Various

“ An untiring, sleepless man, prodigal of his energies in the development of the Herald into a great world-paper, Mr. Holmes is a type of that distinctively modern development, the "newspaper man." Men of adventurous minds, of breadth of view, and delighting in positive achievements, take to journalism in these days as in the sixteenth century they became navigators of the globe, explorers of distant regions, and founders of new empires. ”

“ In the long list of illustrious men who have held the high office of President of the United States, a few names stand out with such prominence as to be constantly before the American people. While Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, Jackson, Grant, and others, did the country service that never will be forgotten, it is indisputable that Washington, Lincoln, and Garfield gained a firmer hold upon the confidence and affection of the masses than any others. ”

“ It is the popular university to which thousands upon thousands of readers resort daily for intelligent comment on the events of the world—the great wars, the suggestions of science, the achievements of the engineers, home and foreign politics, etc. That such a great newspaper as the Herald, wherein the elucidating comment is kept up from day to day by cultivated writers trained in journalism, must perform many of the functions of a university is clear. The news columns of the Herald are a perfect mirror of the great world's busy life. ”

“ No one claims for him political infallibility, and his warmest admirer will admit that he, like other men, has faults. But those who look upon Mr. Blaine as an impetuous and rash politician have but to read his letter of acceptance to see how unjust that judgment is. Calm, dignified, and scholarly, it discusses with consummate ability the issues that to-day are engaging the attention of the American people, and whether it be the tariff question or our foreign policy, he shows a familiarity with the subject that at once stamps him as a man of remarkable versatility and rare accomplishments. ”

“ But few towns in Massachusetts offer to summer visitors as many attractions as does Princeton. The air is clear and bracing, the landscape charming, and the pleasant, shady woodroads afford opportunities for drives through most picturesque scenery. Near at hand is the lake, and above it towers Wachusett. It has been proposed to run a railroad up to and around the mountain, but thus far, fortunately, nothing has come of it. A fine road of easy ascent winds up the mountain, and on the summit is a good hotel which is annually patronized by thousands of transient visitors. ”

“ The quality of the work of reporters and correspondents has been vastly bettered, and the number of special writers engaged has been gradually enlarged; subjects which were once relegated to the monthlies and quarterlies for discussion are now treated by the daily press in a style which, if less ponderous, is nevertheless lucid and not unbefitting their importance. In short, the tone of the American newspaper has been elevated without the loss of its popular characteristics, and the tastes of its readers have thereby—unconsciously, perhaps, but none the less surely—been refined. ”

“ In its closely-printed columns the Herald has, during the last decade, given to its readers a cyclopædia of the world's daily doings. Portraitures of men of affairs done by skilled writers, the fullest records of contemporaneous events, the gossip and news of the chief towns of the globe,—all this has made up a complete record to which the future historian may turn. ”

“ A week is a short time to devote to seeing all that this queen city has that is interesting, and that included every day we spent there. Neither in a sketch like the present shall we have space to give more than we have done—a general idea of the city. One day about noon we steamed out of the harbor, on a magnificent lake-steamer, bound for Duluth. ”

“ Blaine made journalism merely a means to an end, discarding it as soon as it had served his purpose. Blaine has made a systematic and thorough study of politics and political affairs. Constitutional history and international law he made it his business to master. Above all, he has studied men, has learned by careful observation how to handle, to mould, to use his fellow-beings. No man in America to-day is more learned in everything pertaining to the science of statesmanship than James G. Blaine. ”

“ The enormous amount of detail work in a great paper is not easily to be conveyed to the non-professional reader. From the managing editor, whose brain is employed in inventing new ideas for his subordinates to carry into execution, to that very important functionary, the proof-reader, who corrects the errors of the types, there is a distracting amount of detail work performed every day. The Herald is managed with very little friction; the great machine runs as if oiled. ”

“ With such a man as a candidate the country may well congratulate itself that if he proves to be the choice of the majority he will, by his ability and experience, bring as great renown to the office as any of his predecessors, and that under his guidance the material prosperity and intellectual growth of the nation will be such as to gain for his administration great popular favor, the admiration of his friends, and the respect of all nations. ”

“ This city is the second in size of the five Great Lake ports, being outranked only by Chicago. Founded in 1801, it now boasts of a population of one hundred and sixty thousand souls. The site is a plain, which, from a point about two miles distant from the lake, slopes gently to the water's edge. The city has a water front of two and a half miles on the lake and of about the same extent on Niagara River. It has one of the finest harbors on the lake. The public buildings are costly and imposing edifices, and many of the private residences are elegant. ”

