Islands we had run in a straight line towards
Cape Horn, till we reached a point about half way between
the capes and about three hundred miles south of the latitude
of the Cape of Good Hope. Head winds compelled us to take
this course. At last we got a fair and strong west wind, and.

SOME FURTHER INTRODUCTORY MATTER. 193
heading to the east, we ran for twenty-five days in a straight
course. The captain would get an observation whenever a bit
of blue sky showed itself, but had to depend largely on the
casting of the log. We had now reached the middle of the
Indian Ocean, and the captain came on deck at dark and told
us that he thought we should make the island of St. Paul in
the course of the night, and ordered us to keep a sharp lookout.
About midnight we saw in the distance a blazing light, which
we took to be that of a whaler trying out oil, and the captain
gave orders to heave to and lie till morning. When the morn
ing broke there lay the island about three miles off. This was
exceedingly good navigating over such a stretch of water and
in such weather.
While on this part of our passage the gale became so severe
that we could carry nothing but reefed topsails, and finally
we had to lie to and leave the ship to take the brunt of the
storm as she could. This " lying-to " is effected at sea by
putting the fore and main topsails at a different angle, so that
one is filled one way and the other the opposite, by reason of
which the ship lies still. The helm is then lashed in a certain
position, and all hands go below, often for a day, sometimes for
two or three days.
When we reached Java Head an official of the Dutch gov
ernment, to which the island of Java belongs, came off in a
boat, and with a good deal of pomp and ceremony, to examine
our papers. He was a native Javanese, with a stove-pipe hat
on, that some sea captain had given him, a long-skirted coat,
the gift of some traveler, some very short duck pantaloons, and
no vest, collar, or shoes. He apparently did his business very
well, but he was one of the most comical sights that I ever
saw, and all the more so for his utter unconsciousness that he
was not exceedingly well got up.
We staid a week at Batavia, the city of Java, hoping to get
some freight for Canton. We were nearly in bahast. We
finally got a part of a cargo of sandal wood, which was to be
used by the Chinese solely in burning incense to their god
" Josh " — a rather curious business for a Christian ship.
In going from Batavia to Singapore, where we went for
more freight, we had to pass close through the strait between

194 REMINISCENCES.
the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. This region was at that
time and had long been infested by native pirates, who used to
go about in fleets of sailboats, called feluccas. Many stories
were told of their attacks upon ships. We had a sailor on
board who had been a good deal on vessels sailing there, and
who gave this story of one of his experiences. The ship was
an English one sailing from Bombay for Canton. When off
Borneo a fleet of feluccas swarmed down upon them and very
soon the deck was full of the pirates. The captain and crew
fought them, but were overborne by their numbers, and were
finally compelled to retreat to the poop deck, which was over
the ship's cabin and much above the main deck. The steward's
storeroom was directly below the cabin and accessible from it.
The captain sent the steward down to bring up his bottles of
wine, of which he had a good supply, and threw them all over
the deck. They, of course, broke, and the deck became
covered with broken glass. The pirates, being all barefooted,
could not find a place to step, and very soon all fled over the
ship's side, abandoning all attempt to take the vessel. While
we were in that vicinity our ship got aground and lay so for
three or four hours. While we lay there a large fleet of feluccas
came off and hovered about us for a half-hour, but finally
went away.
An incident of some interest, and, perhaps, worth telling ot,
occurred on my first voyage. This was in the brig Fortune,
which went to Malaga on the south shore of Spain for a cargo
of wine, raisins, and almonds. The wine was stowed at the
bottom, acting as ballast, and on top of it was a great quantity
of raisins in boxes, of shelled almonds in boxes, and of al
monds in the shell in large gunny bags. WHien we were in
the neighborhood of the Azores a storm, which had been brew
ing for a couple of days, came down upon us with great vio
lence. It was about the 20th of September, and the storm was
the one we call on shore '' the Equinoctial." I think it is only
a matter of superstition that leads us to so regard and name it.
However that be, it deserved in our case all the severe terms
we could apply to' it. In the course of it our brig sprung a
serious leak in her bows, and the captain finally decided that
we must lighten her forward. We broke through the bulk
head that separated the forecastle from the hold, and, forming

SOME FURTHER INTRODUCTORY MATTER. 195
a line to the ship's rail, passed out bags of almonds and boxes
of shelled almonds and raisins and threw them over the ship's
side. We kept this up for two hours, and the bags and boxes
floated behind us as far as we could see in the thick weather,
looking, as they rose and fell, like an enormous sea serpent
following us. The sailors who were stationed in the fore
castle, thoughtful of the interests of the rest as well as of
themselves, opened all our chests, and, crowding our clothes
together in the middle, emptied boxes of raisins into one end
and boxes of shelled almonds into the other, tiU the chests were
full; and we all had aH the raisins and almonds we could eat
for the rest of our voyage home.
While we were at Canton, on my second voyage, our ship
lay at Wampoo Reach, a stretch of river a few miles below
Canton, where all the foreign ships lie, occupying over a mile
of the river. They remain at anchor here during the whole
time, the masters being rowed up to the city by their boats'
crews, and the cargo being brought down by lighters. The
vessels lie so near together that the crews get somewhat ac
quainted, and each is asked, and is generally ready to tell,
what sort of captain and officers he has, and whether he has
a comfortable life on board. There was one Captain D. of the
ship P., who had among us all a very hard reputation as almost
a monster of cruelty among his men, working them unmerci
fully and inflicting- blows and cuffs as his pleasure or temper
inclined him. We got all this from his men, who complained
bitterly of him. He and his ship were still there when we left,
and I heard nothing further of either. He was at this time
about thirty years old. Over thirty years after I was attend
ing our Supreme Court at Litchfield, and at dinner at the hotel
I found myself sitting by the side of stranger, who proved to
be a man of intelligence, and had evidently seen a good deal
of the world, and who had the manners of a gentleman. We
soon got into conversation, and it came out that he had been a
sea captain in his early life and had made numerous voyages
to Canton in command of the ship P. Here, then, was the old
terror of the sailors of my time, the redoubtable Captain D.
of my early memory. I did not let on that I had once been a
.sailor, and had seen him and his ship at Canton, and had
brought away and always retained a bad opinion of him. I let

196 REMINISCENCES.
him treat me as a gentleman, which he did perfectly, and kept
the grotesqueness of the incident all to myself. I have thought
it best not to give his name or that of his ship in full, but the
initials that I have given are the correct ones.
In looking back from time to time on the period which I
spent upon the sea, especially that of my East India voyage,
I have always felt thankful for that experience. To one
brought up at ease in a refined family with no experience of the
hardships of life, it was a school of manliness and self-reliance
and courage. The labor was generally hard and often very
severe, and sometimes involved great exposure and serious
peril, to be met only by a resolute and unflinching determina
tion to do faithfully what was required to be done. It was a
great place for discipline and no place for shirking or coward
ice. But we had much that was very enjoyable. The vast,
restless, indomitable sea was always most impressive, and
sometimes awful in its grandeur. One can never come away
from a year's life in its constant presence the same man that
he was before. Its varying moods make a perpetual study,
while there is a thrill in the sudden meeting with other voyagers
in the wide expanse where we had felt an oppressive sense of
loneliness, and the brief exchange of salutations with them as
they pass us, seeming to come out of the unknown and to go
away into it. And there is something that fills the imagination
in the vast outspread of sails that a ship carries, like the wings
of a mighty bird. And it is with no small sense of more than
human power that one at a ship's helm turns the vast mass
this way and that at his will. I took my turn at the wheel,
and was often thrilled by the quick obedience of the huge
ship to every motion of my hand. Steamers have now very
generally taken the place on these voyages of the old sailing
ships, and with them have gone the old grace of motion and
beauty of swelling canvas. While the change is of vast benefit
to the world, one who indulges in sentiment over it could al
most mourn as Burke did over the passing away of the age of
chivalry. All these things get idealized as they recede into the
remote past. But I remember with great satisfaction the real
hardships and dangers of the life, and not the least that on the
way home from the East Indies we were taken h\ a Portuguese
pirate, and were in momentary expectation of being butchered.

DAMON AND PYTHIAS. 197
I have devoted a chapter to this incident {ante, p. 27). I have
all my life long been a more manly man for these hardships.
1 would not have exchanged those two years for any two years
at home, however wisely I might have spent them, both for the
greatly-needed benefit to my health, and as a part of my educa
tion for my place in the world. There is one thing that would
not often be considered in such a case, and that is the knowl
edge of naval matters that one gets, and could get in no other
way, which might be of great advantage to him. The knowl
edge that I acquired of ships and navigation has repeatedly
proved very useful to me in my profession of the law, and would
have been much more so if I had lived in a seaport town.
After all, I should hesitate about advising a young man, whose
health or special circumstances did not require it, to take an
East India voyage. It would be a life not only of hardship
and danger, but of serious moral peril. There could not be a
wider open door for vice. But the vice is of the lowest and
least attractive kind to a young man of any deHcacy or re
finement, to say nothing of moral principles. It had no at
traction for me. I was as safe from its contamination as if I
had been sitting by my father's fireside. In view of all I
gained, physical and moral, during my Hfe at sea, it was a wise
and kind Providence that led me to that signal experience in
my life.

DAMON AND PYTHIAS.
In the western part of the town of Farmington there lived
in my boyhood a farmer named William Cowles. He had a
large and well-cultivated farm, and two sons, Ezekiel and Wil
liam. He was one of the best of men, and never failed in all
states of the weather to attend with his family our Congrega
tional Church in Farmington village, some three miles distant
from his home. His sons grew up to be the same sort of excel
lent men that their father had been. It is of them that I am to
narrate an interesting occurrence. I use their true names, as I
desire that they should have the credit of what I relate.
Before their father's death the two boys had married and
their father had built for each a comfortable dwelling-house on

198 REMINISCENCES.
the farm, on the same highway with his own house and not
more than eighty rods from it and from each other. Here they
lived as if one family, working together on the farm and paying
all their expenses from the common fund. After their father's
death they continued for a while to live in the same way, but
soon after concluded to divide the farm between them. They
estimated the value of the houses and the different lots, and
took the advice of judicious neighbors on the subject. At last
they settled upon a division which they thought fair, and noth
ing remained but to execute the deeds. The night after this
settlement Ezekiel, the elder, went to bed, but found that he
could not sleep. His mind was filled with the thought of the
transaction, and the more he reviewed it the more it seemed to
him that he had received more than his share. This troubled
him so that as soon as he was dressed in the morning he started
for his brother William's to teU him how he felt about it.
On his way he met his brother, who had gone through the
same experience, and had come to the conclusion that he had
received more than his share, and was on his way to Ezekiel's
to tell him so. I believe that in the circumstances they finally
decided to let the division stand as they had agreed upon it.
However that may be, the incident stands as a most striking
case of brotherly affection and unity, as well as of aji unselfish
and predominating spirit of justice. History has immortalized
the names of Damon and Pythias as those of devoted and self-
sacrificing friends, but the names of these brothers are well
worthy of what little I can do in these Reminiscences for their
preservation and honor.
A very similar case, perhaps only an Arabic legend, has
been charmingly told of in verse by Clarence Cook, and I can
not forbear to place its heroes in pleasant association with mine.
The poem is entitled Abram and Zimri. It is as follows:
Abram and Zimri owned a field together —
A level field hid in a happy vale ;
They ploughed it with one plough, and in the spring
Sowed, walking side by side, the fruitful seed.
In harvest, when the glad earth smiled with grain.
Each carried to his home one-half the sheaves,
And stored them with much labor in his barns.

DAMON AND PYTHIAS. iqq
Now Abram had a wife and seven sons,
But Zimri dwelt alone within his house.
One night before the sheaves were gathered in,
As Zimri lay upon his lonely bed
And counted in his mind his lonely gains,
He thought upon his brother Abram's lot.
And said, "I dwell alone within my house.
But Abram hath a wife and seven sons.
And yet we share the harvest sheaves alike.
He surely needeth more for life than I ;
I wdl arise, and gird myself, and go
Down to the field, and add to his from mine."
So he arose, and girded up his loins,
And went out softly to the level field ;
The moon shone out from dusky bars of clouds,
The trees stood black against the cold blue sky.
The branches waved and whispered in the wind.
So Zimri, guided by the shifting light,
Went down the mountain path, and found the field.
Took from his store of sheaves a generous third,
And bore them gladly to his brother's heap,
And then went back to sleep and happy dreams.
Now, that same night, as Abram lay in bed.
Thinking upon his blissful state in life,
He thought upon his brother Zimri's lot,
And said, "He dwells within his house alone.
He goeth forth to toil with few to help,
He goeth home at night to a cold house,
And hath few other friends but me and mine "
(For these two tilled the happy vale alone) ;
" While I, whom Heaven hath very greatly blessed.
Dwell happy with my wife and seven sons,
Who aid me in my toil and make it light,
And yet we share the harvest sheaves alike.
This surely is not pleasing unto God ;
I will arise and gird myself, and go
Out to the field, and borrow from my store,
And add unto my brother Zimri's pile."
So he arose and girded up his loins,
And went down softly to the level field ;
The moon shone out from silver bars of clouds,
The trees stood black against the starry sky.

200 REMINISCENCES.
The dark leaves waved and whispered in the breeze.
So Abram, guided by the doubtful light,
Passed down the mountain path and found the field.
Took from his store of sheaves a generous third.
And added them unto his brother's heap ;
Then he went back to sleep and happy dreams.
So the next morning with the early sun
The brothers rose, and went out to their toil ;
And when they came to see the heavy sheaves,
Each wondered in his heart to find his heap,
Though he had given a third, was still the sarr»e.
Now the next night went Zimri to the field,
Took from his store of sheaves a generous share
And placed them on his brother Abram's heap,
And then lay down behind his pile to watch.
The moon looked out from bars of silvery cloud,
The cedars stood up black against the sky,
The olive-branches whispered in the wind ;
Then Abram came down softly from his home,
And, looking to the right and left, went on,
Took from his ample store a generous third.
And laid it on his brother Zimri's pile.
Then Zimri rose and caught him in his arms.
And wept upon his neck, and kissed his cheek,
And Abram saw the whole, and could not speak.
Neither could Zimri. So they walked along
Back to their homes, and thanked their God in prayer
That he had bound them in such loving bands.

GROWTH IN UNSPIRITUALITY,
For many years I was a regular attendant on Rev, Dr. Bur
ton's Park Church prayer-meetings, almost always taking a
part in them. I was at the time a deacon in the church. I
used occasionally to read some article which I had written dur
ing the week, working out some practical religious thought,
though I more often presented the matter in a conversational
way. I find some of these monographs among my accumu
lated papers, and decide to insert one here, partly that my
friends may see my manner of dealing with such subjects, and
partly because the subject is one of the greatest religious im-

GROWTH IN UNSPIRITUALITY. 2OI
portance. I retain the title which I then gave it, " Growth in
Unspirituality." This wed expresses my subject, though I
use in it a word which is hardly recognized by the dictionaries.
In my boyhood and early manhood I used to hear the doc
trine taught, from the pulpit, in the Sabbath-school, and in
the religious papers, that the Holy Spirit, the voluntary and
gratuitous interposition of which was considered essential to
the soul's salvation, was a most sensitive thing, easily grieved
away, and grieved away by the soul's mere indifference; and,
when once withdrawing, departing forever, and leaving the
soul, even in earthly life, in a moral death, from which it could
never be rescued. Fifty years of study of God's word and of
prayerful inquiry and reflection have brought me to believe that
the Holy Spirit is patient beyond aH our conceptions of
patience, persistent, never discouraged, ever watching for an
open door into the heart, and never leaving a human soul while
life lasts. I fully believe that those lines so often sung express
an absolute truth, and were inspired by this very Holy Spirit —
that, ' ' While the lamp holds out to burn
The vilest sinner may return."
But in accepting this doctrine we are letting drop out a
ground of most potent appeal to non-religious men, and one
that has often been effectively used, and which addresses itself
to the fears of men; and an address to men's fears has often
been, at least apparently, the only one that could move them.
They were told that they might, by shutting up their hearts
against the entrance of the Holy Spirit, grieve it away, and be
abandoned by it, and left stranded and hopeless; and that while
they were wholly unconscious of it; doomed already without
knowing it.
Now, while I far prefer to appeal to men's love rather than
to their fears, I freely admit that an appeal to their fears is en
tirely legitimate, and that the terrors of the Lord should never
be laid out of consideration, and in many cases should be
pressed, in all their awful solemnity, upon the attention of the
inattentive and indifferent and careless soul. And I admit,
14

202 REMINISCENCES.
too, that my view of the patience and persistency of the Holy
Spirit in its pursuit of us in our indifference and wanderings
does take away a most weighty consideration that might often
be very effectively used in our appeals to the non-religious.
But there is another principle at work, the potency of which
should be considered, and which to my apprehension supplies
all that we need as a ground of appeal to men's fears. And
that principle is this: That while those who seek after a
spiritual life grow in spirituality, those who are indifferent to
it are all the while growing more and more unspiritual — more
and more hardened. We do not stand still. Motion is Hfe,
and stagnation is death. The air above us is full of winds,
and the sea beneath us is full of tides ; and our bark, as we float
on the sea of life, is never stationary — or never long so. All
souls are moving, upward or downward. No man is quite
what he was ten years ago. Now this growth in spirituality,
or in unspirituality, is not wholly the result of the operation
upon us, or withdrawal of operation, of a supernatural power.
It is in a great measure an entirely natural operation. A
faculty used and cultivated grows, and a faculty not used
shrinks and perhaps disappears. Darwin, in his Origin of
Species, shows clearly how in animals and plants, individuals
of the same type, placed in new surroundings, under new
necessities, develop into different species. While there is great
dissent from his views as to the origin and development of man,
yet all the world agrees to his general views as to the growth,
through the special use of some organs and the entire disuse
of others, of totally different organisms out of the same parent
organism. But we see this abundantly illustrated in human
beings. Everybody understands it. Now, by this same
natural law the cultivation of our spiritual nature leads to a
growth and strength of that nature; while the neglect of its cul
tivation, and especially a course of life that tends not merely
not to promote our spirituality but to promote our non-spiritu
ality, as surely leads tO' the growth and strength of an un
spiritual nature.* We see this illustrated strikingly by the
fact, often remarked upon, that a great many more young

*" Emerson says : " The force of character is cumulative ; all
the foregone days of virtue work their health into us. "

GROWTH IN UNSPIRITUALITY. 203
people, in proportion, become religious than middle-aged and
old people. Reasoning on general principles we might ex
pect the fact to be otherwise. Young people are full of animal
life; full, too, of golden expectations from mere earthly life.
The world as it lies before them has a great charm for them.
They have not reached the age of reflection and disiUusion.
The old people, on the other hand, have found how false is all
that glitters ; they have been sobered by seeing the sad reality
of things, by the loss of those near to their hearts, by the deaths
of companions around them. They have reached the age of
reflection, and often have abundant leisure for it. Yet they
do not often yield to the pressure of religious truth. They
never entered upon a spiritual life, and so they have constantly
moved away and away from such a life. They have moved
further and further away from the point of impressible contact
with spiritual influences.
Now undoubtedly there is a corresponding movement dur
ing all this time on the part. of the Holy Spirit; so that, while
this downward growth is in great measure a natural one, yet
there are also supernatural influences at work. The life of the
man who seeks for a high spiritual life is a perpetual prayer to
God for his help in it; and that help wiH be given. The life
of the man who has no desire for a spiritual life is a perpetual
rejection of spiritual influences; and while those influences may
StiU follow him, yet as the door of his heart becomes more and
more closed against them, those spiritual forces are of less and
less value to him, and may become less and less active in his
behalf. We have, then, a terrible truth here that we can press with
great effect upon non-religious men; for is it not a terrible one?
What misfortune can be greater than that of a constant reced
ing from the reach of divine influences, of a growing impene
trability of the heart. Yet we see it all about us. There is 110
mistaking the fact that this man and that whom we meet in
the intercourse of life has no spiritual experience whatever —
no conception of what spiritual life is. I remember when at
Washington a few. years ago that I went one Sunday morning
into the large office of the hotel and took a seat for the very pur
pose of studying the characters of the throng that filled the
wide room. Men were standing about in groups, talking

204 REMINISCENCES.
earnestly, so that I often easily caught enough to know what it
was about. There were probably some members of Congress,
some lobbyists, many politicians. From almost every quarter
came up an occasional profane expression, and the talk was
evidently all on secular matters, while most of the men them
selves looked hard and greedy and self-indulgent. I said to
myself, among these hundred people I cannot see one that I
think is a religious man. It is true this was an exceptional
gathering and place, and there may, after all, have been here
and there a good man among them; but get together a hun
dred men on some secular occasion, and how much profanity
will you hear? How much low ribaldry? How much that
goes to show that in the vast majority God is not in all their
thoughts? And yet this spiritual life is all that there is of life
that is really worth having. It is all that will survive death —
all that will constitute our Hfe in that world that is so near to
all of us.
How we should struggle to preserve our natural faculties
if we found ourselves in danger of losing them. And yet what
would the loss of them be by the side of the loss of our spiritual
faculties? To me the face of nature is full of wonderful beauty.
It seems to me no enthusiastic lover of music ever enjoyed the
finest musical performance more than I enjoy looking upon a
beautiful landscape. Well, suppose I found my sight prema
turely failing, and aH this panorama passing away from my
saddened eyes forever. What would I not do for the restora
tion of my sight? What skiHed oculist, however far away or
expensive, would I not seek? Yet what would the loss of my
earthly sight be to the loss of all spiritual vision! I have a
near relative, of about my own age, who has been a clergyman
all his life, who from early youth has been an enthusiastic lover
of music and is a performer of rare excellence upon a violin.
He hardly goes anywhere without taking his violin with him.
WeH, for nearly twenty years he has been gradually losing his
hearing. But he could still hear the strains of his own violin,
and while at the concerts he attended he lost some of the notes,
he could yet hear enough, by sitting near, to get great enjoy
ment from the performance. But at last his hearing is utterly
gone. The concert becomes only a pantomime, emitting no
sound. His beloved violin makes no audible response to his

DR. JOHN CHAPMAN. 205
familiar and appealing touch. Now, what would he'not have
done to save his hearing? What remedy, however costly or
difficult to be procured, would he not have sought for and ap
plied? Yet what is this loss of hearing to the loss of all power
to hear the whisper of God to the heart? And what is it to lose
the spiritual sight and the spiritual hearing both? To feel that
the whole heart is sealed against spiritual light and spiritual
voices. It is as the Evangelist says, " To him that hath shall be
given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even
that which he hath."
" However sharp the thorns of poverty,
The pangs of parting, failure's bitterness,
The pain of filling loving eyes with tears.
Thou shalt not fear them. Thou shalt dread but this :
To know thyself as vile among the pure,
With men of honor know thyself untrue ;
To feel debased before the cUmbing hills,
Abashed amid the still, aspiring wood,
And unresponsive to the beckoning sky ;
To -wish that God were not, and restlessly
To seek remoteness from his influence,
Until the spirit's garden grows awaste.
— Embrace all iUs but this, and find them sweet ! "

DR. JOHN CHAPMAN.
One of the most interesting and one of the noblest men I
ever knew was Dr. John Chapman of London. He was one
of my best friends. I first met him in 1872, and when again
abroad with my wife in 1874 and 1875 we were much at his
house, which was indeed our home in London. He was then,
and had been for many years, the principal editor of the West
minster Review, which was described by an English writer as
'•¦ the mouthpiece of the most advanced and the most respected
thinkers of the day, and, by reason of the breadth of thought,
the enlightenment, the toleration, and the spirit of progressive
inquiry in the cause of reason and truth which pervaded its
scholarly pages, no less than by the attention directed to scien
tific subjects and the consideration given to art as an indis-

2o6 REMINISCENCES.
pensable part of human education, as occupying the position
of the leading organ of the liberal and philosophical school of
the time." During our Civil War the Westminster Review
stood firmly and unwaveringly on our side and did a great deal
to turn the best public opinion of England in our favor. Since
then Dr. Chapman's articles, especially on social and political
subjects, have commanded public attention and had a wide and
positive influence. I was told in London that an article in the
review on the administration of affairs by the government in
India had led to a serious modification of the political plans of
the ministry. This article was at first attributed to John Stuart
Mill, the first political philosopher in England, but Dr. Chap
man told me himself that he wrote it. He was all this while
a physician in large practice. His habit was to get up at five
o'clock all the year round, make himself a cup of coffee, and
work with his pen till nine o'clock, when he ate his breakfast
with his family, and for the rest of the day was a hard-working
physician. He was intensely interested in all the reform movements
of the day — in the extension of the franchise among the com
mon people, in woman suffrage, in sanitary improvements,
in methods of benefiting the poor, and in wider education. He
set to work earnestly to rescue the many charitable foundations
which had been perverted from their original purpose and be
come the prey of those who should have been their protectors.
He gave great offense, and injured himself in his professional
standing, by the conflict which he went into with some of the
physicians who were getting the benefit of these perversions.
It was a strange anomaly that in the midst of all this he was an
utter disbeliever in the existence of a God and of a future Hfe.
It is surprising: that, with the want of belief in all that I valued
most, I should have been drawn to him or he to me. Yet he
became my very warm friend, and told a friend of mine that if I
lived in London he should want to have me for his most in
timate friend. I asked him at one time how he could care so
much for making people happier and better if this short life
was all. He repHed that he desired it all the more for this
reason, for if this life is all he wanted to have people get the
most out of it. I was at dinner one day at his house, sitting on
his right hand, while a colonel in our army sat on his left. My

DR. JOHN CHAPMAN. 207
wife sat at the lower end of the table with Mrs. Chapman and
two other ladies. By some means the subject of prayer was
spoken of, and the colonel, who proved to be a Swedenborgian,
spoke very strongly of its good effect on the suppliant, even
if it did not bring the answer sought. Dr. Chapman then
turned to me, saying: " Let us hear what Mr. Hooker says."
At this I entered on something of a discussion of the whole
matter, all conversation at the table being dropped and all Hs
tening to me. What I said was substantially this : " I cannot
be at all sure that we shall get what we pray for. It may be the
very best thing for us not to get it. But back of the whole
question Hes the great question whether there is a God to hear
our prayer. It seems to me that I can say that I am sure there
is. My whole life has been spent in dealing practically with
questions of proof, and I have learned to have confidence in
the movements of my own mind. I cannot go into processes
here; I can give you only results. But I could not feel more
sure that God exists and controls earthly affairs if I could see
him with my eyes or feel his hand taking hold of mine. And,
if God exists, I cannot doubt that he is omnipotent and all-
wise as well as supremely benevolent; and such a being, send
ing us into this hard world as his children, would not fail to
keep a fatherly interest in us and would love to have us pray to
him." Dr. Chapman, restrained by delicacy from coming into
serious conflict with his guests, yet told us of some of the ex
periments that had been made with regard to prayer, which
'seemed to show that it had signally failed in those instances.
My wife told me after dinner that Mrs. Chapman, who listened
attentively to our talk, told her that if she could believe as I
did she should love to pray.
I never saw Dr. Chapman after 1875, though I occasionally
had a letter from him. A few years later he removed to Paris,
still keeping up his editorship of the Westminster Review.
He soon got into a large practice there, which he continued till
his death in November, 1894. I do not know his exact age at
that time, but he must have been over seventy. He had con
ducted the review from 1851 — forty-three years. An interest-
sketch of him is given in the Westminster Review for January,
1895.

208 REMINISCENCES.
Dr. Chapman was a man of exceedingly fine presence —
six feet tall, well filled out and erect, and with a countenance
of the highest manly beauty. It was full of benignity and yet
full of strength.
There was a brilliant circle of scientists and litterateurs
who from time to time served under him as contributors to the
review. Among them was George Eliot, who was for a time
his assistant in the editorship. There were also Herbert
Spencer, George Henry Lewes, James and Harriet Martineau,
and others well known in the literary world. I met a parlor
full of them at an evening entertainment at his house.
Dr. Chapman was buried at Highgate Cemetery, near Lon
don, in the midst of his contemporary workers, and close by
the grave of George Eliot. The obituary sketch of him to
which I have referred contains the following passage, which is
well worthy of quotation here :
During the forty-three years of his editorship of the Review —
a task phenomenal in one man's life, joined as it was to the oner
ous work of a large medical practice — Dr. Chapman used his in
comparable intellect, his remarkable powers and his indomitable
energy to maintain the reputation of the Review with the excel
lence of its earlier teaching, and his most fervent wish when he
died was that it might continue to be so maintained, not alone for
the sake of the glorious associations of the past, but for the sake
of the liberalism of to-day and of generations to come — main
tained as a steadfast organ of the broader ideas, the wider views,
of human interests of which he was so fearless a pioneer, and in
whose cause he labored ceaselessly, at immense personal sacrifice,
for so many years.
It is not possible here to do more than allude to the many rare
and admirable qualities of his nature — singularly sweet qualities
which endeared him to the friends whose unspeakable privilege it
was to know and be associated with him. Neither can more than
a passing reference now be made to his great services to medicine
and his many valuable discoveries in that science.
Dr. Chapman may justly be characterized as an exceptional
man of an exceptional age, and those who knew him intimately
must revere his nobility of character and his staunch fearlessness
of conscience, even as they admired the uncommon order of his
physical presence and his great mental gifts. To those his name

THE KEARSARGE.

209

will be synonymous with all that is good, with all that tends to
promote civilization, and with all that is best for humanity at
large. THE KEARSARGE.
One of the most romantic incidents of our late war, and of
intense interest and great satisfaction and pride to us of the
North, was the fight between the United States cruiser
Kearsarge and the Confederate ship Alabama. It occurred off
Cherbourg, France, on the 19th of June, 1864. After a fierce
contest the Kearsarge sank the Alabama. The Kearsarge her
self in 1894 was wrecked upon a rock in the Caribbean Sea,
where her bones have ever since lain bleaching. A most inter
esting visit which I paid to her in 1890, as she was undergoing
repairs at the navy yard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, will,
I think, make a very proper subject of notice in these Remin
iscences. It should, however, be preceded by an account of
the fight, which so many are too young to remember and which
has hardly yet taken its full place in history.
A writer in. the SpringfieU Republican, early in February,
1894, gives the following graphic account of the fight, taken
from the lips of a sailor who was in it and who was at the time
a coxswain on the Kearsarge. It is given in the vernacular of
the sea, and I preserve the language in which the old sailor
told the story :
We were laying in Flushing, HoUand, on a Sunday, when the
consul had a dispatch from Cherbourg, saying that the Alabama
was there. The coronet was h'isted and a gun fired to call the
crew aboard. When all hands got aboard, the captain had all
hands called aft and told us of the dispatch, and said : " Boys,
I'm going down to fight the Alabama, and I expect every man of
you to do your duty when we get there." This was received by
the officers and men with three hearty cheers, and in less than an
hour we were steaming down across the North Sea for Cherbourg,
where we arrived on Tuesday afternoon about one o'clock.
We steamed up to the east entrance of Cherbourg harbor,
which has a breakwater three miles long. We lowered our third
cutter, and sent her ashore for information. We got a good view
of our antagonist as we was puUing by. I was cox'en of the cut-

2 1 o REMINISCENCES.
ter. After we returned, about 4 p.m., there was a boat came off
from shore with a request, sent out by Capt. Semmes through the
American consul, that if Capt. Winslow would stay out there
twenty-four hours he would come out and fight him, and that he
wouldn't detain him over forty-eight.
We waited from Tuesday afternoon till Friday afternoon, when
the crew began to get discouraged, and wanted to get in and board
her in the night. The captain had them all called aft again, and
said : " Boys, don't get discouraged. I know Ralph Semmes. He
sent word that he would come out and fight me, and he is coming.
Something has detained him longer than he expected. And, boys,
you've got to do the fighting. It isn't your captain that can do it,
but your captain's boys." This caused the boys to give the old
man three rousing cheers, and all went forrid, knowing that
they'd got to fight.
On Sunday, June 19th, the captain was on the quarter deck
with his Bible to hold service, which was customary on Sunday,
when the man on the topsail yard hailed the deck, and said :
¦"Out there she comes." The captain called his boy, and said:
" Boy, take my Bible, and bring up my sword and revolvers.
Officer of the deck, beat to quarters. Quartermaster, port your
wheel. Officer of the deck, let her go fast. Quartermaster,
steady.'' Our course then caused us to run right away from the
Alabama off shore. We eould not account for this, but we knew
the captain was right in whatever he did.
After getting off shore about nine or ten miles, the captain
ordered the quartermaster to starboard his helm. We now
headed right in the direction of the Alabama, which we were
anxiously watching, when, about nine hundred yards away, the
first shot was fired from the Alabama, followed by thirteen others,
some striking alongside, some going through the rigging clear of
everything ; but no damage was done as yet. " Quartermaster,"
called the captain, "starboard your helm a little. Steady.''
We were now within about eight hundred yards of each other.
The order was given to fire as soon as we got our guns to bear.
Bang went the little rifle on the forecastle. We watched the
course of the shell, and saw it strike. Then the forrid pivot,
the after pivot, and two broadside 32-pounders, which failed of
hitting the mark. The captain, coolly walking the deck, said :
" Men, there's a ship to fire at. Don't fire your shells into the
water, but see what you're aiming at. Aim before you fire."
Which good advice the men accepted, and from that on they

THE KEARSARGE. 211
always let the smoke clear away from the enemy's ship before
they fired, and then they could teU what they were firing at.
And now the ball was opened in good style. Shot was scream
ing over our heads. Shells were exploding uncomfortably near.
One sheU went through the smokestack. We were struck but
very few times, mostly in the rigging. One of the shells struck
the sheathing that covered the chain, cut the chain, and dropped
into the water. A few minutes after another struck us, went
through the planking, struck an iron sheathing on one of the tim
bers, and dropped harmlessly overboard. I was first loader of a ii-
inch forrid pivot. Charley Reed was first sponger. I should think
they fired three hundred and fifty shot and shell at us, and we
had fired about a hundred and seventy-five. One shell lodged in
the stern post and one in the plank sheer. We were struck in all
twenty-eight times, — thirteen in the hull and the remainder in
the rigging. Some of the Alabama's shells would go screaming
over our mast-heads, and some would strike short. When we had
been fighting about forty minutes, one of our shells cut away the
Alabama's mizzen halyards, which caused her flag to come part
way down. A few minutes afterwards a ii-inch shell from the
forrid pivot struck her mainmast. After the firing had been go
ing on about fifty-five minutes, the Alabama kept off to run for
port, knowing; that she was, whipped. , Finding that they couldn't
get away from us, they hauled their colors down, and we received
orders to cease firing. But in a few minutes another gun was
fired from the Alabama, at which our captain said: " Give them
another shot, boys. I guess they haven't got enough yet." This
caused a broadside to be fired from the Kearsarge, with such
deadly aim that they jumped on the mizzen boom and held up a
white flag as a signal to cease firing, as the battle was evidently
over for good.
They immediately lowered a, boat, putting in twelve wounded
men, and sent them to the Kearsarge, with a message by the
officer in charge that they had surrendered, and asking for assist
ance, as they were sinking. The officer asked permission to go
back and rescue the men, as he had his boat manned, which
request being granted, they pulled towards the sinking ship,
which sank before they reached it. They rescued a few of the
officers in the water. We succeeded with our two boats that
wem't stove in rescuing seventy-four. The English yacht Deer-
hound came down among the men, and Capt. Semmes, swimming

212

REMINISCENCES.

Alongside, called out: "I'm Captain Semmes; for God's sake,
save me ! " He thus escaped on the Deerhound.
After the battle, and we got the men aboard our ship, each man
picked out a man from the Alabama about his own size, and
offered him the use of a suit of his clothes. I might say, gave
him a suit, for I never see mine again. As soon as they got dry
clothes on, the bo'sen's whistle was sounded, calling all hands to
" splice the main brace." As soon as our crew had gone round,
the Alabama's crew was called to " splice," and to see which could
put in the neatest splice. Immediately after this the Alabama men
were distributed round our different messes to take dinner, which
was served in abundance, as the cook had been told that we were
going to have company.
At four o'clock that afternoon the prisoners were all paroled,
and, in their parting from our ship, the remark was frequently
made : " Boys, if we'd knowed what kind of treatment we'd a
received, you wouldn't a had to fight us as you did. " That was
their feelings after getting whipped.
I went on board the Kearsarge as an ordinary seaman, becaine
an able seaman, then the cox'en of the third cutter, and was made
captain of the f oretop and master's mate after the engagement.
This graphic account of the fight from one who was in the
thick of it is well worth preservation, and I do what little I am
able in my unpretending book to effect this. My own visit to
the Kearsarge was, as I have stated, in the summer of 1890.
After her loss at sea in 1894 this incident, very interesting to
me at the time, came back to my mind with a special interest,
and I sent the following communication on the subject to the
Hartford Courant:
To the Editor of the Courant :
There are few of our people who were old enough to be
thrilled by the incidents of our late war who did not feel a pang
at the news of the wreck of the Kearsarge a few days ago. To
the writer, who had had the privilege of walking upon her deck
in tearful affection and reverence, it brought a great sorrow. The
story of her desperate fight with the Alabama, the rebel cruiser
which had become the terror of our merchant vessels, in which
the Kearsarge sank her antagonist, is known to every one as a
matter of remembrance or of history.

