William L. Stone

“ The rising glories of this western hemisphere have scarcely yet begun to be developed; and as Mr. and Mrs. Wheelwright have been deeply impressed with the importance, in a young and rising republic, of having the youth of the land, of both sexes, reared in the paths of virtue and the intellectual flower-garden of knowledge, they have determined to devote their best faculties to the sacred cause of education,—fully believing, from the inexpressible interest they feel upon the subject, that they shall be enabled to exclaim with the immortal poet ”

“ The eye of man has seldom rested upon such a scene of stern and unmitigated poverty. Shylock or Sir Giles Overreach—aye!—any body but a pawn-broker—would have melted into tears at the spectacle. The children, almost naked, had just been taken to the fire-side of a poor Irish neighbor, to keep their benumbed bodies from freezing to the heart. I was appalled for the moment, as I gazed about upon this unexampled picture of destitution. Before me, seated on his haunches upon the hearth, was poor Wheelwright, resting his chin upon his hand,—and "the woman"—unfortunately his wife—by his side. ”

“ If there is any thing in this world that can subdue the passions, damp the ardor, or quench the spirit of a man, it is biting, remediless, hopeless poverty. Many are the minds, far more powerful than that of Mr. Wheelwright, which have sunk under its chilling influence. ”

“ Knowing that there was little hope for the abatement of the pestilence, and none of its extinction, until after a severe frost, the exiled citizens were never before so anxious for the frosty foretaste of winter. But the heavens continued cloudless, and week after week of ethereal mildness succeeded, until past the middle of October.
It was during this protracted season of sunny weather, that for several days in succession, I observed my old friend Wheelwright passing the window of my temporary office, in company and close conversation with a lady clad in the deepest habiliments of mourning. ”

“ One of the patriotic members of the city government, distinguished for his enterprise, and his public spirit, undertook the job, and gave to the ancient walls of unhewn stone their existing "form and pressure;"—at an amount, too, not much exceeding, probably, twice the cost of two new buildings of the same dimensions.
Architecture is one of the crowning glories of a city; and nothing more strongly indicates the cultivation of a people, than refinement in this beautiful department of science. ”

“ But it is a sad mistake. "Great cities," says the philosopher of Monticello, "are great sores;" and if the envious and discontented poor know little of the splendid misery of the fancied rich,—of the number of aching heads and hearts upon beds of down,—much less do the truly rich, living within great cities, and the world at large without them,—know of the wretchedness and the crime, the poverty and the woe, to be found in the great and crowded marts of trade and commerce in every country. ”

“ Religion appeals to man, not by ghosts and frightful apparitions. It appeals to their reason, their conscience, their hopes, and their fears.—It sets life and death soberly before men, and if they will not choose the former they must die. ”

“ The lunar circle betokens a tempest;—modern writers on pneumatics affirm every breeze that blows, from the gentle-breathing zephyr to the rude northeastern blast, to be a whirlwind; and the beautiful hues of the iris, bright with hope and promise, play upon the melting clouds in the segment of a circle. ”

“ It was during the latter days of the venerable "Poppy Lownds," as the worthy old jailer was called, who for so long a succession of years had presided over the internal police of the prison. He was a kind-hearted old gentleman; and amidst all the storms and vicissitudes of party, was never removed from office during his life-time—for the good reason, probably, among others, that the venerable officer had grown so lusty in his place, that it was impossible to remove him out of it, without removing a portion of the prison walls also. ”

“ There is no more charitable people in the world than those of New-York. Let any case of distress be presented—any call of real suffering—which has actually been ascertained, and is vouched for by a respectable citizen, the hearts of the New-Yorkers will instantly respond to the appeal. Two or three hours of active exertion, therefore, enabled me to obtain the means, and procure all the supplies actually necessary; and in three days' time Wheelwright and his family were comfortably furnished with bedding, clothing, fuel, and provisions for the residue of the season of snows. ”

