Various

“ New England’s best traits, then, are but her rightful inheritance; traits “lineally descended” from her founders, softened and purified in the transmitting many times, as in the case of their sectional loyalty. “They seemed to shrink from trying to get to heaven by any other road than that which their fathers travelled, lest they should miss them at their journey’s end.”
And in these days, thank God! religious toleration is creeping over the forbidding rock of New England theology, much as the delicate vines of the May-flower crept over and beautified the hard, unyielding soil. ”

“ Hale, instilling by the quiet weapon of the pen strong, true lessons of benevolence and truth; men like Longfellow, singing, pure, earnest songs of high endeavor and noble attainment; men like Whittier, whose simple, touching strains move so grandly on the side of right and justice.
Women like Mrs. Stowe, who, in her great strength of mind and character, wrote that wonderful book, which, inspired by zeal, and fired by a terrible earnestness, filled New England once with something of her own noble enthusiasm. ”

“ The struggle for American independence was at last over, and the lusty young Republic, springing, Minerva-like, from the mighty brain of a no longer imperilled freedom, was ready to throw down the gauntlet of defiance to all the world, and assert her rights as queen regnant of the great Western World. ”

“ Thus New England stands, in her freedom, love of education, and all those homely domestic traits which make her the comfortable, clever, strong, and tender mother she is, while under and through and over all her traits runs, like a strain of restful music, her great, all powerful, far-reaching faith. ”

“ Equal simplicity in dress prevailed, and a gown of bombazette—a very narrow, all-wool goods, worth from seventy-five cents to a dollar a yard,—was often worn for best during the owner’s lifetime, and at her death bequeathed, with the fondly-cherished string of gold beads, to the favorite granddaughter, as a precious legacy.
For common wear, pressed home-made and home-dyed flannel in winter; and cotton and linen, woven in colored stripes or plaids, for summer, was considered plenty good enough, even for the doctor’s and minister’s wives. ”

“ We have yet to learn of any public school in which flouting at the Bible or religion enters into the matter of instruction, and we apprehend that the number of teachers who thus misuse their office really constitutes so small a fraction of the teaching community as to be hardly worthy the learned doctor’s attention. As a matter of fact, by far the greater number of American teachers in public schools and private schools, whatever their faults otherwise, are men and women who are either Christians, or filled with a reverent regard for the Bible and its teachings. ”

“ As indefinable as it is delightful, it comes with a lightning flash of wit into the dry, theological conversation of the preacher, relieves with its sharp hits the spread-eagle speech of the country orator, brightens with its apt allusions the more refined periods of the lecturer, flits charmingly in and out of the sympathetic essays of Holmes, keeps us in a perpetual chuckle over the mirthful pages of Irving, and embodies itself in the quaint good-nature of an indolent, contemplative Sam Lawson. ”

“ The wide prospect from Andover Hill is suggestive of the world-wide fame of the school; and the lovely elm-shaded park, in which stand the buildings of the Theological Seminary, and the church where the members of the academy worship, is a hardly less peaceful and charming scholar’s retreat than are those of the college gardens of Oxford and Cambridge. ”

“ So far as the new education so strenuously advocated in our day honors and observes the eternal laws of the mind, we can afford to contemplate the new ventures with equanimity, if not with hope; but there is reason to fear that the almost unlimited freedom of individual choice as to subjects of study accorded to young and inexperienced minds in colleges where new departures have been taken is scarcely compatible with the compliance those laws rigidly require. ”

“ The serpent was an honorable member of the animal community in Paradise before Ithuriel’s “spear of heaven-tempered steel” discovered Satan, in the shape of a toad, breathing into the ear of the sleeping “Mother of Mankind” deadly insinuations of disobedience and rebellion, just as freedom in religion—the serpent so unworthily abhorred by New England Puritanism—was a divinely chartered and precious privilege of mankind long before the founding of Rhode Island colonies or the birth of Roger Williams. ”