“ A friend has said of him as a journalist: "I have often thought that a great editor, as great perhaps as Horace Greeley, was lost when Mr. Blaine went into politics. He possesses all the qualities of a great journalist: he has a phenomenal memory; he remembers circumstances, dates, names, and places more readily than any other man I ever met."
Wielding a strong, vigorous, aggressive pen, Mr. Blaine soon made its power felt among politicians. He went to Maine at a time when the Whig and Democratic parties were breaking up. ”

“ There is a freedom in it that you do not get elsewhere. All the stiff formalties of conventional life are put aside: you are left free to enjoy yourself as you choose. All in all, it is the very best way we know to enjoy a "glorious vacation."
At Duluth, at Sault de Ste. Marie, at Mackinaw, at Saginaw, we wandered away days at a time, with nothing but our birch canoe, rifles, and fishing-rods, and for provisions, hard bread, pork, potatoes, coffee, tea, rice, butter, and sugar, closely packed. Any camper-out can make himself comfortable with an outfit as simple as the one named. ”

“ It has been my boast, in public and in private, that no man on the floor of Congress ever represented a constituency more distinguished for intelligence, for patriotism, for public and personal virtue. ”

“ Imagination cannot conceive the new influences which will be exercised on the affairs of the world when the great valley of the Mississippi, and the continent from Lake Superior to New Orleans, is thronged with population. In the valley of the Mississippi alone there is abundant room for a population of a hundred million. ”

“ He has appeared on the stump in almost every Northern State, and is an exceedingly popular and effective campaign speaker. But it is not when on the platform, speaking alone, that he has shown his greatest strength. He is strongest when hard pressed by opponents in parliamentary debate. He is a thorough believer in the organization of men who think alike for advancing their views. He believes that in order to carry out any great project it is necessary to have a party organization, not for the purpose of advancing individual interests, but to push ahead a great line of policy. ”

“ As the tide of emigration has rolled westward it has ever met that fiery counter-surge, and only overcome it by incessant battling and effort. And even now, as the distant shores of the Pacific are wellnigh reached, that resisting wave still gives forth its lurid flashes of conflict.
Mackinaw Island is only about three miles long and two in breadth, with a circuit of nine miles in all. It rises out of the lake to an average height of three hundred feet, and is heavily wooded with cedar, beech, maple, and yew. ”

“ No pains or expense have been spared to obtain the news from all quarters of the globe, and the paper's most violent opponent will find it impossible to substantiate a charge that the intelligence collected with such care and thoroughness has in a single instance been distorted or colored in the publication to suit the editorial policy pursued at the time. The expression of opinions has always, under the present management, been confined to the editorial columns, and here a course of absolute independence has been followed. ”

“ Now they can be counted up into the hundreds, and a well-established and successful newspaper is rated as one of the most profitable of business ventures. This advance in financial value has accompanied, and for the most part is due to, the improvement in the character of the publications, which has been going on steadily year by year. There has been a constant increase of enterprise in all directions, especially in that of gathering news, and with this has come the exercise of greater care and better taste in presenting the intelligence collected to the reading public. ”

“ With an abundance of capital, an ungrudging expenditure of money in the pursuit of news, a great working-force well disciplined and systematized, it goes on weekday after weekday, turning out nine editions daily, and on Sundays giving to the public sixteen closely-crowded pages, an intellectual bill-of-fare from which all may select according to individual preference. ”

“ His knowledge of facts, dates, events, men in our history, is not only remarkable, but almost unprecedented. It would be difficult to find a man in the United States who can, on the instant, without reference to book or note, give so many facts and statistics relating to the social and political history of our country. This has been the study of his life, and his memory is truly encyclopædic.
Mr. Blaine was not a poor man when he entered Congress in 1863, and he is not a millionaire now. For twenty years he has owned a valuable coal tract of several hundred acres near Pittsburgh. ”

“ The policy of the paper has been, while neglecting nothing of news value at home, and while photographing all events of local importance with fulness and accuracy, to keep its readers au courant with the world's progress. In all departments of sporting intelligence the Herald is an acknowledged authority; its dramatic news is fuller than that of any paper in the country; it "covers," to use a newspaper technicality, the world's metropolis on the banks of the Thames not with a single correspondent, but with a corps of able writers ”

“ But we can have no such regret for our lost comrades, buried not upon a foreign, nor upon an unfriendly shore, but in the bosom of the soil which their blood redeemed. Sacred is the tear that is shed for the unreturning brave. ”

