Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs/Chapter 01
I
INCIDENTS OF MY EARLY LIFE
MY birthplace was at Brookline, Mass., near Boston, upon a farm in my father’s charge, and then owned by a Dr. Spooner of Boston. The place has had many owners and it has been used for various purposes. In 1851 and 1852 it was owned by a Dr. Trowbridge, who had a fancy for fine horses. Upon my election to the office of Governor, and when he had learned that I was born upon his place, he insisted that I should use a large black stallion in the review of the troops at the annual parades. The animal was of fine figure but not so subdued as to be manageable. In one of those years General Wool came to Boston, upon an invitation to review the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company on Boston Common. I assigned the Trowbridge horse to General Wool. The General rode him for a minute or two, when he left the saddle and the reviewing officers went through the ceremony on foot. Since those days the Spooner place has been converted into a trotting course known as Clyde Park, and the house is now used as a clubhouse by an association called the Country Club.
When I was about twenty-five years of age I was present at a temperance meeting at Lowell, held in an unfinished factory building called the Prescott Mills. After some speaking, in which I had taken a part, the Rev. Dr. Pierce, then a white-headed gentleman of seventy years, whom I had seen as an overseer of Harvard College, came to me, introduced himself, and after a little conversation he asked me where I was born. When I answered Brookline, on the Dr. Spooner place, he said: “Oh, yes, I remember when your father lived there, and I recall a circumstance to which I think I owe my good health. Dr. Spooner,” said he, “resided in Boston in the winter and at Brookline in the summer. When he was at Brookline he had a child to be christened, and he preferred to have his city minister perform the ceremony. After the service we were invited to dine at Dr. Spooner’s, and that minister ate so unmercifully of everything upon the table, that I then and there resolved that I would eat but one kind of meat at a meal, and I think my good health is due in a measure to that resolution.” I made no resolution, but the circumstance produced an impression upon me, and in the main I have observed his rule. In seventy-seven years, within my recollection, I have lain in bed but seven days.
In April, 1820, when I was hardly more than two years of age, my father moved to Lunenburg, Worcester County, and settled upon a farm, a mile south-west of the village, which he had bought of Phinehas Carter, then an old man, who had been opulent as a farmer for the time and place, but whose estates had been wasted by a moderate sort of intemperance, by idleness, and family expenses. The house was large, well built for the times, finished with clear, unpainted white pine, with dado work in the front rooms below and in the chambers above. It was situated on the southern brow of a hill, and commanded a view of the Wachusett mountain, and the hills to the west, south and east over an expanse of twenty miles in every direction, except the northern half of the circle. At a distance of eighty or one hundred rods from the house lay the Whalom pond, a body of clear, deep spring water, of more than a hundred acres. The farm contained one hundred and thirteen acres of land, somewhat rocky, but in quality better than the average New England farms. At the time of the purchase one-half of the acres were woodland with heavy timber.
My father relied upon that timber to meet the debt of one thousand dollars which rested upon the place. In those days wood and timber were abundant and money was scarce. If the building of railroads could have been foreseen and the timber saved for twenty-five years it would have risen to twice the value of the farm at the time of the purchase. My father’s anxiety to be relieved of the debt was so great that he made sales of wood and timber as he had opportunity, but the proceeds, after much hard labor had been added, were very insignificant. As a result, the most valuable part of the timber was sold for ship-building, or to the coopers, or converted into boards and shingles, and a remnant of the debt remained for twenty years.
The farm yielded ample supplies of meat, milk, butter, cheese, grain, fruit, and vegetables, but groceries and clothing were difficult to procure after such supplies were had as could be obtained by barter. Once or twice, or possibly three times a year, my father drove an ox-team or a team of one pair of oxen and one horse to Boston with cider, apples, a hog or two, and poultry. The returns enabled him to pay his taxes, the interest on the debt, and perhaps something over.