“ Great political convulsions sift peoples as the wind sifts the wheat on the summer threshing-floor, bringing into prominence their best as well as their worst features. They furnish occasion for the development and display of all that is noblest in mankind, and they offer equal scope and opportunity to all the baser susceptibilities and passions of our nature. ”

“ During the first hundred years of colonial history King and Parliament, occupied with affairs of an absorbing character at home, knew little, and cared even less, about the fate and fortunes of the men and women, who, for the sake of conscience and religious freedom, had left the land of their birth and best affection, and were engaged in a heroic contest with nature, on a wild, desolate, and distant coast. ”

“ The very poor then, as now, were forced to content themselves with the barest decencies of life. But the respectable middle classes,—the farmers, mechanics, and small merchants,—were put to the greatest straits to keep up an appearance of respectability and comfort, with scant conveniences, and few or none of even the simplest elegancies of life, in dwelling, dress, or furniture.
The principal room of a New England farm-house was the kitchen, which was usually large enough to serve for a cooking, dining, and sitting room, all in one. ”

“ No one is fitted for the duties of to-day who dreads the spirit of free inquiry that breathes around him, and fearlessly addresses its questions in every direction. Especially should new and better hints be welcomed as to the true science and method of instructing the youthful mind. ”

“ Occasionally opportunity is given us of measuring “with the eye” the distance which has been travelled. More than a hundred and fifty years ago Dr. Cotton Mather spoke of Rhode Island as “the Gerizzim of New England, the common receptacle of the convicts of Jerusalem and the outcasts of the land.” The island itself, as a portion of God’s creation, he was willing to think worthy of all praise. He seems to have felt regarding it as Bishop Heber felt about India when he wrote his immortal missionary hymn:—
“And every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile.” ”

“ On account of the scarcity of cotton, our modern “comfortables” were a thing unheard of, and, for a substitute, woollen quilts, stuffed with wool, and closely quilted, often in the most elaborate patterns, were used in all New England households. These quilts were often few and thin in many a poor home, where the elders had hard work to shield their flock of little ones from the bitter cold of winter, in spite of the immense fires that even the poorest were able to provide where any amount of fuel could be had for the cutting. ”

“ If there was little of poetry or romance in the lives of those hard-working, hard farming men and women of a past generation, there was no lack of the patient diligence and simple, unquestioning faith, that give strength to weakness, and sweeten toil with the steadfast belief that, to the faithful heart and willing hand God’s blessing never fails. ”

“ In the country, too, as if growing and blossoming under the [Pg 376] influence of the warm, unobstructed sunshine, is the sturdy growth of genuineness, hearty, coöperative sympathy, and cheery hospitality, the latter having its highest exponent in New England’s distinctive festival, Thanksgiving. The dear old holiday may well be called the cradle of New England graces, for it bears much the same relation to the development of her social traits that the old Greek and Roman games bore in developing characteristics of strength and bravery. ”

“ Patriotic, religious, philosophical, and a true lover of nature, yet Bryant cannot, in any mood, be styled one of our fireside poets, like Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell.
[Pg 367] Perhaps he failed to see in the then bare loneliness of the typical New England home a beauty worth the attention of his fastidious and lofty-minded muse. And that New England homes, at that time, were bare of what we, to-day, deem the absolute necessities of life, no student of the past pretends to deny. ”

“ In few places can the local features of the great Revolutionary struggle be as well studied as in the ample and well-preserved records of Andover. It would take many pages to tell what the town did in council and on the field, in business, and at the fireside, to encourage the patriots. So loyal was the town that its citizens were greatly trusted, and a portion of Harvard College library was sent there for its greater safety. ”

“ The King of Great Britain is the best and most glorious monarch upon the globe, and his subjects the happiest in the universe.” And yet Lord Mansfield, whose marble figure stands proudly among those of other distinguished Englishmen in the corridor of the British House of Commons, defended him in Parliament, not as a loyalist, but as a revolutionist. “Otis” said he, “is a man of consequence among the people over there. It was said the man is mad. What then? One madman often makes many. ”