“ The organization of the Herald force is almost ideally perfect. Its three proprietors, all of whom are still on the ascending grade of the hill of life, share in the daily duties of their vast establishment. Colonel Royal M. Pulsifer is the publisher of the paper, and has charge of the counting-room, the delivery, press, and composition rooms, the three last departments being under competent foremen. A large share of the wonderful business success of the Herald is due to his sagacity and liberality. He is a publisher who expends at long range, not expecting immediate returns. ”

“ Our return would be leisurely, stopping here and there, at out-of-the-way places, camping-out whenever the fancy seized us and the opportunity offered, to hunt, to fish, to rest, being for the time knight-errants of pleasure, or, as the Historian dubbed us, peripatetic philosophers, in search, not of the touchstone to make gold, but the touchstone to make health. ”

“ Numerous islands are scattered about the lake, some low and green, others rocky and rising precipitately to great heights directly up from the deep water. The coast of the lake is for the most part rocky. Nowhere upon the inland waters of North America is the scenery so bold and grand as around Lake Superior. Famous among travelers [55] are those precipitous walls of red sandstone on the south coast, described in all the earlier accounts of the lake as the "Pictured Rocks." They stand opposite the greatest width of the lake and exposed to the greatest force of the heavy storms from the north. ”

“ The question of a new meeting-house was now agitating the inhabitants of Dunstable. Their former building was in another Province, where different laws prevailed respecting the qualifications and settlement of ministers. It was clearly evident that another structure must be built, and the customary dispute of small communities arose in regard to its site. Some persons favored one locality, and others another; some wanted the centre of territory, and others the centre of population. ”

“ The rock of which Wachusett is mainly composed has rather obscure stratification, and hence may be called granitic gneiss. What stratification there is does not show the irregularity that one would suppose would result from the elevation of the mountain to so great a height above the surrounding country; on the other hand the rock does not differ essentially in hardness from that in the regions below, and hence the theory that all the adjacent land was once as high as the summit of the mountain, and was subsequently worn away by the action of water and weather, is hardly tenable. ”

“ It is somewhat remarkable that this ambitious young man should have gone East instead of West, choosing a State which the young men were fast leaving—one whose population in the last forty years has increased very little. He is, indeed, almost the only man who has gone East in the last half-century and risen to any prominence.
Mr. Blaine went to Maine in 1853, and soon afterward married Miss Stanwood, whose family are well known in New England. ”

“ He has constantly refused to take religious matters into politics, but his respect for his mother's belief has made him tolerant and charitable toward all sects. In his own house he is a man of culture and refinement, a genial host, a courteous gentlemen. No man in public life is more fortunate in his domestic relations. He is the companion and confidant of every one of his six children, and they fear him no more than they fear one of their own number. Mrs. Blaine is a model wife and mother. The eldest son, Walker Blaine, is a graduate of Yale College and of the Law School of Columbia College. ”

“ The tributaries of the Mississippi equal the largest rivers of Europe. The course of the Missouri is probably not less than twenty-five hundred miles. The Ohio winds above a thousand miles through fertile countries. The tributaries of these tributaries are great rivers. The Wabash, a feeder of the Ohio, has a course of above five hundred miles, four hundred of which are navigable. If the contemplated canal is ever completed which will unite Lake Michigan with the head of navigation on the Illinois River, it will be possible to proceed by lines of inland navigation from Quebec to New Orleans. ”

“ For us who have survived the perils of battle and the far more fatal diseases that wasted our forces, and for all who cherish the memory of these dead, it will always be a consoling thought that the Federal government has done so much to provide honorable sepulture for those who fell in defence of the Union. ”

“ In no country on the face of the globe has nature traced outlines of internal navigation on so grand a scale as upon our American continent. Entering the mouth of the St. Lawrence we are carried by that river through the Great Lakes to the head of Lake Superior, a distance of more than two thousand miles. On the south we find the Mississippi pouring its waters into the Gulf of Mexico, within a few degrees of the tropics after a course of three thousand miles. ”

“ Tradition lends its enchantment to the isle. According to the Indian legend it rose suddenly from the calm bosom of the lake at the sunset hour. In their fancy it took the form of a huge turtle, and so they bestowed upon it the name of Moc-che-ne-nock-e-nung. In the Ojibway mythology it became the home of the Great Fairies, and to this day it is said to be a sacred spot to all Indians who preserve the memory of the primal times. ”

“ The people of Princeton have always kept abreast of the times. From the first they were ardent supporters of the measures of the Revolution, and foremost among them in patriotic spirit was the Honorable Moses Gill, previously mentioned in this paper, who, on account of his devotion to the good cause, was called by Samuel Adams "The Duke of Princeton." Their strong adherence to the "state rights" principle led the people of the town to vote against the adoption of the Constitution of the United States ”