THE KEARSARGE. 213
In the summer of 1890 I spent several days at the Portsmouth
navy-yard visiting a naval officer stationed there, who was an old
friend. The Kearsarge was then in dry dock there undergoing
repairs. She was high and dry above the water, supported by
props of timber. I looked at her with great interest ; but it was a
painful sight to see her out of her native element and stuck up in
the air so awkwardly and painfuUy. It seemed as if she must
groan from the pain and the indignity.
The day before I was to leave, the repairs on her bottom had
been completed, and she was to be hauled out of the dock into the
stream. My friend took me on board and introduced me to Capt.
Crowninshield, who was in command of her, and got permission,
which was readily granted, for me to stay on board during the
operation. The captain received me very graciously, and intro
duced me to several of his officers, who were a fine-looking set
of men. When introduced to the captain as Mr. Hooker of Hart
ford, he asked me if I was of the family of the Rev. Thomas
Hooker, who was the founder of the city. I told him I was the
sixth in direct descent from him. He then told me that he was
from Salem, of an old Puritan family. He seemed greatly to
value New England blood and traditions. His wife soon after
came on board, and he had chairs brought to the quarter deck for
ns. It was a curious incident that, on being introduced tp her,
she asked me if I was related to a certain lady, mentioning the
name of my wife.
A dry dock, which probably few of your readers have seen, is
a capacious structure built upon the land, and so placed as to
receive the depth of water from the sea that will fioat the vessel
that is to be repaired. It is provided with a huge double gate on
the seaward side, which opens outward, and, when the dock is
full of water, the vessel is hauled in through the open gateway.
When she is in the gate is closed, and powerful pumps throw
the water out, and, as the vessel settles down, supporting props
are placed under her, so that, when the water has disappeared,
she stands high and dry resting on her props', and with all below
her water-line accessible for repairs. The hauling of a vessel out
of the dry dock is merely the reversing of the process. The huge
double gate, of course, could not be opened until the outside
pressure of the water had ceased, which could only be when the
dock was full of water again. The water was, therefore, let in
through several small gates. It took nearly an hour to thus fill
the dock. As the water rose about the props of the Kearsarge

2 1 4 REMINISCENCES.
and began to relieve the pressure of the props, a conscious tremor
seemed to run through her as if she felt its friendly touch and her
returning buoyancy, and, when she fully floated and the props
were removed, she seemed to feel that she was in her native ele
ment again, and to move about like a giant waking from sleep
and stretching himself. When the dock was filled with water,
the large gate was opened outward, and she was hauled out into
the stream. Up to this point the engineer in charge of the dock
had directed the whole operation ; but now the captain assumed
command, and the ship was worked around to a place at a dock,
where she was made fast. The whole operation took about three
hours. The ofiicers took great pride in the fame of their ship. On
a large brass plate in front of their quarters was the date of the
fight with the Alabama. I asked the captain if the same planks
were on the deck, and he said: "Yes, the very same." And I
walked up and down the deck thrilled with the thought of what
the ship had done for the country.
Capt. Crowninshield was expecting to be ordered at once to
the coast of Honduras, and I saw by the papers a few days later
that he was so in fact. It was now August, the time in that
region for deadly heat, hurricanes, and yellow fever, and I could
not help feeling anxious for him and the fine fellows who were
officers under him. He returned safely, but how many of his
officers I do not know. I felt the more anxious because I learned
that not long before the ship had been ordered in midsummer to
the coast of Africa, and while there had lost by yellow fever
eight of her officers and fifty-three men, the surgeon, whose
services were of the greatest importance, being one of the first
victims. SAMUEL MOSELEY.
When I entered college in the fall of 1832, the Farmington
canal was in operation, a few years old, but nearing its final
failure and abandonment. At this time it furnished, what
seemed to the public of that time, a very convenient and pleas
ant mode of travehng, far in advance of the old stage coach.
Most of the people who went to New Haven from any of the
towns upon its line went by passenger boats. These were day
boats altogether and had spacious saloons running nearly the

SAMUEL MOSELEY.

215

length of the boats, with rooms at the ends for cooking and
other domestic work and for the boatmen to sleep in. These
saloons were very comfortably fitted up for the passengers to sit
about in, as well as take their meals in, and made the jiassage
to New Ilavcii, which was accomplislicd in a day from most
points on the canal, a very agreeable opportunity for social en
joyment, as well as for reading if one preferred it.
When I went down at the beginning of the fall term and
the college year I went by a canal boat, and four of my school
mates who were joining the class went with me, as well as a
few others from other places on the line. My mother also
went with mc, to sec to getting me settled in my room. Half
of a spacious house which had belonged to my grandfather
fell to her by his will, and my fatlicr had built an addition to
it in the rear, and had a good-sized sitting-room and bedroom
made for nic in the second story of the .-iddition. While we
wci'c fin our w;iy down my mother asked me if I had seen a
young man among the passengers named Moseley, wdio was
going down to join my class. She told me that she had had
c|intc a talk with him and was much interested in him. She
said he told her that he was 20 years old (1 think) and had
worked on his father's farm till a year or two before, when he
decided to prepare for college and to study for the ministry.
His father, he said, was not a religious man, and was very
strongly opposed to his going to college, and, above all, to his
being a clergyman; but that his mother, who was a very re
ligious woman, had set her heart on his studying for the minis
try, and he had been pcrsiiaded by her to prepare for college.
My mother's account of the young man greatly interested mc,
and I sought him out among the numerous passengers. I
found him a tall, gaunt, awkward man, who had seen very little
of society, and was wholly without cultivation, yet evidently
was full of kindliness and with a certain light of consecration
on his plain face, I was at once drawn to the man in pity for
his disadvantages and in sympathy with his earnest devotion
to doing good. This warm symiiathy went on through many
years of college and later acquaintance.
When we came to our daily recitations in Latin, Greek, and
mathematics, it was very obvious that he was vcr\- poorly fitted
for college. Mis Latin and Greek greatly troubled him, and

2i6 REMINISCENCES.
his very natural recourse was to me, whose very kindly dis
position towards him he had by this time thoroughly tested.
Fortunately for me, my father, who was a rare Latin and Greek
scholar, had drilled me in both those languages from an early
age, so that when I entered college I was probably as thorough
a scholar in both those languages as most young men are when
they graduate. It was thus easy for me to help Moseley in his
Latin and Greek lessons, and it was a great pleasure to me to
give him the help. I soon saw that he needed a warmer vest for
the winter than the one he had on. I had a very warm one that
was somewhat worn, but which my mother had thought enough
for my daily wear for the approaching winter; but I got out a
very nice one which she had intended for my Sunday wear and
put it on. I then sent a line to Moseley, asking him to come to
my room. On his doing so I got out the old vest, and said I,
¦" Here, Moseley, is a very warm vest, but getting old, and I
shall not wear it any more. Would you like it? " He put up
both hands, and exclaimed: " Wonderful! wonderful! I was
just thinking what I should do for a warm winter vest, and now
the Lord has sent me this." It was all we could both do to
keep the tears from coming. Well, he put on the vest, and as
I daily saw him wearing it I had a constant reminder of the
slight kindness I had done him and of the spirit of gratitude
and trust in which he had received it. I speak of trust, for he
seemed to regard all good that fed to his needy lot as coming
directly from the Lord.
His home was Westfield, in the state of Massachusetts, and
Farmington was about half way between that place and New
Haven. As a matter of economy he was in the habit of walk
ing the whole distance, stopping over night at my father's
house in Farmington. Occasionally I walked down with him
from my own home, my father sometimes carrying us half way
and leaving us to walk the rest. On all these tramps his in
variable rule was to carry a package of tracts, and leave one
at the door of nearly every country house that we passed.
Wherever he was, or in whatever circumstances, he could never
forget the duty that he owed to his fellow men and to the Lord.
Moseley kept on till the completion of his four years at
college. I was compelled by a partial failure of my eyesight
to leave college at the end of two years, spending those two

SAMUEL MOSELEY. 2IJ
years in voyages about the world, of which I have given
some account in the preceding part of this volume (pp. 27, 192).
1 therefore saw little of him after his sophomore year. But
I was told that he remained the same poor scholar, and had a
low position in the class at graduation, lie studied theology
in the usual way and was licensed to preach.
After becoming a licensed ])rcachcr he began to iircach
wherever he could get the opportunity, hoping, like other
young preachers, to get a call to some country pulpit. Before
he left the seminary he had become engaged to a very worthy
young woman, whom he had met at a New 1 lavcn ccmimencc-
nient, but who resided in one of our country towns. Of course
she vvas looking forward anxiously to the time when he should
get a call and they could be married. Well, the poor fellow
preached very dull sermons, that nobody seemed to care to
hear, and not only month after month went by but year after
year, and found him still at his quest. At last, however, he re
ceived a call to the church in Burlington, one of our smallest
and poorest towns, lie and the young lady were delighted
at this final success, and immediately made their plans for their
marriage, and for .going to housekeeping after he had been or
dained. A council was called, according to the congrega
tional usage, for the purpose of examining him and approving
his settlement and ordaining him. Among the neighboring
churches called on to send their pastor and a delegate to the
council, the church at Farmington, under Rev. Dr. Porter, was
included, and I was chosen as the delegate to accompany our
pastor. 1 attended the council with great interest, as I had
known of my friend's long and anxious waiting for this oppor
tunity to begin the pastoral work for which he had for so many
years been ])reparing himself, and which had so long been his
dream. At the council Rev. Dr. Porter iircsided, and Mr.
Moseley was thoroughly examined by it as to his theological
soundness, which came within the most exacting standards.
The church ami society were then asked if there was any op
position on the part of the people to his settlement over them.
Upon this some of the men of the church apiicarcd and read a
pai)er signed by a considerable minority of the members, stat
ing, in a kindly but very positive way, that they thought his
IS

2x8 REMINISCENCES.
preaching duH and uninteresting, and especially as not cal
culated to reach the younger portion of the people, that his
sermons impressed the elderly women very favorably, that the
society was very small and poor, I think considerably less
than a hundred members in all, including the women, and that
so large a minority as dissented would very seriously affect his
usefulness and his comfort. The opposition did not seem to
be factious, but very evidently was thoroughly in earnest and
likely to continue so. After the hearing the council was left
by itself to consider the matter. Each clerical and lay mem
ber was asked in his turn for his opinion. I gave mine in favor
of his settlement. With all my doubts whether it was on the
whole best for the church and society, I could not but be af
fected by great sympathy for my friend and by my knowledge
of his history and my confidence in his devotion to his work;
besides which, as the church in its poverty could not hope to
secure a man of more than the most ordinary abihty, it seemed
to me it might try to get along with him, and, perhaps, all his
opponents would be won over by his saintliness of spirit and
his faithfulness as a pastor. But a large majority of the coun
cil, including the wise and good Dr. Porter, voted against his
installation. Poor Moseley was then called in to hear the
conclusion. He came in, and Dr. Porter briefly reviewed the
situation, and in the kindest and most sympathetic terms told
him of the unfavorable decision.
Moseley was deeply affected. I think there were few dry
eyes in the room. Pie said he had been for years preparing
himself solely for preaching the gospel, and after long waiting
had had this call. " But," said he, " it is manifestly God's will
that I should not be settled here. I accept his wiH without com
plaint. I had feared, in view of the opposition as it disclosed
itself, that you would think it best not to install me. I accept
your conclusion as a wise one and as expressing the will of
God in the matter." The council then made up its record and
adjourned, and poor Moseley was left to inform the young lady
whom he was to marry of the defeat of their hopes, and to begin
another long tramp in quest of a settlement.
I saw but little of him after this. He got an opportunity
to preach for a short time as an agent, I think, of the Bible
Society, and two opportunities to supply for a few months a

GENERAL B. 219
vacant pulpit. But neither of the latter opportunities
brought him a call to a parish, and his marriage was necessarily
deferred from year to year. At last, before he was forty, he lay
down and died. I do not know the illness that caused his
death, but he was a disappointed and broken man, and wearied
with his hopeless quest. He was a man of lovely consecration
of Hfe, but lacking in vigor of intellect. It was a great mistake
to take him from a life of industrial labor when so old, and to
send him through college. As a farmer or carpenter he would
have made one of the best of country deacons and have led a
very useful life. His unbelieving father, who opposed his at
tempt to get a college education, was in the right, and his pious
mother, whose heart was set on his preaching the gospel, was in
the wrong. The young lady to whom he was engaged lived un
married for many years and finally died at the threshold of old
age. I never regretted my kindness to him. There are few
things that I look back upon with more satisfaction. I shall
soon meet him in the other world and shall look with more
than the old kindness on the plain face that will then be lighted
up by a new consecration and by a happiness that he never
knew here. GENERAL B.
I prefer not to give the full name of the person about whom
I write. B. entered college with me at Yale and staid there
till some time in sophomore year, when he went to the military
academy at West Point. He had been promised an appoint
ment there, and was studying at Yale only to improve the in
terval and make his education more complete. His whole
ambition was for an army life and military glory. He came
from one of the Connecticut country towns, and his mother,
who was a widow, was possessed of but small means, which
she gladly expended for him, though, so far as I could learn,
she had little sympathy with his love of military life. At West
Point he was a faithful student, and graduated with honor, re
ceiving a lieutenancy in the army. In the Mexican war he
did good service and rose to the rank of captain. In our civil
war he became a general, and died a few years after the war.

220 REMINISCENCES.
I was never much drawn to B., and yet while we were in
college together there grew up between us quite a friendly re
lation. As a matter possibly of some honest thinking, but
more, I think, as one of military spirit and bravado, he avowed
from the first an utter disbelief in all religious creeds, and
would, I think, have called himself an atheist. I had occa
sional arguments with him on the subject. He occasionally
wrote me after he got into the army, sometimes alluding to his
unchanged religious opinions, my reply presenting earnestly
my own opposing convictions.
In the summer of 1841 I was a member of our House of
Representatives, the legislature sitting that year at New
Haven. To my surprise, one day B. called on me there. After
a cordial meeting, he told me that some of his friends were
going to bring before the legislature a resolution giving him
a sword, in recognition of his gallantry in the Mexican war,
and while he did not like to appear as a personal applicant for
it, he desired to interest his friends in the matter and secure
their friendly services, and that it was with great pleasure that
he found that I was a member of the House. After hearing
somewhat in detail his account of what he had done in the war,
in which he made out a pretty good case, I said to him : " Now
B. " (I could call him only by his old and familiar name of B.
without prefixing the " Captain "), " you know how I abhor
war, and this Mexican war I have utterly disapproved of as
iniquitous, though as an army officer you, of course, had to go
into it, but I cannot vote for having the state give you a sword.
If it were some other person than you I should not only vote
but speak against it." He was, of course, greatly disappointed,
but expressed the hope that I would not vote against the reso
lution. I finally told him that I would not vote at all, but when
the vote was taken would go out of the House. The whole
thing failed, I think, by an abandonment of the effort on the
part of the captain.
Many years later General B. (who had become a general in
our civil war) was stationed at Boston, in charge of the erec
tion or reparation of some fortifications in Boston harbor.
While he was there I met him in the street, and he at once
told me of his being stationed there, and asked me to go

GENERAL B. 221
with him down the harbor to the work of which he had charge.
I went with him and spent a large part of the day with him
there. He then told me much of his later life. He had mar
ried a few years before a lady whose acquaintance he made
there (I think a Boston lady), and had a little boy about a year
old, who was the delight of his life. Many other incidents of
his life he mentioned that would not be of general interest.
After my return home, perhaps a year after, I received an
agonized letter from him, teHing of the death of this chdd, his
only child. I wrote him in reply what comforting suggestions
I could make, and spoke of the greater consolation one would
find who had a settled religious faith. He replied that he
would tell me just what had happened, which he knew would
interest me. He said that the child was taken very ill in the
night with, I think, membraneous croup, or something very
quick and fatal, and that he at once sent for the doctor, but he
thought the child was dying and remembered that it had never
been baptized. In his horror at the thought of it, he sent a
servant in great haste for the Unitarian clergyman at whose
church he and his wife attended, and then, at once, came the
thought that perhaps Unitarianism was not the true religion,
and he sent another servant for a Congregational clergyman.
(He had been brought up in a Congregational family.) Before
either servant had returned, or the doctor had got there, he
thought the child was surely dying, and he caught up a basin
of water, and, dipping his hand in it, laid it on the forehead of
the child, saying in solemn voice: " Henry, I baptize thee in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen." The incident was almost a grotesque one, but it shows how
deeply fixed, even in an estranged and denying and perhaps
blaspheming heart, are the truths that one is taught by parental
instruction and example to accept in his childhood. I
never heard from General B. again and have no knowledge
how far the revived faith of his childhood remained by him
and affected his future belief and life. He died not long after.
He had seen the wars for which he had in early life expressed
to me a great desire, and had attained an honorable rank in the
army, but not the great military distinction that had been the
sole ambition of his life.

222 REMINISCENCES.

WILLIAM H, IMLAY,

In the summer of 1852 the pubHc heard with astonishment
of the failure of William H. Imlay of Hartford. He had been
regarded as the wealthiest man in Connecticut, and though he
was known to be borrowing money rather largely at the banks,
no one thought that he was seriously embarrassed. He had
on his hands large operations that required the use of much
money. He was rated as worth over half a milHon, which was
then a very large estate.
He retained me as his counsel the year after I removed to
Hartford, and thus I saw a great deal of him. He had ex
tensive real estate in the northern part of Michigan, and a year
or two later took me with him there to examine the property
and his titles, and on our way he told me many very interesting
things with regard to his own history.
His father held an important public office at Washington,
in which he had the handling of considerable public money.
He was a generous liver, given to hospitality, and careless
about money. He died when WiHiam was about fifteen, and
upon his death it was found that he was short in his accounts
about $10,000. This was a shocking occurrence for those early
times. His bondsmen, who were some personal friends, had
to make good the amount. William was the oldest of quite a
family of children. Of course the family had nothing, and
this boy of fifteen had the great burden of the support of his
mother and the other children faH on him. With her help he
got the place of a clerk in a store (a grocery, I think), and
worked with the utmost faithfulness, turning in for the family
support all he got. He had to work from daybreak till late in
the evening, and he told me that often, when he got home for
the night, he was so utterly tired out that he could not undress,
but threw himself on top of the bed and slept in his clothes. In
this way he struggled on tiU the other children were able to
earn something and the family needs were less. In this severe
school he had acquired habits of industry and economy and
learned the ways of business. When he became of age he got
into a profitable business (I forget what it was, or where), in
which he accumulated over $10,000. Who could have
blamed the poor boy for putting all this into his business, or

WILLIAM H. IMLA Y. 223
investing it for the benefit of the family? But with a high
sense of honor he took it all and paid his father's bondsmen
for what they had had to pay out for him. He settled in Hart
ford early in life, and all the remainder of his life was spent
there. After he became wealthy he was persuaded to invest
$50,000 in the Atlantic Dock Company of Brooklyn, N. Y.
He told me that the other owners, there were but some half
dozen in all, assured him that $50,000 was all that he would be
caHed on to furnish. The undertaking was a magnificent one,
promising great returns, but requiring the use of a very large
amount of money. A large amount was raised by the sale of
bonds, a portion of which Mr. ¦ Imlay took as security for
further advances, and was able to sell only by putting on them
his personal guarantee.' At last, tired out with the perpetual
draft on his money and his credit, he told me that he offered the
other members of the company $75,000 if they would take his
stock, assume his obligations, and let him off; but they would
not do it. Just at this time a son-in-law, who was in the paper-
making business, failed, and Mr. Imlay was on his paper as
endorser for $175,000. The whole made too heavy a load for
him, now getting on in years, to carry, and he saw no way but
to assign. Still his credit was perfect and nobody suspected
that he was seriously embarrassed. This was in the summer
of 1852. It was not till this time that I was retained by Mr. Imlay
as his counsel, and there are some incidents connected with
the matter that I think will be interesting to the younger mem
bers of the profession, and not without profit in the lesson that
they furnish.
I removed from Farmington to Hartford in September,
185 1. I had looked about for an office there in the preceding
May. Mr. Imlay was at that time building the stone front
edifice on Main street, opposite the old State Capitol, that has
ever since been occupied by the State Bank. I looked over
the offices in this building, and thought very favorably of two
rooms in the third story, and went to see Mr. Imlay about
them. They were then lathed but not plastered, but I could
easily see what the rooms would be. I caHed on Mr. Imlay at
his office, ascertained the rent, and agreed to take the rooms
in the fall. He was to have a lease drawn and ready for me to

224 REMINISCENCES.
take when I came over. He preferred to make the lease for
but two years, stating that he should undoubtedly be ready and
glad to renew as long as I desired to stay. I assented to this.
When I came over to occupy in September, I very soon went
to Mr. Imlay's office for my lease, and he handed me one
drawn by his clerk, which I took to my office to examine. As
it did not provide explicitly for aH that I thought I was en
titled to, I carried it back to Mr. Imlay and stated my ob
jections. He yielded to my view of the matter, and said he
would have his clerk draw another lease. The next day his
clerk brought in another lease, which, on examining it, I was
not quite satisfied with, and I took it to Mr. Imlay to have it
made right. I expected him to be irritated by my pertinacity
in the matter, and he remarked, after hearing what I had to
say: " It seems to me you are pretty particular, Mr. Hooker."
" Yes, Mr. Imlay," said I, " I am. The lease is an important
one. I may occupy the rooms twenty years, and I want
it made exactly right. Suppose you let me draw the lease
for myself and show it to you." He consented to this, and I
soon drew the lease with much care and carried it to him to
examine. He approved my draft and we executed the lease
in duplicate. Sometime in the following winter he came to my
office to get some conveyances drawn, but with that exception
I did no business for him, and, indeed, rarely saw him, till the
following summer. About the middle of that summer (1852),
I went to Newport, R. I., with my wife, for two weeks, leaving
a notice on my office door of the time of my return. At
this time Mr. Hawley, since our Senator in Congress, was my
junior partner, but he was also away on his summer vacation.
The next morning after my return Mr. Imlay called at my
office and told me that he had some very important business
that he wished to put into my hands. Pie said that Mr. Toucey
(afterwards Attorney-General at Washington) had been his
counsel, but that now he wished me to be so. He then re
minded me of what passed between us about my lease, and
asked me if I thought he took offense. I told him that I
thought he was somewhat irritated by my particularity in the
matter. " No," said he, " I was not. So far from it I said to
myself, there is just the man to do business for me," and he
said that he had waited very impatiently for two or three days

MY BICYCLE ACCIDENT.

225

for me to get back from Newport rather than have any one
else do the business. He then told me of his great pecuniary
embarrassment, and that he had decided to make an assign
ment for the benefit of his creditors; and on talking over the
persons who were proper for assignees, he settled on Mr.
George Beach, president of the Phcenix Bank, and myself.
There was a relative in New York whom he decided to put on
with us, but he was not willing to take the position unless all
the work could be done by Mr. Beach and myself. The
amount of work brought upon the assignees was very great
and lasted for several years. Mr. Beach took entire charge of
the account keeping and of the handling of all moneys. I took
charge of all the law business and drawing of papers, while we
both had frequent consultations with Mr. Imlay and with each
other. What I had to do in court and in my office occupied
a great part of my time, and would of itself have constituted a
very respectable professional business for the time. The era
of great fees, of what I may call unconscionable fees, had not
then reached Hartford. I will only add that Mr. Imlay after
wards made me one of his executors, and on his death, in 1858,
I had his complicated estate to settle. The estate paid aH its
debts, but very little was left for his children, who, unfortu
nately, had been brought up in the expectation of a consider
able inheritance, and with very little idea of self-dependence.

MY BICYCLE ACCIDENT,

In September, 1895, I was run over by a bicycle, and with
a broken hip kept on my bed for eight weeks, and for several
weeks more got about only on crutches. It is a marvel that,
in my eightieth year, I could sustain such an injury and ever
get about again without crutches, I have, however, entirely
recovered and take long tramps, of which I am very fond, with
out any difficulty. The young man who ran over me was one
of our best young men, and was distressed over the injury he
had done me. He stopped to help me, and desired to watch
ah night with me, besides frequently caHing to see me, and
finaHy, though he had but a trifle of property and a small salary
for clerical work in one of our manufacturing companies, he

226 REMINISCENCES.
insisted on paying the special expenses which my condition
made necessary. Soon after I began to get about I sent the
following article, giving the particulars of the accident and
some observations on the general subject, to one of our city
papers :
As most of my city friends know, I was run over by a bicycle
some time ago and very badly hurt. It was eleven weeks ago.
For eight weeks I lay upon my bed ; and I have since walked
with crutches, with a fair prospect of complete recovery in a few
weeks. I think, therefore, that in what I may say about bicycle
accidents I may be regarded as looking at the matter from a
practical point of view, and perhaps as speaking with some au
thority as an expert.
The young man who ran over me (of whose personal charac
ter and attentiveness to me since the accident I cannot speak too
highly) was coming up Laurel street at a high rate of speed on
the 2oth of last September at twenty minutes after six in the
evening. It was getting dusky, but persons could easily be seen
a few rods off. Laurel street crosses Farmington avenue, our
great western thoroughfare, which then must have had many
persons walking upon it as I was. The young man's first mis
take was in thinking that he could safely and justifiably keep on
across the avenue at his high rate of speed, and pass on up Lau
rel street. When he reached the avenue he rang his bell. I was
just crossing Laurel street on the other side of the avenue and
did not hear the bell or get any intimation of his approach. If
he allowed himself to consider the tinkling of his bell as putting
on pedestrians any obligation to take notice and keep out of his
way, or any warrant for relaxing at all his vigilance, this was his
second mistake, and a very great one, I will say more of this
further on. When he reached the track of the electric road he
saw me just a little way on the Laurel street crossing. Here he
thought that by pressing a little he could pass ahead of me.
This was his third and most disastrous mistake. He should with
out hesitation have slacked up and gone behind me. I generally
walk with a quick step, and at this time was hurrying a little be
cause I was late in getting home. He did not allow for this, and
the consequence was that his large wheel struck me with terrible
force. I was thrown with great violence upon the stone cross
ing, the wheel and its rider going down with me. No person
crushed to a quick death was ever more suddenly and incompre-

MY BICYCLE ACCIDENT. 227
hensibly overwhelmed and seemingly extinguished than I was.
I did not know whether it was an explosion of dynamite or the
last convulsion of nature. I only knew that I was crushed by
something. I go into these details because the case presents so many ele
ments of an ordinary "bicycle accident." I do not care to con
sider any of them except the ringing of the beU. A short time
after I was hurt an old gentleman on Pearl street was crossing a
side street on the walk when a wheelman, going with great ra
pidity on Pearl street, turned into the side street, and rang his
bell as he did so to warn the old gentleman of his approach.
This wheelman was also one of our best young men. The old
gentleman, hearing the beU, stopped and looked about him to
see where the wheelman was. The latter had not expected him
to stop and in consequence of his doing so struck him with much
force, knocking him down and injuring him seriously. The news-
¦ paper paragraph which told of the incident stated that, as the
wheelman had not expected the old gentleman to stop, the by
standers thought he was not in fault.
It is evident from this case, and perhaps from my own, that
there is a prevailing idea among wheelmen that whenever they
have rung a bell a part of the responsibility for his safety passes
to the pedestrian, and that it is in large part his fault if he gets
run over. What can put this case more strongly than the Pearl
street incident ? There the old gentleman heard the bell, making
it, so far as that goes, a clear case for the wheelman. But he
Stopped to look about when he heard it, and here he made a fatal
error. But who would not naturally stop and look about ? And
how would it have been if the old gentleman had been deaf and
had not heard the bell ? The bell is rung to be heard, and yet it
was his hearing it that doubled his danger. How would it be in
the case of children ? How in the case of a timid woman ?
There is no rule that can be properly adopted but that which
puts on the wheelman the absolute responsibiUty for his move
ments, without the slightest abatement of his vigilance after he
has rung his beU. The sidewalk belongs to the pedestrian, except
at the street crossings, where he shares his right with the passing
vehicles, which, however, have no right to pass at a rate of speed
which endangers pedestrians. Wheelmen have no more right
than they to pass these crossings at a dangerous rate of speed,
especiaUy in view of the fact that they move so noiselessly as not
to be observed so easily as an ordinary carriage or wagon. What

228 REMINISCENCES.
then is to be the rule with regard to their speed in the streets of
a city ? It is that they shall not move at a rate which will not
leave them at every moment in entire control of their wheels, so
that they could instantly turn them or aUght from them. It does
not need a city ordinance to require this. The law is ample with
out any city action. Any greater rapidity of motion would be a
want of care, for which the law would hold the wheelman both
civilly and criminally responsible. If I had been killed by my
wheelman, as I might easily have been, there can be no question
but that he could have been held for the crime of manslaughter,
and fined and imprisoned for it.

ANARCHY AND ITS PHILOSOPHY.
In the bitter controversy between laborers and employers
my sympathies have been with the laboring class, who, I think,
do not get a fair share of the product of their labor. I have
spoken and written on their side, asserting their right to strike
where they had any just cause of complaint, and expressing my
greater apprehension from organized capital than from organ
ized labor. I have never, however, approved, or even regarded
with patience, the violence of strikers in preventing other needy
and willing workmen from taking the places they had vacated,
and I regarded with abhorrence the dastardly and murderous
conduct of the anarchists in Chicago, who threw bombs among
the policemen who were endeavoring to hold their violence in
check. A number of them were convicted (as their friends
claimed, on indecisive evidence) and were executed. This was
in 1887. A few days later I sent the following communication,
over my signature, to one of our city papers. I insert it here
as containing some ideas that I think very important, and
which I am glad to leave in permanent form behind me.
Anarchy has no excuse for its existence in a country like this.
It should be dealt with, in its outbreaks, with a strong and unspar
ing hand. It has, however, its philosophy, or what it claims to be
such. The men who have just suffered for the most atrocious of
murders were not men thirsting for blood or spoil, but were acting
upon an idea which seemed to their ill-reasoning minds fundamen
tal to the welfare of the laboring class. Let us see, now, just
what that idea is.

ANARCHY AND ITS PHILOSOPHY. 229
This idea (I cannot call it a principle) is based upon a social
principle that has come to be, within more or less of Umitation, a
very generaUy accepted one. It is expressed in the familiar
maxim that that government is the best which governs the least.
It is the rule that government should do nothing, either helpful or
compulsory, that can safely be left to the voluntary action of the
citizen. It finds an apt illustration in the change of policy in the
New England states with regard to church membership and
church attendance. Every person was at first required to attend
church, and later to belong to some rehgious society ; but finaUy
these laws were repealed and the whole matter left to every man's
voluntary action. An eminent clergyman of that time says, in a
letter written forty years later, that he fought with all his might
against a change which was one of the greatest blessings which
God ever sent to the churches. Some able articles have been
written against the policy of requiring oaths, official or in courts
of law, the idea being that men -will be more likely to tell the
truth under an obligation to themselves and where put upon their
honor, than where the fear of the law is substituted for conscience.
The same rule is applied to the laws of trade, a term which is used
to express a natural law which trade finds for itself. Secretary
Lamar expressed very well the free-trade side of this question, in
a recent speech in New York, in -n'hich he said that "artificial
and legislative restraints are as ruinous to commerce as they have
ever proved to be fatal to human thought and human freedom."
There is a philosophy here worthy of respect and study.
Now this principle the anarchists, partly in a most visionary
way, and partly recklessly and dishonestly, have pushed to a per
nicious extreme. They seem to have the idea that if society were
no longer compacted by legal pressure it would still cohere and
prosper. They are not seeking to escape the restraints of law
that they may have a free course of robbery and murder. They
think, or try to think, that men not crushed by bad laws, but left
to themselves, would get a fairer share of the good things of life,
and so would be more contented and therefore would not wish to
rob others ; that there would be no men so much above the mass
as to have the power to oppress them ; that men would be hap
pier, and therefore full of good temper and good ¦will, and that
self-restraint on the one hand and public spirit on the other would
take the place of the restraints and exactions of the law. Now
let us see exactly what are those essential principles of social or
ganization that a society built up in the most voluntary way would

230

REMINISCENCES.

necessarily adopt, and thus let us see whether it is not an utter
fallacy that such a society as the anarchists are advocating and
working for could exist.
I. It would be absolutely necessary that there should be a
police force, to protect persons and property. We might concede
all that the anarchists claim with regard to the effect of this equal
opportunity for all men in making them unselfish and kind and
just, and yet, knowing what we do of human nature, it is abso
lutely certain that there would be some bad men in the commu
nity. There would be beastly passions in search of prey, rapacity
that would rob, craft that would cheat, and violent temper that
would strike. No matter how few these bad men might be. If
there were only ten in a city they would make a considerable
police force necessary. It could not be known in what part of the
city they would lurk or ravage, and therefore all the city would
have to be patrolled. Thus at the very outset, by the most abso
lute necessity, the new society of the anarchists would be estab
lishing for its protection a police force, the very name of which is
hateful to them.
2. The mere possession of personal and property rights would
require a system of laws for their protection. It would be neces
sary that rights be defined. If conveyances are made, there must
be certain formalities of execution and registration. There must
be a record of wills and an administration of estates. There must
be a record of marriages, even under the loosest marriage con
tracts, else neither titles nor descents could be traced. All this
would require chosen legislators to make the laws, and courts to
expound and apply them, and officers to put them in execution.
There would have, too, to be a code of criminal law. Then there
would grow up a system of civil and criminal procedure, which
would have to be as complete for a simple state of society as for a
more complex and extended one. Then we should have, what
the anarchists detest, courts of law, administering what they
equally hate, a system of law.
3. This civil system would necessarily involve a large outlay,
which must be met by taxes. The less there would be for courts
and policemen to do, the less might be the cost of maintaining
them, but it would in any event be considerable. This cost must
in some way be drawn from the community. If there were a com
munity of property, and the cost were taken from the common
fund, it would not alter the case, being the same thing in effect.

ANARCHY AND ITS PHILOSOPHY.

