Mary Caroline Crawford

“ The prisoner's counsel were two very clever young lawyers who afterward came to be men of great distinction in Massachusetts—no others, in fact, than Harrison Gray Otis and John Lowell. These men advanced very clever arguments to show that Elizabeth Fales, maddened by a love which seemed unlikely ever to end in marriage, had seized from Jason the large knife which he was using to mend a quill pen as he walked to meet her, and with this knife had inflicted upon herself the terrible wounds, from the effect of which she died almost instantaneously. ”

“ Ripley was largely in charge, and it was not until early fall—September 29—that the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education was organised as a kind of joint stock company, not incorporated.
A seeker after country quiet and beauty might easily be as much attracted to-day by the undulating acres of Brook Farm as were those who sought it sixty years ago as a refuge from social discouragement. The brook still babbles cheerily as it threads its way through the meadows, and there are still pleasant pastures and shady groves on the large estate. ”

“ The country about Hopkinton was then as to-day a wonder of hill and valley, meadow and stream, while only a dozen miles or so from Frankland Hall was the famous Wayside Inn. That Sir Harry's Arcady never came to bore him was, perhaps, due to this last fact. Whenever guests were desired the men from Boston could easily ride out to the inn and canter over to the Hall, to enjoy the good wines and the bright talk the place afforded. ”

“ Of the quaint ancestral homes still standing in the old Granite State, none is more picturesque or more interesting from the historical view-point than the Stark house in the little town of Dunbarton, a place about five miles' drive out from Concord, over one of those charming country roads, which properly make New Hampshire the summer and autumn Mecca of those who have been "long in populous city pent." Rather oddly, this house has, for all its great wealth of historical interest, been little known to the general public. ”

“ Though an old man whose hair was whitened with the snows of eighty winters, he "was laid on his back, a board placed on his body with as great a weight upon it as he could endure, while his sole diet consisted of a few morsels of bread one day, and a draught of water the alternate day until death put an end to his sufferings." ”

“ Here, however, her master had become discouraged with the idea of her maintaining the march, and burying his tomahawk in her head he left her dead. Mrs. Williams was the daughter of Reverend Eleazer Mather, the first minister of Northampton—an educated, refined, and noble woman. It is pleasant, while musing upon her sad fate, to recall that her body was found and brought back to Deerfield, where, long years after, her husband was laid by her side. And there to-day sleeps the dust of the pair beneath stones which inform the stranger of the interesting spot. ”

“ What General Ward has done to and for China is as yet but imperfectly known, for those whose duty it is to transfer to posterity a record of this great man are either so wrapped in speculation as to how to build themselves up on his deeds of the [Pg 354] past time, or are so fearful that any comment on any subject regarding him may detract from their ability, that with his last breath they allow all that appertains to him to be buried in the tomb. Not one in ten thousand of them could at all approach him in military genius, in courage, and in resource, or do anything like what he did. ”

“ One of the most interesting of the phenomena to be noted by the student of historical houses is the tenacity of tradition. People may be told again and again that a story attributed to a certain site has been proven untrue, but they still look with veneration on a place which has been hallowed many years, and refuse to give up any alluring name by which they have known it. A notable example of this is offered by what is universally called the Old Witch House, situated at the corner of Essex and North Streets, Salem. ”

“ Hutchinson seems to have been New England's first clubwoman. Never before had women come together for independent thought and action. To be sure, nothing more lively than the sermon preached the Sunday before was ever discussed at these gatherings, but the talk was always pithy and bright, the leader's wit was always ready, and soon the house at the corner of what is now School Street came to be widely celebrated as the centre of an influence so strong and far-reaching as to make the very ministers jealous and fearful. ”

“ Few, indeed, are the homes in America which contain so much which, while of intimate interest to the family, is as well of wide historical importance. Though a home, the house has the value of a museum. The portrait of Major Stark, which hangs in the parlour at the right of the square entrance-hall, was painted by Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the discoverer of the electric telegraph, a man who wished to come down to posterity as an artist, but is now remembered by us only as an inventor. ”