Until the introduction of the cotton and woolen manufactures, and indeed, until the building of railways, the farmers of Massachusetts had only limited means of comfort. Their houses were destitute of furniture, except of the plainest sort. Of upholstered furniture they had none. Except a few school books for the children and the family Bible there was no reading matter, unless in favored neighborhoods, a weekly paper carried the news to two or three families that were joint subscribers. The mails were infrequent, and the postage on letters, based on the pieces of paper instead of weight, varied from six and one fourth cents for all distances within thirty miles to twenty-five cents for distances of four hundred miles and more. Intermediate rates were ten, twelve and a half, and eighteen and three fourths cents. These rates existed when mechanics could command only one dollar a day, and when ordinary laborers could earn only fifty cents or seventy-five cents—except in the haying season, when good mowers could command one dollar. Servant girls and nurses received from one dollar to one dollar and fifty cents per week. At the same time every variety of clothing was much more expensive than it now is, unless shoes and hats are exceptions.
My father was the best farmer in the neighborhood. He had been employed in nursery and vegetable gardening at Newton, and for five years he had had charge of the farm of Madam Coffin at Newton Corner, widow of the Hon. Peleg Coffin, who had been a member of Congress from Nantucket. In a few years we had a supply of cherries, peaches, and choice apples. As my father understood budding and grafting trees, his improved fruits were distributed to others. I acquired the art of budding when I could not have been more than ten years of age, and before I left home at the age of thirteen, I had practised the art in the village and on the trees of the neighbors.
Previous to 1830 the era of invention had not opened, and the articles by whose aid domestic comfort has been promoted were unknown. The only means of cooking were the open fire and the brick oven. Meat for roasting was suspended by a cord from a hook in the ceiling in front of the open fire and over a dripping pan. The children found amusement and became useful in twisting the cord and then allowing the weight of the meat to untwist it. Even fire in the summer was obtained and kept with difficulty. There were no friction matches and not infrequently a child was sent on a flying visit to a neighbor’s house to borrow fire. Indeed, the habit of borrowing and lending extended to nearly every movable thing that any one possessed. Tools, food, especially fresh meat, the labor of men, oxen and horses were borrowed and lent. Farming tools were few in number and rude in construction. Many of them were made upon the farms, either by the farmers themselves, or by the help of poorly instructed mechanics. The modern plough was unknown. Hay and manure forks, scythes, hoes, were so rough, uncouth and heavy that they would now be rejected by the commonest laborer. As early as 1830 my father bought a cast-iron plough; it was the wonder of the neighborhood and the occasion of many prophecies that were to be falsified by events.
My father was a practical man and a gentleman by nature. With him civility was innate. He was a close observer and something of a philosopher. I recall his statement made in my childhood that matter was indestructible. He was of even temper, and of an imperturbable spirit. His paternal ancestor on this side of the Atlantic was made a freeman at Lynn in 1638. Of his arrival in the country there is no record. From that date there had been no marriage except into English families. My father was purely English. My mother, whose family name was Marshall, and who was a descendant of John Marshall who came in the Hopewell, Captain Babb, in 1635, was English also through all her ancestors from John Marshall.
My father enjoyed the respect and confidence of his fellow citizens and he held many of the offices of the town and for many years. In 1843 and in 1844 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and in 1853 he was a member of the Constitutional Convention. I was also a member of the same bodies, and the association with my father under such peculiar circumstances is one of the pleasant recollections of my life.[1] My mother belonged to a family of unusual intellectual endowment, and of great rigidity of opinion. Her father, Jacob Marshall, was a student by tendency and habit, a stone mason and farmer by occupation, and the inventor of the press used for pressing hops and cotton in square bales. He lived to be more than eighty years of age, was twice married, and had a large family of children whom he educated and trained as well as children could be trained and educated at the close of the last century in a country town in northern Massachusetts.