231

We have given here only the absolute essentials of the simplest
social order, omitting everything that a more advanced and com
plex state of society would demand and add. The necessity of
these makes it evident that anarchy, which is the absence from
society of all legal power to compel or restrain, cannot co-exist
with society itself, and that the conception of any kind of social
order built upon anarchy is as wild as any conception that ever
found expression in an insane asylum.
There are, no doubt, great evils that have attached themselves
to our social system, like barnacles to a ship. It is not strange
that men who find themselves hedged in by hard conditions or
overborne in the struggle of life should feel exasperated at the
surfeiting success of other men, no better than they, who have
been able to take advantage of or to create circumstances which
have put them in a condition not merely of luxury, but, what is
specially exasperating, of power — power in controlling legisla
tion and trade, a power unscrupulously and often oppressively
used, and which too often and too successfully sets at defiance
the law and its tribunals. They see such men robbing their fel- "
low-men and escaping all just retribution. There is, in fact, some
thing very close to anarchy at the upper end of the Une. It is no
wonder, then, that these beleaguered men look out from their
dens with the ferocity of tigers. They deserve wide sympathy,
and they have it. Thousands of our best men and women are ex
pending thought and feeling and effort in their behalf, and would
join with them in every legitimate and reasonable effort to right
these wrongs ; but when they resort to arson and murder, they
are both repelling sympathy and frustrating the best efforts for
reform. I have watched with much interest the progress of sociaUsm in
Europe. The sociaUsts, where standing upon their true princi
ples, are at a vital point the antagonists of the anarchists. Karl
Marx, their greatest thinker, and until his death their leader, laid
it down as a fundamental principle of sociaUsm that it was to
reach its ends by evolution and not by revolution. It differs also
from anarchy in this, that it would add to the powers and func
tions of government, while anarchy would overthrow the whole.
There is nothing in common between them but the sense of a
wrong done to the laboring class by the present condition of
society. WhUe there seems to me much that is impracticable in
the theories of the socialists, yet their discussions of social prob
lems are not only harmless, but useful as educating them and en-

232 REMINISCENCES.
couraging patience and hope. There is a great advantage in hold
ing up before a people a high, even if it be an unattainable, ideal.
The church has for ages been quickened and elevated by its dream
of a Millennium, and society owes a debt to those who, in the
words of scripture, "dream dreams." It all helps to lift human
life in some measure out of its hard materialistic conditions. The
sociaUsts in this country have, however, been so confounded with
the anarchists in the public opinion as to have met a general con
demnation with them, and probably many among them would
hardly know how to classify themselves. The public has done
them a wrong and itself an injury in not listening with some pa
tience to what they have had to say, and availing itself of their
readiness to antagonize disorder and anarchy.
It has been my object thus far to simply state the case, and not
to discuss remedies. To do the latter would require more space
than I can now ask. But I will say briefly — (i) That the one
remedy for all political evils in this free country, and a remedy
open to all laboring men, is by the ballot. Its patient, intelligent,
and concerted use by men who think they are disadvantaged by
political conditions, will, if that disadvantage is positive and con
siderable, surely in time remedy the evil. (2) But the great rem
edy for what seem to laboring men the disadvantages of their lot
is to be found in the personal improvement of each one's self, and
not in any political or class movement. It is a noticeable fact that
men who, like Herr Most, are loudest in their talk about the wrong
done to laboring men, are enriching themselves out of their earn
ings by selling them all the liquor they can be induced to drink. I
know nothing more encouraging than the determined action of a
large organization of the labor element in favor of temperance.
There is not a man, however humble in life, who, if he will be
temperate, virtuous, and industrious, cannot, with ordinary health,
secure to himself and his family reasonable comforts. It is sus
ceptible of demonstration by statistics that the money spent by
laboring men for liquor and tobacco would, if expended for their
families, or put aside for future contingencies, make want practi
cally unknown. All political remedies put together will not com
pare with this. TAXATION.
The subject of a system of taxation that shall be just and
equal in its theory, and effective in its operation, is one of great

TAXATION. 233
difficulty. Nothing is more unacceptable to our taxpayers than
a graded income tax, yet no tax can be more just, and few taxes
arouse greater complaint than a legacy tax, which seems to me,
with certain restrictions and limitations, a very just one. The
English inheritance tax goes much further than ours, as it taxes
all inheritances, while that of my own state, and I think those
of other states, tax only bequests that fall outside of the line
of descent. No estate would be of much value if there were not
a probate court to settle it and a system of laws to determine
its settlement, to say nothing of the courts of law which aid the
administrator in the coHection of its debts and the securing of
its just rights where disputed. In the evasion by large property
owners of their just taxes, and the unequal burden thus thrown
upon the small holdings of poorer men, as well as upon all
honest taxpayers, I have come to think favorably of the prin
ciple of laying but one tax, and that on real estate, the burden
becoming justly distributed over the entire community in the
rents they pay and in the cost of the products of the land,
while the landowner would be largely relieved by the exemp
tion of his personal property, and there would be no room for
the evasions that make the burden of taxation fall so unequally,
as weH as add seriously to the cost of searching for property
and of collecting the taxes. An ideal system would be that of
the ownership of all land by the state, and the collection of
taxes by the rents paid for it. But while this would be an easy
thing to do in a case where society was starting new and in
dividuals had acquired no separate rights in land, it seems im
possible to devise any mode of substituting such state owner
ship for that of individuals where the rights of the latter have
been for centuries recognized and established. The time may,
however, come when such state ownership will be considered
so essential to the public welfare, and so just in itself, that a
disruptive and arbitrary transition, with some attempt to do
justice to the individual owner, may be regarded as a smaller
evil than the continuance of the inequitable system that has
long sucked, like a vampire, the life blood of society. At my
advanced age I do not expect to see anything better than a
patching up of our present system, by such occasional legisla
tion as will help us to improve it.
16

234 REMINISCENCES.
There has been a great outcry against the taxing of the evi
dences of debt, as representing only an obligation of the debtor
to pay, and especially where the debtor is secured by the
mortgage of property which itself pays a tax, as where a debt
is held and taxed in an eastern state when secured by prop
erty situated and taxed in a western state. This is called
by its opponents " double taxation," a phrase which they re
gard as sufficient to condemn it. A few years ago I sent to
one of our city papers the following article on this subject,
the reasoning of which I still regard as sound and as worthy
of serious consideration. I will add that in my youth there
was a law in this state making a man's " faculty " the subject
of taxation — that is, the particular power of making money
which a man's occupation gave him. It was repealed more,
I think, than fifty years ago. There would be a serious dif
ficulty in making a just valuation of this faculty, but there
was a large element of justice in it. Some things that I say in
the article which I append bear upon this point.
The matter of taxing notes and other evidences of debt is a
perplexing one. The writer is not prepared to show any clear
way out of the perplexity. But it will help us if we strip the
question of some of the irrelevant matter that obscures it, and see
exactly what it is.
The common mode of outcry against the taxation of such
property is to call it " double taxation." The matter of double
taxation does not, I conceive, touch the real question. The
Courant quoted approvingly a terse illustration of what it con
ceived to be double taxation from one of the lawyers who dis
cussed the question before the committee, as follows: "I sell a
mule to my neighbor for $40, and he gives me his note for that
amount. Here is only one mule ; why should the S40 be twice
taxed?" This illustration shows its own fallacy. Suppose the
mule died, then there would be no mule at all, and yet the ques
tion would remain exactly as before, shall my forty-dollar note be
taxed ? It is perfectly good, and constitutes a part of my estate.
The question in every aspect of it is simply whether notes are a
proper subject for taxation. The fact that there is certain property
in which the borrowed money was invested, or certain property
mortgaged to secure the note, is the mere accident of the case.
In the vast majority of cases it would be impossible to trace the

TAXATION. 23 s
investment of the money borrowed. It may have been lent to
some person who expended it in paying his old debts ; it may have
been loaned on merely personal security ; it may have paid for a
house that has been burned ; all these are mere accidents.
The fallacy in the double taxation argument grows out of the
ia^SiOj oi con%\6ie-n.r^g tangible property a.% the thing specially pro
tected by the law, and, therefore, that which should alone be
charged with the expenses of supporting the government. Let
me illustrate. Here is a hard-working mechanic who owns the
house he lives in, worth $5,000, and that is all he has. A fellow
townsman has $100,000 money at interest, but owns no tangible
property. The mechanic pays a full tax on his house, his fellow
townsman pays no tax whatever. No ingenuity of argument can
make this anything else than a seeming injustice ; no legislation
anything else but a real one. It is especially hard on the me
chanic because he has to pay a higher tax in consequence of the
other paying none, while the latter could pay his large tax, if it
were laid, much more easily than the mechanic his small one.
Now. as to the protection which the richer man receives ; there is
an expensive system of police which protects the person of the
rich man, a protection really more important to him than that of
the poor man because there are many more chances that a man
supposed to have a pocket full of money will be knocked down in
the night and robbed. The rich man's office, and house if he has
one, are much more likely to be broken into by burglars than the
poor man's house, so that here he gets more protection from the
police. Further, it is a great benefit to him that all his many
debtors are protected by the law in their persons, their property,
and business, and a great benefit to him, if his debtors do not pay,
that he has the whole system of legal administration to apply for
the coUection of his debts. If any of his debtors die, there is a
careful administration for the benefit of creditors of the property
which he leaves, in the probate court. Now transplant this man
with his $100,000 of notes into the center of Africa and suppose
his debtors to be members of a tribe of savages. What is his own
Hfe worth to begin with ? And as to his debtors, half of them
might be kiUed in some savage fight with no probate court to set
tle their estates ; and if he undertook to collect what the other half
owed him, there not only would be no courts to help him, but the
chance would be that they would roast him for a barbecue. Here
all that makes his $100,000 notes worth that sum in this country
and worth nothing in the savage one, is that expensive machinery

236 REMINISCENCES.
of society for which he is paying nothing because his notes are
not tangible property.
Let me make another illustration. A man has two sons and a
farm worth $5,000 and $5,000 in money. One son takes the farm,
the other desires to have his $5,000 put into a complete education
for the bar. He enters upon the practice of law with five times
the earning capacity of his brother on the farm ; yet his brother
pays the full tax on his farm and he pays none. Well, now suppose
him to turn out to be a very brilliant man — another Richard Hub
bard perhaps — and after a few years to be earning $20,000 a year,
all of which (beyond his living) he puts out at interest. The farmer
keeps on paying his full tax. The brilliant and successful brother
pays nothing. Now look at what protection this lawyer gets. He
gets first the protection of his person, greatly endangered by the
fact that he is supposed every night to be carrying home a hun
dred dollar fee in his pocket. Again, what brings to him all that
great business ? The fact that there are organized courts where
civil rights can be enforced — a most expensive part of our social
machinery. Who would go to him for advice as to his rights if
there were no way to enforce those rights ? Who would go to him
to draw a will if there were no probate court to administer
estates ? What value would be his great forensic abilities if there
were no courts in which to use them ? What would be the value
of all his investments in notes if he had no legal means of collect
ing them ? Put him down in that savage country where we sent
the other rich man, and with all his abilities he couldn't earn a
dollar. Is it so then that the whole protection of government ex
pends itself upon tangible property? Is it so that nothing but
tangible property should respond to the call of government for
the means of maintenance ? It is as clear as day that this ques
tion can only be answered in the negative.
The question then is (and the whole question, so far as theory
goes), whether notes and other evidences of debt are of such a
nature that they ought to be taxed. It seems to me there can be
but one answer to this question.
But there remains this further question — whether such a tax
can be enforced. Here is the sole practical question in the case.
The law making notes taxable will be easily evaded — a constant
temptation to perjury — and the result will be a great inequality
after all. It seems to me that the danger of perjury should not
be seriously considered. A man must settle that with his own
conscience ; he will find chances enough to perjure himself on the

JOHN HOOKER OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 237
witness stand and in other ways if he has not conscience enough
to restrain him. I would, however, add a few provisions to the
law that would help to secure its enforcement. I would, first, add
to the general oath now taken upon each assessment list (or em
body in it) a special oath as to the notes held by the taxpayer.
Second, I would make the law more peremptory in requiring as
sessors to add to a tax list whatever amount of money at interest
they suppose to be kept back, allowing the taxpayer to appear,
and upon special oath aud examination have it reduced. Third,
I would have any property of that kind kept back from taxation,
that may be discovered within ten years (perhaps by the disclos
ures of a man's inventory on his death) subject to a large for
feiture, say of 25 or 50 per cent.
JOHN HOOKER OF SOUTH CAROLINA,
My uncle, John Plooker, who was a leading lawyer in South
Carolina, died on the 28th of July, 181 5, at the age of forty-one.
I was bom a few months later and was named after him. Pie
was a brother of my father, about ten years older than he, and
graduated at Yale College in 1796, my father graduating in
1805. He went to Columbia, in South Carolina, at the age of
twenty-eight, and in the thirteen years that he lived there had
risen to a front rank at the bar of the state. He married in
Columbia, but left no children. ChanceHor DcSausure, of
South Carolina, one of the greatest jurists that the country has
produced, was his warm friend, and wrote the epitaph which
appears on his gravestone in the churchyard of the principal
Presbyterian church in Columbia. It is as follows: —
S.XCKF.II TO THE yl/A'.1/('A'l' OF yOHN HOOK EK.
He was a native of Farmington, and graduate of Yale College,
in the State of Connecticut. He settled in South Carolina at the
age of twenty-eight years. . , , , • ,
Possessed of an acute logical mmd and a sound judgment,
guided by the purest integrity, he became a very eminent mem
ber of the bar of South Carolina. The pubUc respected him for
his virtues ; the court esteemed him for his talents and learning;
his brethren loved him for his amenity and kindness. In private
life his unassuming deportment, his active benevolence and the
purity of his affections endeared him to a large circle of friends,
but above all to the beloved partner of his hfe and her family.
This exceUent man was summoned to immortality by his
Creator, whom he humbly adored, on the 28th day of July, 1815,
aged 41 years.

238 REMINISCENCES.
A lady, a cousin of mine, who was teaching in South Caro
lina forty years ago, told me that she met Chancellor DeSau-
sure, then an old man, at a party one evening, and that he came
up to her and introduced himself and said that he learned that
she was a niece of John Hooker, and then went on to speak of
him in the highest terms, and told her of their great friendship
and of the anguish that he felt over his early death. Mr.
Hooker's widow came north the spring following his death
and spent the summer of 1816 at my father's house. I was
born in April of that year, so that she saw much of me as a baby.
In 1872, when I was fifty-six years old, I saw her at her home
in Newberry, South Carolina. She had not seen me before
since I was a baby. She had married a Dr. Glenn, some time
after my uncle's death, who owned and was Hving on a planta
tion in Newberry. He had since died, but one of her sons,
a married man, was living on the plantation. The war had
swept away much of the wealth of the South, and especially
that part of it invested in slaves, and this family had suffered
with the rest. There was, however, a pathetic remnant of the
old plantation life, which could not adapt itself to the new con
ditions. I wrote Mrs. Glenn, from Florida, of my desire to
visit her on my way home and had received from her a most
earnest request that I would not fail to do so. When I reached
her home she threw her arms around my neck and cried. I
found that her marriage to my uncle was the great event of
her life, and that she carried in her heart a constant remem
brance of him. She could not talk too much about him. She
remembered my father, also, with great interest ; and I stayed
two days at her house, spending my time almost wholly with
her, but looking about with great interest upon the fresh marks
of a state of society that was fast passing from observation and
would soon be a matter only of history.
While at Columbia I was introduced to a middle-aged
lawyer as Mr. John Hooker. " Why," said he, " there was a
very distinguished lawyer of that name who lies buried in the
churchyard close by." I then told him that he was my uncle
and that I was named for him. He replied that he had never
known Mr. Hooker, as he died before he was born, but that he
had left a great memory among the members of the bar.

JOHN HOOKER OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 239
The South Carolina State Gazette of August i, 1815, says
of him :
Mr. Hooker had been several years practicing here as a law
yer. He already ranked among the first of his profession and
was rapidly rising to still higher eminence, and there is no doubt
but the highest honors of the country awaited him. Of the
utmost benevolence of disposition and benignity of manners it
was impossible to know without esteeming and loving him.
Active and indefatigable where he could be useful (and no one
had a greater capacity for usefulness), he injured or offended no
one. His virtues were of that sterling unaffected kind that give
a grace and value to life. It will be long before the chasm his
death has made in our society can be filled up. The solicitude so
strongly expressed for him during his last illness, by almost every
individual in this place, was an evidence of the universal esteem
and affection which he had acquired.
The period during which my uncle lived in South Carolina,
from 1802 to 181 5, was one in which the public conscience was
very Httle touched with regard to slavery, and yet he would
never, during all his life there, own a slave.
My father, immediately after his graduation in 1805, went
to South Carolina to study law in his brother's office, and with
the intenrion of settHng there as a lawyer, in partnership with
him. About a year later he was invited to a tutorship in the
South Carolina University and carried on his legal studies in
connection with his college duties. After spending about a
year in the college he went north for a visit home, and while
there was invited by the facuHy of Yale CoHege to take a tutor
ship at the college. At the end of two years there he settled
at Farmington, in this state, his native place, his parents de
siring that he should give up his plans for a professional life
and live upon the ancestral farm, taking care of them in their
old age. It is to me a curious matter of speculation what would
have become of me if he had settled in South Carolina and prob
ably married there. Indeed, it is a curious matter of specula
tion where he would have stood in the fierce conflict that grew
up between freedom and slavery. He always hated slavery,
and, I think, could never have become a defender of it. At a

240 REMINISCENCES.
dinner at Columbia, while he was residing there, at which sev
eral invited guests were present, he gave as a toast, " May the
time come when there will not be a slave in the land."" No one
seemed to take offense, though one elderly gentleman replied
that he hoped he should be under the turf first.
My father kept a minute daily journal of all his life, from
his graduation in 1805 to about 1820. At the time of his
brother's death he was living in Farmington, and I find this
entry in his journal, under date of August 14, 181 5 :
Oh, what a sea of sorrow has in one moment overwhelmed
me, and those dear aged and infirm parents ! The mail from the
South arrived this afternoon, and our friend the postmaster, who
is always feelingly tender towards those in affliction and ready to
share in their grief, hastened to me with letters conveying to us
the woful, heartrending intelligence that our dearly beloved and
affectionate brother John is no more. I am lost in astonishment.
I hardly seem to know if I am awake. I almost flatter myself it is
a dream ; only I see before me the black-sealed letters and hear
the half-suppressed groans of others and observe their despond
ing looks and sighs and tears. Oh, most merciful God, have com
passion upon us. Mercifully give us consolation from above.
Sanctify to us this visitation of thy Providence, and do not let it
be in vain.
The casual reader will probably find little in this account
of my uncle to interest him, but I have felt that it was due to
his memory that in this retrospect of one who entered the world
just as he left it and succeeded to his name, a few words should
be written, both as a testimonial of my profound and affec
tionate regard for his memory and as a means of preserving
some brief record of his short but earnest life. He had not
reached that age when his name, whatever his promise, could
have gone into history, and no recollection of him could be pre
served except by some such inadequate record as this. It was
too strong and brave a life to pass wholly out of the knowledge
of men.

A WORLD POLICE. 24 1
A WORLD POLICE.
In the fall of 1884 my wife and I were invited to address
the annual meeting of the Connecticut Agricultural Society to
be held at Meriden. I prepared a short address occupying but
a quarter of an hour in its delivery, while she, as was expected,
delivered the principal address of the occasion. Her subject
was " Woman's Work in Sanitation." The printed report of
the meeting says that " Mrs. Hooker spoke over an hour, with
out notes, holding the fixed and interested attention of the
audience." My address was on the moral questions growing
out of the existence of filth diseases, and the duty of Christian
nations to unite in policing the whole world against their out
breaks. It was as follows : —
Robert Ingersoll, in one of his audacious speeches, in which
he discusses not only the mistakes of Moses, but the mistakes of
the Deity, has said that, if he were making a world, he would
make health and not disease contagious. That is, if a healthy
man should come in contact with a man who has the small pox, he
would have the latter catch health of the healthy man, and not
the healthy man catch the small pox from the sick one.
It seems at first sight a little strange that a God who is omnip
otent and benevolent and all-wise should not have made some
such arrangement in planning his universe; but the difficulty
undoubtedly is that God is all-wise, as well as omnipotent and
benevolent. We wonder often at the slow progress of moral
ideas in the world, when God might enlighten and quicken and
elevate human hearts by the exercise of his spiritual power.
How can he let the world groan so long under moral evils, under
ignorance, under oppression, when by the exercise of his power
the world might be filled with light and righteousness and peace ?
Why has he let those powers of nature which man is now em
ploying for such beneficent uses lie so long undiscovered ? Why
are we at the present day kept in ignorance of powers of nature
that a later generation may discover, and with them work out
results far more astonishing than any that our own day of great
invention and discovery has known ?
A plausible explanation of it all, possiblj' the true one, is found
in this — that it is for man's highest good that he work out his own
salvation. If everything were done for us, we should always
remain mere chUdren. Necessity is the mother not only of inven
tion, but of all wholesome industry.

242

REMINISCENCES.

In the tropical regions nature is luxuriant in its productiveness.
Man's wants are few. He needs little clothing. He needs no
artificial heat. He becomes indolent and thriftless and improvi
dent. In the midst of the wealth of nature he is actually poorer
than the Northern man who has to force his crops out of a reluc
tant soil, and to encounter and provide for the cold of the long
northern winters. This necessity makes him vastly the superior
in every quality of manhood of his luxurious and indolent fellow-
man of the tropics.
So if God did for us, in the progress of discovery, in the pro
gress of liberty, in the progress of his own truth, what we now
have to do so laboriously for ourselves, we should not have a
tenth of the moral stamina that we now acquire by scientific- and
social and moral and Christian work. The need of the world puts
upon us a great moral obligation, and we never rise to such
grandeur as when we try faithfully and with God's help, sought
and given, to meet that obligation. God never meant to leave us
the flabby creatures that we should be, both mentally and mor
ally, if we had no busy lives to lead, lives of duty, lives of earnest
work. And so in this matter of disease. If disease did not tend to
spread itself ; if, as Mr. Ingersoll amused himself with imagining,
disease had but to reach out and touch a healthy man, and it
would disappear and its victim be well again, we should lose out
of our lives a great opportunity for humane and benevolent work;
we should find in the prevalence of disease and mortality no call
upon our sympathy and benevolence and self-denial. As in the
case of the king's evil, which the superstition of past ages sup
posed to be curable by the mere touch of the king, all that would
be wanted would be the mere perfunctory act of touching the
diseased man, when he would arise and take up his bed and
walk. But not only should we lose out of our lives this beautiful
spirit of helpfulness and sympathy towards others, but should lose
a great moral education in the loss of the necessity of keeping
our own persons and f amiUes and dwellings clean and wholesome.
A perpetual vigilance against the inroads of disease gives us a
mental and moral alertness, a constant spirit of thoughtfulness
and forecast that tend to elevate and strengthen our manhood.
God's providence is a blessed thing to trust to where that is our
only refuge ; but a man who is a man will be, as far as he is able,
a providence to himself and his household.

A WORLD POLICE. 243
But there is another great lesson to be learned from the fact
that disease springs into life and activity whenever the conditions
are favorable for it. Of all our diseases the class called zymotic is
the most numerous. You will find it largely represented in the
monthly statements of our State Board of Health. These dis
eases are otherwise known as "filth diseases," and are often so
designated. That is, these diseases have their origin and suste
nance in filth. Now if filth were harmless, if a family could wal
low, as swine do, in a perfect pool of filth, and no harm come
from it, how many would do so ? We find it now, even with the
pressure brought to bear upon them by public opinion, self-inter
est, and the Board of Health, very difficult to make some of our
city people live in cleanliness that is much above that of pig-stys.
But filth, if physically harmless, would yet be as noxious morally
as it now is. It would still be the indication and the promoter of
a loiv civilization. It would still accompany and promote the loss
of self-respect, the practice of vice, and barbarism generally.
Indeed, the low state of the physical condition caused by filth is a
great promoter of intemperance, by the craving which it causes
for stimulants, and this not in the lower classes alone, but among
those whom we call respectable. Indeed, the verj"- word " filth "
has come to have a moral meaning, as we speak of the filth of
vice, and the Scriptures constantly apply the term " filthy " to the
depraved. The necessity, then, for the sake of health of getting
rid of filth is a great helper of civilization, the handmaid of virtue
and godliness. The apostle, who understood this well, has said
that " cleanliness is next to godliness."
But we come to a still greater lesson. God has meant to bind
his earthly children into a great human brotherhood. The apostle
has said that when one member suffers aU the members suffer
with it. This was not intended so much as a statement of a fact,
as of a great moral principle. God meant that we should all suffer
together, as if we were one large family, thus imposing upon us
all the duty of looking out for our fellowman and his needs.
There never was a meaner rule of Ufe than that which I have so
often heard expressed, that " I take care of myself, and if every
other man would do the same thing it would be aU that is
wanted." But other men wiU not take care of themselves. Per
haps they are crippled,' or broken down in health, and cannot.
More likely they are intemperate or vicious and don't try — in
the last case involving their innocent wives and children. The

244

REMINISCENCES.

poor we have always with us, and probably always shall have.
And when they come to suffering they must be helped ; and God
has given the opportunity for it to their more prospered fellow
men as a precious opportunity that they cannot ignore or neglect
without a moral loss to themselves.
And when the wretchedly poor, left to live in crowded apart
ments and in filth, find disease breaking out in their midst, then
comes the penalty to those who have neglected them. The dis
ease spreads like a fire. It does not spare your family nor mine.
If a fire is started in a city, no matter in how mean a quarter,
every mansion on its aristocratic streets is in some danger. No
body knows where the fire will stop. What was it to burning
Chicago whether the fire started in a palace or a hovel ? We are
put, then, under bonds to look out for the condition of our poorest
and most wretched fellowmen — under a bond with a great
penalty. Our fellowman is our brother, and in neglecting his wel
fare we neglect our own. We may forget him, but the pestilence
that he breeds and fosters will not forget us.
And this leads me to suggest something that I verily beUeve
will be seriously considered by Christian nations before long, and
I trust come into practical operation before we have gone far into
the next century, and which has in it an inspiring element of
grandeur and of millennial promise. The whole world is tending
towards a vast unity. The telegraph and steamship have brought
us close together. London was farther from New York fifty
years ago than Japan is to-day. We are having world exposi
tions and world conventions, and men have ceased altogether
looking upon a foreigner as in the old sense an alien, much less as an
enemy. Now I think we shall before long have a World's Police.
And this world's police will deal with the world's filth as the
board of health of a city deals with its foul and crowded alleys.
Cholera originates in the delta of the Ganges about loo miles
north of Calcutta. Indeed, it may be said to have its perpetual
home there. It has existed there for centuries. It is a low, un-
drained region, swarming with an idle, dirty people whose dwell
ings are full of filth. Occasionally the disease becomes specially
virulent and breaks its accustomed bounds and starts on its
devastating sweep around the world. The loss to the world by
one of its great progresses, like that of a monarch from the
infernal regions, is beyond easy computation. In Bombay alone
150,000 lives were destroyed by it in 1820. We have seen how the

WOAIAN SUFFRAGE.

245

inhabitants of lower France and Italy have fallen before it during
the past summer. Its ravages may be far greater in Europe and
in this country the coming year. Its victims can be counted only
by the hundreds of thousands. And then add to this the pecuni
ary loss, the injury to business, the actual outlay in deaUng with
disease. Its cost can be counted only in hundreds of millions.
Probably half this loss of money, to say nothing about lives,
would pay the whole cost of clearing up the foul spot where the
disease has its home, and stamping it out of existence.
I am no prophet, nor the son of a prophet, but let me give it to
you as my prediction that before many years all Christian nations
will unite in policing the world, and in taking in hand these
plague spots wherever found, and cleaning- them up, with as much
authority and determination as a city board of health cleans up
the foul places of a city.
And when that time comes, not only will the health of the
world be better, but there will have been a great step taken in the
acknowledgment of a human brotherhood. .Where Christian
nations join in a work of so universal interest and benefit where
will be the spirit of war among them ? The time will have come
when, as Tennyson says —
" The -war drums throb no longer and the battle flags are furled,
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World."
And when, as he says again —
" The kindly earth shall slumber, ¦wrapt in universal law,"

WOMAN SUFFRAGE,
The admission of women to an absolute political equality
with men is so sure to come and that at a not distant day, that
I do not care to use any of my space in its advocacy. The
arguments for it are well known, and are absolutely unan
swered, while the actual trials of the experiment in some of our
western states, and in several foreign countries, have proved
it to be of very great benefit to the communities in which it has
been estabHshed. Nothing stands in its way but prejudice
and the selfish schemes of politicians, and both wiH yield to
the constant pressure of the advancing reform. I introduce
the subject here to put on record for the honor of my memory
my own earnest approval of the reform, and the fact that I have

246 REMINISCENCES.
worked earnestly for it for many years. I have no fear to stake
my whole character as a man of some foresight and judgment
upon the proposition of its general acceptance and establish
ment in the first half of the twentieth century, and then of a
prevailing wonder that there had ever been any other system
thought of.
I will add here, as strongly expressing the view of one of
the best known and most respected of our women, a few words
from a recent address of Clara Barton at a New England meet
ing of the friends of the cause :
I believe I must have been born believing in the full right of
women to all the privileges and positions which nature and justice
accord to them in common with other human beings. Perfectly
equal rights — human rights. There was never any question in
my mind in regard to this. I did not purchase my freedom with
a price ; I was born free ; and when, as a younger woman, I heard
the subject discussed, it seemed simply ridiculous that any sensi
ble, rational person should question it. And when later the phase
of woman's right to suffrage came up, it was to me only a part of
the whole, just as natural, just as right, and just as certain to take
place. And whenever I have been urged, as a petitioner, to ask
for this privilege for woman, a kind of dazed, bewildered feeling
has come over me. Of whom should I ask this privilege ? Who
possessed the right to confer it? Who had greater right than
woman herself ? Was it man, and if so, where did he get it ?
There is once in a while a monarch who denies the right of
man to place a crown upon his head. Only the great Jehovah
can crown and anoint him for his work, and he reaches out, takes
the crown, and places it upon his head with his own hand. I
suspect that this is, in effect, what women are doing to-day.
Virtually there is no one to give her the right to govern herself, as
men govern themselves by self-made and self-approved laws of
the land. But in one way or another, sooner or later, she is com
ing to it. And the number of thoughtful and right-minded men
who wiU oppose wiU be much smaller than we think ; and when it
is really an accomplished fact, all will wonder, as I have done,
what the question ever was.
Clara Barton represents the early devoted workers for this
reform. The present generation can hardly realize what in
sulting epithets were heaped upon them by public speakers

SPIRITUALISM. 247
and the press. A leading religious paper called them " a few
discontented women." I heard a clergyman from the pulpit
denounce them as " desecrating the name of woman," and
nearly all the papers held them up as unsexing themselves,
and as dissatisfied that they had not been made men. And yet
these women were among the noblest of whom history has
ever recorded its admiration. So far from being discontented
with their sex, they felt in it a power to work for the progress
of the world that they longed to use for the world's good, and
which would fill a want by which all the social forces were
weakened. They were far from being insensitive to the ribald
attacks that were made upon them, but bore up under them
as the martyrs of old bore up under their persecutions. It is
only by such crucifixions that the world is redeemed. Those
days of insult have passed away, but most of those early
workers have gone to their rest and reward, and the later
workers are treated with a respect which shows clearly how
their cause has advanced in the public estimation.
It is greatly to our discredit as men that we have left the
self-sacrificing women who have worked for this reform to
struggle alone, without the sympathy and active aid that we
could so easily have given them. There have been a few noble
men who have been their earnest helpers, such as Garrison,
Phillips, Beecher, Curds, Higginson, and others, but the great
majority of men have either actively opposed the movement
or have regarded it with absolute indifference. And yet the
end to be attained, a perfect democracy and a purer govern
ment, have been matters of the supremest importance to men
as weU as to women. I think the journalist or public man
who is leaving a record of opposition to this reform is leaving
a stain upon his memory which his children will mourn that
they have not the power to efface.

SPIRITUALISM.
More than twenty years ago I became convinced, upon the
fullest and most careful examination, that modern spirituaHsm
is based on fact and is of great importance. That opinion I
have held ever since, only confirmed by my later observations.
I have no doubt that there have been many cases of delusion

248 REMINISCENCES.
and some of fraud, but I gave consideration only to phenomena
which upon the severest test I was satisfied were genuine. I
joined no spiritualist society, as I did not feel willing to make
myself responsible for what other spiritualists might say or do.
But my position in the matter was well known by the public.
In December, 1888, the ministers of Hartford, who then
held weekly meetings for conference, at which the clergy of
all denominations were invited, and which were generally well
attended, invited me to address them at their next meeting on
Spiritualism. I thereupon prepared an address which I read
before them, and to which they listened with respectful atten
tion and apparent interest, asking me numerous questions at
its close. A few days later I received a letter from Hon. Ed
ward W. Seymour, a leading lawyer of Bridgeport, and soon
after elected a judge of our Supreme Court, stating that he
had heard of my address before the Hartford clergy, and that
he was greatly interested in the subject, and asking me to bring
the address with me when, a week or two later, I was to attend
a session of the Supreme Court in Bridgeport. I did so, and
Judge Seymour got up an evening meeting in the court room,
at which three of the five judges of the court attended and sev
eral of the lawyers, with their wives, with one of the city clergy
men. I read the address and all seemed to listen with much
interest and respect.
I cannot now present the subject to the readers of my
Reminiscences in any better way than by giving that address,
with some abridgment. It was as follows : —
A spiritualist is one who believes that disembodied spirits may
communicate with spirits in the flesh. The question whether
they have done so, and may do so, is wholly a question of fact,
like any other question of fact presented in a court of law, or in
business, for men to consider and decide. It is to be determined
by evidence. There is a great presumption against the existence
of such intercommunication, growing out of the very strong
belief to the contrary which has so long and so extensively pre
vailed. But this affects only the question of the quantum of
evidence necessary to establish the fact. In the face of such a
presumption there must be a great preponderance of evidence in
favor of the spiritualistic theory. After the question of fact
is settled in favor of that theory, there will remain a large

SPIRITUALISM.

249

practical question of much importance with which every person
must deal for himself. This question is, to what moral use shall
the fact be put ? It may take the form of a series of questions :
How are my religious opinions to be affected by^t? How my
teachings ? How far are we to accept the statements made by
spirits on the other side as to their condition and experiences
over there ? What is the philosophy of spiritualism ? These are
questions of great importance and interest, but it is useless to
touch them until we have first settled the question of fact. I
will limit myself on this occasion wholly to this question. In
doing this I propose to confine myself to facts that have fallen
under my own observation, and I shall, to make the matter
clearer, present them by classes — taking generally only a repre
sentative fact or two from each class.
And first, as the lowest class of phenomena, I take purely
physical phenomena, by which I mean the manifestation of a
mysterious force that has, so far as we can see, no connection
with intelligence. About three years ago my wife and I were
invited by a friend in this city, a widow, to spend an evening at
her house and meet an elderly lady who was visiting her, and
who belonged in the western part of the state of New York. I
came afterwards to know the lady well. She had uncommon
mediumistic gifts, but she exercised them solely for her friends,
and never for compensation. She was professedly, and seemed
to be sincerely, a Christian woman. Her trustworthiness, how
ever, does not become an important factor in the case. We met
in the parlor of our hostess, where there was a grand piano,
which I was told weighed over a thousand pounds. It stood
against the wall on one side of the room, and at about the middle
of the wall on that side. There were present one gentleman
besides myself, and five ladies, including the medium. We all
stood up by the piano, except one lady who played upon it,
and put our hands on top of it. Very soon the large end of it
began to move out into the room. As it did so the top board,
which projected over the sides about two inches, began to rub
against the waU at the smaller end of the piano, and I went there
to try to move it out a little way. I appUed my whole strength,
but could not move it. As soon as I desisted it moved out of
itself, tiU it was a few inches from the wall. Then the whole
piano began to move out slowly, and by hitches, till it had
reached the middle of the room. On its way it stopped several
times and Ufted up its side, resting whoUy on its legs on the
17

2SO

REMINISCENCES.

other side, and on reaching the middle of the room again lifted
itself up in the same way, the feet rising several inches from the
floor and remaining so for several seconds. To make sure that
there was no optical illusion I stooped down and passed a book
through the space between one of the upraised feet and the
carpet. During all this time no one was lifting at all, our hands
were merely resting on top of the piano. When all was over we
undertook to roll the piano back to its place, and it was all we
could do with our united strength.
I could give you many facts that belong to this class of what I
call unintelligent force. But phenomena of this class are of but
Uttle interest except as they show the reality of some force
entirely external to ourselves It may be some undiscovered
natural force — electricity, perhaps. But they have an impor
tant relation to spiritualism in this, that they are a part of a great
variety of mysterious phenomena, and no mode of solution can
be accepted which does not cover them all ; and when one is
found that seems manifestly to cover them all, it is greatly sup
ported by the fact that it does so. It is the weakness of the
anti-spiritualistic explanations that each set of phenomena has its
separate explanation, which cannot be appUed to any other set.
Thus fraud, mind-reading, an occult natural force, have each a
very limited application, while the facts demand some general
theory. I come, secondly, to a higher class of physical phenomena —
higher in this, that they are operated by a manifest intelligence.
This class includes, and may be illustrated by, rappings, through
which intelligent communications are made. These have often
been used in private families, where some member has been
found to have mediumistic gifts. The alphabet is repeated, and
at some letter a rap is heard. To this letter are added, in the
same way, another and another, till a whole sentence is wrought
out. I have received most interesting and characteristic com
munications in this way. In many cases I have had name after
name of departed friends spelled out to me, as being present, and
that in a strange city, where the medium did not even know my
name. Where the medium is a public one there is room for a
suspicion of fraud or for the explanation of mind-reading, as the
message may possibly be a manufactured one, or the name may
be got by mind-reading. But I have seen many cases where
neither of these explanations could possibly apply. This I will
illustrate by a single case. I could give scores. I was spending a

SPIRITUALISM. 251
few days with a friend in Providence. A lady, a member of his
family, had become a medium, and at dinner every day we had
raps indicating the presence of spirits. There were thus named
to me numerous friends, whom none of the family knew. One
day I left the table early to finish a letter which I wished to mad,
and came back as the members of the family were leaving the
table. Said my host, " You did not stay to meet your friends.
Do you know anybody by the name of Edward Hart? " "Yes,"
said I, "he was my lifelong friend, the husband of my own
cousin, who died recently." "WeU," said he, "he came while
you were gone, and gave his name, and said it was for you."
Here, observe, there was no room for the mind-reading theory ;
while a fraud in the case is so remote a possibility as to be entitled
to no consideration.
I come, thirdly, to slate-writing. This I place next in the list
because it seems to me to be absolutely unexplainable upon any
other than the spiritualistic theory. The Seybert Commission con
cluded that it was all a fraud — the slates being exchanged by
sleight of hand or the writing being done by the other hand of
the medium (one hand being occupied -with the holding of the
slate). No one who has watched the proceedings with an honest
purpose can, I think, possibly admit either of these explanations.
I spent an evening with the medium Slade, a few years ago, at a
friend's house in Hartford. I carried my own slate, a new fold
ing one. In the first place he told me to write on a paper the
name of some spirit friend from whom I wished to hear. I did so,
and the paper, without being shown to him, was by his direction
crumpled up in my hand and laid on the table, where it lay
untouched during the performance that followed. This require
ment on his part was a suspicious one, and if the communication
which it brought had been an oral one, would have destroyed its
value. But the important thing was the getting of a communi
cation written upon the slate. I could not see that the theory of
mind-reading could help in that matter. A bit of slate pencil
was put inside the folded slate, and Slade, standing on one side
of the table, held one corner of the slate with his right hand, and
I on the other side the opposite corner with my left hand. His
left hand was then laid on the table and my right hand put on
top of his. The gas was then lowered, but not turned entirely
off. It was easy to see all the nearer objects about the room. I
soon heard the pencil scratching inside, and when it stopped the
gas was turned more fully on. Slade had not moved — the slate

252

REMINISCENCES.

had not moved from my grasp. And within it was a brief affec
tionate message signed by the initials of the friend whose name I
had written. The friend was a young lady to whom I had done
many kindnesses during three or four years of a decline, and she
has come to me, or appeared to do so, more frequently than
perhaps any other friend on the other side.
A few years ago I went with a friend in Boston (a Congrega
tional clergyman, who was much interested in the investigation
of spiritualistic phenomena) to a Mrs. Philbrick, a woman in
whom he had confidence, and who seemed to me to be trust
worthy, who was, however, a public medium. I was introduced
to her by my friend, but she knew nothing whatever of me except
my name thus given her. In this case I used her slates. An
open slate, with a bit of pencil on it, was held under the top of
the table, she holding it on one side of the table and I on the
other, her other hand laid on the table, and my other hand on
hers. The gas was turned wholly off, or so nearly so that the
room was dark. Soon the scratching was heard. After it
stopped and the gas was turned on, we found a long message,
nearly filling the slate, addressed to my wife by her first name,
and signed "P. W. D," the initials of the name of a dear friend
of hers who had died a year or two before. What is noteworthy
here is, that while the communication seemed to come almost
certainly from Mrs. D., it yet stated that a certain person (whose
name she gave) would soon come over. This person has since
died, but not till nearly ten years after this. After this we took
other slates and in the same way got several messages from
departed friends, another to my wife, one to myself signed by a
familiar name, and I think two to my friend. Those intended for
myself or my wife were characteristic, and alluded to incidents
that a stranger could have known nothing of. I could fill many
pages with such statements. There would be none, however,
more striking than these. I have regarded the theories of mind-
reading and of fraud as entirely at fault as explanations of these
phenomena. If the matter written had been in my mind, so that
the medium could have read it all there, how could it have been
got upon the slate ? But the matter, so far from being in my
mind, was every time a surprise to me.
I take, fourthly, in the ascending scale, oral communicatiofis
through trance mediums. I class with them written communica
tions. This class of spritualistic phenomena is to me the most
interesting and the most convincing, and I shall dwell upon it

