EDWARD EVERETT HALE
HALE, EDWARD EVERETT. Among modern classics we may justly include that striking book, "The Man Without a Country." Had its author no other written work, the originality of this, alike in conception and execution, would have brought him fame. His full message to the world has been a sane, wholesome and uplifting one. The world has been better, has been cheered and elevated by the life and the writings of Edward Everett Hale. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the third of April, 1822, the son of Nathan and Sarah Preston (Everett) Hale, he is descended from a family of distinction in American history. Its colonial line began with Robert Hale, one of the Puritans who came over with Winthrop in 1630. One of his descendants, Reverend John Hale, took part in Phipps' famous expedition against Quebec. But the most notable of the family was Mr. Hale's grand uncle, Nathan Hale, the patriot and martyr, hung by the British as a spy, but adjudged by posterity a victim to noble devotion to his country. Mr. Hale's own character is doubtless partly due to hereditary influence, partly to the example and precepts of his parents, both of whom exerted an influence for good upon his life. His father — lawyer, editor and civil engineer by profession, may be characterized as a man of untiring industry, utter unselfishness and absolute honor, qualities which his fellow-citizens availed themselves of in electing him successively as representative and senator in the General Court, the legislative body of Massachusetts. His mother's influence was no less beneficial, acting alike on his intellectual, his moral, and his spiritual nature. From his infancy she seems to have aspired to fit him for service in the Christian ministry, though in the end the choice was his own, his parents controlling him only by silent influence.
A healthy boy, except for a critical attack of scarlet fever in his childhood, Mr. Hale was not an ardent student, having a dislike to the constraint of school life and deeming his home occupations more important. No doubt he found them more pleasant. He was devoted to books from childhood, could utterly forget himself in one