For the last fifty years of his life he devoted himself to the study of the Bible and such works of history as he could command. His knowledge of the Bible was so great that he was an oracle in the town, although he departed from the popular faith and became a Universalist. He lived comfortably and without hard work, and in the later years of his life he became the owner of two farms in the northerly part of Lunenburg. As I recollect him and his farms he could not have been a good farmer. His crop was hops, and that crop always commanded money, at a time when it was unusual to realize money for farm produce.
As my father’s house was a mile from the District School, and as there was a school within twenty or thirty rods of my grandfather’s house, I was sent to my grandfather’s for my first winter’s schooling. I think it must have been the winter of 1823-4. The teacher was Ithamar Butters, called Dr. Butters from the circumstance that he had studied medicine for a time with Dr. Aaron Bard, a physician in the village. Of Dr. Butters as a teacher I remember little. He became a disbeliever in the Bible—an agnostic of these days. I recollect a remark of his made many years after: That he would prefer the worst hell to annihilation, which he believed would be his fate.
I learned to read by standing in front of my mother as she read the Bible. Of course all the letters were inverted, and the faculty of reading an inverted page, has remained.
I went to the District School summer and winter, until I was ten years of age, and to the winter school until I passed my seventeenth birthday, when my school life ended. My father and mother were scrupulous about my attendance, and I cannot recall that I was ever allowed to be absent during the school term either for work or pleasure.
When I reached the age of ten years I was kept on the farm during the summer months, until I left home in December, 1830. In those days farmers’ boys did not enjoy the luxury of shoes in the summer, nor indeed in the autumn season. More than once I picked chestnuts bare-footed and often have I tended the oxen in the mowing field frosty mornings and warmed my feet by standing on a stone.
Once only during my home life did I go to Boston with my father. He carried poultry in a one-horse wagon. I accompanied him. The year may have been 1828, or ’9 or ’30. On our way he stopped at one of the Waltham cotton factories to see a niece of my father who was there at work. We lodged that night at the house of Madam Coffin. She was then already old in my sight. She seemed pleased with my father’s visit, and the impression left upon my mind is that we were entertained with marked consideration. My father had managed her farm for about five years from 1809 to 1814, when he volunteered for service in the army, and for ninety days he was on the island then known as Fort Warren.
The next morning we reached Boston and stationed our wagon at the northwest corner of Quincy Market, where we sold our poultry. During the day my father had occasion to go to the store of Joseph Mead, at the corner of Lyman Place, and I was left in charge of the wagon. I had the fortune to sell some of the poultry. My father thought that the proceeds in money did not equal the decrease in stock, and so it proved—for the next Sunday morning when I dressed for meeting I found a two dollar bill in my trousers’ pocket.
That night we spent with Captain Hyde, at Newton Corner. During the first year of my father’s married life he had carried on a farm on the opposite side of the highway, and it was from Captain Hyde that he obtained his knowledge of budding and grafting, and some knowledge of the art of gardening. They always continued friends; Captain Hyde came to my father’s, in after years, and supplied our farm with the best varieties of cherry, peach and apple trees.
The day following we went to Brighton where my father purchased the remnant of a drove of cattle that had been driven from the State of Maine—twenty-four in number. Of these nine were oxen and the rest were young animals between two and four years of age, and all were bought for the sum of two hundred and fifty dollars. My father was then the overseer of the almshouse, and the purchase was primarily for that establishment, but some of the animals were sold to the neighbors. The result of the purchase was to me a short experience as a drover.
As I recollect the experiences of my life on my father’s farm, there were many amusements and relaxations mingled with the hardships. In the winter the house was cold, with only open fires for warming the rooms. We had, however, an abundance of wood, and in the evenings a supply of cider, apples and nuts for ourselves and for the neighbors. There were always one or two poor families in the neighborhood who enjoyed the moderate comforts of our house. I recall one man, who after a visit would stop at the pile of wood, near the house, and carry a backload to his home. My father often saw the stealing, but the culprit never knew from any word or act that he had been discovered or suspected.