SPIRITUALISM. 253
more at length than I have upon the others. I shall not attempt
to reduce them to any particular order, but shall select a few out
of a great many with reference to their clearer exclusion of the
idea of mind-reading, and with less reference to their value than
to the proof which they give of a supra-mundane origin.
About eight years ago a gentleman was staying at my house
who proved to be a rare medium. He had no suspicion of it
(that is, he said so), though he told us of some strange experi
ences that he could not understand, and of his frequently hearing
raps in his room, especially in the night, that he could not account
for. He professed not to believe in spiritualism, and seemed
inclined to materialistic views. At the request of my wife and
myself he had several sittings with us. He would go into a state
of unconsciousness or apparent sleep, and after an hour come out
of it with no knowledge (as he declared and we believed) of what
had happened while he was in that condition ; but he had given
us communications, apparently from spirits, of which we had
taken quite full notes, giving us names that we knew well, but
which it was hardly possible that he could have known of (and
he declared that he did not), and often names of which we knew
nothing, but which he recognized as those of old friends of his
who had departed. He had been brought up in a family of little
cultivation, and certain errors of speech had become imbeded in
his English, and were constantly appearing in his ordinary con
versation ; yet some of the communications, purporting to come
from educated minds, were expressed in the best of English, with
no intrusion of his inaccuracies. One evening Samuel Bowles,
formerly editor of the Springfield Republican, who had died not
long before, came. He and I had been great friends. He always
called me " John," and in his frequent spiritualistic communica
tions, in different places and before different mediums, he gener
ally so addressed me. I asked him who were with him. He
named several persons, and among them Dr. Smith, a Springfield
physician, who had died a short time before. I said a few Words
to him, to which he replied, stammering a little as he spoke. I
had known him slightly, and knew that he had an impediment in
his speech, but it was wholly out of my mind. It is stated to be
a general, perhaps universal, rule, that spirits returning to earth
put on the old earth conditions. I have seen many illustrations
of this, but not enough to safely generalize from. Soon after Dr.
Smith came my wife said, " I am glad to meet you, Dr. Smith ; I
have often heard of you, but never saw you. " Said he, " I met

254

REMINISCENCES.

you once, Mrs. Hooker." "Why," said she, "I have no recollec
tion of it." "Yes," said he, " I met you in London." I could not
at the moment recall the fact, and my wife was totally unable
to, and we passed on to other communications. I very soon.
however, recollected the circumstances. My wife and I were in
London in 1875, and she went into a shop on Regent street to
make some purchases, while I went on to attend to another matter,
and was to call for her there on my way back. While returning
I overtook Bowles and Dr. Smith, and we stopped and had a
chat. I had not before known that they were in the city, or
indeed that they had left home. After a while I said to Bowles
that my wife was in a shop near by, and he must step in and see
her. So he came along, and Dr. Smith with us. She was sitting
at a counter looking at some goods. Bowles shook hands with
her very cordially, but Dr. Smith was merely formally introduced,
and then stepped back and waited at the door. This little inci
dent (of Dr. Smith's coming in) my -wife had totally forgotten,
and could not recall it after I stated my recollection of it. I can
not see how any theory of mind-reading can explain this occur
rence. I suppose mind-reading to be the reading of what is then
in one's mind — of what the mind is then doing, and not of what
is laid away in the memory and perhaps substantially forgotten.
Nearly twenty years ago I made the acquaintance, at the home
of a friend in a neighboring city, of a young lady whom I wUl
call Julia Brown. She was about twenty-five years old, belonged
to one of the best families in Brooklyn, and was finely educated
and of very bright mind. She was just entering upon a hopeless
decline. There g^ew up a warm friendship between us, and from
that time till her death, some five years later, I was able to do
much for her comfort, for which she seemed very grateful. No
friend from the other world has come to me more frequentl)-. It
was she whose communication appeared on the slate held by
Slade and myself, before mentioned. In 1883 I was in Boston,
and went with Rev. Mr, H., an old college friend who was greatly
interested in these investigations, to a sitting at the Berry sisters.
Some things I have since seen stated tending to discredit them,
but I knew nothing of them at this time, and their trustworthiness
does not become a very important factor in the matter that I am
to state. There were, I should judge, twenty or more people
there. All sat around a long, narrow table, like a dining-room
table, which it probably was. My friend introduced me to a man
whom we met at the door, but my mere name was all that was

SPIRITUA LISM. 255
mentioned. There was no one in the circle that I had ever seen
before, except my friend, and he sat at quite a distance from me.
I had a lady on one side of me and a gentleman on the other.
We were requested to join hands. All had sheets of note paper
and a pencil laid before them. The gas was then turned off,
leaving us in total darkness. There was not a sound or an appar
ent motion in the room, except of the pencils writing on the
sheets of paper. Presently I heard a distinct whisper in my ear,
"lam Julia Brown." I was amazed. I had never had such ati
experience before. I said, in the lowest possible whisper, " Won't
you repeat that ? " The voice then whispered, with perfect dis
tinctness, "I am Julia Brown." I whispered again, "JuUa, if
that is you, touch me on my right temple." Immediately there
were two Uttle pats on my right temple. Then a gentle hand
played with my hair and again patted me on the forehead. Soon
the gas was turned on. I took up the note paper, and there was
on it a message addressed to me and signed "Julia Brown."
Nearly ten years ago I made a contract with a florist by which
he was to hire of me a piece of land in Hartford for a nursery
and garden, with a small house upon it, with the expectation of
purchasing it at a price agreed, but without a binding agreement
that he should purchase, as he felt that he could not safely come
under such an obligation. After a whUe he wanted to have me
build a greenhouse on the lot and thought it indispensable that
he should have one. I had just been subjected to a heavy loss
as surety for some friends, and so had no money to spare, and
there was a serious risk that he might not be able to buy, in
which case the greenhouse would be a useless piece of property
to me. The matter was held by me for consideration. I had not
spoken of it to a human being, not even to my wife. Just then
the wife of a friend of mine, who was a writing medium, told her
husband one morning that she felt impelled to go to Mr. Hooker's
— that she could not say for what purpose, but that the influence
upon her was very strong. He at once got up his carriage and
drove her to my house. Both my wife and I were out. She then
felt herself impelled to write something. She took a sheet of
paper and wrote a message, signed " Francis Gillette " (my
brother-in-law — not long deceased — and who had once owned
this land with me and knew all about my affairs), in which he
addressed me as his "tender-hearted brother," and advised me
not to let myself be induced to help another man who was better
able to take care of himself than I was to take care of l\im. I

256 REMINISCENCES.
came in, and the lady said to me, " Here is a message for you ;
perhaps you can understand it, but I have no idea what it
means." I read it and said, "I understand perfectly what it
means." This decided me not to make the investment. And the
wisdom of the decision was clearly proved a few months later,
for the florist had an offer of a place as superintendent of a ceme
tery in Springfield on a good salary, and told me that he should
have felt that he must accept it and leave Hartford, even if I had
built the greenhouse. It must of course be understood that for
my statement of how the lady was impressed and what she did,
up to the time when I came in, I have had to depend on her own
and her husband's statements. I will further state that the mes
sage could have had no other meaning or application than the
one I gave it, as there was no other matter then under considera
tion with me that involved the raising of money or the helping of
anybody. In the financial crash of 1875-76 a firm of my personal friends
and relatives, who were engaged in a large real estate undertak
ing failed most disastrously. I was holden as their surety to a
large amount. Their real estate was all mortgaged to various
savings banks, and I held a second mortgage for my security. I
took the property and struggled with the load two or three years,
losing several thousand dollars more in the attempt, and finally
surrendered it all to the mortgagees. I found myself no longer
able to hold my own dwelling-house, and after a long effort to
carry it, I put it into the hands of a broker to sell. For three
years he tried to sell it without success, and there was no way
but for me to give it up on a heavy mortgage which I had some
time before put upon it. The mortgagee was willing to take it,
as it was well worth the debt, even in the very depressed con
dition of real estate at that time. Accordingly I prepared a deed
and executed it, and held it ready to be delivered to the mort
gagee. It then occurred to me that a friend of mine, who had
no house, might be willing to buy an undivided half of the place
at a low price, and that we could together carry it, — the house
being of ample size for two families, with extensive grounds.
I proposed it to him. He said it was a generous offer and that
he would talk with his wife about it. My intimate friend, Gov
ernor Hubbard, an eminent lawyer, had died a few weeks before
this. While the matter so stood, a lady whom we knew called
on me and said that the previous evening she had been at a
stance, and that Governor Hubbard announced himself and said.

SPIRITUALISM. 257
"Tell John liooker to let there be no foreclosure and no divi
sion." She said none of them knew what it meant, but perhaps
I should, and that she had brought it exactly as it was uttered.
I told her I knew what it meant. I decided to hold on to the
property a Uttle longer. This was early in April. Before the
ist of May a stranger desiring to settle in Hartford, found that
this house was for sale, looked at it, and bought it, giving all
that I could have hoped to get in the depressed condition of real
estate, but several thousand dollars more than the mortgage. I
cannot see how there could have been any mind-reading here,
while there could have been no fraud ; at least there seems no
room for any suspicion of it. It is to be noticed, however, that
the message speaks of a "foreclosure," while no foreclosure was
thought of. It was to have been merely a surrender of the prop
erty to the mortgagee — the result being of course the same as if
there had been literally a foreclosure, that being the ordinary
mode of getting possession by a mortgagee.
There resides in Hartford a middle-aged woman, Mrs. M., who
practices "magnetic healing." During the past ten or twelve
years we have employed her many times in our family for
massage treatment and have come to know her well, and to have
great confidence in her honesty. She professes to be controlled
by an Indian girl named Minnie and sometimes by another
named Nicowassa. Each of these controls has peculiarities of
speech (imperfect and mispronounced English), but the language
of one is at certain points totally unlike that of the other. I
have had many sittings with her, and have watched carefuUy
this matter of speech, and am able to state jDositively that I have
never found either trespassing on the other's preserve of inac
curacies. And further, I have never known in a single instance
Mrs. M., when not in a trance and speaking in her own person,
falling into the particular inaccuracies of speech of either, and
while she has some inaccuracies of her own I have never known
hor to intermingle them with the words of either control, at least
in such a way as to make them noticeable. Also when speaking
under control she invariably alludes to herself as a third person
and never says "I" of herself. In June, 1888, 1 made my arrange
ments to go to England for my summer vacation. Two ladies,
one of them a cousin, decided to go with me, and finaUy two
young gentlemen and two more ladies — the whole party making
seven, of whom I was the only one who had ever crossed the

258 REMINISCENCES.
Atlantic, which I had done several times. All were therefore
dependent on me as a manager and guide. Our passages were
taken and all preparations made. I proposed to my wife to go
with us. (She had before spent a year and a half in England and
Europe.) She said that nothing would induce her to take the
voyage for so short a stay, and it was treated as a settled thing
that she would not think of going. About a month before we
were to sail I had a sitting with Mrs. M., when Minnie said, " I see
you and your wife crossing the ocean together." (Not a word
had been said about my going.) Said I, " Oh, you are all wrong
there. I may go, but my wife will not think of going." "Yes,
she will," she replied; "she will change her mind at the last
moment and go." I took this to be a clear case of blundering, so
much so that; I did not even speak of it to my wife. About three
weeks before we were to sail my -wife went away from home to be
gone about two weeks. Ten days before the day for sailing I was
taken suddenly with dysentery, and was threatened with a serious
fit of it, with little hope of getting up in season to sail. My wife
was telegraphed to to hurry home, and came at once. By good
medical and home care I got better rapidly, but was still in poor
condition for the voyage. We were to leave home on Friday and
to sail on Saturday. On Wednesday morning my wife said : " I
am going with you ; you need my care." I advised against it, but
she was decided about it. She sent immediately for a seamstress
to help get her clothing in order, and by excessively hard pushing
she got ready and went off with me on Friday and took the whole
tour with me. She had not thought of going till she woke on
Wednesday morning with the sudden resolve to go.
In November, 1889, I held a note of $5,000 which fell due
on a Tuesday of that month. The maker had assured me that it
would be paid, and I had made arrangements, which I could not
easily change, for the use of the money. On the Thursday be
fore the note fell due the maker wrote me from New York,
where he lived, that he found he must renew for three months
for $4,000, paying now only $1,000 and asking if I could accom
modate him. The letter reached me on Friday. I wrote him by
the Friday night mail that I would do so if he would send a check
for the $1,000 by the Saturday evening mail, so that I could have
it on Monday morning. Sunday evening Mrs. M., the medium I
have spoken of, was at my house, and went into a trance there.
I had not said a word to my wife about this note niatter, nor of
my expectation of the $1,000 on Monday. Mrs. M. said: "Your

SPIRITUALISM. 259
daughter Mary is here" (a daughter aged forty, who died in 1886,
and who has been to us many times and in a convincing way),
and she says — ' Father, the letter that wUl come to you to-morrow
will have nothing in it, but what you expect wUl come very
soon.' " No one in the room had any conception what it meant,
but I told them that I understood it perfectly. The postman the
next morning brought a letter from the gentleman in New York,
expressing- regret that he had not been able to get the money in
season to send me a draft by that mail, but that he would certainly
send it by the next day's mail, and, in fact, he came up himself
late Monday evening and brought me the $1,000.
About 1845, just as I was entering on my profession, I read
with great interest a life of Sir Samuel Romilly, a great English
lawyer, who lived in the latter part of the last and the early part
of this century. My whole Ufe has been affected by the person
ality of that man, and when I was in England in 1858 I sought out
his son. Sir John Romilly, then Master of the Rolls, and had a
long talk with him about his father. I give an account of this
interview ante, p. 70. I never saw Sir John again, and did not
suppose that he ever again thought of me. He died a few years
later. Not long after his death, I was, with my wife, spending a
few days at Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher's in Brooklyn, N. Y. He
and Mrs. Beecher were at that time much interested in looking
into spiritualistic phenomena. One evening Dr, and Mrs, Beecher
and my wife and I went together to a very respectable lady living
not far off, who was a medium, and in whose trustworthiness they
seemed to have confidence. Various interesting things occurred,
but I will notice only one incident. The medium addressed me
and said (some spirit seeming to try to speak through her) — " Sir
John " — "Sir John." I could not imagine who it could be, tdl
my wife (unfortunately for the completeness of the test), said,
" Isn't it your friend RomUly ? " The name had not come into my
mind tUl then. I then said, "Is it Sir John RomiUy?" The
medium at once reached out her hand to take mine and seemed
to answer to that name. I took the hand, shaking it rather for
mally than cordially, and said, "lam very happy to meet you,
Sir John." The medium then said (personating him), "I am
happy to meet you, but I came specially to introduce to you my
father, Sir Samuel." He then (that is, the medium) made mo
tions as if introducing somebody, and then the medium (now
representing Sir Samuel) took my hand and gave it a dignified

26o REMINISCENCES.
shake, and said, "I am happy to meet you" (or substantially
that), and this was all that was done. Something else came along
and took the attention of the medium.
I could fiH many pages more with similar cases, but these
are all for which I have room. I will, however, append an
article sent by me to the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Eagle, in 1887,
in reply to an article against spiritualism by Rev. Dr. C. B.
Smith published in that paper:
The Rev. Dr. C. B. Smith, a classmate of the writer at Yale, in
a recent article in your paper on Spiritualism, noticed an address
deUvered by me on that subject before a society of spiritualists,
and, while dissenting wholly from my conclusions, speaks most
kindly and commendingly of me personally. It will be impos
sible, in any such space as you would allow me, to answer the
points made by him, especially that with regard to the unsatis
factory character of the proof relied on to establish the claimed
facts of Spiritualism. I will, however, present briefly two or
three points which I think worthy of consideration.
I. While it would be in bad taste for me to quote Dr. Smith's
words of commendation of myself for any mere personal reason,
yet as I am totally unknown in your part of the country, while he
is so widely and favorably known, I owe it to the cause I repre
sent to put considerations of mere delicacy aside and to avail my
self of the generous certificate he has given me. He says : " Mr.
Hooker has no superior among his classmates as a thinker and a
scholar. His mind is clear, keen, logical, and strong. . He
is a lawyer of great ability. . . There is no cant or humbug
in him, and he is the last man we should suppose could be carried
away by a delusion. " Now, is it likely that, being such a man,
and having had nearly fifty years' experience in applying evidence
to facts, I should wholly lose my head in dealing with the ques
tion of Spiritualism ? Let it be observed that it is purely a ques
tion of fact and evidence. If I am claiming too much for myself,
let me refer to another classmate, Professor Lyman of Yale Col
lege, to whom the Popular Science Monthly for November devotes
a whole article, ranking him among the first scientists of the
country, and who has been for years a full believer in Spiritualism.
He is, besides, a Congregational clergyman, and an earnest
religious man. There are, in fact, no more scientific men in the
world than those who have, upon full investigation, become

SPIRITUALISM. 261
believers in and advocates of Spiritualism. William Crookes and
Alfred Russel Wallace are at the head of the EngUsh scientists,
and both, beginning in unbelief, carried on investigations which
have never been surpassed for thoroughness, and became believ
ers, and have pubUshed books in its defense.
2. My friend makes a point of the triviality of some of the
phenomena of Spiritualism, and the low tone of the communica
tions. "The gabble of fools," he calls it, and asks "if dying
makes men fools." His assumption that everything that purports
to come from the other side is low, or even commonplace, is
utterly unwarranted. I have never heard or read anything more
elevated in thought or finer in expression than I have heard from
what I believe to have been disembodied spirits, and that through
mediums who were unable in themselves to conceive the thoughts
or use the language. But a great deal that is said is undoubtedly
commonplace and trivial. What else ought we to expect from the
very commonplace people who make the great majority of those
who go over ? We too often have the impression that there is in
that world such a perpetual pressure of the sublime and awful as
to expel from the mind all thoughts but solemn ones. But that
world, I believe, is only another stage of existence, higher than
this, but, like this, full of social life and all that enlivens
social life here. In such circumstances trifiers would still trifle,
the ignorant would still show their ignorance, and the ascents to a
higher level of thought and expression would be the exception.
It is to be borne in mind, too, that these communications are gen
eraUy the talk of friends with friends in a familiar way, and that
they are not addressing the pubUc, or posturing for observation
or criticism. But let us compare these undignified acts of these
commonplace souls with a certain other accepted manifestation
from the spirit world, which the church has never thought of
criticising. We are told in the New Testament that Christ after
his crucifixion came back to earth as a materiaUzed form, and
that on one occasion, when several of the disciples had been toil
ing aU night at their nets, they saw him, as the morning broke,
standing upon the shore, where he had made a fire of coals
and was broiling some fishes. And this, in the contemplation of
the church, was the Lord of Glory, who had just completed his
subUme sacrificial work, and had visited the heavenly worid, the
radiance of which, to him its Lord, no human imagination can
conceive ; and yet he comes back to earth and is seen broiling
some fishes. If this had not appeared in Holy Writ, but in some

262 REMINISCENCES.
apocryphal record of the time, or had been revealed through
some mediumistic agency, the whole Christian church would
have scouted it as absurd to the last degree, and the Seybert Com
mission would have thought it too contemptible for one moment's
attention. Yet when we consider the loftiness of Christ's char
acter and the low level of ordinary human life, I am sure there
cannot be found an act of a human disembodied spirit that can
justly be compared to this for want of probability or want of
dignity !
3. My friend thinks it ridiculous that spirits should make
known their presence by raps and other physical means. But for
those who know nothing about how spirits can communicate with
mortals, it is very unscientific to say beforehand that it cannot be
in this particular way. It is a sufficient answer to say that by
these modes there have come communications which could not
have come from any other than intelligent minds. The evidence
on this subject is absolutely conclusive. It cannot be gone into
here. But I do not hesitate to say that if any intelligent and
honest-minded man could see what I have seen, he would inevi
tably come to my conclusions. I started upon my investigations
in utter disbelief and with a great disrelish for the whole subject.
My friend says of the investigators who have been convinced,
" They desire to have it true, and there is only a short step
between that desire and truth." The fact with the most intelU
gent investigators is exactly the opposite. I did not desire it to
be true. I thought it a delusion, and set out to prove it to be so.
And after my investigation began I held on for a long time to the
theory that all of the phenomena could be explained by mind-
reading ; and it was not until facts compelled me to give up this
theory or confess myself a dishonest man, that I yielded to the
inexorable fact.
My friend speaks confidently and with an apparently certain
knowledge about what is and is not in this matter. I cannot say
how much careful and candid examination he has given to it (I
have given a great deal) ; but I can say without hesitation that I
have almost invariably found that those who were most positive
in their rejection of Spiritualism have been those who have never
given it any serious and unprejudiced examination. I cannot do
better than to quote a few words from Alfred Russel Wallace,
whom one of our religious papers speaks of as " a man in whom
the candor of the scientific method is conspicuously illustrated."

SPIRITUALISM. 263
In a recent article in an English journal he speaks of the subject
as follows :
" The fact that Spiritualism has firmly established itself in our
skeptical and materialistic age ; that it has continuously grown
and developed for nearly forty years ; that by mere weight of
evidence, and in spite of the most powerful prepossessions, it has
compelled recognition by an ever-increasing body of men in all
classes of society, and has gained adherents in the highest ranks
of science and philosophy ; and finally, that despite abuse and
misrepresentation, the folly of enthusiasts and the knavery of
imposters, it has rarely failed to convince those who have made a
thorough and painstaking investigation, and has never lost a con
vert thus made — all this affords a conclusive answer to the objec
tions so commonly uged against it. "
I have thus far dealt only with the evidence of the reality
of spiritualism and of the soundness of the inference in its favor
from its phenomena. A question of great importance re
mains with regard to its moral relations. The argument here
is strongly in its favor. I cannot present the point better than
by a brief and forcible article written by my wife in 1897 for
the " Banner of Light," a spiritualist paper published in Bos
ton. The article, which is entitled " Spiritualism and Good
Morals," is as foHows : —
It is sometimes said that the code of morals under SpirituaUsm
is a loose one, and that it gives a free rein to unbridled fancies,
leading to domestic separations and disorders. No one can abhor
loose morals more than I, and it would disturb me greatly if
SpirituaUsm was open to such a charge.
But I have studied it most carefuUy for over twenty years, and
have long been convinced that, rightly understood, it goes far
beyond the ordinary sanctions of what we call " Orthodox Chris
tianity ¦¦ as a deterrent from vice and an encouragement of aU
that is good. The hell that has been held up as a terror to evU-
doers, and than which nothing could be more terrible if it com
manded the beUef of the mind, has yet stood before us, even those
of us who most beUeved in it, as something vague and remote and
unreal. It has practically no power as a deterrent from wrong
doing. But there is something terribly impressive and real in
what we hear from those who have gone to the other worid from
a life of sin and wrong in this. They have told us that they are

264 REMINISCENCES.
in darkness and desolation. One who had acquired great wealth,
but who had never opened his hand to help the needy or to aid
the moral efforts of others, said to me, months after his death,
that he had found no rest, but was blown about over a dark and
desolate region, like a wisp of hay. Another, who inherited a
large fortune, but had been overbearing and exacting in his deal
ings, and had done nothing for the needy, came to my husband
most unexpectedly in a sitting at which I was present (an occur
rence that was remarkable, as they had barely known each other
by sight), and, giving his name, said : " Those who have not used
their wealth for humanity in earth-life have no wealth in spirit-
life. They are as poor as those whom they have neglected to
help on earth. With my great wealth I neglected to help suffer
ing humanity. I am very unhappy over it. I can see no way to
undo the past, but I will do all the spirit-world will give me power
to do. It is a dreadful thing to come into the spirit-world without
one friend to say ' well done.' "
At another sitting with the same medium, at which my hus
band was present, an old gentleman of great wealth who had
died a few months before, gave his name and said : " Oh ! help me
to the light. I never lifted a finger for humanity. I had a pleas
ant home, but not even a poor cabin now. I am in the dark. As
I crushed humanity, so I am crushed. My ear was deaf to
humanity, and now God is deaf to me. I come to you to learn.
Help me to the light." At another sitting the same person came
again and said: "Oh ! how I regret that dreadful past. I wish I
could come back, and open my doors, and say, ' You poor afflicted
ones, come and help yourselves.' What a blessing it would be to
me. How these bonds would be broken ! To come to you brings
me the only light I have had since I have been in the spirit-
world." Can there be more awful sanctions than these to bind a man
to right doing whUe he is in earth life ? I know nothing in the
orthodox penalties that in practical effect will compare with them.
But there is one very comforting fact that we learn from
Spiritualism. It is that the suffering in the spirit-world is reform
atory, and not everlasting ; that erring and perverse souls, when
they have suffered for a time, perhaps for years, and have come
to see and feel ashamed of their evil-doing, repent, and are up-
Ufted and forgiven, good spirits helping them to find the way to
the Ught. And from frequent expressions of these spirits, as in
the last case mentioned, they get great help from coming to us

SOME BITS OF VERSE.

265

for sympathy and encouragement. The one task g^ven to them
all is to come back here, and try to influence others to do better
than they have done.
It must not be inferred that the cases I have mentioned are
recent ones. They are taken from a great many that have come
to me in the last twenty years.

SOME BITS OF VERSE.l
With considerable hesitation I decide to make up a chapter
of what I call " Bits of Verse." I do not pretend to be a poet.
From my youth I have been accustomed at dinner parties and
on other festive occasions, frequently to weave together lines
which were intended to be humorous, and which generally
proved entertaining in the hilarious and uncritical mood of the
company, and thus I acquired a not uncommon faculty of
rather easy versification; but this faculty I almost never used
for any serious purpose till after I was fifty years old. The few
poems which I shall here publish were all written after I reached
that age. Their publication here gives me the opportunity to
express not only my great desire, but my earnest request to my
family, that nothing else in the guise of poetry that may be
found among my papers shall ever be published. Two poems
of serious intent have already been printed in former chapters,
pages 62 and 112. I might greatly enlarge this coHection, but
it is with me a matter both of preference and of wisdom to keep
it small. I commit to the charity of my friends what foHows.
THE BELL TOLLED BY THE WAVES.
Far down the bay, where pass the stately ships
That come and go, a spar, with deep-toned bell,
Uprises from the waves, fastened beneath
To a huge rock that lurks in ambush there,
Waiting to gore to death some gallant ship.
The waves, confederate and ravenous,
Are yet compelled to toll that warning bell,
And mingle with their own perpetual moan
Its dirge-like monotone, that cheats their greed.
iS

266 REMINISCENCES.
So walk our streets blear-eyed and sin-scarred men,
Bearing unwilling on their visages,
As if in endless moan and monotone.
Warning of ambushed death,
TIDES.
Constant the great tides come and go,
Obedient to the Queen of Night;
Lord I may my heart's tides ebb and flow
For thee, the Lord of Light.
Earth's gravitation all forgot,
They heed alone the heavenly call;
Lord ! may my heart give earth no thought
But hold thy mandate all.
Dark storm clouds hide at times the moon.
Or she is paled by light of day ;
In storm and calm, by night and noon,
The great tides still obey.
Lord, thou dost oft in darkness hide,
And give my anxious heart no sign;
Help me to still in thee abide,
And know no law but thine.

My friend in the spirit land,
With whom I, hand in hand,
Have walked so oft on earth,
And till thy great new birth;
With whom, as we sat or walked,
Of deepest things I talked.
And of the mysteries vast
That we should know at last;
Awful and vaguely told,
Yet should one day behold;
Thou hast beheld them now.
Their light is on thy brow;
No longer a veil between
Thine eyes and the once unseen;
No longer from thee concealed
The a-wful and unrevealed;

SOME BITS OF VERSE. 267
In the shadow still I stand,
But thou in the sunlit land.
Oh, tell to my longing ear
Of thy life in that new sphere !
Oh, tell to my longing heart
Where, near or tar, thou art !
What are seeing those eyes of thiw^
That so lately looked in mine ?
What is hearing thy ravished ear
That so lately listened here ?
Oh, lips that so lovingly spake,
Can ye not the silence break ?
Cannot the immortal breath
Whisper the secret of death ?
Thou knowest my hunger and tbt* ¦¦-
How I could almost burst
Into that unknown land,
Nor wait the Lord's command.
Thou knowest how here our brcatr
Seems but a lingering death;
And how my sad heart ponders
Ever upon those wonders —
Ever on the end of earth
And the wondrous spirit birth.
Oh, wondrous birth and life I
Calmness succeeding strife ;
Joy in the place of sorrow
And forebodings ot the morrow ;
There, the Eternal Presence,
Here, constant evanescence ;
There, rest in full assurance.
Here, pain and mere endurance ;
There, the exultant shouting.
Here, the fearing and the doubting ;
There, sure and blest abodes.
Here, wandering on rough roads ;
There, mighty organ swells,
Here, constant tolling bells.
Oh, rest of that land of bliss !
Oh, weariness of this !
And canst thou not, my friend.
Some of thy new light lend

268 REMINISCENCES.
To one who loves thee so.
Yet waits and longs below ?
Canst thou not feed his yearning
With something thou art learning ?
Some hint of the life divine,
Some unmistaken sign ?
I watch with my every sense ;
I listen with soul intense ;
But not a whisper comes.
And a chill my soul benumbs.
But out of the sky at last
A word on the void is cast ;
On the void a single word,
But it comes as that of the Lord ;
As I barken, my breath I bate,
But that word is only — " Wait." '''
THE DEATH OF GRANT.
Our victor, vanquished by th' all-conqueror.
Lies dead ; clad was our hero but in clay.
The strong right hand that held the avalanche
Of battle, as th' Almighty holds the tempests,
Lies powerless, and the arms that clasping held
A nation to his heart, are folden now
Upon his heaveless breast.
THE EMPIRE THAT IS TO BE.
I once in sad and thoughtful mood
Stood in an old world solitude.
Amidst the scattered ruins vast
Of a great empire of the past.
But now, with feeling more intense,
I watch the gathering elements
Of a grand empire yet to be,
World-clasping in immensity.
That empire shall be Love and Peace ;
Its sway begun shall never cease ;

* I have become entirely satisfied since the above was written, that we can have
actual communication witli our friends in the spirit world.

269

SOME BITS OF VERSE.
No drumbeats shall its morns salute.
No trumpets shall their clangor bruit ;
But, following the circling sun.
Each day shall be with song begun ;
A song of praise, oh God, to thee ;
A song that shall unbroken be,
Save by the deep-toned anthem of the sea,
AT THE PIANO.
[Verses written for a young lady friend who had come out from a crushing dis
appointment into a great and abiding peace,]
Before these keys responsive to my moods
I sit, my fingers wandering at their will.
Singing in low voice sweet beatitudes.
And of the peace and joy my heart that fill.
Five years agone this night here sat I singing
Of an awaiting joy that tilled my dreams ;
The bright sun of my morning then was flinging
Across my untrod path his golden beams.
But ah, between ! what tumult, oh my soul !
Oh God, what cries of agony to thee !
Thou, Christ, hast felt of human 'woes the whole;
My heart has shared thine own Gethsemane.
Yet self I conquered ; for thy grace drew near,
And taught me sorrow was a gift divine ;
I trod the wine-press of that vintage drear,
But drank at last its eucharistic wine.
And so I sit to-night in a great peace.
Touching these keys, and singing soft and low
Of a calm joy that cannot know surcease.
Richer than all I dreamed five years ago.

TRUTH AND DOGMA.
An outworn Dogma died. Around its bed
Its votaries wept as if all truth were dead.
But heaven-born Truth is an immortal thing;
Hark; how its lieges give it welcoming,
" The King is dead — Long live the King."

270 REMINISCENCES.
THE MODERN SPHINX.
"He is of age; ask him." John 9, 21,
Woman, Sphinx of the secret yet unspoken,
On human wastes outlooking sad and dumb,
At last on Memnon's top the morn has broken.
And Memnon's voice proclaims her day has come.
And now, her long, mute, weary non-age o'er.
She calmly sits her own interpreter ;
; If we would have her riddle solved, no more
Of our rude guesses. She's of age; ask her.

WATER CHANGED TO WINE.
The Lord said. Bring me wine ; my scanty stoie
Alas had none that I could bring.
I brought but water, I could do no more.
From a cool spring.
And hardly dared I to the Lord look up.
So worthless seemed this gift of mine ;
When, lo, the water in my humble cup
Had turned to wine.

ALONE WITH THEE.
" Come ye apart into a desert place and rest." Mark 6, 31.
LoPD, help me, from the strife and whirl and din
Of life, to go apart awhile with thee ;
E'en though it be a desert's depths within.
It will be sweetest rest to me.
My heart is weary of men's sateless greed
For wealth ; of power that plays the tyrant's part ;
Of bigotry, with its dead forms and creed.
And fire and fagot in its heart.
I weary of blind prejudice, whose hate
Would battle with advancing truth and right ;
Loving the lark's song at the morning's gate
Less than the hootings of the night.

SOME BITS OF VERSE. 271
But most I weary of myself ; my ways
Of ill, on better purpose following ever ;
My vows so often broken ; my to-day's
Resolve, to-morrow's weak endeavor.
So let me flee into a desert place,
Where I can be apart from all but thee ;
Where on my troubled brow thy placid face
May look, and give its peace to me.
That desert place — be it of thine own choosing ;
The path that leads there may be steep and rough
And dark ; but I the way shall not fear losing ;
Thy leading hand will be enough.
Through whatsoe'er of trial thou see'st best
I will with gladness go to that lone place,
Where, all the world shut out, I shall find rest,
Gazing in rapture on thy face.

I shall add a very few of my humorous poems. If aH that I
have written could be brought together, they would make a
considerable volume. A few have already been given in this
volume, at pages 36, 43, 90, 103. and 104. Verses of this
character, however, are generally written for some special
occasion, and often all their point Hes in some happy personal
allusion, making their pubHcation out of the question, and they
lose much of their interest where taken out of all their sur
roundings and especially presented in cold type. I will add
a single word of explanation of one of the poems, entitled
an " Elegy on Departed Worth." Some ten or fifteen years
before this was written I saw and preserved a bright little
poem on the death of a favorite horse. The subject remained
in my mind, but I had not seen the lines since I first came
across them, and had totally forgotten the details. One night,
in 1891, I had one of my not infrequent turns of wakefulness,
and in casting about for matter to amuse myself, I thought of
these lines, and at once began to compose verses on the same
subject. I was so entertained by my work that when morning
came I could not stop to dress, but threw a blanket over my

272 REMINISCENCES.
shoulders and finished the poem in season to read it at the
breakfast table, where it was received with great favor. It
then occurred to me to look up the old poem to see whether I
had not unwittingly appropriated some of its puns. I found
that my best verse, which I thought absolutely original,
trenched seriously on the other poem, and I struck it out
entirely. No other verse was open to objection, and I at once
made a final draft of the poem for preservation. I give here a
very small representation of verses that have been most warmly
received at dinner parties and gatherings of my friends.
A GOOD THING DONE BY A PLUMBER,
[The public has so often allowed itself to be amused by heartless gibes at our
worthy plumbers, that where one of them does a really good thing, as in the present
case,-he ought to have the credit of it.]
The pipes of the palace got leaky.
And the king for a plumber sent ;
The plumber was smart and cheeky.
And with ominous smile he went.
For a year kept plumbing that plumber,
And perhaps he is plumbing still ;
But you never saw a man dumber
Than the king when he saw his bill.
The king was in deadly strife
With another king near by.
At a dreadful cost of life
And drain on his treasury.
But he forthwith stopt that war ;
T'was the best thing he could do ;
For he couldn't raise money for
The war and the plumber too.
AN HONEST BUT SHREWD COBBLER.
[Showing that the best policy does not conflict with honesty.]
An honest cobbler had twelve girls,
With plump red cheeks and redder curls ;
But not a boy, poor man, had he
To help him in his cobblerie.

SOME BITS OF VERSE.
Early he worked and he worked late
To feed these girls, (and how they ate !)
The elder had become passees.
The younger were well on the way ;
But still, no beaux his threshold crossed,
No billets-doux were brought by post ;
Yet none of these continued slights
Seemed to affect their appetites.
The cobbler still worked early, late
And still the twelve girls ate and ate.
He o'er the problem worried sore.
And Mrs. Cobbler even more.
But our poor man had Yankee shrewdness.
And was not made of simple goodness:
Long time he schemed, and then at last
Away his awl and apron cast,
And moved off to another place.
Where no one knew his trade or face,
And there set up a shop as Plumber,
Young men touched hats to the new-comer.
And all the girls were married the first summer.
Our cobbler then, with Mrs, C,
Rubbing his hands in honest glee,
Moved back to his old home and cobblerie.

TO MY WOODBINE IN OCTOBER,
Thou pretty woodbine, fondly clinging
About my porch, what now is bringing
To thy soft cheek such blushes scarlet ?
A kiss snatched rudely by some varlet ?
Or has true love with winning art
Found entrance to thy tender heart ?
Surely, thy blush is not of shame ;
No scandal can have touched thy name.
E'en as I ask, the warm blood rushes
To fill thy cheek with deeper blushes.
Ah, pretty vine, in love thou art ;
Tell me the secret of thy heart.

273

274

REMINISCENCES.
Thy secret thou wilt never tell ?
But I have watched and know it well,
I've watched, and seen too oft of late
An evening loafer 'round my gate ;
And know thou'st been, to thy heart's cost,
A-chatdng nights with gay Jack Frost,

ELEGY ON DEPARTED WORTH.
Old Prince is dead, that good old steed ;
Of sheer old age died he;
Four sturdy legs he had, yet now
But this poor leg.
Where'er the path of duty led
Faithful he followed it ;
To hard or humble service called,
He never shirked a bit.
His courage never failed at drum.
Or march of bannered host ;
When in the street securely tied
He never left his post.
He loved fair woman's gentle rein;
His mistress was his idol ;
Yet, though no Mormon, forth he came
Each morning to a bridle.
No need of harsh command or blow,
A mild word was enough ;
And so, though he a collar wore,
He never had a cuff.
Though of finance he nothing knew,
Nor bankers' methods noticed,
He always traveled with a check,
Though always under protest.
His life was far beyond reproach.
But gossips never fail ;
And always, whereso'er he went,
There followed him a tail.