“ No one loves me. But I love many a good deal, and see some way into their eventful beauty.... I am myself growing better, and shall by and by be a worthy object of love, one that will not anywhere disappoint or need forbearance.... I have no child, and the woman in me has so craved this experience that it has seemed the want of it must paralyse me...."
The circumstances under which Margaret Fuller and her husband first met are full of interest. ”

“ Concerning the visitors attracted to Concord by the great original thinker who was Hawthorne's near neighbour, the romancer speaks with less delicate sympathy: "Never was a poor little country village infested with such a variety of queer, strangely dressed, oddly behaved mortals, most of whom look upon themselves to be important agents of the world's destiny, yet are simply bores of a very intense character." ”

“ Young people of good family did not marry a hundred years ago without thinking, and thinking to some purpose, of what cares and expense the future might bring them. The man, if he was an honourable man, expected always to have a home for his wife, and since Fairbanks was an invalid, "debilitated in his right arm," as the phrasing of the time put it, and had never been able to do his part of the farm work, he had lived what his stern forebears would have called an idle life, and consequently utterly lacked the means to marry. ”

“ There are many points of view from which this tale of Paul Revere may be told, but to the generality of people the interest of the poem, and of the historical event itself, will always centre around Christ Church, on Salem Street, in the North End of Boston—the church where the lanterns were hung out on the night before the battles of Lexington and Concord. At nearly every hour of the day some one may be seen in the now unfrequented street looking up at the edifice's lofty spire with an expression full of reverence and satisfaction. ”

“ My place of residence and the adjoining country are beyond description delightsome.... Indeed, were it not for the ravages of war, of which I have seen more here than in Massachusetts, this part of our great continent would become a paradisiacal elysium. Heaven condescend [Pg 179] that a speedy peace may constitute us a happy and independent nation: when the husband shall again be restored to his amiable consort, to wipe her sorrowing tear, the son to the embraces of his mourning parents, and the lover to the tender, disconsolate, and half-distracted object of his love. ”

“ THE ROMANCE OF OLD NEW ENGLAND ROOFTREES THE HEIR OF SWIFT'S VANESSA
Nowhere in the annals of our history is recorded an odder phase of curious fortune than that by which Bishop Berkeley, of Cloyne, was enabled early in the eighteenth century to sail o'erseas to Newport, Rhode Island, there to build (in 1729) the beautiful old place, Whitehall, which is still standing. ”

“ Greeley brought Boston's high priestess to New York for the purpose of putting the literary criticism of the Tribune on a higher plane than any American newspaper then occupied, as well as that she might discuss in a large and stimulating way all philanthropic questions. That she rose to the former opportunity her enemies would be the first to grant, but only those who, like Margaret herself, believe in the sisterhood of women could freely endorse her attitude on philanthropic subjects. ”

“ At first, their relations seem to have been simply those of teacher and pupil, and this phase of the matter it is which is most particularly described in the famous poem, "Cadenus and Vanessa," written at Windsor in 1713, and first published after Vanessa's death.
Human nature has perhaps never before or since presented the spectacle of a man of such transcendent powers as Swift involved in such a pitiable labyrinth of the affections as marked his whole life. Pride or ambition led him to postpone indefinitely his marriage with Stella, to whom he was early attached. ”

“ Hundreds of interested visitors drive every summer to the old house, to take a cup of tea, to muse on the strange story [Pg 12] with which the ancient dwelling is connected, and to pay the meed of respectful memory to the eminent philosopher who there lived and wrote. ”

“ The old mansion on the Weare road has been the home during its one hundred and ten years of life of several women who would have adorned, both by reason of their personal and intellectual charms, any position in our land. This being true, it is not odd that the country folk speak of the Stark family with deepest reverence.
Beside building the family homestead, Caleb Stark did two other things which serve to make him distinguished even in a family where all were great. He entertained Lafayette, and he accumulated the family fortune. ”