The ponds and brooks in the vicinity gave us a chance for fishing, and there was some shooting, especially of pigeons in the autumn. The oak forests had not then fallen, and the pigeons were abundant in September and until there were heavy night frosts, when they would leave for milder regions. For several years my father baited pigeons, and caught them in a net. To do this we were in the bough-house by daylight. A wicked advantage was taken by soaking the grain in anise-seed cordial, which made the birds noisy and active, thus attracting other pigeons to the stand. The device of taking pigeons in a net and wringing their necks is a brutal business, as is all slaughtering of animals.
From 1820 to 1830 religious controversies were violent and universal. No one of the towns in Massachusetts was free from them. Under the colonial system each town was a religious corporation as well as a political one. There was one church and one meetinghouse in each town, and the parochial expenses were paid from the municipal revenues. In 1780 when the constitution was adopted, some progress had been made, but by the Third Article of the Bill of Rights, every citizen was required to be a member of some religious society. As a result, new societies were formed, and in many instances they were so organized and managed as to avoid expenses. About the same time attacks were made upon the Third Article of the Bill of Rights, and after an excited controversy covering many years, the constitution was changed in that respect, by an amendment in the nature of a substitute, which was adopted by the people at an election held in the month of November, 1833. By that amendment each citizen was authorized to file a certificate of non-membership with the clerk of the society of which he was a member and thereafter he was free from any contract or obligation of such society thereafter made.
The little town of Lunenburg participated actively in the contest. My father advocated the amendment. At the ancient meetinghouse the ancient doctrines of future punishment were preached and the literal inspiration of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation was not questioned. Those who denied the one or doubted the other were denounced as infidels. Religious topics were the leading subjects of conversation, and the fruitful source of personal and neighborhood controversies. My father rejected the doctrine of physical punishment in another state of existence, and he came to regard the Bible as a record of events, and the expression of human thought and feeling, rather than as a message of the Divine will.
Perhaps as early as 1820 the Methodists had organized a church and secured a place of meeting in the north part of the town on a by-road. The building was not as good in quality or style as is a modern barn. My father separated himself from the old society and joined the Methodist society. In that organization each one paid what he chose. I recollect attending meetings at the old barn, but the distance was great and the inconveniences were numerous. The converts could endure the inconveniences, but as my father was not a convert nor a believer his interest was slight. Afterwards, however, the Methodists built a meetinghouse in the village, and for several years we had seats and attended the services. Once in two or three years the denomination held camp meetings in the autumn and the work of conversion would go on rapidly. The scenes were such as are now reported of the negro race in the states of the South. Young girls would shout, crying out that they had found Jesus, fall down, and lie senseless, or at least speechless, for many minutes. After brief periods of excitement many of the converts returned to their old ways of life, neither better nor worse.
During those years the Universalists held meetings at Shirley Village, quite eight miles away. My father attended occasionally, and not infrequently I went with him. I had therefore the opportunity to hear the great preachers of the denomination—Russell Streeter, Sebastian Streeter, brothers; Thomas Whittemore, the editor of the Trumpet, the organ of the sect, Hosea Ballou, Walter Balfour, and others whose names I do not recall. Balfour was a Scotchman, preaching with an accent, and rolling his scalp, from his eyes to the nape of his neck. The sermons had two peculiarities. First the text was examined carefully and so construed as to show that the author, whether Jesus, Peter, or Paul, taught the doctrine of universal salvation. Then came a process of reasoning designed to show that God could not punish his creatures in a lake of fire and brimstone. First, he was all-powerful; next, he was all-wise; then he was infinitely just, and finally his mercy was without limit. Could a being endowed with these attributes consign his children to unending misery? From the first I saw the defect in the process of reasoning. The premises were not faulty, but given a being with infinite faculties, could another being, with finite faculties only, forecast the result of the exercise or operation of the infinite?