SOME BITS OF PERSE. 375
But all such things disturbed him not,
He took them as a part
Of life's sure ills, and through them all
He kept a stable heart.
Though of best temper and sincere,
He had a funny way,
Whate'er you kindly said to him.
Of answering with a neigh.
But when grim death upon him called,
And beckoned him away
His eyes half closed, he was too weak
To answer with a neigh.
In his gay youth he loved the turf ;
Beneath the turf he lies ;
And o'er him waves the grass, as in
A good steed's paradise.
Though vanished from our mortal sight,
Mere vision of the mind ;
Unlike the poet's vanished scene,
He left a rack behind.
Oh, teacher of a kindly code,
Fro.m humble manger called !
No reverend preacher e'er has been
More worthily installed.
We wear, as thou did'st, on our eyes,
Blinders that dim our sight ;
Would we could travel as serene
And always keep the right.

CANDOR.
I desire very much to put upon the unpretending record of
this volume an article which I wrote a few years ago on
Candor. It seems to me to present a truth of great practical
importance, and one which I have not seen presented by any
of the writers on moral subjects. I read it to a leading doctor
of divinity whom I met at a mountain resort, and he said the
idea was a new one to him and very important, and that he

276 REMINISCENCES.
should avail himself of it in one of his earliest sermons. The
article is as follows :
Christ came into the world on a great mission from God to
men. Other great prophetic souls had lived and spoken words of
inspired wisdom for the enlightenment and guidance of men.
But Christ came, not merely proclaiming divine truth and illus
trating it in his own remarkable life, but with a mighty power to
convince and subdue, and doing mighty works to attest the reality
of his mission from God.
But when he came into Galilee he encountered a resolute un
belief, and (Matt. 13, 58) "did not many mighty works there be
cause of their unbelief. "
Why was this ? It was to confound just such an antagonizing
unbelief that he was clothed with this special power. Why did
he not exercise that power at the very place where it was most
needed ? The hearts that were open to receive him, the Nathan
iels without guile, did not need these overwhelming proofs.
They were specially needed by the men of fixed and determined
unbelief — the men who clung tenaciously to old Jewish ideas —
the Scribes and Pharisees, conservative, dogmatic, self-righteous,
intolerant. Yet in the presence of these very men he did not
many of his convincing mighty works.
And this was not a mere special occasion, governed by special
reasons, and out of harmony with his general course of conduct.
It accorded with his general practice and was only the application
of a general principle by which he governed his conduct. See
that principle more strikingly applied in his conduct after he had
risen from the dead and during the forty days of his return to
earth. To whom in his re-incarnated body did he go ? You would
say that he now had the means of utterly confounding those who
had denied him and put him to death as a felon. Here he was,
alive after death, the very marks of the nails and the spear upon
him. How he might have overwhelmed the High Priest. How
the whole Sanhedrim. Yet he does not show himself to one of
them. He goes only to his disciples, to the very men who not only
needed little persuasion, bnt who were almost in a credulous state
of mind, and who would be the last men who could bear effective
witness as to the facts. Every skeptic would at once attribute
their belief to an overwrought imagination and to an eager credu
lity, and perhaps the earnestness of their advocacy to an interest
in sustaining a cause to which they had committed themselves.
The High Priest, the Sanhedrim, would say — " Why did he not

CANDOR. 277
Show himself to us ? You, visionary and enthusiastic, are no wit
nesses for us. If your master has in fact returned to earth, let
him show himself to us. "
Yet all this while the fact that Christ had risen was an almost
pivotal fact in Christianity. Paul says of it, " If Christ be not risen
then is your faith vain." This vital fact, so easily proved, so deci
sive in the conflict of the new faith with the old, so easily brought
to bear with destructive force against the very citadel of Judaism,
Christ forebore to avail himself of, and left the scoffers to go on
into a greater depth of hardness and unbelief.
Now why was all this ? There is a great phdosophy involved
here which I will proceed to consider and which is worthy of our
most serious consideration.
And this philosophy is not merely the very simple and accepted
theory that a receptive mind is more likely to be sought by the
spirit of truth and a receptive heart by the inspiration of God,
All this is very true and very important, but the philosophy here
involved is something far more profound.
That philosophy is this. God requires of men candor. He
does not ordinarily help them to it. He requires them to furnish
it for themselves. Why is this? He helps men morally in many
ways. His spirit is always seeking for the soul that needs help.
Why then does he not help men to be candid ?
Because candor is a merely human virtue. That is, it is a virtue
which it needs mere common intelligence ¦ to understand and ap
preciate. It is like gratitude. The whole world would say that
the man who is not grateful for a real service rendered him is
despicable. Let a judge upon a bench deal uncandidly with a case
submitted to his decision and there is not a mind so ignorant or so
depraved that it cannot see that he has acted basely. Lord Bacon,
as chancellor of England, took a bribe, and the whole civilized
world has joined in fixing upon him the designation of the "wisest
and meanest of mankind, " Let two ignorant laborers who have
a matter of disagreement, no matter how small, agree to leave it
to another laborer, ignorant and perhaps without character, and
he will at once lift himself up into a sense of responsibility and do
his best to decide right, and will feel that to be unfair would be
base. The mere common sense of men tells them what is right
in this matter, and God demands that we have this common sense
virtue. Now the astonishing thing is, that while by common consent it
is base to be uncandid in deciding a matter of disagreement be-

278 REMINISCENCES.
tween two men, yet when we come to that highest duty of decid
ing between Truth and Error, the majority of men, and among
them many otherwise good men, thrust candor utterly aside.
There is hardly one in ten of even editors of religious papers, who,
in dealing with a matter in controversy, would honestly represent
the opinion they are combating, or would honestly present in its
exact meaning and connection some passage on the other side
that they take up for criticism. Such matters are discussed on
one side and the other in a manner that would call do^wn the
rebuke of the judge if a lawyer were so to deal with the side of a
question that he was combating. With all its infelicities the
practice of law has this felicity : — the advocate, if he has good
sense, cultivates the habit of presenting to the court in the clear
est and exactest manner the opposing side of the case, that it may
be seen that he meets it with his argument fully and squarely. It
is of no use for him to put up a man of straw to demolish. It is of
no tise for him to understate his opponent's case. He has a sharp
clear intellect on the other side watching him, and any represent
ation of his opponent's case that makes it appear anything less
than it is, is likely not only to bring upon himself a damaging
interruption from that sharp intellect but a more damaging one
from the court, while there results from all the impression that
the advocate has not confidence in his own position, and dare not
meet the real case against him.
But far more important than the questions which are discussed
between parties and denominations are those which pertain to
human conduct and which every man must consider and decide
for himself. To every man the question presents itself, and ¦with
a constant recurrence, What shall I think and do, and where shall
I stand, upon the great questions of religion and morals and social
progress, which the Providence of God is bringing before us?
Each of us has a great duty to perform in deciding what we will
help and what oppose. It is no question submitted to us by two
controverting parties, of some small indebtedness of one to the
other — a question upon which, however small, it would be base
for us to be uncandid, but a question put before us by Providence,
in which we are to decide between Truth and Error — God's truth
and man's error. How are we meeting the question ? With pre
judice ? With perhaps a hate that has no foundation but ignor
ance ? Or will we say, " Show me thy truth, O God ! Save me
from the cowardice that fears man's opinion. Save me from the
miserable conceit that I know enough about a matter that I have

THE PROGRESS OF WOMEN. 279
never examined. Save me from the delusion that old things are
the best. Save me from the worse delusion that thine own truth
has been fully revealed and exhausted, and that the Spirit of
Truth is not to lead us into all truth. May we follow where
the Spirit of Truth leads — a leading and a following that neces- .
sarily imply progression — a constant advance into a higher and
higher revelation of thy truth."
There is a great revelation of divine truth in the Gospel. In
what spirit do we study that Gospel ? Have we yet comprehended
it in its application to the widening spirit of inquiry and growing
intelligence of the christian world ? It has seemed to us some
times very strange that the disciples, hearing Christ's own words,
brought into loving companionship with him and living under the
magnetism of his presence, could have failed as they did to com
prehend the great spiritual character of his kingdom. But we
have read all that they have recorded of the teaching and life and
death of Christ ; we have seen his church, so feeble at the outset,
almost fill the earth with its anthems ; we have seen his religion
grow into an almost worldwide recognition and dominion ; we
have seen the operation of the divine spirit upon the hearts of
men ; and we cannot but know that here is a mighty power that
shall make a conquest of the whole earth ; and yet, are we not as
much too narrow in our conceptions of what that kingdom is and
is to be, of its real nature and power and of its vast comprehen
siveness, as were the poor fishermen that followed Christ in Gal
ilee ? I think we are.
But a more serious question for us is — Are we willing to abide
in this region of narrowness and prejudice ?

THE PROGRESS OF WOIWEN.
I was born in the early part of this century, and had there
fore an opportunity to observe the condition of women as
members of society when the laws of society determined their
sphere and compressed them within it.
In my boyhood women bowed to these laws as if they
were laws of nature, and hardly dreamed of calling them in
question. Such a thing as a woman doctor was unknown, and
it was a common joke, when they first began to be thought of,
" How would you like to have your wife called up at midnight
to go and see another woman's husband ? " It was almost

28o REMINISCENCES.
universally regarded as a gross indelicacy for a woman to let
her innocent mind touch the subject of physiology or anatomy.
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, in the story of her early experiences,
tells us what almost insuperable obstacles she found in her
"way. Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis, when she began her most
instructive lectures to women on physiology, was repudiated
by her own family as if she had become a profligate, and yet
she was one of the most modest, as well as most cultured,
women of her time. How is it now about women physicians ?
We all know and esteem and trust them. The country is full
of them, and no physicians are better educated, or more suc
cessful in their practice, or more respected by the public.
Take the matter of wornen speaking in public. In my boy
hood it was a thing unheard of, and the suggestion would have
shocked almost every woman. The American and Foreign
Anti-Slavery Society was formed by abolitionists, our highest
type of reformers, who left and repudiated the old American
Anti-Slavery Society mainly because the latter allowed women,
and especiall}^ Abby Kelly, one of the most effective of
speakers, to make public addresses. One of the boldest stands
taken, a few years after this, was by Anna Dickinson, who, to
the general wonder and to the apprehension of our best people,
began to speak against slavery at the meetings of the Repub
lican party. I went with my wife to hear her, not merely
with much curiosity, but with great anxiety as to her success.
Not long after this a young lady of one of our first families,
who had been very intimate with Miss Dickinson, asked her to
be one of her bridesmaids at her approaching wedding. She
also requested another very intimate friend to act as„ brides
maid, informing her that Miss Dickinson was also to act. But
the mother of the friend wrote the mother of the young lady
that she could not consent to her daughter acting as brides
maid with Miss Dickinson, because of the latter's speaking in
public, which she thought utterly unfit for a modest woman
to do. Yet now we have a great number of women speakers
and lecturers to whom our pulpits are open, who are intro
duced by accomplished presiding officers, and are listened to
by crowds of our most cultivated people.
In the early part of the century the industrial field of women
covered only half a dozen overcrowded employments. Now

MY THEOLOGY. 281
nearly or quite a hundred are not only open to them, but occu
pied by them. Indeed, all the industries are open to them.
There are no "jail limits" known as "woman's sphere."
They may do anything that they feel able and desire to do.
Comparing their condition now with what it was in the early
part of the century, their advance has been enormous. They
live in another world from what they then lived in.
These facts are familiar and have become commonplace.
We have got too far along to take much notice of them. But
it is worth considering by those who are opposed to granting
political rights to woman, that she has advanced so far that one
more and final step into full enfranchisement will be but a short
step as compared with the many steps that have brought her to
the point where she is. If all that she has gained has not
broken up our social foundations, and has not de-womanized
her, there need to be no fear that the short final step will do it.
Woman will take that step, and, with her larger intelligence
and greater interest in public affairs, will be found the same
wifely companion, the same devoted mother, and the same
unselfish worker for the public good.

MY THEOLOGY.
It is not without hesitation that I give to the readers of my
book my views on theology, mainly because I may seem to
regard them as of some importance to the world. If of little
importance to the public, it is yet due to myself that I be not
misunderstood in the matter, and that, so far as I have arrived
at settled opinions, I have the courage to state them.
From my early manhood there has been nothing that has
operated as a restraining force upon me more than the fear
that I might by some act or word lead some fellow-man into
error of belief or life. I should be very sorry to do that here.
But I cannot from that apprehension leave my position in this
most important matter unavowed. I have given deep thought
and much prayer to the inquiry after God's truth. I had no
theory of m}' own with which I wished to bring divine truth
into harmony. All I desired to know was, what is divine
truth. In this search I may have been led into perceptions of
19

282 REMINISCENCES.
truth which I ought not to withhold from other inquirers.
Christ said that the "Spirit of Truth " is " to come;' and is " to
lead us into aH truth." This impHes progress, and progress
out of what is accepted as truth in one age into what a later
age shall be taught as truth by the Spirit of Truth. I cannot
shirk the duty of speaking for God and what I beHeve to be
Truth. I was born in Farmington, Conn., in 1816. Rev. Dr.
Noah Porter, father of the late President Porter of Yale Col
lege, was my pastor, a man of most solid intellect and charac
ter, who would have made a great chief justice or chanceUor.
He accepted and earnestly preached aH the dogmas of the old
Calvinistic theology. My father, who was one of his deacons,
accepted them all. I was brought up to believe them. I
joined the church when I was a little over twenty, expressing
at the time my behef in all those dogmas by accepting the
creed of the church in which they were embodied,
I settled in Hartford in i85i,.my wife and I joining the
Fourth Congregational Church, under the pastorate of Rev.
William W. Patton, who, after a few years, was succeeded by
Rev. Nathaniel J. Burton. A few years later I went with Mr.
Burton to the Park Church, where I remained till some time
after his death in 1887. Early in my connection with the
Fourth Church I was elected one of its deacons, and afterwards
a deacon of the Park Church, holding the office of deacon in
the two churches for probably twenty-five years. It was after
I came to Hartford that I began to have most serious doubts
about one and another of the doctrines of Calvinism. Some
of the more obnoxious of these had already been extensively
repudiated — such as the doctrine of Reprobation — and others
had been seriously discredited or explained away, as that of
Election, I soon came to see that everything ought to be
brought to the test of the best human reason, human reason
exercising itself in a sincere desire to find the truth, and seek
ing the aid of God in the inquiry.
While in painful suspense as to the effect to be given to
the deep impressions made upon my reason, I caHed to see
Professor Johnson (since deceased), then a professor in Trinity
College, and also a preacher of rare spiritual gifts in the

MY THEOLOGi. 283
Episcopal church. I knew him well and held him in high
esteem, and I knew that as a preacher of that denomination he
would incline to give me conservative advice. I told him how
I stood towards these old dogmas — that I could not help re
jecting them as against all reason and unworthy of belief. But,
said I, there were grand old Dr. Porter and Dr. Beecher, the
best of men, who prayed daily to be guided into all truth, and
they fully believed them. How can my poorer intelligence and
faith be trusted when they reject what such men believed?
Shall I trust my own convictions or theirs ? " Trust your own
convictions," he said. I had not gone into any detail as to-
what I believed or rejected, so that Professor Johnson was
not committing himself to any particular of my disbelief, but I
felt that I had his authority for freedom of opinion in theo
logical matters.
I have spoken only in the most general way of my revolt
against the authority of old dogmas. I will go a little more
into detail.
I. Tlie Idea of God. That which prevailed in my youth
and was taught from the pulpit and in the Sabbath-school was
one that, in my maturer years, I could not accept; which, in
deed, I felt compelled to reject as a libel upon the Creator.
The opening of the Westminster Assembly Catechism, which
we were required to recite every Saturday in the pubhc schools,
says of God that " He made aH things for his own glory." I
think this is a horrible untruth. I do not believe that God
ever thinks of such a thing as his own glory. He is full of the
thought of the welfare and happiness of the people he has
made. His one great thought is of his universe. He has not
a particle of that vanity or conceit or pride of sovereignty that
we so often see in earthly rulers. The pulsations of his heart
of love fill the universe with their infinite rhythm. So also the
idea that has been so often taught from the pulpit and in re
ligious books that God's sovereignty gives him absolute and
unqualified right and power over the creatures he has made,
that we are but clay in the hands of the potter, is one of the mis
representations that the Creator has suffered at the hands of
theologians. God has no right to make a human being with
out doing the best that he can for his welfare. I know it will

284

REMINISCENCES.

seem to many theologians audacious in me to talk of the rights
of men against God, but I believe that God looks on me with a
more kindly regard for daring to make that statement. I
think he is only disgusted with aU the cringing with which so
many men approach him. He does not wish us to crawl Hke
worms of the dust, but to stand up Hke men, ready to give to
him the service of our bodies, as his temples, as well as of our
minds and hearts. It is a grand calling from God to do men's
work for him, and the more we stand up as men for it the more
we shaH have his approval. In the most perfect humUity
towards God and sense of utter dependence on him, there need
not be a particle of abjectness.
A great question has arisen within a lew years as to the
nature of God, a large number of truly religious men, and
among them some of our best preachers, holding that God is
only a part of nature, or rather, perhaps, is nature itself, not
outside of nature as a creator of it, but as a force within it,
indistinguishable from it, and, of course, not a personal being.
I have never been able to settle down comfortably upon this
view. If God is not a personal being I do not see how he can
be a hearer of prayer. Yet I should feel like an orphan if I
believed that he could not hear my prayers. Christ taught us
that the Father heard us, and encouraged us to pray. This is
enough to decide my own mind in the matter. Whatever we
may think of the nature of Christ, we know that he had the
highest spiritual perception, and as our great Teacher could
not have been mistaken in a matter that he taught so em
phatically and practiced so constantly and fervently. There
is another consideration that has weight with me in the matter.
We ourselves are a part of nature, as much so as the trees and
rocks ; we grow by the force of nature just as the trees do.
And our minds are a part of nature as much as our bodies,
and grow as naturally. Their growth is by an expanding
force within them, not by an external force. Now inspiration,
a force to which the human mind is susceptible and responsive,
is an external force. It is not a sudden and extraordinary but
yet natural expansion of the mind itself. It is an affiatus from
without, a breathing in upon us. It is the old " enthusiasm "
of the Greeks, which with them was " a god within us," not a

Ml THEOLOGY.

285

god abiding in us, but a god entering into us from without.
Every one who has felt inspiration, and those who have felt it
in the highest degree have been those who could most in
teHigently understand and report its operation, knows it to be
some motion upon the mind from the outside. Now, if in
spiration comes from a divine source, which I believe is a
settled point in theology, the God from whom it comes must
be something wholly outside of ourselves; and if outside of
ourselves, then outside of all the rest of nature.
2. Everlasting Punishment. This dogma I reject with all
the force that I can put into the rejection. It is a dogma that
can live only as a part of a system that robs God of aH his
Fatherhood and makes him a remorseless tyrant. As I believe
in no such God, I cannot accept this hideous outcome from that
false conception of him. If God created a world of which
more than half the people in it were to go finally into eternal
suffering, then he is not worthy of our worship, and, indeed,
may justly be abhorred. A human father that should leave his
own child to grow up in ignorance and crime, would be re
garded by us as a monster. God creates a child that is born
in shame in the slums of London, who never hears the name
of God except in profanity, and at the age of twenty is shot
down in attempting to commit a robbery. Now, if God sends
that boy to hell, there to remain and suffer forever, then he is
no better than that unnatural father whom we all agree in call
ing a monster.
I put this very case to a clergyman who expressed to me
his full belief in everlasting punishment, and he replied that he
did not believe that boy's condemnation would be so great as
that of those who had had better opportunities, but that it
would be exclusion from heaven, and without end. " Why,"
said he, " such a young man, if taken away from his vile asso
ciates and placed in a refined Christian family, would be per
fectly miserable, and, if he could run away, would go back to
the slums at once. Now, God may keep up through eternity
such a place as the heH for such souls, where they will be
denied all rational happiness and yet will not be wholly miser
able." I replied that the supposition was to me simply horrible.
That the Indian boys and girls in our Hampton and York

286 REMINISCENCES.
schools often went back to their old life as a matter of prefer
ence, but we did not hesitate to do all we could to educate
and christianize them so as to lead them to a better life, and
can it be (said I) that God would not do aH in his power to
bring men out from such degradation and up into a higher and
better life? And that, too, where a child had never had any
other chance ? It is my full and settled belief that sinful men
in the other world are taught and helped by the best spirits over
there to overcome what is evil in their characters, and that,
after it may be many years, they come, through penitence and
earnest effort, into fitness for pure companionship and a Hfe
of love and worship.
3. Salvation. I believe profoundly that a man is saved
by character, and not by any vicarious sacrifice or imputed
righteousness. As a man leaves this world and goes into the
next, he merely passes through a dividing door, and is in every
respect the same man after the transition as before. If his life
has been truly a good one, he passes at once into the highest
society of that world. If it has not been so, he must linger in
greater or less of darkness and distress, till, under the influence
of that world and its teachers, he is brought to contrition for his
evil doing, and to abhorrence of the evil and aspiration for
the good.So far as the death of Christ is a factor in his salvation,
I think its whole effect is a moral one and that its operation
is man-ward and not God-ward. " If I be raised up I will
draw all men unto me," Christ said. Its object was, I am
sure, to stop present sin much more than to pay the penalty
of past sin. The Scriptures are full of declarations of God's
fatherly love and mercy. If a sinful man has thoroughly re
formed and has become a truly godly man, we have their
authority for believing that God will not dwell on his past
sins, but will readily forgive all that he has been for the joy
of finding him what he is. The old Calvinistic doctrine
that God must exact a penalty from the sinner or from some
one for him, to maintain the dignity of his own moral gov
ernment, I believe to be a terrible misconception. I heard
this doctrine expressed from a Presbyterian pulpit a few
years ago in terms that were horrible to listen to, but yet

MY THEOLOGY.

287

were only a fair statement of the Calvinistic idea. I was spend
ing a Sunday in one of the towns of central Pennsylvania
about twenty-five years ago, and attended the Presbyterian
church of the village, where a professor in a neighboring theo
logical seminary preached for the day. His subject was the
atonement. He described the Father as an awful sovereign
appearing in the heavens and brandishing the sword of justice,
and crying out, " A victim, a victim, I must have a victim ! "
At which Christ appeared at the other side of the heavens, and,
baring his bosom, said, " Here is the victim " ; upon which the
Father plunged the sword up to the hilt in his bosom, and
" was satisfied." I have done the preacher no injustice by
overstating the matter. It was all literally as I have described
it. Let those who hold to that fearful doctrine find pleasure
in contemplating that awful picture. I for one believe in God
as a loving Father, and see in that representation of him only
an atrocious libel. I believe no- theologian of to-day would
dare present the doctrine of the atonement in that bald and
shocking way ; and, if so, it shows that the doctrine has no
solid foundation and recedes before the growing intelligence
of the age. The only statement by Christ of the process by
which a sinner turns from the error of his ways and is accepted
by God is his story of the prodigal son. Here the son, brought
to the depths of degradation and want, determined to arise and
go to his father. He did so, walking in his rags and conning
as he went the words of confession with which he would meet
his father: " Father, I have sinned against Heaven and in thy
sight, and am not worthy to be caHed thy son." His father
had doubtless been looking out for his return every day since
he went away, and when he saw him afar off he ran to him and
fed upon his neck and kissed him, before he had time to repeat
those words of confession which he had ready. And when
the son gets home he does not attempt to humiliate him before
his household; he imposes no penalty, but he says to his
servants, " Bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and
put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, and bring hither
the fatted calf and kill it and let us eat and be merry." I set
this statement of Christ over against that of the Presbyterian
preacher. Who can blame me for siding with Christ in the
matter ?

288 REMINISCENCES.
According to the Calvinistic belief, a man may have all the
qualities which, according to the first psalm, will make him
" blessed," and yet fail of eternal Hfe, because as a Hebrew, or
as a scientific thinker, he does not accept the atonement of
Christ. Indeed, all the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount
may belong justly to him and yet he may fail of salvation. But
the Scriptures are full of promises of highest rewards to good
living. " What doth the Lord require of thee but that thou
do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before thy God."
After naming sundry acts of a good life, they say : " He that
doeth these things shall never be moved." Indeed, where
Jesus is depicting in fearful language the condemnation of the
wicked, he imputes to them only selfishness and inhumanity,
and not unbelief — a lack of all brotherliness towards one's
fellow men, and not a lack of devoutness towards God. It is
a great loss to a human soul not to come into loving com
munion with God, and it may require years of sorrowful ex--
perience in the other life to educate such a soul into a full com
prehension and enjoyment of that high relation, but if the life
and character are right, the soul may expect acceptance when
it reaches that life.
I would not disparage the work of Christ. He has done a
wonderful work for men in his example and teaching and in
his sacrifice of himself for them. What there may be in the
hidden counsels of the Almighty that may have given a special
efficacy to his death I do not know. All that I care to contend
for here is that it is not essential to the salvation of any soul
that it should have believed in and accepted that sacrifice, or
indeed that it should ever have known of it. This, I believe,
is essentially the doctrine of the Universalists. The sacrifices
of the Jews, an important part of their religious system, and
which constitute a strong argument for an atoning sacrifice in
the Christian system, were made, not for the benefit of the in
dividual who should by some exercise of faith believe in their
potency and accept their effect, but for the whole people.
There was never lived a better Christian life than that of Sir
Moses Montefiore, and yet as a Jew he rejected wholly the idea
of the atonement. I cannot believe that his soul is lost. I
think it has a high place in the other world. There are no

MY THEOLOGY. 289
more godly men than some of our Jewish rabbis, and yet they
do not accept Christ. A godly character is essential to salva
tion under the atonement, whatever efficacy we may give it, and
the godly character, I am sure, will in itself save the soul.
_ It is only as we regard Christ as human that we can find
in his death that depth of sacrifice that would be fitting to the
supposed result. He was a man of sorrows and had not where
to lay his head. What sacrifice could it be to him, if divine, to
lay down such a burdened and weary life and enter into the
ineffable glory of his waiting kingdom? What sacrifice that
could be compared with that of many a young man who went
into our civil war and laid down his life in the defense of his
country and for the liberty of men?
The church in its history has held so many theories with
regard to the atonement that that now held cannot be regarded
as invested with an authority that places it beyond most serious
questioning. 4. The Nature of Christ. Perhaps there is nothing that
orthodox Christians hold more tenaciously than that Jesus be
came the son of Mary only by a miracle, and that he was of a
divine nature and " very God." The question is one of most
serious difficulty, and I do not propose, in my ignorance of so
much that I need to know for an intelligent study of it, to allow
myself to reach, and much less to express, any settled con
clusion on the subject. It is difficult to see how, if the synop
tic gospels are to be accepted as absolutely correct in their
statements, as to both the actions and the words of Jesus,
there can easily be any other conclusion than that he was of
divine birth. His language is often in the highest degree self-
assertive and authoritative, while it is almost a universal rule
that a human being of great superiority of endowment is
modest and even self-depreciating. It is hard to conceive how
Jesus can have said some things which he did without having
-a full sense of the divine power within him, and if he felt con
scious of the possession of such a power it becomes a very
strong argument in favor of his really having it, for it seems
hardly possible that, with his clear intellectual perceptions, he
could have been deceived in the matter. It is claimed, too,
that Paul, and those of the disciples who wrote on the sub-

290

REMINISCENCES.

ject, believed in his divinity, and their testimony in all the cir
cumstances is certainly entitled to special weight. The almost
universal acceptance of that view by the Christian church for
so many centuries is also in itself a high authority in the
matter. On the other side, it is said that the idea of a double nature
in Jesus, part God and part man, is one so impossible of com
prehension as to create the greatest improbability of it, while it
is contrary to God's manner of dealing with the world and its
people, which is to make use wholly of the laws and forces of
nature; and that Paul, the strongest authority on that side,
made on the subject this most significant declaration in i Cor.
XV, 27, 28 : " For he hath put all things under his feet. But
when he saith all things are put under him it is manifest that
he is excepted who did put all things under him. And when all
things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also be
subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may
be all in all." This passage, it is contended, can mean only
that the exaltation of Christ, no matter how high, was yet
limited as to both its nature and its duration, and that he
would not finally be embraced in the Godhead and had
never been brought within it. It is claimed also that the
gospels were written so long after the death of Christ that it
is hardly possible for them to have been absolutely accurate
in their statements, and especially in what they give as Christ's
language; that the first and second chapters of Luke, which
contain the exquisite story of his birth at Bethlehem, are of
questionable authenticity, and are not found in a well authen
ticated gospel written before Luke's; that by prophecy and
universal belief it was indispensable that the Messiah should
be of the lineage of David, and that it was impossible that
Jesus should be of that lineage through his mother alone ; and
that both Matthew and Luke, who alone give his genealogy,
give us the name of Joseph as the representative of that
lineage. In accordance with the idea that God employs
natural forces to carry out his divine purposes, it is claimed
that there may have been a great overshadowing power at
the natural conception of Jesus, which gave to him, in his
wholly human nature, a great spiritual and special quality,

MY THEOLOGY. 29 1
which, as he grew up, unfolded into a marvelous spiritual
power. And with regard to his " mighty works," it is claimed
that, supposing them to have been all that they are recorded as
being, they do not differ essentially from many marvelous
works of some of the old saints and prophets, " who through
faith subdued kingdoms, stopped the mouths of Hons, quenched
the violence of fire, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the
armies of the aliens ; women received their dead raised to life
again " (Hebrews xi, 23, 24, 25) ; and Jesus himself declared
that, under the same faith, and with belief in him, we aH could
do the mighty works which he did, and even " greater works "
than his.
This is only an outline of the argument on both sides of the
question, and I give it here, not to help in the settlement of the
difficulty, but to suggest whether it is important that we should
come to a settled conclusion in our own minds on the subject.
Can it make any great difference whether Jesus was conceived
by a miracle and so was of superhuman birth, or received at his
conception a divine baptism, raising him spiritually above all
other men ? In either case he would be the same Messiah, the
same great Teacher, the same Master, the same Lord. He
will ever be the " Prince of the Kingdom of the Heart."
Edward Irving, in the height of his wonderful work in
London in the early part of this century, expressed the opinion
that, while the soul of Jesus was divine, his body was merely
human ; else, said he, how could he have been tempted as we
are and how understand our infirmities ? The orthodox theo
logians at once took him up for this blasphemous statement,
as they, called it, and Irving was hurried to his grave by the
bitter and unrelenting persecution to which he was subjected.
Several of the best Scotch clergymen were silenced by their
presbyteries. And yet who now hears any EngHsh or Scotch
theologian contending for the divine nature of Christ's body?
As a matter of discussion, the question has aH gone by. So
the question as to Christ's nature, whether he was divine by
his birth or raised to the summit of spiritual exahation by
divine inspiration, it seems to me, wiH pass by as only a sub
ject of curious speculation and as no longer of vital interest to
men.

292

REMINISCENCES.

There is much difference of opinion among good men as to
the nature of God. I have referred to this in an early part of
this article. Is it necessary for us to decide this point before
we can worship God? Surely it is not. The questions that
deeply interest us relate to his attributes — his love, his wis
dom, his power, his fatherly care of us, and our dependence
upon him ; in a word, his moral nature. If these are under
stood and felt, what matter is it to us exactly what is his ma
terial nature, if I may use such a term ? Ought we not to try to
bring all rehgious people together in the service of God, and
not keep them apart by dogmatic and speculative differences?
5. The Scriptures. It is the orthodox belief that the
Scriptures are the " Word of God," and that its writers were
inspired by him, and that inspiration ceased to exist with them.
I heard Mr. Moody say, as he held up the Bible before his
audience, " Every word between these covers is inspired."
I do not think that term has any application to mere narrati'ves,
especially of ancient facts of which the writers knew nothing.
This is very different from declarations purporting to have
been made by God to the old prophets and by them uttered as
God's word to men. They said, " Thus saith the Lord," and
without doubt they believed that he spoke through them. I
know of no reason why it may not have been so. I have great
faith in the power of the spirit of God to speak to men through
human instruments that he may control. But this is very dif
ferent from the dictation of a mere narrative of historical facts,
to be written out by penmen acting in a mere clerical way, and
very different, too, from a spiritual guidance of the minds of
the writers so that they would unconsciously be kept from
error. That is all that I care to question.
What, then, is the Bible? The Old Testament is the
religious history of the Jews, written by themselves, and cher
ished and revered as every nation would cherish and revere its
own history. It is not known by whom the various books
were written. It is well settled that those ascribed to Moses
were not written by him. The books, for they should be
called books rather than the book, were made up of a great
many fragments, brought together by Jewish Rabbis and
Scribes, and which came from their nature and age to be held

MY THEOLOGY. 293
in great reverence by the Jews. The ancient histories of all
nations have their legends, which came to fill a large place
in their traditions, and which were generally the magnifying
of some memorable occurrence. The Jewish history has thus
its legends, more numerous and improbable from the very re
mote past in which the history had its beginning. The creation
of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is one ol them.
The stopping of the sun by Joshua is another. That can
never have occurred, even if we regard it as merely a stopping
of the earth in its revolution, for it would have carried the
whole solar system into wreck, and besides would have been
noticed and recorded by other nations, especially those who,
like the Egyptians, were familiar with astronomy. The story
of the deluge and the ark is another legend. Such a deluge,
covering the highest mountain peaks, was a physical impos
sibility, while the collecting of representatives of all the animals
on the earth, with provisions for their sustenance, and the
preservation of their lives and the lives of all Noah's family in
the noxious air of so scant and overcrowded a space and for so
long a time, would have been an equal impossibility. There can
be no doubt that there was a basis for the legend in the preva
lence of an enormous flood on the earth, of which other nations
have their traditions. The idea that all these fables were in
spired by God is degrading to him and tends to produce an
utter distrust of all inspiration and all Scripture. All who
would have our respect for the Bible preserved, should be out
spoken in their relegation of these impossible stories to the
domain of legend. The New Testament is a far more modern
book and is not open to so much criticism and distrust as the
ancient Scriptures. But the four gospels, on which w& rely
for the story of the wonderful Hfe and teachings of Christ and
of his early and tragic death, were written so long after the
death of Christ, and have so uncertain a history, that it is im
possible to feel absolutely sure of their details, either of acts
on his part or (and perhaps especiaHy) of his words. We get
from them enough to show what an exalted character Christ
was, what a marvelous spiritual comprehension and experience
he had, and what words of wisdom he spoke. He wiH always
remain to us our great example, and our leader in all our efforts

294 REMINISCENCES.
to perfect ourselves in a godly life and to bring others to such a
life. I read a portion of the Scriptures every day, and while there
are passages in the Old Testament that could have been written
only in an age of brutality and which are horrible to read, and
for the writing of which I am sure God was in no way re
sponsible, yet I read a great deal that is wonderful in its
presentation of divine truth and wisdom and in the record of the
earthly experiences of godly men. The Bible has no more real
enemies than those who claim for it verbal inspiration and in
errancy. The intelligence of the age will not accept this claim
and the whole book is made to feel the discredit of the false
assumption. The true friends of the Bible are those who look
upon it as literature, and, as such, as the history of the most
godly nation that lived in its time on the earth.
6. Creeds. I do not beHeve in creeds. I think it was never
intended that Christian churches should be built upon creeds.
Religion, as I have said before, and as our wisest religious
teachers tell us, is a matter of life and not of belief. All that
I would require as a declaration of faith is a belief in " the
Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man." I would
have our covenants something like this, and with nothing
more : " We desire to lead the Christian life, and we seek the
help of our fellow Christians in trying to attain that life and
promise them what help we can give them in their efforts to at
tain it."
I believe that before another century has passed, and per
haps before the next century has reached its culmination, the
best religious organizations of the Christian world wiH have
accepted a theology substantially like that I have outlined in
the foregoing article. Dogmas will have ceased to dominate
the religious mind. Men will have learned to love one an
other, and through such human love will be all the more ready
to love God. AH that is repulsive in the old idea of God will
have given way before the idea of God's love to his children.
The world grows slowly out of its old errors and delusions,
but such a change of religious behef will mightily help it for
ward towards it redemption from the dominion of evil.

MY RELIGION. 295
Nothing promises more for this result than the growing
prevalence in the Christian world of what is known as " liberal
Christianity." By this I mean rehgipn as Christ taught it.
That which is generally accepted as Christianity should have
been called " Paulism." It is founded wholly on what Paul
taught, and not on what Christ taught. Indeed, it is doubtful
whether Christ could be called a Christian, if we judge him
wholly by his teachings. The Christian world needs to revise
its religious opinions. The revision has earnestly begun, and
I feel confident it will continue until the religious world finds
the whole of its religion in the love of God and the love of
man. MY RELIGION.
I draw a clear line between my Theology and my Religion.
One is a matter for the intellect, the other for the heart. If a
man's heart is right, I feel sure of his salvation, whatever his
opinions may be. He may be utterly uncivilized, and even
what we call a heathen, and yet, if his heart is right, I am sure
that neither his ignorance nor his superstition will endanger
his salvation. By opinions I mean, of course, honest opinions.
A wilful perversity of thinking, a pride of false opinion, are not
consistent with honesty. An honest thinker wiH have lost
much by his misconceptions of truth, for truth is fuH of nutri
tion for both mind and heart, but he wiH not have lost his soul.
The whole question comes to character, the importance of
which, in determining one's condition in the future life, is
transcendant. I do not mean to say that that character must
be perfect, but it must have been making a constant and
earnest effort to be perfect.
God made us merely human. He knew what a weak thing
a human being is, and yet he chose to make a world that should
be inhabited by such beings, and to fill it with evd temptations
and opportunities. And now, when we wander away into sin,
he is not watching in anger to detect us, but with the guardian
eye of a father to restrain and save us, and his feehng towards
us is one of sorrow, and not of that rage of which the theological
professor, of whom I spoke in the last chapter, gave us such a
dreadful picture. He never forgets that we are his children.