“ Country life has a way all its own of preserving the best traits of a people, and in more than one old-fashioned farm-house, and among the haymakers in more than one sunny meadow, may be heard the witty expressions and strong metaphors which led Dickens to say, “In shrewdness of remark and a certain cast-iron quaintness the Yankee people unquestionably take the lead.” ”

“ Naturally, this Umbilicus of the Western World set the fashions in theology, literature, dress, and manners for all New England, and any one who had made a trip to Boston was venerated as a kind of travelled wonder, and forever after regarded as an authority upon all mooted points of general interest.
It has been said, on what authority I am unable to state, that “all good Americans go to Paris when they die.” ”

“ From this small beginning the school has developed into the widely-famed Academy, which numbers more than three thousand graduates, and under whose instruction have passed about eleven thousand pupils. The limits of this article prevent a notice of those alumni who have become justly famous, and also of the very strong faculty of instructors, at whose head stands one of the foremost of American educators, under whose wise direction Phillips is fast becoming the synonyme of Rugby, and is already one of the important sources of supply of student-life for Harvard and Yale. ”

“ To-day the bust of our own Longfellow stands in Westminster Abbey, side by side with a Chaucer and a Shakspere, while not only the English-speaking world on both sides of the ocean, but the dwellers in sunny Italy, upon the frozen steppes of Russia, and in far-off Japan and India, sing and repeat, each in his own tongue, the stirring battle-hymns and sweet home-songs of the gifted singers of our Western World. ”

“ In this rapid and general view of the town, [A] all that will be attempted is to connect the past with the present, and to give a picture of Andover as it is to-day. [B]
The natural attractions of the town are great and permanent in their character. There are neither gold mines nor alarming precipices, but there are graceful rivers, a quiet rolling landscape, and extensive views, shaded walks, and charming drives, because there are “more roads than in any other town in New England;” ”

“ Woven plain, by the skilful hands of the housemother, and bleached upon the young grass under the blossoming apple boughs, the cloth served for the underwear of the family, and was regarded as one of the few luxuries of the frugal household,—the raw cotton costing over fifty cents a pound, to say nothing of the time and labor required to convert it into cloth. ”

“ But while it is true that each generation must have liberty to do its work in its own way, no generation can afford to despise or disparage the wisdom and experience of previous ages, or to institute reforms which revolutionize the methods and the principles of the past. The intellectual triumphs and achievements which are the goal of one age are indeed no more than the starting-point of the next ”

“ And this is but the outgrowth of that short formula of the brave founders of school and church: “Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work;” so that New England’s present traits are directly traceable to Puritan influence.
Our educational institutions had substantial foundation-stones of self-sacrifice and far-seeing purpose, nobly laid by that score of sturdy men, dedicating, for the first academy, a peck of corn, or a shilling in cash, or a few treasured volumes. ”

“ Some writer says, that, if for no other reason, there should be a new fire-proof building for the Public Library for the better preservation of the Shakespeare collection and the Prince Library. The valuable editions of Shakespeare arranged in glass cases in the Bates Hall are no doubt familiar to many people, but it is possible that the majority even of the daily visitors to this institution have no definite knowledge of the Prince Library, which is found, on examination, to contain a fund for the curious, as well as many things of importance to the antiquarian. ”

“ Suddenly she started, uttering a slight cry, then sank back against the tree with a sigh of relief as she recognized a tall young Indian who approached her.
“Ah! is it you, Ninigret?”
“Yes, Millicent; fear not, there is no foe near; and if there were I would protect you. Why do you tremble so?”
“Is it strange I tremble at the least noise, when the sound of a footstep or the rustling of a leaf may mean instant death to me? The forest is full of enemies. They lurk in every by-path. Behind every bush or fair spreading tree may be seen their leering faces. ”

“ Many a man, and woman too, whose names are, to-day, blessed and honored by thousands of grateful hearts all over the land, dreamed then their first misty, childish dreams of a grand and helpful manhood and womanhood, and felt swelling up within their young souls inexpressible longings to help right the wrongs of the down-trodden and oppressed, which they heard their elders talk of, and deplore as past remedy. ”