The little town was made notorious by the career of the physician, Dr. Aaron Bard. He was born in Jaffrey, N. H., about the year 1770. He obtained his medical education in part at least, at Troy, N. Y., from which place he fled to avoid arrest upon the charge of robbing graves. His parents were rigid believers in the old faith, and in that faith they had trained the son. Against that faith the son rebelled, dropped the second “a” in his baptismal name, and rejected the Scriptures as not containing divine truth. As the mass of the people believed implicitly in the divine origin and plenary inspiration of the Bible, a disbeliever was denounced as an infidel and punished by social outlawry.
Bard was not a quiet doubter. He attacked the Bible, ridiculed much of the Old Testament, accepted controversies with the clergy, although he attended their families without charge. His reputation as a physician was considerable, and although his enemies, who were many, made repeated efforts to secure a competitor, the wary declined their invitations, and the credulous were soon driven away by poverty, or the fear of it. Bard was a bachelor, lived economically, never presented a bill, and when he died, about the year 1850, his books were free of charges. Before the repeal of the Third Article of the Bill of Rights, Bard organized a society which by some art of logic was so far recognized as a religious body as to exempt its members from taxation in the old parish. It flourished until the Third Article was annulled, when it disappeared. Bard purchased a Hebrew Bible, lexicon and grammar, and proceeded to translate parts of the Old Testament, especially the early chapters in Genesis, and in such manner as to throw doubt upon the received version. His Sundays were devoted to talks in his office, where were gathered a few hearers, some because they agreed with him, and others because they were interested in hearing what he had to offer.
He was of small size, hardy, ingenious, and free from meanness. He was economical and his ways of business forbade any extravagance. When he needed hay or grain for his horses or wood for his fire he called upon some of the farmers whose physician he was, and obtained a supply. Beyond this he made no demand for payment, though when it was offered he accepted it. Until he was about sixty years of age, he rode on horseback, and always without an overcoat. From my thirteenth to my seventeenth year I was boy and clerk in a store at a distance of less than five rods from Bard’s office. I saw him constantly. His denunciations of Christianity were so violent and unreasonable that many persons would revolt at the thought of accepting his theories. He had followers, however, and the trial of Abner Kneeland for blasphemy promoted the spread of infidel opinions. I do not now recollect that I heard Bard express any opinion as to a future state of existence. In that particular he was probably an agnostic. When in later years I saw a plaster cast of the head of Voltaire at the Cambridge Museum of Comparative Anatomy, I was impressed with the resemblance between Bard’s head and that cast.
His success as a physician was due probably to his ingenuity and keen powers of observation rather than to his learning. All his faculties were active, and he appreciated the importance of the laws of progress. When homeopathy had taken some hold upon public opinion, he said: “There is nothing in it; but then it has done a great deal of good. It has taught us not to give so much medicine. We killed a great many people with medicine, but it is several years now since I killed a man.” This remark was made in 1842 or 1843.
In my boyhood the Rev. David Damon was the minister. He was a graduate of Harvard College, a man of learning, of good standing in the profession, and a satisfactory preacher. His temper was mild, and it was not easy for Bard to engage in bitter contests with him. Mr. Damon left Lunenburg about 1827, and settled in West Cambridge, where he died suddenly in the pulpit. Among the constant attendants upon Mr. Damon’s Sunday services at Lunenburg, was a blacksmith named Kimball, who was afflicted with deafness. From his trade perhaps he had come to be called Puffer Kimball. From a front seat in the meetinghouse he had ventured upon the pulpit stairs, and finally he had reached the position of standing on an upper stair, resting his arms upon the desk, and with his hand to his ear listening to the services from beginning to end. In the east part of the town was a farmer named James Gilchrist, a Scotch Irishman, weighing not less than two hundred and fifty pounds, and the father of four grown sons who were his equals in weight, and all of them of great strength. Gilchrist abandoned the Sunday meetings and when Mr. Damon asked him for his reason he said he wouldn’t have his religion strained through old Puffer Kimball.