296 REMINISCENCES
sent here to be trained, not to be tested, and is full of patience
and of mercy.
Now, do not let it be supposed that I am excusing sin and
helping the wrongdoer to an easier conscience and to a less
restrained life. I think that no earthly calamity that can be
fall a man can be compared to that of a life of wilful sin. If
one has been a prodigal son he may abandon his reckless life
and return to his father's house and be welcomed back. His
past sins wiH be forgiven. They will have made a scar upon
his soul that it may take years of growth to efface, but God's
mercy will have forgiven him. But he must be an honestly
returned prodigal. There can be no half-way reformation, no
compromise between duty and self-indulgence. Such thor
oughly reformed men may become some of our best men.
They have been some of the best saints and martyrs in the
world's history.
Now, what is the religion that has this preserving and res
cuing power — the religion that is so essential to our true hap
piness here and hereafter? The best answer that I can find is
the following passage in the Epistle of James, Chap, i, v. 27:
" Pure religion and undefiled before God is this — To visit the
fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself
unspotted from the world." Let it be noted that this is not
from any of the prophets of the Old Testament, whose earnest
words were all to the same effect, but who spoke before the
death of Christ had, as theologians claim, brought a new ele
ment into personal religion, but was written by one of the
apostles, who had been taught by Christ himself, and who
stood in a position of special authority among his commis
sioned representatives, and was written, too, after the death of
Christ had completed his earthly work for men. And this
definition of the apostle brings in the two elements that make
up the formula of religious life and belief that I think will ulti
mately be accepted by the church and become its only creed
— "the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man."
The latter is clearly expressed in the sympathetic and helpful
visiting of the fatherless and widows, and the former in that
loving obedience to God's commands which will keep one from
the pollutions of sinful life. The fatherhood of God is, how-

MY RELIGION.

297

ever, more directly declared in innumerable passages of both
the Old and New Testaments, and especially by Christ himself.
And here is aH my religion. I think I have never failed in
brotherly love of my fellow men. The greatest pain of my life
grows out of my knowledge of their many sufferings. In a
book of daily religious reading (" Daily Strength for Daily
Needs," a book unsurpassed for its purpose), I find that, at a
place where a Christian writer is quoted as saying " Ask God
to increase your power of sympathy," I have written on the
margin, " I have to ask God to give me less power of sym
pathy." Indeed, one of the most awful mysteries that con
front me in the divine administration is that of a fatherly God,
whose power is unlimited, allowing his children to suffer as
they so often do-, and looking down calmly upon it, when my
own distress at the sight is almost unendurable. I can see why
he has allowed sin to come into the world. We should be
miserably flabby creatures if we were kept good wholly by
divine power, with no choice of our own wills. And I can
only hope that in the case of innocent sufferers there is some
loving and compensating purpose that in our ignorance we
cannot understand. We can only hope and trust, doing con
stantly all that we can for the relief of the suffering and the
comfort of the sorrowing, but leaving the outcome and result
to God. As to keeping ourselves, unspotted from the world : I have
treated this as a recognition of our relation to God, who re
quires it of us, and who is ever ready to help us in our struggles
with temptation. " The eyes of the Lord run to and fro
throughout the whole earth to show himself strong in behalf
of him whose heart is perfect toward him." (2 Chron., 16, 9.)
But I have often seen men of whom it might be said that they
kept themselves unstained by the pollutions of the world, who
yet did not clearly recognize and consciously love God.
What shall be said of them? Some of the best men I have
known, honest, benevolent, earnest in moral work, have yet
said to me that they could not form any conception of God,
and of course could not love him. And it is difficult for one to
form a conception of God that is not vague, and to feel toward
such an indefinite and uncomprehended being anything like

298 REMINISCENCES.
the emotions of love which a child feels for its mother who is
holding it in her arms, or that two loving friends feel for each
other. I got great comfort years ago from a very thoughtful
sermon which I heard on this very subject. It told us that the
test is this : Do we love the things that God loves ? I can
not feel any doubt that I do this. It was impressed very
strongly upon my mind by an experience which I had in
London a few years ago. I was very intimate there with Dr.
John Chapman, with whom I was staying. I have devoted a
short chapter to him, ante, p. 205. He was chief editor of the
Westminster Review, and a man of rare intellect and most
lovable personal qualities. But he did not believe in the ex
istence of God, nor in a future life ; and at one time while I was
with him, and had been admiring the clearness and apparent
honesty of his mind, the thought seized me and for some time
held possession of me, like the fastening of a vampire upon
one's respiration, may he not be right? I wandered for a
morning about the London streets at the mercy of that malign
possession and looking aghast upon the possible desolating
anarchy. But through it all it never came into my mind that
I would escape a fearful accountability and find myself ad
mitted to a freer and less restrained life. My whole thought
was that the world must be saved by all the harder work of
those of us who loved righteousness. It looked like a des
perate fight on our part, but the idea of letting up a particle in
the fight never occurred to me. And I came to see clearly, as
if a divine revelation had disclosed it to me, that my accounta
bility, in its most fearful aspect, was an accountability to my
self, and ever since then that has been my sole sense of ac
countability — the certainty that in the revealing light of the
spirit world I have got to look myself in the face and answer
my own searching and merciless questions. God is our
Father, and will look on our shortcomings with pity and
mercy, but I expect no mercy from myself. Here is the Hell
of bad men — self-condemnation and bitter self-reproach. I
lay very ill a few years ago, but with my mind clear and in
tensely active, and my memory wandering like a skilled de
tective over the whole field of my life. I cannot tell with what
comfort I was able to see that my entire life had been a morally

UPBUILDING 01 A STATE. 399
clean one, and that I had not been intentionally guilty of un
kindness or wrong, but had been unselfish and generous and
full of the spirit of helpfulness to others, while I had from
my boyhood been most scrupulous to avoid leading others
astray by word or example. If I had led a dissolute or dis
honest life I think I should have gone insane upon the re
view of it.
And I think that no one who consciously and truly loves
those things that God loves, and so in a true sense loves God,
ever has to fall back upon his moral principles to strengthen
him in his effort to do the right and avoid the wrong. He
does what is right solely because he loves it, just as God
loves it; he refuses to do the wrong solely because he abhors
it, just as God abhors it. God never has to faH back upon
moral principles. He acts only on a great, wise, loving wiH,
and when we do the same we may be satisfied that God accepts
our consecrated desires as the truest love to him, although we
may have no clear conception of him as a spirit, and no con
scious love of him as our Father.
Thus, by our conformity to that highest ideal of a godly
life and by our spirit of love and helpfulness toward our feHow
men, we illustrate in our fives that pure and undefiled religion
which the apostle describes as " the visiting of the fatherless
and widows in their affliction, and the keeping one's self un
spotted from the world."
THE UPBUILDING OF A STATE.
The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the adoption
of the first constitution of Connecticut was celebrated at Hart
ford on January 24, 1889. Rev. Dr. Joseph H. TwicheH de
livered an address of great interest in the Center Church of the
city, before a crowded house, and in the evening a meeting was
held at Allyn Hall, at which numerous speeches were made.
I had agreed to take part in the exercises of the evening, and
prepared for the purpose the foHowing address on the " Up
building of a State," which I read at the meeting. I express
in it some ideas which I think very important, and am glad to
put myself on record as having held and declared them.

300

REMINISCENCES.

The planting of a State is always a subject of interest. Its
history is generally one of adventure and heroism, and we read it
as we would a romance. This is generally so where mere tem
poral advantage was the ruling motive, but the subject becomes
one of profound interest where there predominated a great moral
purpose. Such a purpose entered into the planting of our State,
and of all New England, even though they did not dream they
were sowing the seeds of empire, and we do well to honor these
noble founders. They were wise men in their day, and laid foun
dations deep and strong, and we may study the history of the
time for the mere wisdom that it teaches. But we miss its -great
lesson if we do not study, and understand, and become inspired
by, the spirit of those grand men. They came here in the fear of
God, and holding their first allegiance due to him. And, though
they had a perpetual struggle for existence against savages,
against most rigorous winters, against the most scanty supplies
of the necessaries of life, they found time and heart to look to the
future, and felt their responsibility for the character of that future.
The church, the school, the college, a wise system of govern
ment — all that could affect the moral welfare of their descend
ants — these were the things that they thought of and labored
for. They had sometimes their petty ambitions, their jealousies
and rivalries, for they were but human ; but there was a great
pervading enthusiasm to establish an intelligent and God-fearing
people. All honor, therefore, to those brave, good men.
Bnt we ought not to forget that we are all, in a sense, if not
founders, yet builders. We, as they, build for the next generation,
and the next, and the great lesson we are to learn from them is,
that we are to build, as they did, with a great moral purpose. No
man can live for himself alone ; but we may make our lives
morally worthless if we live in the mere present, seeking our own
personal success in life, and not striving to make the world better
for our having lived in it. There are noble men and women
living to-day, grand souls, who, by their toil and self-sacrifice,
have helped to set the world forward, But how manifest is it that
the vast majority of men, even in this Christian land, and men of
intelligence and social position, are living but little above a mate
rial plane ; certainly with no thought of any allegiance owed to
God, or of any duty to make warfare upon the powers of evil.
Let us then be builders with a high moral purpose. All this is
easy exhortation ; almost commonplace. But I beg you, in the

UPBUILDING OF A STATE. 301
few minutes allowed me, to follow me through a certain philoso-
ophy that attends the matter of budding up a truly Christian
society. I. And, in the first place, the work of up-building is a work of
Reform. The true builder is a reformer. The reform of a hun
dred years ago, reaching then the highwater mark of the pro
gressive thought of the time, becomes the conservatism of to-day,
.and the reformer of to-day must build higher. The true reformer
is not, necessarily, an iconoclast. Sometimes he has to be. Thus
the reformer Hezekiah " brake in pieces the brazen serpent that
Moses had made, for the children of Israel did burn incense to it ;
and he called it Nehustan," — that is — only a piece of brass. It
once represented a vital truth, but the life had all gone out of it,
and the Jews had made a mere fetish of it. But in the composi
tion of a genuine reformer there is, ordinarily, no quality of de-
structiveness. He is, in the truest sense, a builder. So far as he
would destroy some entrenched wrong, it is merely the over
throw of that which is itself a usurpation and the re-establishment
of that which is a dethroned right, or which rests upon clear, but
disregarded, principles of right. This is illustrated in the over
throw of slavery in this country. The spirit which assailed it
was not one of destructiveness, but a spirit of up-building, of
lifting dethroned manhood to its rightful place. The ordinary
idea of a reformer is of a pugnacious man, who carries around a
moral shillalah ; whereas, in fact, he is generally a member of a
peace society ; or of a morose and gloomy man ; whereas, he
may be, and sometimes is, overflowing with wit and humor, and
the best sort of company. All that specially marks him is a burn
ing enthusiasm for humanity. I know no truer women, in all
that goes to make true womanhood, than those who, as the
Women's Christian Temperance Union, are carrying on a war
against the saloons.
2. The true reformer, in the second place, is never satisfied
with mere expedients and makeshifts. These have their place,
and it is often absolutely necessary to resort to them. But when
the immediate exigency is passed, the true reformer goes to work
to remove the cause. He considers not merely conditions, but
theories. He studies and seeks to apply fundamental princi
ples. Compromises are often not only expedient, but just. They
enter largely into the framework of society. But a compromise
with some vice, no matter how entrenched, merely postpones an

302

REMINISCENCES.

inevitable struggle with it. Unsettled questions of right, it has
been said, have no mercy for the peace of nations. Compromises
¦with slavery only postponed, and in the end made more terrible,
the final death struggle of freedom with it. When the anarchists
were hung in Chicago, their execution was an expedient. No
wrong, fancied or real, could justify their dynamite war on
society, and there was no way but to deal with them with a strong
hand. But the danger to society from the anarchy of the hovel
is not so great as that from the anarchy of the palace. There
will always be a determination to suppress disorder. Life, prop
erty, all prosperity, rest for their security on social order, and the
nation would rise by a common impulse to put down any organ
ized attack upon it. But the most dangerous anarchy — and the
more dangerous because it does not come in conflict with the
spirit of order — is that of the men, who, by combination and by
the power of money, control our legislation, or pervert it where
they cannot wholly control it, or where they can do neither,
lubricate, by the use of their money, some hole of escape. They
do not terrorize society ; it is no part of their object to terrorize
anybody ; but the thoughtful lover of his country, and of equality
and justice, looks on with the gravest apprehension. When the
true builder of society has discharged his painful duty toward the
men of violence and blood, he addresses himself to his higher and
more serious duty to this more dangerous class, and sees that a
correction of what is wrong here will largely remove the cause of
the plebeian anarchy.
3. The true reformer, in the third place, builds upon the
foundation of old ideas, but the superstructure is of new ideas, or
of ideas that have been overlooked or lost, and are practically new
to the age. The case is not unlike that of our wonderful inven
tions and material improvements of all sorts. These are gener
ally but new uses of natural forces that have existed from the
foundation of the world. And upon our discoveries and inven
tions a later age will build a like superstructure of its own. This
is true evolution. So it is with moral and religious ideas. The
old Roman who, as a magistrate, could coolly condemn his son to
death, could never have got from the declarations of Scripture as
to God's fatherly love the same conception of it that a father
to-day gets. The new conception, as compared with the old, is
practically a new truth. Yet the ideas of both would have the
same foundation. So I say we build' in our day with ideas that

UPBUILDING OF A STATE. 303
are practically new in our day, though all resting on old founda
tions. Take the religious dogmas of two centuries ago ; where
are many of them to-day ? and even some of those most tena
ciously held ? yet all were built, according to the intelligence of
the age, on that everlasting foundation, the Gospel of Christ.
Our Lord told us that the Spirit of Truth would come (involv
ing the idea of a new arrival), and would guide us into all truth.
This involves the idea of progression in the guide and in the fol
lower ; and progress, too, in truth itself. Paul told us to " serve
in the newness of the spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter."
The spirit is ever new and ever progressive, and leaves the letter
far behind. I was once in Geneva on the Fourth of July, and in
that home of Calvin gave as a toast, " John Calvin as he would be
if he were here to-day." That grand, brave, sturdy old man, if
here to-day, would, I verily believe, hardly pass an acceptable ex
amination in Calvinism. The world of religious thought moves,
though it still revolves and will ever revolve, around the great
central source of all light.
4. There is a great duty on the part of sober and intelligent
men, not to stand aloof from, but to fraternize with and guide,
that less intelligent, and often too impatient, and so too hasty
and impetuous, spirit of reform which almost always shows itself
in connection with true reforms. It is extravagant and often
fanatical, but is well-intentioned and needs to be guided and not
discouraged or suppressed. The world would never move if
there were not some men so zealous as to go too far. What a
force there is, if rightly directed and controlled, in the Salvation
Army. Benjamin Du Plan— the "Gentleman of Alais," as he
was called, who lived in the south of France a hundred and fifty
years ago, was a noble specimen of a true reformer in the highest
social position joining with extravagant zealots, because he knew
they were on the Lord's side. The Hartford Courant, in an edi
torial notice of his life, recently pubUshed, says : " To be a Pro
testant was to be an outcast in every way. It was this lot that
young Du Plan chose for his worldly portion. The reader will
not be surprised to learn that there was Protestant fanaticism as
well as CathoHc bigotry, and that there were abnormal develop
ments of religious zeal. Many women and girls took up the char
acter of prophetesses and preachers, fell down in ecstasies, and
went through all the scandals of fantastic demeanor and impos
ture. Du Plan was deterred from his choice neither by the ex-

304

REMINISCENCES.

travagance of some of the sect, nor by the persecutions. // is
largely owing to his labors that the French Protestant church is alive
to-day. "
S'. And this brings me, in the fifth place, to a point which I
conceive it to be very important to have fully understood. It is
that new ideas, especially on moral and religious subjects, which
are finally accepted as God's own truth, find at the outset their
most determined antagonists in the church and among really
good men. I am not speaking against good men as such ; to
nobody are they dearer than to me. I am not speaking against
the church ; few love the church more. But I am speaking of a
fact, and speaking from the study of history and the observations
of a long life. The fact seems on its face almost incomprehensi
ble, yet is easily explained.
In the first place, almost every advance is in the direction of
larger liberty — liberty of thought, liberty of action, of less
. responsibility to mere law and more to one's own soul, the
grandest of responsibilities. Now liberty is near neighbor to
license, and every man of loose morals takes the side of liberty
against restraint. And not merely the bad men, but all the men
of courageous thinking who have already antagonized prevailing
beliefs. Take the universal belief of a hundred years ago that
the world was made in six days, by six successive fiats of God,
and that the Scripture so taught. Thirty years after science had
clearly established the fact that the world was thousands of years
in being made, there were probably twenty outside of the
churches who accepted this as the truth where there was one in
the churches. And the former were regarded as little better
than infidels. But God's truth was with the infidels, and the
error was with his people. Again, take the question of future
probation. (I do not propose to touch the merits of the question.)
Almost every bad man favors the idea. He sees in it deliverance
for himself. He sees in it license. Yet the man who desires only
to know what is God's truth on the subject is allowing himself to
be led astray if he lets himself be influenced by the consideration
that all bad men accept the new idea and the great majority of
good men reject it. Early in this century Sir Samuel Romilly,
one of the noblest men England has ever known, then a member
of Parliament, set out to reform the criminal law of England by
abolishing the death penalty for petty offenses. A body of acts
which, voted down overwhelmingly at first, he by great effort

UPBUILDING OF A STATE.

305

and long persistence finally got passed, is known as the "Romilly
Acts," and England is to-day proud of them, and not one vote in
ten thousand could be got for going back to the old law. Yet
when he began all society was against him — and the church -with
the rest. There was a universal belief that any letting up of pen
alty would only increase crime. And who were with him ? Some
good men were early gained over ; but every thief, every robber,
every vile man and woman, was on his side. Yet God was on the
same side with the thieves, and not with his people.
There is another reason why the church and good men are
thrown into antagonism to nascent truth. The church rests on
old ideas. .Its people have been brought up on them. They
think them everlasting truths, and that they embrace all truth.
They cannot realize that the kingship never dies, though the
scepter may pass to new hands.
A worn-out dogma died. Around its bed
Its votaries wept as if all truth were dead.
But heaven-born truth is an immortal thing.
Hark, how its lieges give it welcoming —
"The King is Dead — Long live the King."*
So the moment a new idea is brought before these good peo
ple which seems to confiict with what they have been taught,
they bristle against it. Without ever examining the question
they take a position of antagonism to it. There is often much to
respect in this spontaneous rallying to the defense of old truths
to which they feel that they owe an unhesitating and unquestioning
allegiance. I have more respect for a bigot than for a mere sur
face indifferentist. And then these same defenders of the church
look out upon the supporters of the new idea and see a motley
group of all sorts — broad rehgionists, cavillers, agnostics, and,
beyond these, all sorts of bad men, and they think that nothing
can be clearer than that they are on the Lord's side. Yet, in
most cases, a half-century later the church wdl have accepted
the new idea as God's truth.
Let it be understood, then, that as an almost universal rule,
new truths come with a great discredit. It is right that there
should be a strong presumption against them, and to require that
they be supported by a large preponderance of proof. But it is

* These lines and those on page 3°7 have already appeared in the chapter on
"Bits o£ Verse." When that chapter was printed I had not decided to insert the
present chapter.

3o6 REMINISCENCES.
more than this. They encounter a strong, unreasoning, often
bitter, prejudice ; a prejudice that I think is hateful to God ; for I
believe that God loves above all others the man who loves truth,
and is willing to suffer, and, if need be, to die for it. God makes
his truths stand upon their own foundation, not on the patronage
of the church or society. The New York Nation said some time
ago, in an article on Garrison, that no one not living at that time
could have any idea of the state of public opinion when that
reformer began his work. It was a few fanatics on one side and
all society on the other. I know that to be the fact, for I was my
self one of the fanatics. Where is society now? The old
prophets, with their long hair, their garments of sackcloth, and
their denunciatory proclamations in the market places, were the
" cranks " of their time, and very repulsive ones too ; yet God
made them his mouthpiece. What more uncouth than John the
Baptist, wearing a goat skin and living on locusts and wild honey
as he wandered about ; and yet he was the forerunner and herald
of Christ. And when Christ came he was called a glutton and
wine-bibber, and was despised and rejected of men. Hear what
Paul says :
" Not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many
noble are called ; but God hath chosen the foolish things of the
world that he might put to shame them that are wise ; and God hath
chosen the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame
things that are strong ; and the base things of the world and the
things that are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which
are not, to bring to naught the things that are." I Cor., i, 26-7-8.
All who come to save the world must expect to be assailed as
gluttons and wine-bibbers, or with other terms of contempt ; but
they will be none the less the commissioned servants of God.
Remember, then, ye who would be builders for God in the state,
in society, in the church, that you are to encounter the sneers of
society and the antagonism of that church which is dear to us all,
and are to find hosts of supporters with whom you have little in
common, many of whom you must regard with utter disgust, but
are to have the great comfort of feeling that God is with you, and
that the future will bless you. Christ was willing for the sake of
truth to become of "no reputation." Are we ?
But let us be comforted with the assurance that the toil and
self-abnegation and self-sacrifice of noble and consecrated souls
will not be lost. Under a great divine purpose, that has run

APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN.

307

through the ages, the world is moving on to the completeness of
its deliverance. All redemptions come by crucifixions. Blessed
are the crucified. Christ told his followers that in the latter days
there would be a great spiritual experience among men. Our
greatest philosopher, Fiske, gives it as the result of his profound
studies, that man's physical development is complete, and that
his development in the future is to be of his inward nature. Thus
the last word of the best philosophy of to-day accords with the
prophetic word of eighteen centuries ago. And God's word is
pledged, and his nature too, for the final triumph of good.
There is then a great final good to which the world is tending,
and its progress toward which we can aid by our endeavors. All
that poets have dreamed, all that seers have beheld in their
visions, is to be finally realized. The kingdoms of this world are
to become the kingdoms of Christ our Lord.
I once, in sad and thoughtful mood.
Stood in an old-world solitude.
Amidst the scattered ruins vast
Of a great empire of the past.
But now, with feeling more intense,
I watch the gathering elements
Of a grand empire yet to be,
World-clasping in immensity.
That empire shall be Love and Peace ;
Its sway begun shall never cease ;
No drum-beats shall its morns salute ;
No trumpets shall their clangor bruit ;
But, following the circling sun.
Each day shall be with song begun ;
A song of praise, O God, to Thee ;
A song that shall unbroken be,
Save by the deep-toned anthem of the sea.
APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN.
I feel unwiHing to close this little volume, my last word to
those who have known me, and to young men who may here
after come upon the stage and be attracted by some pro
fessional considerations to the reading of the book, without
making an earnest appeal to young men for purity of hfe. i
have been exceedingly pained by seeing not a few young men

3o8 REMINISCENCES.
in my profession who have yielded to besetting temptations
and begun upon a depraved life. I feel the deepest sympathy
for young men so beleaguered, who have not yet reached a full
sense of the seriousness of life and of its heavy responsibilities,
and I have from my early life done what I could to strengthen
the virtuous and reclaim the immoral. One young lawyer of
much promise, to whom I gave desk room in my office, I found
had begun a dissolute life, and on my telling him what I had
heard he confessed that it was so. " Now," said he, " I sup
pose, of course, you will require me to leave the office." " No,"
said I, " I am going, if I can, to be your saviour." I did my
best to reclaim him, but he soon after left the city, and I can
not feel sure that I accomplished anything for his reclamation.
I mention the case here only as showing my manner of dealing
with such cases.
A dissolute life is a terrible one to look back upon from the
spirit world, whither we are all hastening. And it is dreadful
to look back upon from earth life where age has brought us to
reflection. An elderly public man of ability, who then had the
public confidence and esteem, and in a high degree my own,
had been a profligate in his early life, and his only son had
closed an intemperate and licentious Hfe before he was thirty.
He was one day talking with me in a room by ourselves, and
spoke of the great danger which our young men were in, of
falling intO' licentious habits, and said that, though it was
greatly to be deplored, it seemed almost inevitable that they
should do so. I replied to him that I thought young men, by
the cultivation of pure ideas and by self-control, could preserve
a perfect moral integrity, and I added that no man and no
woman had ever stepped down morally a thousandth part of an
inch from anything that I had ever done. " Can you say
that?" said he. "Can you say that? Oh God, if I could
say that." Is it worth while in early life to throw away an in
nocency of mind that would be worth all the world to a man in
later life ?
The dissolute man is filling his mind with foul images that
¦will beset and haunt him as he grows old, and especially when
he finds himself in the other life. There was a few years ago a
well-known man, living in the northern part of this state,

APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN. 309
who was notorious for his Hcentious habits. One day a lead
ing member of our bar, who was fond of gathering the younger
members about him to hear his humorous stories, was thus
amusing a circle of whom I was one, and told us that he had
recently seen this man, now old and unable longer to keep up
his free habits, and asked him how it was with him now as to
his old appetites. " Oh," said the man, " just as it always has
been, only now it's all in my head." Quite a laugh followed,
but to me the picture which it brought was a dreadful one.
This old man, in the other world, was to be set on fire by his
old passions, yet it was to be all in his head. He was to be
eaten up with sexual desire, but without the means of gratifying
it. Do any of my young friends want such a hell ?
The Scriptures teH us that " as a man thinketh so is he."
The only protection of a young man is in the cultivation of
pure thoughts. Without them he is almost at the mercy of
temptations. By a habit of impure thought he is inviting evil
spirits to pursue and haunt him. And they are always ready
to come. There is a consideration in favor of a chaste Hfe that is rarely
thought of by dissolute men, but which seems to me to be a
very serious one. What dissolute man, who> has wandered
about the world in his free life, knows what children may have
been born in shame and to utter neglect, of whom he is the
father ? I think such fathers in the other world will find fingers
pointed at them by children whom they have never known, and
who will curse them for their own hard fate.
But there is another consideration that should have a
decisive weight with our young men. Almost every man of
them expects some time to marry, and will require of the
woman he may marry the strictest purity of life. But why
should he demand a better record of her than she of him? If
he has any sense of honor left in him he will be distressed at the
thought of what he in his defilement has brought to her in her
purity. I do not claim that it is quite so bad in him to have
fallen as it would have been in her. Her fall would have been
from a greater height and into a deeper abyss, and could less
easily be recovered from, though in such a case, if she had been
betrayed through her affections, she would be less guilty than

3 1 0 REMINISCENCES.
her betrayer. And I do not claim that a fallen man is hope
lessly lost to society and to himself. There have been many
cases of profligate young men repenting and reforming and
leading lives of usefulness and honor. A man by penitence
and a new life can recover from any fall, but he will have a
stain upon his soul that not all the waters in the world can
wash away.
And it is a serious question whether such men, leaving
utterly behind them an immoral life and seeking the happiness
and support of refined domestic life, are not bound in honor to
make a full confession before marriage to the women who have
accepted them. It will be a very difficult thing to do, and there
can be no general rule on the subject. Each case must be de
termined by its own circumstances. But I think it will in al
most every case be better than to have the concealed im
morality discovered after marriage. At any rate I think it
may be relied on with a good degree of certainty that if the
woman has any quality of nobleness in her own character, she
will respect and trust him the more for his full confession.
No man need despair of himself because in his immature
years he has gone widely astray in this matter. There is al
ways a readiness on the part of God to- welcome back a prodigal
son, and society is ready for it too. But for the man who
keeps up through life, or far into middle life, habits of
profligacy, I have not a word to say of excuse or paHiation, and
society should utterly withdraw its respect and recognition,
while a terrible self-condemnation and remorse, making the
deepest hell, await him in the future life.

A FINAL WORD.
I had intended to make my last chapter the closing one of
my volume, but in reading over what I have said in my chapter
on Theology, I have become apprehensive that my old religious
friends and co-workers in the churches, who still cling to the
dogmas that I have abandoned, may feel as if I have with
drawn in the same degree from my sympathy with their re
hgious work. I am very unwilling to be so misunderstood.
With me an earnest spirit of Christian work counts for more.

A FINAL WORD. ^jj
far more, than intellectual soundness of religious belief The
latter stands only for correct thinking, which may co-exist with
utter heartiessness ; the former is the token of a good heart and
hfe, which are all that is vital in human character. I never
looked with more sympathy upon a human life consecrated to
the true salvation of men. I look in occasionally upon the
young men who are studying in the Theological Seminary at
Hartford, and I forget all about the dogmas which they are
taught and which they hold, in the thought of their unselfish
devotion to the good of the world. There is a light upon their
faces that seems to me like an illumination from the overspread
ing heavens. The Fourth Church at Hartford represents in its
creed and teachings much that I regard as passing away in
theology, but is one of the most consecrated churches in New
England, working incessantly, not only to build up among its
members a high standard of Christian Hfe, but to rescue the
abandoned and profligate, going out into the highways and
hedges to bring them in. It is a great and noble work that it is
doing, and no change in my own belief could abate my interest
in its saving work.
I spend my summers in Norfolk in this state, a mountain
town which is a favorite place of summer resort for the resi
dents of our cities. I always attend the Congregational church
there, which has during the summer a large congregation. In
the fall of 1897 I attended there, with great interest, the in
stallation of a young pastor over the church, and I have ever
since watched with increasing interest his devoted labors in
his pulpit and through his parish. I doubt whether there is a
person in his parish whose eyes have followed him with a more
fatherly affection. In my summer residence in Norfolk in
former years I have been in the habit of always attending the
mid-week prayer-meeting of the church, almost invariably
taking a part in its exercises. I am now too old for the activi
ties of a few vears ago, but I look out on the active Christian
work of others with no abatement of interest, and vnth a warm
and hearty sympathy and satisfaction.

APPENDIX.

SOCIAL LIFE IN FARMINGTON EARLY IN THE
CENTURY.
By Julius Gay of Farmington,
[The following article was prepared at my special request by Mr, Julius
Gay of Farmington, a gentleman of fine education and of great intelligence in
all matters of local and state history, I am sure it will very much interest the
readers of my book. It is of special pertinence to these reminiscences, as Far
mington is my native place and it depicts the social life into which I was born
and in which I was reared, I have appended a few short notes, generally
enlarging a little from my personal recollection some of the points spoken of
by Mr. Gay.
The Edward Hooker, from ¦vrhose journal of that time Mr. Gay makes
several extracts, was my father. He kept a minute daily journal from the
time of his graduation at Yale College in 1805 to about 1825, covering the
period of his residence in South Carolina, his two years' tutorship at Yale,
his marriage and the birth of two of his children (the second being myself) ,
and the time of his taking young men to prepare them for college. The jour
nal is an almost inexhaustible mine of materials for the study of the people
and habits of that time. J. H.]
The present village of Farmington, the original center of the
old town which once extended from Simsbury on the north to
Cheshire on the south, and from the river towns of Hartford and
Wethersfield westward beyond the Burlington mountain range,
occupies about the same ground as the village of the Revolution.
On the site of Unionville the tavern of Solomon Langdon stood
almost alone on the forest trail which led to Litchfield and far-off
Albany. Plainville, then known as the "Great Plain," had only
a few scattered houses, while Avon, Bristol, Burlington, and
Southington, though parts of the town when the revolution
began, were separate communities, having meeting-houses and a
social life of their own. The dwellers on the rich alluvial soil
along the Farmington River were industrious and prosperous.
The horrors of Indian warfare came all around them and left them
unharmed. The only revolutionary armies which marched
through their streets were the friendly troops of Rochambeau.

3 1 4 REMINISCENCES.
At the close of the war the one or two stores on the main street
gave place to a dozen or more that supplied the wants of the
numerous villages springing up to the westward. Their owners
began to import their own goods from the West Indies and even
from far-off China. From Middletown they shipped to the West
Indies, in their own vessels, oxen, cows, beef, pork, flour, corn,
and all manner of farm products, until the breaking out of the
war between England and France in 1792 let loose the French
privateers on their unprotected commerce and gave rise to the
still unsettled "French Spoliation Claims." Later on from 1800
to 1806 much Farmington capital was invested in trade with China;
in the ship Sally, Capt. Storer ; the Huron, Capt. Moulthrop; the
Oneida, Capt. Brintnall, and other ships, usually with a Farming-
ton supercargo. Along with the ships sailed young men of the
village seeking more stirring adventures than the quiet streets of
their native village afforded.* Their letters home from Canton, ,
the islands of the South Atlantic and South Pacific, then first
explored by adventurous navigators, gave brilliant pictures of
foreign travel when life was young and every scene a surprise.
We have letters from the Falkland Islands off the east coast
of Patagonia, from South Georgia some seven hundred miles
eastward, and several from Massafuera just west of Juan Fer-
nandes. At these places they captured large numbers of seals,
making up cargoes of sealskins, on one voyage at least, 13,025,
which were sold in Canton for ninety-five cents each, and the
proceeds invested in silks, nankeens, tea, and china ware. Then,
after circumnavigating the globe, the adventurers sailed back to
New Haven, and the wealthy owners divided the spoils. So
Farmington, for one generation, grew rich and took on luxurious
habits. President Porter, in his discourse of 1872, says, " The old
meeting-house began to rustle with silks and to be gay with rib-

* Among these sailors was my uncle, James Hooker, an older brother of
my father, of ¦whom I give some account in a note at the foot of page 317. I
remember well Captain Mix (a son of Squire Mix, a. leading citizen of the
to^wn), ¦who used to ¦walk about the streets in his blue jacket,' with the tradi
tional gait of an old sailor. He -was then but a middle-aged man, but was of
intemperate habits, and as I understood lost for that reason his place as a ship
master under the Co^wles Brothers. I was a small boy when he died. Life on
the sea seems at that time to have been a school of intemperance. It became
the vice not merely of the forecastle, but of the cabin. It made a great
change in this respect ¦when the daily allowance of grog to each sailor was
wholly discontinued, as it was by 1830. J. H.

APPENDIX.

315

bons. The lawyers wore silk and velvet breeches, broadcloth
took the place of homespun for coat and overcoat ; and corduroy
displaced leather for breeches and pantaloons. As the next cen
tury opened, pianos were heard in the best houses, thundering
out the ' Battle of Prague ' as a tour de force, and the gayest of
gigs and the most ostentatious of phaetons rolled through the
village. Houses were built with dancing halls for evening gayety,
and the most liberal hospitality, recommended by the best of
cookery, was dispensed at sumptuous dinners and suppers.'' At
this rapid increase of wealth and luxury. Gov. Treadwell sounds
a note of warning. " The young ladies," he says, "are changing
their spinning-wheels for forte-pianos, and forming their manners
at the dancing School rather than in the school of industry. Of
course the people are laying aside their plain apparel manufac
tured in their houses, and clothing themselves with European
and India fabrics. Labor is growing into disrepute, and the
time when the independent farmer and reputable citizen could
whistle at the tail of his plough with as much serenity as the cob
bler over his last, is fast drawing to a close. The present time
marks a revolution of taste and of manners of immense impor
tance to society, but while others glory in this as a great advance
ment in refinement, we cannot help dropping a tear at the close
of the golden age of our ancestors, while with a pensive pleasure
we refiect on the past, and with suspense and apprehension
anticipate the future." Good Deacon Samuel Richards also
exclaims, "The halcyon days of New England are past. The
body of the people are putting off rigidity in habits and morals."
One of the first results of increasing wealth was a desire for a
better education for their children than the district school afforded.
Already, in 1792, Miss Sally Pierce had estabhshed her famous
school in Litchfield under the patronage of Chief Justice Tapping
Reeve Gov. Wolcott, Col. Tallmadge, and other distinguished
men probably the first female seminary in America. Here were
sent the young ladies of this village until the Farmington Acad
emy was estabhshed. E. D. Mansfield, LL.D.,* once connected
"*Edward D.Mansfield, here mentioned, was born in New Haven in 1801,
prepared for college with my father, graduated at Princeton College m 1822
studied law in Litchfield, settled in Cincinnati, where he was elected professo
of constitutional law in Cincinnati C°ll«g%>\'«36, soon after leavmg that
position for journalism, in which he continued the rest of his life. He d ed m
^SSo. He was the author of several books. His "Personal Memories" was
published in 1879.