“ One hundred years ago there was committed in Dedham, Massachusetts, one of the most famous murders of this country, a crime, some description of which falls naturally enough into these chapters, inasmuch as the person punished as the criminal belonged to the illustrious Fairbanks family, whose picturesque homestead is widely known as one of the oldest houses in New England. ”

“ Thus in the tragedy of an Indian massacre was quenched the light of the most remarkable intellect Boston has ever made historic by misunderstanding.
Hawthorne, in writing in his early manhood of Mrs. Hutchinson ("Biographical Sketches") , humourously remarked, Seer that he was: "There are portentous indications, changes gradually taking place in the habits and feelings of the gentler sex, which seem to threaten our posterity with many of those public women whereof one was a burden too grievous for our fathers." ”

“ A man who, while still [Pg 92] a youth, was adopted by the Mohawk Indians,—who who bestowed upon him the significant name of Boiling Water,—who was at one time aid-de-camp and intimate friend of the King of Poland, who rendered good service in the Russian war against the Turks,—all before interesting himself at all in the cause of American freedom,—could scarcely be expected to be as simple in his us-ward emotions as an Israel Putnam or a General John Stark might be. ”

“ This passion eventually proved the girl's perdition,—and was, as we shall see, the cause of a will which enabled Dean Berkeley to carry out his dear and cherished scheme of coming to America.
Swift's journal, frank about nearly everything else in the man's life, is significantly silent concerning Esther Vanhomrigh. And in truth there was little to be said to anybody, and nothing at all to be confided to Stella, in regard to this unhappy affair. ”

“ When one reads in the old records the entries for Frankland's salary, and finds that they mount up to not more than £100 sterling a year, one wonders that the young nobleman should have been so ready to take upon himself the expenses of a girl's elegant education. But it must be remembered that the gallant Harry had money in his own right, besides many perquisites of office, which made his income a really splendid one. Certainly he spared no expense upon his ward. ”

“ In the dream, a serpent bade her "arise, stand on your feet, gird yourself, and prepare to encounter your enemy." This, according to the chronicler's interpretation, was one underlying cause of Deborah's subsequent decision to enlist as a soldier.
Yet her mother's wish that she should [Pg 174] marry a man for whom she felt no love is also suggested as a cause, and there is a hint, too, that the death in the battle of Long Island, New York, of a man to whom she was attached, gave the final impulse to her plan. ”

“ Hawthorne's genius has conjured up the scene at Boston's first "parlour talks," so that we too may attend and be one among the "crowd of hooded women and men in steeple hats and close-cropped hair ... assembled at the door and open windows of a house newly-built. An earnest expression glows in every face ... and some press inward as if the bread of life were to be dealt forth, and they feared to lose their share."
In plain English Ann Hutchinson's doctrines were these: "She held and advocated as the highest truth," writes Mr. ”

“ The most beautiful example of wifely devotion to be found in the annals connected with the war of the Revolution is that afforded by the story of the lovely Baroness Riedesel, whose husband was deputed to serve at the head of the German mercenaries allied to the king's troops, and who was herself, with the baron and her children, made prisoner of war after the battle of Saratoga. ”

“ That the wise Shakespeare spoke the truth when he observed that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin" has never been better exemplified than in the affectionate tenderness with which all sorts and conditions of men join in singing a song like "The Old Oaken Bucket." As one hears this ballad in a crowded room, or even as so often given—in a New England play like "The Old Homestead," one does not stop to analyse one's sensations ”

“ And now, of course, Martha had her chariot, from which she could look down as disdainfully as did the Earl of Halifax on the humble folk who needs must walk. The sudden elevation seems, indeed, to have gone to my lady's head. For tradition says that very shortly after her marriage Martha dropped her ring and summoned one of her late kitchen colleagues to rescue it from the floor. But the colleague had quickly become shortsighted, and Martha, dismissing her hastily, picked up the circlet herself. ”

“ Moreover the memory of the man's beautiful, unselfish life pervades this section of Rhode Island, and the story of his sweetness and patience under a keen and unexpected disappointment furnishes one of the most satisfying pages in our early history. ”