This same Gilchrist had had a controversy ending in a slander suit with Mr. Damon’s predecessor, the Rev. Timothy Flint. Mr. Flint was a man of recognized ability, a good preacher, but erratic in his ways. For some purpose not well understood, he built a furnace in the cellar of his house. His friends maintained that he was engaged in scientific experiments, and such was his purpose, no doubt, but his enemies and the more ignorant of the community assumed that his plan was to coin money. One day, in a store kept by Mr. Cunningham, (the grandfather or great-grandfather of Gen. James Cunningham,) Gilchrist exhibited a coin and said: “Here is a dollar that Tim Flint made.” Flint returned the challenge with a suit, which I think was adjusted without a trial, but the controversy contributed to the dissolution of the settlement. Flint left the town to which he returned once in my boyhood and preached a sermon in the new meetinghouse, that had been substituted for the old one used in the days of Zabdiel Adams, of Timothy Flint, and David Damon.
After leaving Lunenburg Flint went with his family to the valley of the Mississippi, and led the life of a wanderer, floating down the river with his family and making his way back as best he might. In these expeditions children were born and children died. He wrote two romances founded on Western primitive life, and a history of the Mississippi Valley. Time may give to his works a value that they did not appear to possess when they were published. Flint was recognized in the town as a man of ability, but he failed to secure the affections or even the confidence of the people. He was a man of ready faculty, being able to write his sermons Saturday evening, with his children around him.
Parson Adams, a cousin of John Adams and the predecessor of Flint, had lived among his people as a chieftain. He was not only the spiritual teacher, he was supreme in most other matters. Unlike the Adams family generally, he had a rough wit and a sententious practical wisdom about common things not unlike the kindred conspicuous qualities in Dr. Franklin. If the traditions that existed in my boyhood were trustworthy, he said and did things that would have ruined an ordinary minister. Adams gave an earnest support to the Revolution, and one of his sermons delivered at the opening of the war contained a view of the coming greatness of the country that was truly prophetic.
Samuel Dexter studied law at Lunenburg. He was there married by the Rev. Zabdiel Adams to a Miss Gordon, a daughter of an English lady.
The successor of Mr. Damon was the Rev. Joseph Hubbard, and during his ministry the old society that represented the town of former days came to an end. The first error was the scheme for erecting a new meetinghouse. The larger part of the village is on the southern side of a hill, and the first meetinghouse was midway on the slope and facing the south. The site was a triangular piece of land, of more than one hundred rods in extent, on which were shade trees planted in other days. If the whole town had been at command not another equally good site could have been selected. A spirit, called the spirit of progress, had seized the leaders and it was resolved to build a new meetinghouse on the top of the hill. The house was built, but in the meantime the society lost members. Following the dedication of the new house, there came complaints against Hubbard as a preacher. He made enemies, and his enemies promoted disturbances. Efforts were made to dissolve the connection. Hubbard having been settled for life, those efforts were ineffectual. Finally his salary was withheld and the house was closed against him. Sunday after Sunday, morning and afternoon, Hubbard would walk from the parsonage to the meetinghouse, try the doors and then return home. As long as the doors were open, I attended the services—the congregation diminishing until the pews were given up to boys and those who attended from curiosity. One morning the seats of the singers were vacant, and Hubbard read the hymn commencing: “Let those refuse to sing, who never knew their God.” That was the last, or near the last of his Sunday services.