3 1 6 REMINISCENCES.
with the " Old Red College " of Mr. Edward Hooker of this vil
lage, gives us in his " Personal Memories " an outside view of the
school as it appeared a few years later, on his first visit to Litch
field. " One of the first objects which struck my eyes was inter
esting and picturesque. This was a long procession of school
girls coming down North street, walking under the lofty elms,
and moving to the music of a flute and flageolet. The girls were
gayly dressed and evidently enjoying their evening parade in this
most balmy season of the year. It was the school of Miss Sally
Pierce, one of the earliest and best of the pioneers in American
female education. That scene has never faded from my mem
ory. The beauty of nature, the loveliness of the season, the sud
den appearance of this school of girls, all united to strike and
charm the mind of a young man, who, however varied his experi
ence, had never beheld a scene like that' He was about to enter
the Litchfield Law School, a famous institution which gathered
numerous brilliant young men, especially from the south. Their
proximity might have been a disturbing element in the quiet of
the young lady's school had Miss Pierce lacked the wisdom to
manage discreetly what would have ruined a weaker administra
tion. The young men were allowed to call on certain evenings,
but woe to the man who transgfressed ever so slightly the laws of
strict decorum. To be denied admission to Miss Sally Pierce's
parlor was the deepest disgrace which could befall a young man.
A school girl writes home that a " Mr. L  was very attentive
to Miss N  of Farmington, and gazed at her so much that it
mortified Miss N —  , and Miss Sally spoke to him, and he has
not been in the house since March." It was only after much cor
respondence and penitence that Mr. L  was reinstated. On
lea'ving the school each girl was expected to bring home to her
admiring parents some evidence of proficiency in her studies.
Those who could, exhibited elaborate water color drawings which
have ever since hung on the walls of Farmington parlors. Others
less gifted were advised to paint their family coat of arms, and.
if they had never heard of any, they soon learned how all this
could be managed without any correspondence with the Herald's
College. One Nathan Ruggles, who advertised in the Connecti
cut Courant, "at his Looking Glass and Picture Store, Main
Street, opposite the State House, city of Hartford,'' had somehow
come in possession of the huge folio volume of " Edmonson's
Complete Body of Heraldry," and allowed anyone to select from

APPENDIX. 317
its vast assortment of heraldic monsters, ' ' Gorgons and Hydras
and Chimeras dire," such as suited his taste. His sole charge
was the promise of being employed to frame the valuable work
when done. I have seen several of these devices which were
brought home from Litchfield, some done in water colors and
some in embroidery, with combinations of color which would
make a herald stare. They had, however, just as good right to
them as ninety-nine out of a hundred of the families who flaunt
coat armor and pictures of English castles, and all that in their
published genealogies. Nathan Ruggles, who was in a measure
responsible for all this spurious heraldry, came to an untimely
end. We read in the Connecticut Courant that in a private dis
play of fireworks at his house, the whole suddenly exploded and
brought his heraldic career to an all too brilliant conclusion.
Music was not a specialty of Miss Pierce, and so the Farmington
young ladies were removed to the school of Mr. Woodbridge in
Middletown, where a piano was procured for their use, and instruc
tion was given them by a Mr. Birkenhead. One of them writes,
" My Papa has just informed me that I might go to Middletown
this summer to school with my cousin Fanny. I am so strongly
attached to my native place that it is not without regret that I
leave it ; from the calm scenes of pleasure into a busy crowd of
extravagant people. I have been warned of my danger. My
Mamma is something unwUling I should go, for fear that the
pleasures of the world and its fashionable enjoyments will gain
an ascendency over me and raise ambitious views and lead me
into the circle of an unthinking crowd." Two years afterward
she is sent to New York to continue her musical studies and
writes, " Had a long passage here ; no female kind on board with
us, but plenty of male, . . . and above all was Mr. Wollstone-
craft, brother to the famous Mary Godwin, author of the ' Rights
of Women.' He was a very good looking man, conversed hand
somely, and was, to appearance, of great information. He
informed me that his sister died two years ago. ... I have
seen him once since we came here. He is an officer in the army
stationed at New York." By Mary Godwin she refers to the
mother of the future wife of the poet Shelley.
The first piano in town of which I find mention was bought by
Gen Solomon Cowles, probably in 1798 or i799- In November
6, 1799, his niece writes, "Wednesday . . . Came to Uncle
Solomon's to hear the music, piano and bass-viol and three voices.

3x8 REMINISCENCES.
. . . From there to Mr. Chauncey Deming's to see their new
piano, which is a very good one. It has ten more keys than
Fanny's." A piano was bought about this time by Zenas Cowles,
and these three pianos were probably the only ones in town for
several years.* As for the style of music rehearsed on these
instruments, we read: "Wednesday eve. Mr. Birkenhead had a
benefit at Gridley's and his pupils played, all except Nabby
Deming and myself. He wished me to play, but as I did not
sing I thought it not best. Fahny played much the best, and
sung extremely well, indeed. The tunes she played were ' The
Shipwreck,' 'The Tear,' and ' The Bud of the Rose.' Dr. Todd,
I. Norton, and Larcon were there with their instruments. After

* When I was a small boy my father purchased a piano for my sister, three
years older than myself. There were at that time but few pianos in the village,
and they had not ceased to be curiosities, and to be regarded as extrava
gances. My father was very fond of music, and began at once to amuse
himself with the piano, though he never became an expert player. I often
heard him for an hour at the piano after we had all gone to bed, and he not in
frequently spent an hour over it at midnight when he happened to have a
wakeful night. My uncle James, whom I have spoken of on page 27. as his
wayward brother, whose intemperate habits compelled my father to relinquish
his settled plan of going into the practice of law in Columbia, So. Car., with
his brother John (see page 237) , and to settle in Farmington and take the family
farm and the care of his father and mother, was then living with the old
people at Farmington, and, upon the death of my grandfather, came into our
family. My father was the youngest member of the family, and the only one
(besides James) who was not settled in life. My uncle James, I remember well,
in all my childhood. He lived to be 67, He had been a sailor under the
Cowles Brothers, and had spent a few years on the sea. He there acquired
the common habit of sailors of taking their daily grog, as well as a familiar
use of their picturesque and often very emphatic language. He had been a
bright boy, and through life was very fond of sitting all day in his room
and reading. He had very positive views of social matters, and greatly dis
liked the introduction in our homespun village of pianos and extravagance. I
have often seen him terribly irritated by my sister's inartistic practice upon
it, and remember his once saying, as we stood in the yard, with the noise
from it coming through the open window, " There goes again that d  d
eternal jewsharp." His death was preceded by a long typhoid fever, during
which my father watched over and nursed him night and day, feeling, I think,
that he had been too impatient with him in his ' ' often infirmity." When at
last, at the end of several weeks, he died, my father at once went to bed in
complete exhaustion, and died in four days. He was but 61, and ought to have
lived twenty years longer. Thus was wasted the life of one of the brightest
of the family, and more than wasted, since in going down it carried with it the
life of my father, one of the best and most useful of men. — ^J. H.

APPENDIX. 3ig
the playing was finished the company danced two figures, and
George [afterward Gen. George] danced a hornpipe. Came
home at twelve o'clock. "
And now with the young men, some in college and some in
Canaan Academy, and the girls in Litchfield or Middletown, what
sort of schools had they left behind them ? As good as those of
our neighbors, and as much better as the lifelong labors of Gov.
Treadwell could make them. Two or three young misses, just
begiiming to write letters, thus inform their dignified cousin at
Yale: "Mr. Lee," that is, Matthew Lee, the teacher, "says that
the girls make more disturbance than all the rest of the school. I
learn Geography but not Grammar, because Mr. Lee says he does
not understand English Grammar." Eight months afterwards
our collegian is informed — "We have got a good schoolmaster.
His name is Gordon Johnson. You must be a good boy, and
learn as fast as you can." A year later we learn that— "Mr.
Nathan North keeps our school. He boards at our house. Mr.
North has between thirty and forty scholars in his school." It
was visited on the last day of the year by Gov. Treadwell, Major
Hooker, Rev. Mr. Washburn, Deacon Bull, Col. Isaac Cowles, and
Gen. Solomon Cowles. Imagine these ponderous dignitaries
sitting around the blazing log fire on that winter's day. I will
warrant there was no want of decorum in school that day, on the
girls' side or anywhere else. What hard questions they put does
not appear. Probably Messrs. Washburn, Treadwell, and Bull
could hardly have failed to inquire, "What is the chief end of
man ? " One lively miss writes, "They praised us very much, and
if I was sure you would not think I was proud, I would tell you
that my writing was judged the best in school." Good penman
ship was considered of the first importance, and was the one
quaUfication most insisted on in the examination of teachers.
Nathan North, sitting at his desk one winter's day after school
was out, writes to a friend— "It is six o'clock, and I am at my
schoolhouse writing in the dark. Oh wretched man that I am,
because I can write no better."
But enough of schools. The intellectual life of the middle
aged found exercise in the several debating and hterary societies
of the day The Social Club, The Union Society, The Weekly
Meeting, and I know not how many others. The latter comes
into being January 15. 1772, with this ponderous preamble : " It
has been justly observed in all ages that vice increases when

320 REMINISCENCES.
learning is on the decline, and, on the contrary, when useful
learning flourishes, it in some measure excludes vice and im
morality ; and we, the subscribers, sensible of the prevalence of
vice and the low state useful learning is in among us," etc., etc.
We learn, however, that after a few weeks this meeting joined
the Social Club, under different regulations. A series of fourteen
essays written by Amos Wadsworth for these clubs, beginning
with the year 1772, and as many more by his brother Fenn, have
come down to us. The subjects, many of them, show the theo
logical bias of the age. Some of them were — " Conscience,
whether it be lawful to follow its dictates in all cases ;" " Infant
Baptism vindicated; " " Extorted Promises not binding; " "Beasts
not rational; " " Enslaving Negroes vindicated; " " Origin of Civil
Society;" "The Sabbath Evening must be kept holy;" "Theft
ought not to be punishable with death;" "The duty of unre-
generate men to pray; " " The Supreme Magistrate not to be re
sisted;" "The Powers of Congfress." The club sometimes also
dropped into poetry. They have left us a " Song to Sylvia,'' in
six verses, with much about love and turtle dove, the nightingale
and amorous tale, and other interesting matters. I speak of these
clubs as being the progenitors of those of the next two genera
tions with which our subject is more immediately concerned, in
which other topics are discussed, and when thought begins to
take a broader range. In 1813 we hear of the "Moral Society."
Mr. Hooker records — " Thursday, Sept. 9. Evening. Attended
the 'Moral Society,' when the conversation was chiefiy on the
means of resisting the vice of profane swearing.'' The next
week the society conversed " on the use of ardent spirits at the
meetings of people for business." At other meetings they dis
cussed colonization for the negTO, paper money, and other topics
of a political nature, until the one member who looked upon
slavery as a divine ordinance came to denounce the Moral
Society and all effort to interfere with the morals of the com
munity or the nation as odious, comparing them with the in
quisition of Spain and the system of espionage in the time of
Bonaparte. A more genial body of men was the " Conversation
Club," which met weekly at the houses of the members and dis
cussed a wide range of topics. The principal members were
Doctors Todd and Thomson, Mr. Goodman, principal of the
academy, Egbert Cowles, Alfred Cowles, George Robinson,
Nathaniel Olmsted, and sometimes other prominent men. Mr.

APPENDIX. 321
Hooker almost always attended, and wrote in his diary an ab
stract of the subjects considered, and the diverse opinions of each
of the members. We have space for only the most meagre
account of these most interesting discussions. They conversed
on the penitentiary system; to what extent it is desirable that the
benefits of education be diffused among the mass of people ; on
poor laws; on the expediency of further and greater encourage
ment being given to the manufacturing interests of the United
States; on the distribution of the public school money of Connec
ticut; on the assessment of property, and on other questions
mostly of public utility. There were also monthly meetings of
the -village library company, in which they discussed the merits of
new books, and Mr. Hooker records the talk at length. The
comparative value of the " Commentaries " of Clarke and Scott
and Gov. Treadwell's criticism of "Johnson's Lives of the Poets,"
especially interested them. The ladies, too, had a society known
as the Female Society, for aiding in the education of pious
youth for the ministry. By far the most interesting conversa
tions recorded by Mr. Hooker are those which he himself held
with the good people of the village in his daily walks among
them, and which he recorded at length when he returned at
night, revealing what Farmington society most cared for, and
giving some insight into its culture and intellectual breadth. We
can give but glimpses of it. He says —"In the afternoon moraUzed
with Mr. Chauncey Deming at his store about an hour ....
He entertained me with some description of the manners that
prevailed thirty or forty years ago. He says that more expense
is bestowed on the bringing up of one youth than was formerly
bestowed on twenty. Young fellows would often, perhaps gen
erally, go to meeting without stockings and shoes in the summer
till they were fourteen or fifteen years old. Not more than
twenty-eight years ago the giris would attend balls with checkered
aprons on, and he has many a time gone to a ball with Dema (his
wife) attired in that way." Again — " Made a call of an hour or
two at Chauncey Deming's. Conversed on his favorite theme,
the selfishness of the human character." With Gov. Treadwell
he converses on the common origin of mankind, on foreign
missions, on Johnson's "Lives of the Poets," and on the sudden
growth of Farmington opulence; and with Capt. Seymour on the
most profitable mode of reading. With President Dwight he
"walked very leisurely, and conversed on various topics, but

322

REMINISCENCES.

mostly on matrimony," he being particularly interested in that
subject at that time. One afternoon he calls at Mr. Pitkin's, who
was busy with some law business, "so Mrs. Pitkin said she must
be unceremonious enough to ask me into the room where were
her friends, Mrs. L. and Mrs. M. , seated by a good fire and very
social. The conversation turned on the reasoning power of
brutes, catching rats, suicide, and various other things." Riding
home from Hartford with Mrs. Pitkin, they discourse on the
utility of newspapers, on the belittling nature of the ordinary
strifes among men for village distinction, on the character of
some public men, especially of John Randolph, and on the
Quakers of Philadelphia, among whom Mrs. Pitkin had visited.
Soon after Dr. Porter's settlement here, after noting all his
wanderings for the day, he says, " Walked to the Rev. Mr. Porter's
and spent the evening. There was quite a large assemblage,
more than a dozen in number. Mrs. Washburn and her sister.
Misses Charity Cowles, C. Mix, C. Deming, Mary Ann Cowles,
Mary Treadwell, Maria Washburn, and Messrs. Porter, G. Norton,
Camp, T. Cowles, W. L. Cowles, T. Root, and Egbert Cowles.
¦ The evening was spent in mixed conversation and singing, and
the company was treated with cider and walnuts. The subjects
of conversation were the Rev. Mr. Huntington's dismission, the
character of the Philadelphia clergy and those of New York, the
state of piety in the cities of New York and Charleston, the
Southern Baptists, and numerous other topics suited to the time
and place." Of all the conversations which he so laboriously
reported, none can begin to compare for clearness of thought,
breadth of range, liberality of sentiment, and nobility of heart and
mind, with those of Dr. Eli Todd. He says — "Dr. Todd is
hardly willing to rank the pleasures of music with those of sense,
for he thinks them intimately connected with the best affections
of the heart. At least he believes this pleasure never exists in a
high degree except when so connected. When in Trinidad he
daily saw a tiger of prodigious fierceness confined in a cage, so
rapacious that if a piece of meat were put to him he would
instantly tear it into shreds. He played airs on a fiute by the
cage day after day, and the beast every day seemed less wild, till
in a short time he would purr like a cat and roll and rub and be
apparently the subject of inexpressible delight." An experience
which may have profited the doctor in his new and kindly methods
of treating the insane in after life. Again he discourses on " the

APPENDIX. 323
state of society in Farmington, the causes and consequences of
the particular form which its character takes, and on earthquakes
and meteors." On another occasion he talks on the "subject of
expensive rural embellishments in reference to Daniel Wads-
worth's country seat, and discussed whether it be justifiable to
expend one's superfluous wealth in such a way, or in the expensive
gratification of a taste for the fine arts. He argued for the
affirmative, and insisted that the rich have a right to gratifications
as well as the poor." Again he conversed " on those peculiarities
of character which mark a simple state of society, holding that a
high cultivation of the intellect, if not a part of virtue, is neces
sary to give to virtue its highest degree of beauty and loveliness,
and on whether a state of society devoted to the rural interest or to
commerce is to be preferred." Again he discourses " on the kind
and degree of evidence by which the Christian revelation is sup
ported," and "on the effects of ardent spirits, and on the threat
ening danger to the country from the prevalent use of them."
The dangers of intemperance to the State were only just be
ginning to force themselves on the attention of thinking men.
Deacon Bull, writing an account of the town to be used by Gov.
Treadwell in his "Statistical History of Farmington," under the
head of vices does not once allude to intemperance. He says :
" The number and kind of vices in the town are too many for the
compass of my abdity to find out or enumerate ; however, there is
nothing in this respect distinguishable from other towns of the
same age, numbers, and experience. In particular, card-playing
and profane swearing are the most prominent vices of the towm
The inhabitants, in general, are industrious, sober, and peaceable. "
While the men amused themselves with their clubs, moral or
conversational, the ladies read at home whatever books came in
their way. He who will, may examine the records of the village
library and find charged to them the works of Jonathan Edwards
and other books which are not often called for in the library of
to-day and whose tiUes are as unfamihar to us as most of those
we read will be to our children. One devourer of books writes m
her diary "Yesterday, which was Monday, I went to Hartford
in the stage with Miss Sally Pierce. . . . Bought a couple of
books - ' Wilberforce's View,' 6/, and 'Memoirs of Miss Susanna
Anthony ' 3/6 ; the former. Miss Pierce advised me to purchase.
We hear no more of Mr. Wilberforce and his " View." but, on leav
ing the school in Middletown, Mr. Woodbridge presented her with

324

REMINISCENCES.

' ' Reflections on Death. " Two Sundays afterwards she writes :
"Attended meeting all day; read in 'Reflections on Death';
found it very interesting as well as instructive." Here is her ex
perience with a famous novel she got from the library : " Thurs
day evening. Read in ' Sir Charles Grandison,' a novel I don't in
tend to read any more." But she did. Two weeks afterward she
wrote : " Saturday. At home. Evening, read in ' Grandison. '
Sunday. Stayed at home ; read in ' Grandison '; had a very bad
pain in my head. Monday. As usual. Evening. Read in ' Gran
dison.' " Two weeks later : " Went to Mr. Bull's ... to get
the second volume of ' Grandison ' which I have read almost
through." The Saturday following she writes : " Have been so
much reading ' Grandison ' that other things have been neglected. "
This is the last we hear of Sir Charles. How any mortal could
have waded through the one thousand nine hundred and thirty-
three octavo pages of that famous book, even with skipping nine
pages out of ten, is a mystery to all moderns. In the early days
of the library, some one calling at Mr. Ezekiel Cowles's remarks :
" Egbert is now reading the ' Lady of the Lake,' which seems to
be a very fashionable book about here."
Schools and music, debating clubs, books, and serious conver
sation filled up but a small part of the leisure hours of society.
Five o'clock teas and evening parties assembling by invitation
were not in vogue. Families were larger than now, and the
young people from one house had but to join their cousins across
the street to make the liveliest gatherings. Others dropped in,
and, somewhere every night, there were dancing and music and
games and hearty enjoyment. One favorite meeting-place on a
summer evening was the long flight of stone steps which led from
the street up to the ever hospitable door of Squire Mix. Another
favorite locality involving a somewhat longer walk which some
times had its own attractions, was "The Maples." I think, but
am not positive, that this must have been the familiar name of the
residence of Gov. Treadwell, the little red house by the side of
Poke Brook, near the great rock. Here are a few glimpses of
these informal gatherings : "To Gen. Cowles's, where we found
a lively little party engaged in a family dance, with a couple of
negroes to play for them. Much affability and hilarity." Or,
' ' All the ladies were at Mr. Norton's, and the gentlemen. We
played ' Button. ' I was mortified by a lad's handing me the but
ton twice following. " Again: "Thursday we went to Fanny's.

APPENDIX. 325
All the girls were there, and, among the rest. Miss N  H  .
Tim and Tim were there (afterward Major Timothy Cowles and
Major Timothy Root), They proposed trying fortunes. N 
tried hers. (I'll tell you how we try them.) We take a glass and
a ring and tie a string around the ring and hold it in the glass and
let it strike the glass, and count A, B, C, etc. N's struck M 
C  ." Much previous knowledge seems to have entered into
this as into most fortune-telling, for soon afterward it was an
nounced from the pulpit that M  C  and N  H  in
tend marriage. Even the weekly prayer-meeting had its social
side. Here female piety came to hear the teaching of the be
loved Washburn, and here, too, came young men not always of
devout reputation. Until near the close of the ministry of Dr.
Porter it was the fashion to seat the men on the right side of the
hall in evening meetings and the women on the left, in the vain
attempt to defy the strongest of nature's laws. When Dr. Porter
began his ministry here, a young lady writes : "Mr. Porter ad
dressed the gentlemen and requested them to sit down and wait
till the ladies were out of the hall. We arrived safely home with
out any escort, as the gentlemen, alas ! could not overtake us.
Mr. B  got to us just as we crossed the street, after a long run
ning." In the winter evenings the young people amused them
selves with sleighrides. Commonly they drove to Southington,
stopping at all the inns on the way — at least the boys did — and
returning had a supper at Cook's in White Oak, and so home.
Occasionally they rode to Solomon Langdon's, stopping, of course,
at Thomson's by the way. Those old houses, Langdon's and
Cook's, somber enough in our day, have probably seen more of
mirth and good cheer than any other two in town. Here are a
few specimens of a girl's experiences : " February 23, 1798, .
We went to Mr. Jonathan Thomson's ; came back. Coming by
the meeting-house, the bell rang [9 o'clock, of course]. Down to
Mr. Dunham's we went ; stayed there about an hour, then down
to Mr. Job Lewis's, then to Mr. Selah Lewis's. AU abed. Came
back to Mr. Dunham's. We stayed there about an hour longer.
Got home about 2 o'clock. Got to bed and asleep about 3." One
more account must suffice. On the day after Thanksgiving in
1799 they planned a sleighride, but an inopportune rain carried
off all the snow ; this, however, made no difference ; they went all
the same. " Cleared off at noon ; took the stage and went out to
Langdon's to dine. On the back seat were four, S  , F — -,

326 REMINISCENCES.
B  . and myself. Next N  H  , and D  . and A- 
M  , Next L  , and M  , N  H  . G  , and M  -.
Dick Gleason, negro, drove four horses. T  C, T  R  ,
T  , and S  on horseback. Had a very good dinner, fried
fowls, pies, chicken-pies, and cake. There was a live owl there,
and after we got seated in the stage it was flung in, and then —
what a screaming ! Set out to come home and the boys got whip
ping and running horses. Very muddy. You may depend I was
frightened. The girls' white cloaks were covered with mud, and
Sukey told me this afternoon she had been washing hers and
could not get it out. In the evening went to the ball. Had a very
good one. Thirteen ladies and about as many gentlemen." Fif
teen years later we have a picture of social life in Farmington by
the same Mr. E. D. Mansfield, who gave us his impressions of the
school of Miss Sally Pierce. He says: "In August, 1815, my
father took me to Farmington, Conn., to prepare, under a private
tutor, to enter college preparatory to the study of law.
As this was to me a new and striking life, I will give a little de
scription of it, chiefly for the sake of the inside view I had of New
England society. My tutor, Mr. Hooker, was a descendant of
one of the old New England families, and had all the characteris
tics of the Puritans ; was very religious and exact in all his duties.
He lived on what had been a farm, but a portion of it had been
embraced in the town. Having got forward in the world, he had
built a new house. His old house was one of the oldest in the
country, large, dark-red, with a long, sharp, projecting roof. This
was the residence and schoolroom of the students, and we called
it "Old Red." There were about fourteen of us, from nearly as
many states. There we lodged and there we recited, while we
took our meals at Mr. Hooker's. His son, John, afterward mar
ried Miss Isabella Beecher, now the noted Mrs. Isabella Hooker.*
"Mr. Hooker was a deacon in the church — the church, I say,
emphatically, for it was the only one in the village — a monument
remaining to the old and unquestioned orthodoxy of New Eng
land. It stood on the little green, its high, sharp spire pointing
to heaven. The ' pastor of that church was Mr. Porter, who
preached there for nearly half a century [sixty years]. He was
the father of the present Noah Porter, president of Yale College.
* Mrs. Hooker's friends would hardly recognize her by this name, as she
invariably writes her name Isabella Beecher Hooker. — J. H.

APPENDIX. 327
Mr. Hooker took a large pew for the students, and he told us to
make notes of the sermon, upon which he questioned us. I was
always thankful for this exercise, for I got into such a habit of an
alyzing discourses that, if the speaker had any coherence at all, I
could always give the substance of the sermon or address. This
is, to a newspaper man, a useful talent. I have tried to discover
what was the religious effect of this continual hearing and analyz
ing sermons, but could not find any. Such exercises become a
habit, and are purely intellectual. A striking figure is sometimes
remembered, but any spiritual effect is wanting on young people
who have not learned to think seriously. I remember one of Mr.
Porter's illustrations of the idea of death, which I think he must
have taken from Sir Walter Scott's ' Talisman. ' At any rate
Scott has beautifully described it in that work. It is that of Sala-
din, who, in the midst of the most splendid fete, surrounded by
his chiefs, had the black banner unfolded, on which was inscribed,
' Saladin, remember thou must die ! ' Mr. Porter was more than
half a century minister in that parish, and a most successful cler
gyman, honored in his life and in his death. Such was the minis
tration of the church to me, but I must say that in the service the
chief objects of my devotion were the bright and handsome girls
around. At that time, and to a great degree yet in a New Eng
land village, out of the great stream of the world, its young
women were the largest part of the inhabitants, and by far the
most interesting. The young men usually emigrated to the cities
of the West, in the hopes of making fortunes. The old people
were obliged to remain to take care of the homesteads, and the
young women stayed also.
" No place illustrated this better than Farmington, where there
were at least five young women to one young man. The advent
of the students was, of course, an interesting event to them. And
a young gentleman in his nineteenth year was not likely to escape
wholly the bright shafts which, however modestiy directed, he
was sure to encounter. I soon became acquainted with these
young ladies, and never passed a pleasanter time than when days
of study were reUeved by evenings in their society. My father
went with me to Farmington and introduced me to the Hon. Tim
othy Pitkin. This gentieman was then a very distinguished man.
He was one of the leading men of the old Federal party. He was
sixteen years a representative from the State of Connecticut, and
had written a very good book on the civil history and statistics of

328

REMINISCENCES.

this country. He was a plain man of the old school, living in an
old-fashioned house near the church. In two or three weeks after
I had been in ' Old Red,' Mr. Pitkin called upon me and said his
daughters would be glad to see me on a certain evening. Of
course I accepted ; and on that evening, arrayed in my unrivaled
blue coat, with brass buttons, cravated and prinked, according to
the fashion, I presented myself at Mr. Pitkin's. It was well I had
been accustomed to good society, for never was there a greater
demand for moral courage. On entering the parlor I saw one
young man leaning on the mantel-piece, and around the room
(for I counted them) were eighteen young ladies ! During the
evening my comrade and self were reinforced by two or three stu
dents, hntfive made the whole number of young men who ap
peared during the evening. The gentleman who was in the room
when I entered it was Mr. Thomas Perkins of Hartford, who after
ward married Miss Mary Beecher, the daughter of Dr. Lyman
Beecher. The town of Farmington furnished but one beau dur
ing the evening, and I found out afterward that there were but
two or three in the place ; I mean in that circle of society. This
was perhaps an extreme example of what might have been found
in all the villages of New England, where, in the same circle of
society, there were at least three girls to one young man. You
may be sure that when I looked upon that phalanx of eighteen
young women, even the assurance of a West Point cadet gave
way. But the perfect tact of the hostess saved me from trouble.
This was Miss Ann Pitkin, now Mrs. Denio, her husband being
Mr. Denio, late Chief-Justice of New York. Miss Pitkin evidently
saw my embarrassment, which was the greater from my being
near-sighted. She promptly came forward, offered me a chair,
and, introducing me to the ladies, at once began an animated con
versation. In half an hour I felt at home, and was ever grateful
to Miss Pitkin.
" I will mention here, as one of the characteristics of New
England manners, that Mr. and Mrs. Pitkin never once entered
the room on this occasion, and the older people never appeared
at any of the parties or sleighrides given by the young people,
or at any gatherings not public. This was contrary to the cus
tom of my father's house, where people of all ages attended the
parties, and my mother was the most conspicuous person and the
most agreeable of entertainers. . . . The evening passed
pleasantly away, and I was launched into Farmington society.

APPENDIX. 320
As there were only three of us at the close of the entertainment,
to escort the young ladies home, it was fortunate that Farmington
was built almost entirely in one street, so one of us took the girls
who went down street ; one, those who went up the street, and a
third those who branched off. Of these young ladies more than
half bore one name, that of Cowles. I was told there were in that
township three hundred persons of the name of Cowles. There
were on the main street five families of brothers, in all of which
I visited, and to whom I was indebted for many pleasant hours.
. . . . The time had now come for me to leave Farmington.
My sleighrides, my parties, my pleasant visits, and, alas ! my
pleasant friends, were to be left forever. My path lay in differ
ent and sometimes far less pleasant scenes. I well remember
the bright morning on which I stood on Mr. Pitkin's step, bidding
farewell to my kind and gentle friend, Mary Pitkin.* Married
and moved away, she soon bade farewell to this world, where
she seemed, like the morning flower, too frail and too gentle to
survive the frost and the storm. "
The vast range of amusements which now enter largely into
social life were scarcely known sixty years ago. School exhibi
tions were the nearest approach to the theater, and card parties
were held of doubtful morality. Deacon Bull, compiling material
for Gov. Treadwell to use in his " Statistical History of Farming-
ton," wrote what he knew of the amusements of the village,
though both worthies probably knew less of amusements than of
theology. He writes : " Their diversions and amusements are
various, according to their different ages. The former genera
tions had for their amusements the more athletic exercises, such
as wrestling, hopping, jumping, or leaping over walls or fences,
balls, quoits, and pitching the bar, also running and pacing
horses, especially on public days when collected from all parts of
the town. Some of these diversions are still in fashion, especially
balls, but the most polite and fashionable amusements now are
dancing at balls or assemblies, card-playing, and backgammon.
There are also hunting and fishing, both by hook and seine. The
mountains afford plenty of game, such as squirrels, partridges,
?Afterward the wife of John T. Norton, a native of Farmington, to which
place he returned to reside before reaching middle age, after a period of very
successful business in Albany. His wife died early. She was the mother of
Prof. John P. Norton of Yale College, who also died before reaching middle
age.— J. H.22

330

REMINISCENCES.

and some turkeys and foxes. The river abotmds ¦s\-ith plenty of
small fish, such as pike, trout, dace, etc. In this diversion gentle
men and ladies both unite, and in the pleasant part of the summer
ride out to the most agreeable part of the meadow near the mar
gin of the river, where are delightful shade trees with green and
pleasant herbage for the accommodation of a large number of
people to walk, fish, or eat, which renders the amusement
delightful." Another out-of-door amusement was the Annual
Field Day. This is how it impressed a quiet, unmilitary specta
tor. " September 25. Some rain. Review Day. Street full of
men and horses and carriages and mud, etc. A regiment of cav
alry was out and a part of the regiment of infantry. Afternoon.
The troops marched off into the meadow and the town was quiet
for two or three hours." A young girl observes, " In the after
noon rode out in the stage upon the Plain ¦with seventeen in the
stage. Stayed a few hours and became quite tired of field day.
I was shocked to see the indelicacy ¦with which some of my sex
appeared. It wounded my delicacy to see gfirls of seventeen en
circled in the arms of lads. From the field I repaired to the ball.
I returned home about 12."
The most imposing anniversary was Independence Day, not
then a day of license and vandalism, but a day when the old
soldiers who knew well what independence cost, gathered ¦with
those who shared with them the blessing of freedom, and listened
to the story of their valor, their sufferings, and their glorious -vic
tory, and all unitedly offered up to the God of Nations a people's
thanksgi^ving. The exercises were the reading of the Declaration
of Independence, prayer, an oration, and a patriotic anthem.
The young people closed the day with a ball, and their elders had
a dinner ¦with formal toasts and much good cheer. Perhaps a
school girl's' account of one celebration is quite as good as the
more formal reports occasionally given in the newspapers.
"Wednesday the cannon arrived. Some of the artillery are
expected. Friday went to the meeting-house at the time set, 1 1
o'clock. There I was an hour and a half or more before the
troops arrived, who were all dressed in uniform and looked
extremely well. They sang at meeting first Berkely ; Dr. Todd
and Hooker and Mr. Seymour played on their instruments.
Next, Mr. Washburn made an exceUent prayer, prayed that we
might be truly thankful that our country still maintained its inde
pendence, and that if any came to meeting that day more for the

APPENDIX. 33 J
amusements of the day than for praise of God, that they might be
pardoned. Next, Uncle SoUy ascended the pulpit and read in
their law book [the Declaration of Independence]. Next came
Dr. Todd with his oration. It was a very good one, indeed.
The exercises closed with a hymn which was composed for the
occasion by Dr. Dwight, and sung to the tune of New One Hun
dred, written by Birkenhead's brother. Returned home and soon
went back to the tea party opposite Mr. Wadsworth's. There was
another in the next lot south. Danced untd twelve, when the ball
broke up. One hundred and fifty dined under a bowery at Grid-
ley's." Thanksgiving, the best enjoyed of aU old-time anniver
saries, is briefly alluded to by the same person as foUows : " Tues
day. Thanksgiving is coming and we are making preparations.
We keep three days. Wednesday ; have finished twenty-one
pyes and some cake. I wished for your assistance to flour the
tarts. Thursday attended meeting. The first I heard was
'Marriage is intended between Robert Porter and Roxanna
Root, both of this place. ' Heard a most excellent sermon by Mr.
Washburn, in which he exhorted us in a most pathetic manner to
embrace the gospel. The parties were married in the evening.
Timothy carried round the cake and wine."
Weddings were mostly informal. We have one reported by
Mr. Hooker, then a tutor in Yale College. "Attended the wed
ding of Richard Cowles and Fanny Deming at Mrs. Deming's.
Large concourse of relations and friends, perhaps sixty. Not
much ceremony. The parties were seated in the room when the
company arrived. None stood up with them, but Mr. Camp and
Caroline sat near them, and, after the ceremony, handed round
two courses of cake, three of wine, and two of apples. The com
pany in the different rooms then conversed half an hour, then
those who could sing, collected and sung very handsomely a
number of psalm tunes, and half an hour after had quite a merry
cushion dance. I came away about nine, leaving still a large
number capering around the cushion." Some of our older people
may be able to explain the nature of a cushion dance, if they
care to confess their youthful follies. I have an invitation given
some time afterward to a wedding for Wednesday evening at 7
o'clock, on which the recipient years afterward wrote, ' A large
assembly and a very pleasant evening, several college acquaint
ances present. After the old folks had gone we had a fine cush
ion dance, according to the fashion of our old Puritan fathers. '

332 REMINISCENCES.
At this latter wedding some one took Deacon Richards to task
for drinking wine. ' Sir,' said the solemn deacon, 'I have the
highest authority for drinking wine at weddings," and, forthwith,
drained his glass like the old soldier he was.
Ordinations with their solemn rites, their good cheer, and their
closing ball, were notable days in the land. In this town they
came about once in two generations. The Rev. John Richards,
writing to his children years afterward, gives his recollections of
one. "Dr. Porter," he says, "was ordained Nov. 5, 1806. I
remember well how he looked in the pulpit, and how Dr. D^wight
looked with his green spectacles while preaching the sermon. I
sat directly behind Mr. Roberts, the singing master. Just before
the close of the sermon Caty Mix fainted. 'There,' said Mr.
Roberts to Col. Tillotson, ' we lose one of our best singers.' But
they sang the Ordination Anthem notwithstanding, well. I was
in raptures, especiaUy at the verse :
' The saints unable to contain
Their inward joys shall shout and sing ;
The Son of David here shall reign,
And Zion triumph in her king.'
I knew not then, as I did long afterwards, the meaning of the
words." Besides these solemn festivals, other diversions of a lighter
character occasionally though rarely enlivened the quiet of village
life. Mr. Hooker records : "Dec. 12th. Snowy day. A large,
tawny lion, a tall and beautiful Peruvian llama, an ostrich, and
two or three monkeys were exhibited at Phelps's inn. To gratify
my little daughter and son, I took them thither to see the animals.
John rode the llama about the barn, while the keeper led the ani
mal and I steadied the rider." Other occasional amusements, in
which society of to-day does not indulge, sometimes came within
reach of an easy drive from the village. In the same journal we
read: "Tuesday, June i, 1824. Very dry and warm, but other
wise pleasant. After early breakfast I took John and his cousin
Samuel with me in the chaise and rode fifteen miles north to the
town of Tolland, to witness the awful scene of an Indian man ex
ecuted for murder. We arrived there about ten, and, after put
ting out the horse at Col. Smith's inn, walked up the hill half a
mile to view the gallows and other preparations, and returned to
the village which, by this time, had become filled with company.

APPENDIX. 333
Probably seven or eight thousand (and some say ten or twelve
thousand) people were there. . . . The cavalry were on white
horses and made an impressive show in the procession. There
was a variety of musical instruments, drums, fifes, bassoons and
bass viols, clarionets, etc."*
One of New England's proud anniversaries was the coUege
commencement. To this came the best culture of the land to do
honor to the embryo statesmen and divines as they exhibited
their learning in some unknown tongue to admiring parents and
friends. The first student in Yale who arrived at the honor of a
bachelor's degree was a Farmington boy, and the first tutor was
our second minister'sf son. The town has very frequently been
represented on the commencement stage, but New Haven was a
far country and too inaccessible to make the anniversary a popu
lar one. Col. Isaac Cowles writes to his son about the difficulty
of getting him home at the end of the college term : "I spoke to
*I remember well the incident which my father has here related. The
cousin who was with me was Samuel S. Clarke of Columbia, Conn., who was
at school at Mr. Hart's academy at Farmington, and was a member of our
family. I was, at the time, 8 years old, and he lo. This paragraph from my
father's journal is interesting as showing the great change in public opinion
with regard to executions from that which prevailed at that time. The curios
ity to witness such an awful spectacle was not a little barbarous and morbid,
but there was a general feeling that such exhibitions would make a deep moral
impression and be a strong deterrent from crime. It was with that feeling, I
have no doubt, that my father took my cousin and myself to see this execu
tion. There was a vast concourse of people from miles distant. The gallows
was erected at the tqp of a hillock, where it could be seen by the surrounding
thousands. There was not one in the great assemblage who could not see
the wretched murderer swinging in the air. My father was not only very ten
der-hearted, but full of good sense with regard to such matters, and it is some
surprise to me that he took us to see the distressing sight. It is to be said, as
some excuse for the general desire to witness it, that it was a very rare thing
that executions had taken place in this State, and there may have been some
special atrocity in the perpetration of the crime that created an unusual inter
est on the part of the public in seeing the criminal punished. I was once tell
ing the late Judge "Waldo, of our Superior Court, about my attending the exe
cution as a boy, when he told me that he was there. He must have been about
20 at the time. I have never seen the time when I would have taken my son
to witness an execution, or would willingly have looked upon one myself. —
J.H. + Rev. Samuel Hooker, son of Thomas Hooker, the first minister at Hart
ford. He was settled over the Farmington church from 1760 till 1797, dying in
his pastorate. — J. H.

334 RE MINIS CENCES
Mr. W  the other day respecting your getting home. He will
lead down the bay mare for you to ride back. In that case you
cannot bring your trunk home." At the end of next term he
writes : " We send a few lines by Mr. C. Hope he will be sober
when he delivers them. May he be a warning to you and all
other youth. The Farmington East India Company will probably
be loading their ship at vacation if the snow continues till that
time. If not, shall get you home some other way. You must be
a good boy. Don't let us hear any bad report of you." A young
miss who mourned because her mother thought her too young to
attend the Yale commencement the next summer, writes how her
neighbors went to a similar entertainment : ' ' The qualitj- of
Hartford and some of Farmington have gone to Dartmouth Col
lege to spend the commencement, viz., Chauncey Gleason, wife
and daughter, Polly Cowles, and Sally Gleason, in one hack with
a driver, and black Dick on horseback to officiate as servant. Mr.
Howe and Mrs. Dolly Norton in a chaise." This repeated men
tion of " Black Dick " suggests the relation of society to the labor
problem of those days, then, as always, an unsolved one. Who
did the household drudgery then? Not labor-saving machin
ery. Not white servants. You might hire some strong-
armed girl to do some well-defined work, such as spinning
or weaving, for a limited time, but on an absolute social equal
ity with the daughters of the house. Most families were large,
and the work was divided among all the members, who thus
became notable housekeepers in their turn. Indians could not
be made servants of. They were removed too few generations
from their untamed ancestors to bear dictation or continuous
labor. The only servants were the blacks. The probate records
of this town, which begin in 1769, show bequests of such valuable
pieces of property as "A negro woman and boy as slaves." . . .
"A negro man called Daff." . "A negro man called Gad."
. . . " My negro boy called Cambridge." I have an original
bill of sale, of which this is a copy: "Know all men by these
presents that I, Samuel Talcott Junr. of Hartford, for the consid
eration of twenty-six pounds, ten shillings, to me paid or secured
to be paid, have bargained and sold to James Wadsworth of
Farmington one negro girl about the age of six years, named
Candace, warranted sound and healthy and free from any claim
of other person or persons, and the same warranted a slave for
life. Dated at Hartford, September 30th, 1763." These un-

APPENDIX. 335
fortunate laborers, or fortunate as some thought them, were a few
of them imported from the West Indies, but most came from
Newport, which our Quaker brethren made the center of the New
England slave trade. In 1711 slave-owners were compelled to
support the slave in his old age, and not set him at hberty to take
care of himself. In 1774 the importation of slaves was forbidden.
Ten years later it was enacted that all born after 1784 should be
free at the age of twenty-five, and in 1797 all when they arrived
at the age of twenty-one. Black servants, therefore, in the period
of which we write, were not slaves. Such was our fathers' solu
tion of a difficult problem. The labor problem is still with us,
and still we look forward to the final solution at the Millenium
with great diversity of expectation.
No account of the social life of the village which leaves out
the religious side can be complete. That, however, has been so
fully and fairly treated of in the Half Century Discourse of Dr.
Porter, that any attempt to add to or condense his account of
what he more than all others was most qualified to write, seems
presumptuous. One great change, however, in religious thought,
since he wrote, cannot be overlooked. From 1821 to 1851 he
records ten revivals, those great awakenings which in quick suc
cession spread over the community, gathering all classes from
their ordinary avocations, some in ecstatic elevation of soul and
some in abject terror. That phase of religious behef can hardly
be understood by the present generation. We now hear from the
pulpit more of character and less of eternal punishment, more of
the love of God and less of his wrath. Truth is eternal and the
same. The same things are true to-day as two gene'rations ago,
but preachers and hearers ahke do not universally and heartdy
believe the same things.
Such is an imperfect account of social hfe in the first part of
this century. I have said littie about it, preferring to leave the
actors in the drama to teU their own tale in their own words. Of
all the old diaries and letters which have furnished material for
this paper, much the most valuable is the journal of Mr. Edward
Hooker, some parts of which have been printed, but which ought
to be pubhshed in its entirety. Other diaries afford vivid pictures
of the times which have not been given to the public, wiU not be,
I trust and ought not to be. Every giri began one almost as
soon as she could write. Here they recorded the events of
every day, all their love affairs with great minuteness, and their

336

REMINISCENCES.

most sacred thoughts and aspirations. One of them began :
" Diary. In the eleventh year of her age. To thee I will relate
the events of my youth. I will endeavour to excel in learning
and correct my faults so that I may be enabled to look backward
with pleasure and forward with hope." And right well did she
keep her resolutions until death early laid his hand on her as on
many of the brilliant circle of her companions, and with trembling
hand she records her last farewell to him she would have married,
the last kindly words of Dr. Todd, and the last consolations of
the saintly Washburn.

I have read with so great interest the admirable article of Mr. Gay that I
cannot forbear to add a page or two with regard to my father and my own
home life. I have spoken of him briefly in my introduction. There were a
few men of education and refinement in Farmington in my early boyhood,
who with him made up a very choice circle of intimate friends. Of these Dr.
Eli Todd was perhaps the most brilliant. My father was very fond of him
and deeply mourned his death a few years later when at the head of the insane
asylum at Hartford. The Cowles brothers, who became the wealthy people
of Farmington, were men of little cultivation, but of very great business
enterprise and ability. It was generally reported and believed that they
had made half a million in their business, and I think it was so. When the
five brothers dissolved their partnership a few years later it was generally
understood that each took $100,000 as his share. This was a large sum for that
time. They and their families were much given to free living and extrava
gance. With their relatives they gave a. character to the town. My tather
had no fondness for display and no sympathy with them in their habits in this
respect, although one of the five brothers married his sister. He had a com
petence, but nothing that could sustain extravagance. My recollection of
our home life is of abundance, but of very plain living. Our clothes were
made from the wool of our own sheep, which was fulled and woven at a mill
within the town into a strong gray cloth, which was then made into suits of
clothing by tailoresses who came around regularly for the season's work at our
house. My father's clothes were made of the same material. He had a nice
broadcloth suit for Sunday and public occasions, but I think his ordinary suits
were cut by a tailor and made up by the tailoress. With this plain living we
had a most healthful and inspiring mental life. My father was a rare Latin
and Greek scholar, and began quite early to teach me those languages. I
recollect well how, when I was a beginner in Latin, he asked me to read some
book which I happened to be then reading, and how I, with much pride,
answered " Ego sum." I meant by the " I am " to be understood as saying " I
am reading that book." He laughed and then explained to me that "Ego
sum" meant only " I am," in the sense of " I exist," and that I ought to have
answered in some word meaning "I read." This illustrates his way of cor-

APPENDIX. 337
recting my early blunders. We had also at this time a study of English at our
table. If any one of us children made a mistake either in our use of a word or
in our grammar, he would instantly call our attention to it, and, by a rule
which had been adopted for such cases, the one making the mistake was
allowed a minute to correct it, and, he failing, any other of the children had
the right to do so, and finally, ah faihng, he would himself correct the error
and explain wherein it consisted. An account was kept among us. A failure
corrected by the blunderer went for nothing, but if another child corrected it,
the fact was set down to his credit and to the debit of the other. There was
no forfeiture, but we all felt a great desire to have our account, when ex
hibited, a creditable one. "We had at that time a table full of children, some
cousins of mine, children of my father's sister, always attending the Farming-
ton Academy as they became old enough, and finding a hospitable and pleasant
home with us. We had rarely, through all my youth, fewer than two of them
at a time.
I should perhaps make a wrong impression if I should be understood as
reflecting at all upon the intelligence of the people of the town who did not
belong to the ambitious and fashionable circle, nor to that of the highly
educated and cultivated. They were generally intelligent, availing themselves
of all the opportunities for education that then existed, and very generally
patronizing the village library. This association held monthly meetings on a
Sunday evening at the librarian's, where the members drew out several books
for the month. These meetings were quite largely attended by the older people
in the parlor and by us boys in the kitchen. They were very enjoyable times,
and I rarely failed to attend with my father. The services on Sunday, in the
Congregational church, the only one in the village, were largely attended.
The huge church was always well filled, and very few stayed away. The out
lying districts for several miles had no other place of worship, and their resi
dents came in large wagons and carriages, generally whole families coming
and bringing all their children.
My father appears by his journal to have been very familiar with the
fashionable people of the town, and with the attractive young women, of
whom there were so many; but he never had a particle of their love of display
and was never moved a particle from his simplicity of life.
Such a home hfe makes a great and abiding impression on a child of
ordinary intelligence, and it saddens me to think how little is left of it for the
coming generations. , J. H.

338 REMINISCENCES.

THE EARLY ABOLITION MOVEMENT.
Several friends who have read the printed sheets of my book
have strongly advised me to add a chapter on my personal knowl
edge of and participation in the abolition movement in New
England, and I add a few pages on that subject.
After a few years of unsettled life, nearly two of them on the
sea and two in studying law in New Haven and Hartford, I settled
in Farmington in 1840. I was then twenty-four years old. Before
that time I had not taken much interest in the anti-slavery move
ment, though I had attended a few public meetings of the abo
litionists, but I now looked thoroughly into the question and
became convinced that they were in the right and that it was my
plain duty to join them. The whole movement was extremely
unpopular, though it had gained many friends and supporters
since William Lloyd Garrison began, in 1831, the publication of
The Liberator. This paper he had most of the time published in
Boston, where he encountered the most violent opposition, both
from respectable people and from the populace. Mr. William F.
Gordy, in his recently published and most admirable compendium
of the history of the United States, speaks of him and of the
abolition movement at this time as follows:
"The opposition to Garrison's teachings became so intense
that he was mobbed in the streets of Boston in 1835. The mob
in its fury had almost torn the clothing from his body and- was
dragging him through the streets with a rope around his waist,
when he was saved from death by the police. Elijah P. Lovejoy
was mobbed and murdered in Illinois in 1837 for printing an
abolition newspaper, and abolition speakers became accustomed
to sho"wers of eggs and stones at public meetings. But in spite
of all the scorn and contempt heaped upon them, in the North
and in the South, the heroic William Lloyd Garrison and his
brave followers would not be silenced. They were, like most
reformers, extreme in their views and unwise in their methods,
but they were right in their leading idea that slavery was wrong.
Their sincerity of purpose had its infiuence and won the sym
pathy of many, who joined in forming abolition societies, which
by 1837 included probably 150,000 members. Among them were
two of the ablest defenders of the anti-slavery crusade, Wendell

APPENDIX. 33Q
Phillips, the anti-slavery orator, and John Quincy Adams, the
anti-slavery statesman."
The New York Nation said, some time ago, in an article on
Garrison; that no one not hving at that time could have any idea
of the state of pubUc opinion prevailing during the early part of
his work; it was a few fanatics on one side and all society on the
other. Harrison Gray Otis, the Boston statesman, on being asked
by some anxious citizen who had great confidence in his political
wisdom, whether there was any danger that this aboUtion move
ment would succeed, repHed that there was no danger at aU, for,
said he, "all the journals in the country are opposed to it, and
there's only one paper that advocates it, and that is published by
a fanatic and a nigger. "
At an anti-slavery meeting held one evening in the lecture
room of the Congregational church in Farmington, which was
well filled, and addressed by Rev. Amos Phelps, one of the
gentlest and most moderate, yet most impressive of speakers, a
stone was thrown with great violence through the window back
of the desk at which he was speaking, which passed close by his
head, and went across the hall to the wall on the other side. The
miscreant who threw it must have meant to hit Mr. Phelps's head,
but fortunately it missed it, and failed to hit any of the audience.
I saw this myself. A majority of the audience were women.
Some of the best of the Farmington people, both men and women,
had early become interested in the movement, and the village
was one of the best known stations on what was known as the
"Underground Railroad." This name was given to villages
where fugitive slaves were sheltered and helped on their way.
They were always harbored there and helped. Some remained
there and worked for the farmers, relying on their protecting
them or helping them to escape if any attempt should be made
to capture them. Among these were some very smart young
men. I remember particularly one named Henry, I forget his
other name, who lived a long time with one of our citizens, and
was much liked by everybody who knew him. He was fine
looking, manly, and energetic. After he had been in Farmington
for several months a fugitive slave from his old home in South
Carahna came along, and told him how, after his (Henry's) escape
the year before, his master had charged his old mother with
aiding him to escape, and had given her a terrible flogging on her
bare body. This so exasperated him that he determined to go

340 REMINISCENCES.
back to South Carolina and comfort his mother, as well as take
revenge on his old master by helping other slaves to escape. He
went back, saw and comforted his old mother, and got up a com
pany of eight slaves, who started north under his guidance.
They had all sorts of perils and escapes on the way, but all got
through and made their way to Canada, except one, whom they
buried on the way. This was the wife of a young man in the
company. She was about to have a child and soon became unable
to walk, and her husband and Henry took turns in carrying her.
Each made a seat for her with his hands clasped behind his back,
and she sat in this seat, with her back against his. They had
traveled thus for several nights until, worn out with weariness
and anxiety, she was unable to go further, and they all stopped
for her to die, and then buried her in the darkness in a secluded
spot, and went on their anxious and perilous way.
I remember another fugitive, who, during his short stop in
Farmington, told a group of us this story. He was born and
raised in Virginia, and married a slave girl there who belonged to
his master, and had three or four small children. At this time
slaves were raised in Virginia to be sold for the cotton fields of
the South, a large business of that sort being carried on. This
negro was working in a field, when a slave trader came along and
bought him and several other negroes of his master. They were
attached to a coffle of slaves that the trader was taking along,
being handcuffed and fastened together. He was not allowed to
go home to see his family or to get anything to take with him,
but as the coffle passed his cabin, quite a distance away, his wife
saw him and ran out screaming towards him. The trader upon
this drew out his pistol, and, pointing it towards her, threatened
to shoot her if she came another step. She stopped and the
coffle passed by, too far off for him to call to his wife, and he
never saw her or his children again.
We heard many such stories, some of them very thrilling,
from the fugfitives who came through Farmington, and these
stories, heard by us, or read in The Liberator, brought many
friends to the cause.
Mr. Gordy, in the passage which I have quoted from his excel
lent history, says of the abolitionists that " they were like most
reformers, extreme in their views and unwise in their methods."
They were men and women who were thoroughly in earnest, and
not very concihatory in their utterances, but perhaps few of their

APPENDIX. 341
methods ran more against a settled prejudice of the public than
their employing women speakers as advocates of their cause.
Among these speakers was Abby Kelly, a young married woman,
who went about on lecturing tours with her husband, himself a
speaker. I repeatedly heard her, and she has never been sur
passed as an effective speaker by any of the eloquent women to
whom the public listens so patiently and even delightedly to-day.
But we can see how offensive it was to the prevailing sense of
propriety, in the fact that a large part of the abolitionists, who
were enlisted in the cause, and were true and earnest reformers,
left the American Anti-Slavery Society because of it, and formed
a new association called the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery
Society. They were also extreme in their views, according to the
prevailing opinions with regard to slavery, but a little incident
shows how they were unjustly judged by their opponents, who
had, far more than they, the ear of the public and almost total
control of the journals of the day. Dr. Bailey, a few years later,
published an anti-slavery paper in Washington. He was a man
of remarkable ability as an editor, fair minded and courteous,
and greatly respected by his brother journalists of Washington.
It was in this paper that Mrs. Stowe's " Uncle Tom's Cabin " was
first published as a serial. Dr. Bailey in one of his issues gave a
clear and condensed statement of his position towards slavery.
The other editors of the city were so struck with his reason
ableness and moderation that they at once commended his
article for its fairness, though of course not agreeing with him
in his condemnation of slavery, but they said, why could not the
first abolitionists have been so moderate and reasonable— instead
of stirring up mobs and violence by their extreme claims. Dr. B.
waited for them to commit themselves fully on this point, and
then said in his paper that what he had published as his position
on the slavery question was taken from the constitution of the
first anti-slavery society.
My father was very decided in his condemnation of slavery,^
but had great fear of what would come from the emancipation of
the slaves, and of the exasperation of the South over the assault
upon it by the abolitionists. He had lived at the South and had
warm friends there. He had whUe there, at a dinner given to
some public men, expressed in a toast the hope that the time
would come when there would not be a slave in the country, upon
which one of the guests rephed by saying that he hoped he

342

REMINISCENCES.

should be under the turf first. Yet I became an avowed aboli
tionist before he did. His brother John, who was a leading law
yer in Columbia, South Carolina, with whom my father studied
law, and with whom he expected to go into partnership, would
never own a slave. {Ante p. 239.)
The free blacks of the North were generally held in contempt
except by the anti-slavery people, who did what they could to
elevate them and secure them fair treatment. I remember that
at one time, about 1840, a respectable-looking and decently-clad
black man came into the Sunday-school of which I was superin
tendent, and took a seat near the door. I went to him, after the
session closed, and asked him if he would go over to the church
with me. He said he would, and I took him over and gave him a
seat in my pew. Such a sight had probably never been seen in
that church before. There had been, as in most of the churches
in Connecticut, a negro pew, close by the door on the lower
floor, and in the gallery, and probably no negro had before sat
elsewhere in our church. Everybody stared, but there was no
other demonstration of displeasure, but after the service one of
the church members told me I had done more to break up
the church than anything that had happened since it was estab
lished. Yet it was not over five years later that Rev. Dr. Por
ter, our pastor, exchanged with Rev. Mr. Pennington of Hart
ford, one of the blackest of negroes, and we were all astonished
at seeing the pulpit thus occupied.
Of course, on starting as a lawyer in Farmington, I encountered
much unfriendliness from those who were bitter against the anti-
slavery movement. A relative of mine, then a middle-aged man
and a leading lawyer in the state, who was one of the last
of men to interpose his advice, said to me that he must
advise me as to the course I was taking in identifying my
self with the abolitionists — that they were so unpopular that it
would very seriously injure my chances of getting into business.
I felt, however, that if I turned my back on the abolition move
ment I should be a traitor to God and man, and I saw no way but
to go on as I had begun. It very likely made it slower work for
me to get into business, but I do not think it made any very seri
ous difference — certainly none in the end, and indeed I think I
have stood better for it in all my later life. In 1850, 1 was elected
by the abolition voters of Farmington to the House of Represent
atives in the state legislature, the only time that I was ever a

APPENDIX. 343
member of that body. There were about forty anti-slavery voters
n town and they held the balance of power. Ld so manlged a
to carry m their candidate after a number of ballotings
I now look back with much satisfaction at that eariy effort to
do my duty and to aid a cause of vast consequence to the country
and the success of which has been, perhaps, its greatest blessing
I ought not, however, to take to myself much credit for the
stand I took m this matter. My convictions were decided and
by a necessity of my nature dominated me, but I was devoting
myself earnestly to my profession, and did not give to this cause
the time and zeal that so many others did. The hardest and
most trying part of the work had been done by those who be^an
it nearly ten years before.
I ought, injustice to my brother-in-law, Hon. Francis Gillette
afterwards a member of the United States Senate, to state that he
was one of the eariiest abolitionists, a man of great earnestness
and one of the most eloquent speakers of the time. J, H.

MRS. MARY HOOKER BURTON'S LETTER
TO MRS. MARY CLEMMER AMES IN DEFENSE
OF HER MOTHER.
I was about closing my volume with the next preceding article,
when it occurred to me that I ought to include a letter which our
daughter, Mrs. Mary H. Burton, wrote in 187 1 to Mrs. Mary Clem-
mer Ames of Washington in reference to an article written by
the latter grossly misrepresenting and ridiculing some action of
her mother when attending a woman-suffrage convention at
Washington. Mrs. Burton's death in 1886, at the age of forty,
was an almost overwhelming affliction to us, and remains a great
and abiding sorrow. It is due to her memory that this earnest
defense of her mother should be preserved, while it is to the
latter a richly-deserved tribute.
The convention was largely attended. A petition had been
presented to Congress asking for legislation in favor of woman
suffrage, and a committee of Congress had invited them to appear
before it and advocate their petition in person. A large repre-

344

REMINISCENCES.

sentation of women assembled in an ante-room of the Capitol
and were waiting for the time for going before the committee,
when some one proposed that they have a prayer for God's bless
ing on their effort. Others at once concurred, and Mrs. Hooker
was called upon to pray. She did so, offering a most reverent
and fervent petition to God. Mrs. Ames was at this time an able
and popular correspondent of a New York paper. She was not
present at this meeting, but she gave what purported to be a
description of it for her paper, letting loose her too facile wit as
she did so, describing in a grotesque way the personal appearance
and manner of Mrs. Hooker as she prayed. The amusing article
went the rounds of the press and was seen by Mrs. Burton. In
her indignation at the treatment of her mother she wrote the fol
lowing letter to Mrs. Ames:
Mrs. Mary Clemmer Ames.
Dear Madam : — Will you permit the daughter of Mrs. Isabella
Beecher Hooker to address you ?
I read yesterday the enclosed extract from a New York
paper. When you used your ready wit to make a clever sketch
of Mrs. Hooker you of course knew that however you might
entertain scores of readers, you must necessarily wound many to
whom she is near and dear ; but I venture to believe you did not
know how cruelly unjust you were to Mrs. Hooker herself. If
you knew her in daily life as tender mother and devoted wife,
loving grandmother and loyal friend, how differently you would
have spoken of her. Seeing her with her children you would
think: " This woman lives only for her children" ; with her hus
band, you would say, "What an ideal marriage ! Was ever wife
so devoted or husband so appreciative before? " — as housekeeper
you would say : " What executive ability she shows ! no detail of
house or grounds but is under her supervision " ; as hostess,
among the greenery of her petted plants, in her bright parlors,
you would say, " How genial ! How motherly ! " — in her library, at
her desk, if you looked over her shoulder, you would find her
reading carefully on a score of subjects besides woman suffrage,
and, if you watched long enough, you would surely say : " In what
science, art or philosophy is she not interested? Suffrage is but
one of the subjects upon which that busy brain and large heart
are working." If you were a neighbor and sick, you would send
for her first of all, knowing her presence of mind in an emer
gency and the infinite tenderness of her heart. As she would be
the first to come to you so would she be the last to leave you. If
you were poor and in trouble you would turn to her as surely as
the magnet to the pole. If you were her friend you would rest
secure, knowing that she would never change, and that, whatever
others might say of you, she would be loyal to the last. If you

APPENDIX. 345
were her enemy you might also rest secure ; she would never stab
you, never bear malice, and would forgive you and forgive you.
The question of woman suffrage is little discussed in our
family. My mother is content to have each one hold her own
opinion, I have never heard my motbc v speak in public. But,
knowing the woman, I know you ha^e misrepresented both her
manner and speech. Whatever she does she does with her
whole heart, but that she would appear other than an earnest,
womanly, modest woman, absorbed in (to her) a great cause, is
impossible. That you have represented her otherwise to thou
sands of readers who can never see and know her will some day
be a matter of regret to you, if you ever come to know her as
she is.
If you were yourself less of a true woman than I think you
are, I never should have addressed you. Your name is associated
only with honor, respect, and cleverness as a writer ; therefore I
felt the stab of your pen the more keenly ; therefore I appeal to
you to guard your sparkling wit, lest it scorch where it should
only illuminate. I am, dear madam, very truly yours,
Mary Hooker Burton.
Mrs. Burton was much disappointed at receiving no answer
from Mrs. Ames, who took no notice of the letter. It was after
wards ascertained through a friend at Washington that she had
duly received it.

23

INDEX.

Abolition movement, 338.
Abram and Zimri, poem by Clarence
Cook, 198.
Accident, bicycle, 225.
Adams, John Quincy, 339.
Address at Rev. Dr. Porter's semi-cen
tennial, 114.
Alabama, fight with the Kearsarge,
209.
American Anti-Slavery Society, 341.
American and Foreign Anti-Slavery
Society, 341.
American Missionary Association, 26.
Ames, Mrs. Mary Clemmer, 344.
Amistad, case of the, 23, 25.
Amusements in Farmington, 325, 329.
Anarchy and its philosophy, 228.
Anderson, John T. and Francis T.,
32.
Anthony, Susan B., 50th birthday,
89 ; poem on that occasion, go ;
trial before Judge Hunt, 163.
Appeal to young men, 307.
Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 73.
Ass, loosing the, 106.
Atlantic Dock Co., 223.
Bacon, Rev. Dr. , Dr. Burton's address
on, 95.
Bailey, Dr. Gamaliel, 341.
Baker, Capt. Obed, 99.
Baldwin, Gov. R. S., 9, 191.
Baptism, 13.
Barnard, Dr. Henry, great speech at
commencement dinner, 76.
Barton, Clara, on woman suffrage, 246.
Batavia (Java), 193.
B  , General, 219. (347

Beecher, H. ^W., controversyj with
Rev. Dr. Parker, 78.
Beecher, Rev. Dr. Edward, 110, 183,
259
Beecher, Rev. Dr. Lyman, g.
Beecher, Mary, 328.
Bicycle accident, 225, 253.
Birth and parentage, 9.
Bits of verse, 265.
Borneo Pirates, 193.
Bowles, Samuel, 65, 253.
Bull, Dea,, 323,
Burlington man's series of misadven
tures, 188.
Burton, Mary Hooker, 344.
Burton, Rev. Dr. Nathaniel J., sketch
of, 92 ; his habit of procrastination,
94 ; address on Rev. Dr. Bacon,
95 ; letters from Europe, 96; resi
dence at Nook Farm, 171.
Bushnell, Rev. Dr. Horace, 19,
Butler, C, J., death of, 136,
Cairns, Martin, 35,
Canal, Farmington, 16,
Candor, 275.
Capaces Feniince, 34.
Captain D of the ship P, 195.
Chamberlin, Franklin, 72.
Chapman, Charles, anecdotes about,
48 ; rhymes written by him in court,
142.
Chapman, Dr. John, 205.
Church, Farmington, 12.
Clemens, Samuel L., 171.
College Commencement, 333.
Collyer, Rev. Robert, letter from,
174.
)

348

lA/DEX.

Colored people and slaves in Connect
icut, 22.
Conversation Club, 320.
Cowles Brothers, Farmington, 314.
Cowles, Egbert, 324.
Cowles, Horace, his great probity,
191.
Cowles, Samuel S., 32.
Cowles, Gen. Solomon, 21.
Cowles, 'William and Ezekiel, 197.
Crowninshield, Capt. U. S. N., 213.
D  , Capt,, 195.
Daggett, C, J,, 131,
Daggett, Henry, 16,
D,D,, how I became a, 37,
"Daily Strengthfor Daily Needs," 297,
Damon and Pythias, 197,
Dansville sanatorium, loi,
Davis, Paulina Wright, 280,
Day, Mrs, John C, 10,
Deming, Chauncey, 321,
Denio, J,, 328,
Dickinson, Anna, 280,
Disclaimer, Mr, Hungerford's anec
dote de, 131,
Dog-fight suit and poem, 41,
Du Plan, the Gentleman of Alais, 303,
Dwight, President Timothy, 321,
Eaton, W. 'W., 42.
Echo Farm, 144.
Education, xo, 336.
Eliot, George, 208.
Ellsworth, Judge W. "W., 35, 131.
English, study at table, 337.
Equal Rights Club, 177.
Evarts, William M., g, 75.
Execution of an Indian, 332.
Family worship at my father's, 15.
Farmington, beauty of situation, 11;
mails and postage at, 17 ; ancient
church, 12 ; social life in, 19 ; for

mer commercial importance, 27 ;
history of, 323.
Farmington Academy, 10.
Farmington Canal, 16.
Fessenden, Rev. Mr-, 20.
Flora slave case, 31.
Foster, J., sketch of, 157 ; dinner at
his house, 143 ; remarkable verbal
memory, 143.
Fourth Church, Hartford, 311.
Fourth of July, 330.
Fugitive Slave Act, 37.
Fugitive Slaves, 339.
Garrison, Wm. Lloyd, 338.
General B., 219.
Gillette, Francis, 170, 343.
Godwin, Mary Wolstencraft, 317.
Golden Wedding, 173.
Goodrich, Capt., 22.
Gordy's History of United States, 338.
Granger, J., humorous rhymes in
court, 152.
Guilford, a summer at, 108.
PIall, Mary, admission to bar, 145.
Hall, Gideon, 45.
Hanchett, Capt., 31.
Hart, Simeon, 10.
Hawley, J. R., 40, 171, 175.
Hemingway, Rev. Mr., 31.
Heraldry, 316.
Hillhouse, James, 16.
Hinman, Ch. J., death of, 135.
History of Farmington, 323.
Hoar, Senator, 9.
Home education, 336.
Hooker, Edward, 9, 15, 318, 326, 336.
Hooker, Commr. Edw., 27.
Hooker, Dr. Edward B., 10, 112.
Hooker, Isabella Beecher, 9, 109, 170,
I73> 344-
Hooker, Isabel K., 109.
Hooker, James, 314, 317.

INDEX.

349

Hooker, John, birth and parentage, g;
baptism , 1 3 ; at Farmington Academy,
10; at Yale College, lo; voyages, 10,
28, 192; taken by pirates, 27; teach
ing in Farmington Academy, 33 ;
study of law, 10 ; marriage, 10 ; re
moval to Hartford, 10; offer of
pastorate at Farmington, 24 ; pur
chase of Rev. Dr. Pennington, a
fugitive slave, 39 ; address at Rev.
Dr. Porter's semi-centennial, 114 ;
deacon at Hartford, 282 ; at Dans
ville Sanatorium, 101; reporter of
Supreme Court, 124; offer of a judge
ship, 121, 122 ; life at Nook Farm,
170; golden wedding, 173; bicycle
accident, 225; views on theology,
281; views on religion, 295.
Hooker, John, of South Carolina,
237-
Hooker, Noadiah, 34.
Hooker, Rev. Samuel, 9.
Hooker, Rev. Thomas, 9, ill.
Hubbard, Gov. R. D., 53; lines on
his death, 62; his obituary addresses,
63 ; urges my acceptance of a judge
ship, 123 ; inauguration as gov
ernor, 144.
Hungerford, William, his anecdote de
disclaimer, 131 ; obituary address
by Gov. Hubbard, 64.
Hunt, J., and Susan B. Anthony's
trial, 163.
Hutchinson, John, 183.
Ideal woman, 113.
Imlay, William H., 170, 222.
Incidents of Supreme Court reporter-
ship, 129.
Independence Day, 330.
Ingersoll, Gov., 189.
Introductory matter, additional, 185.
Irishman, my first sight of, 17-
Irving, Edward, 291.

Jackson, Dr., cure at Dansville, N.
Y., loi.
Javanese customs official, 193.
Johnson, Prof., 282.
Judges' opinions, asked for by Gen
eral Assembly, 132.
Judgeship, desire for, 120.
Judicial friends, 155.
Kearsarge, The, fight with the Ala
bama, 20g ; visit to her at Ports
mouth navy yard, 2og.
Kelly, Abby, 280, 341.
Latin, early teaching by my father,
336.
Legislature, my election to, 343.
Letters received at golden wedding.
Rev. Robert Collyer, 174; Joseph
R. Hawley, 175; Frances E. Wil
lard, 175.
Life at Nook Farm, 170.
Linonian Society, 75.
Litchfield, Miss Pierce's School, 315.
Loomis, J. , speech at banquet on his
retirement, 146 ; letter de reporter-
ship, 127 ; my surviving judicial
friend, 155.
Lovejoy, Elijah P., 338.
Lying to, ig3.
Mansfield, Edw. D., 326.
Marriage, 9.
Matches, friction, ig.
Matson, Wm. N., 124.
Meeting-house at Farmington, 12.
Mendi Mission, 24.
Methodist revival in Farmington, 185.
Militia training, 18.
Mix, Capt., 314.
Montez & Ruiz, 25.
" Moral Society,'' 320.
Moseley, Samuel, 214.
Mygatt, Henry, 107.

350

INDEX.

Nook Farm, life at, 170.
Norton, Prof. John P., 329.
Norton, John T., 329.
Obituary addresses of Gov. Hubbard,
63.
Olmsted, Prof. Denison, 114.
Onion stealer, 107.
Opinions of Judges, asked for by the
General Assembly, 132.
Ordinations, 331.
Otis, Harrison Gray, 22, 339.
Ox that returned from Ticonderoga, 34.
Pardee, J., some of his wit, 128;
sketch of him, 161.
Park, J., 123, 124; C. J., 136.
Parker, Rev. Dr. and Henry Ward
Beecher, 78.
Parsons, Francis, 42.
Pastorate at Farmington proposed, 24.
Patton, Rev. William W., 106.
Pennington, Rev. Dr. James W. C,
23, 38, 342.
Perkins, Thomas C, 72, 122, 171,
328.
Phelps, Rev. Amos, 339.
Phillips, Wendell, 339.
Pianos in Farmington, 317.
Pierce, Miss, her school at Litchfield,
315-
Pirates of Borneo and Sumatra, 194.
Pirates, taken by, 27.
Pitkin, Ann, 328.
Pitkin, Mary, 329.
Pitkin, Hon. Timothy, 321, 327.
Poems, on present to court messen
ger, 36 ; on dog-fight suit, 43 ; on
death of Gov. Hubbard, 62 ; on
burning of cure at Dansville, 103 ;
on dedication of new cure, 104 ; on
women founders of New England,
112; collection of poems, 265.
Policing the world, 241.

Porter, Rev. Dr. Noah, 13, 114, 217,
282, 322, 326, 342.
Postal service at Farmington, 17.
Prayer-meetings at Park church, 200.
Progress of women, 279.
Purity of life — appeal to young men,
307.
" Red behind and white in front,"
52-
" Red College," 315.
Reed, Fredus, anecdote about, 187.
Religion, 295 ; in Farmington, 335.
Reportership of Supreme Court, 10,
124 ; incidents of, 129.
Resignation of Reportership, 125.
Rhodes v. Wells, 41.
Richards, Dea. Samuel, 17, 331.
Romilly, Sir John, 72.
Romilly, Sir Samuel, account of, 70, 71,
259, 305.
Romilly acts, 71, 304.
Rothschild, banker at Paris, gi.
Rowe, Chauncey, 185.
Ruggles, Nathan, 316.
Ruiz & Montez, 25.
Sabba-day houses, 13.
Sailors from Farmington, 314.
Sanatorium, Dansville, N. Y., loi.
Sanford, J., sketch of, 155; death of,
122.
Sanford, Henry S., 141.
Schools at Farmington, 319.
Seymour, Chief-Justice, sketch of,
159 ; speech at banquet on retiring,
137.
Seymour, Judge Edw. W., death of,
150 ; sketch of, by Judge Fenn, 151.
Shipman, Judge William D., 124.
Slavery in Connecticut, 22, 188, 334.
Slave case, Flora, 31.
Slaves, fugitive, harbored at Farming-
ton, 338 ; some of their stories, 338.

INDEX.

3SI

Smith, Rev. Dr. C. B., answer to his
attack on spiritualism, 260.
Socialism, 231.
Social life in Farmington, 313.
South Carolina University, 239.
Spiritualism, 247, spiritualism and
good morals, 263.
State, upbuilding of, 2g9.
Statistical History of Farmington, 323.
" Stoop-endous house,'' 75.
Storrs, C. J., memorandum of deci
sion in Latin, 129 ; death of, t2i.
Storrs and WiUiams, Chief-Justices,
compared, 118.
Stowe, Mrs. H. B., letters of, 89,
109.
Suffrage for women, 245.
Sui Generis, 33.
Sumner, Samuel B. , poem at banquet
given Chief Justice Seymour, 141.
Supreme Court reportership, 124.
Table, study of EngUsh at, 337.
Taxation, 232.
Theological Seminary, Hartford, 311
Theology, 281.
Tilghman, Frisbie, 39.
Tillotson, Rev. Mr., peculiar prayer
at opening of court, 130.
Todd, Dr. Eli, 320, 322, 330.
Toucey, Isaac, 42, 224.
Town-meetings at Farmington, 21.
Treadwell, Gov. John, 16, 315, 321.
Tyler, Charles, 130.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, 341.
Underground railroad, 339.
Unspirituality, growth in, 200.
Upbuilding of a state, 29g.
Verse, some bits of, 265.
Village life at Farmington, 19.
Voyages, 10, 192.
Wadsworth, Amos, 319.
Warner, Charles D., 171.
Watching with sick people, 190.
Waterman, N. M., 43.
Weddings at Farmington, 331.
Welch, Henry K. W., 123.
Westminster Review, 205.
Welles, Martin, 46.
Whitman, Lemuel, 20.
Whittaker, Henry, 72.
Willard,' Frances E., letter from,
175.
Williams, Austin F., 26.
Williams and Storrs, Chief-Justices,
compared, 118.
Woman, the ideal, 113.
Woman suffrage, 245.
Women founders of New England,
III ; poem de, 112.
Women, progress of, 279.
World police, 241.
Wyckham, William, 76.
Young men, appeal to, 307.

ERRATA.
gth page, 12th line from bottom, for mother read mothers.
72d page, 12th line, for a letter read letters.
104th page, loth line, for i8g3 read t88j.
I52d page, Sth line, iox profession read procession.

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