As the controversy went on, the members of the parish withdrew, until the only one remaining who possessed any property was an uncle of mine, Timothy Marshall. He lived in the easterly part of the town, and he was a Universalist in opinion. He owned a small farm and a sawmill on the Mulpus Brook. His chief delights were reading, discussing political and religious questions, and gathering information in the department of the natural sciences. He associated a good deal with Dr. Bard, but he never accepted Bard’s views of the Bible. He had continued with the old society from indisposition to disturb himself rather than from sympathy with its teachings, or regard for its interests. At the conclusion of the active controversy between Hubbard and the society, the unpaid salary amounted to several hundred dollars. Hubbard threatened suit, and he may have commenced one. In that juncture my uncle went over the town and gathered the signatures of those nominal members who had no property, who had not paid taxes and whose eyes had not seen the inside of a meetinghouse. A parish meeting was called, composed of my uncle and his new adherents. At the end authority was given for the conveyance to Mr. Hubbard of the site of the old meetinghouse in full satisfaction of his claim. This spot was in the center of the village and in the view of the houses of the principal residents. Not their curiosity merely, but their fears were excited when they learned that their bitter enemy was to become the owner of the common in the center of the village. To be sure the bounds were indefinite, but there was a spot belonging to the parish, and it included all that was not highway.
My uncle had an understanding with Hubbard that the land was to be conveyed to Hubbard and the society released from all its liabilities under the contract. Then the land was to be conveyed to my uncle, for the sum of six hundred dollars. This was done, and my uncle became the owner of the common. He was not a friend of the citizens of the village, and various uncomfortable surmises were set afloat. But my uncle had but little malice in his nature, and moreover he was too inert to indulge in the luxury of avenging any wrong either real or imaginary. The common was left to the use of stray cattle, the children of the neighborhood and of the school. After a time the school district decided to rebuild the schoolhouse. The old site was small, indeed, only sufficient for the building. The citizens divided, but the advocates of the old site prevailed, and a brick building was erected. Still the contest went on, and after a year or two the majority of the district voted to erect a new house, and the upper part of the common was selected for the site where a second house, of wood, was built. Whether any title to the land was obtained from my uncle, I know not. The new house was used for a time, when it was sold, moved, and converted into a dwelling.
When my uncle died at the age of about eighty-five years, the common was unoccupied, and it had the appearance that property takes on when the owner is intemperate or absent, or when heirs cannot agree to a division. The settlement of my uncle’s estate was put into the hands of Mr. Ephraim Graham, whose brother had married my uncle’s eldest daughter. My uncle’s children were scattered, and apparently they inherited their father’s indifference to property. Graham was unable to finish any business, and after ten or more years he died, leaving the estate unsettled. Finally, the ladies of the village took possession of the common, removed the rubbish, leveled the ground, and made the spot an agreeable feature of the town.
Of the teachers of the village school there are several that I remember with gratitude, and I cannot but think that some of them were very good teachers. My first teacher was Martha Putnam, afterwards Mrs. Nathaniel F. Cunningham. Of her as a teacher I can recall nothing. Her father, Major Daniel Putnam, was the principal trader in the village. For the time and place his accumulations were very large. Nancy Stearns, afterwards Mrs. Benjamin Snow, was the teacher of the summer school for many years. But beyond comparison Cyrus Kilburn was the best teacher of the town, and a person who would have ranked high among teachers at any period in the history of the State. He was not a learned man in a large sense, but his habit was to investigate the subjects within his scope, with great thoroughness. Grammar was his favorite study, and he devised a system of analysis in parsing quite in advance of the time. He had the faculty of putting questions and of changing them to meet the capacities of the pupils. He compelled thinking. I attended the winter school about ten terms, and of these not less than six terms were taught by Mr. Kilburn.
In later years we had Colburn’s Sequel as the arithmetic. From this I passed to algebra and geometry, and during the last two terms I studied Latin grammar. My school-going days ended in February, 1835, a month after my seventeenth birthday.
- ↑ During the session of the Legislature of 1843 or 1844, I walked with my father on the ice from Boston to Fort Warren, a distance of about three miles. The authorities were then engaged in cutting a channel for the departure of a Cunard steamer.