“ Of misery!"
Never in my life, in any place, or under any circumstances, had I before entered a human abode of such perfect and entire destitution as that of poor Wheelwright! It was a wretched apology for a house, at best, containing two stories, of two rooms upon a floor each. The upper apartments were occupied by several poor Irish families. The front room below had been Wheelwright's workshop, and the family lived in the room back of it. Both looked as though they had been swept and garnished by the hand of Famine herself. Not a single article of furniture, of any description, was left! ”

“ This is truly the age of intellectual improvement, and in every form and manner exertions are multiplied to advance it. Daily the unwearied press teems with new publications in aid of truth and knowledge. Compendiums, abridgments, and compressments of scientific lore, rapidly succeed each other in their pretensions to public favor; and it is now a point of competition amongst authors and publishers to give the greatest quantity of valuable information for the least money. ”

“ At the close of the term he returned to the country, and resumed Cheselden. But he yet preferred the society of the ladies—accompanying them in their morning walks, and at their evening parties. And with them all he was a favorite—of a particular description. Full of good nature—easy and accommodating in his disposition, ever ready to oblige, when any of the fair were in distress for a beau, he could always be had, and even felt honored to be called upon such service, when it was not desirable to take such a liberty with gallants of a different cast and temperament. ”

“ Who knows but the beauty of the new commercial exchange that is to be, will cause gladness to those who wept alike over the ugliness and the destruction of the old! Who knows but that a grinning populace will one day displace the lions grinning from the gutters at the eaves of the new stone church in Duane-street! And who knows but that in process of time, American architects will be found who shall understand the difference between the Composite and the Corinthian, and that a long sperm candle was never intended as a model for a Doric column! ”

“ The privileges of a college were to be obtained, with the power of conferring the same degrees upon female students, as upon males—forgetting, in their ardor, that the constitution of female Bachelors and Masters of Arts would be a misnomer in any other country than Ireland. In one word, there was to be no other classical institution, in this country or any other, comparable with it—and to it the nuns of Canada, the Moravians of Bethlehem, and the azure-hosed professors of modern Ilium, would forever thereafter be compelled to send for instructers. ”

“ There is no interminable flow of lazy words. Every word is active and does its work well. There are no fanciful expositions. There are no tedious display of learning.
There may be passages in which we should differ from the writer in some of the minor shades of meaning. There may be sometimes an unguarded expression which has escaped our notice. We have not scrutinized the volumes with the eye of a critic. But we have used them in our private reading. We have used them in our family. And we have invariably read them with profit and delight. ”

“ It is well known how much the intellectual character of the child depends on that of the mother, and yet girls are brought up and educated as if they were born only to buzz and flutter on the stage of life, instead of forming the character of a future generation of men.—Montreal Gazette. ”

“ Thus ends the history of Doctor Daniel Wheelwright in New-York.
"It is the end," says the Bard of Avon, "that crowns all;" and bringing these "passages" in the life of my friend to a close, from the position in which I shall leave him, the reader may perhaps agree with the same illustrious poet:—
"More are men's ends mark'd than their lives before." ”

“ As the curve is the true line of beauty, and as the circle in Egyptian hieroglyphics is ever used as the symbol of renewed life—the type or sign of the generative principle—so the motion produced by the centripetal and centrifugal forces, seems to be that of nature. ”

“ But with a people who have once tasted the sweets of liberty, this kind of tranquillity is short. Maddened by wrongs, real or supposed, they are soon prepared again to rush into the death-dance of revolution. ”

“ The mellifluous bard of Twickenham was egregiously mistaken when he pronounced "a little learning" to be "a dangerous thing." Had it not been for the modicum of letters, small as it was, acquired by Mr. Wheelwright, at the school of which I had occasion to speak early in the present history, to say nothing, as seems most meet, of the university, his family would now have been rather short of bread and butter. ”

“ All you wanted was the right numbers!"
"Exactly so: but it's no use to cry over spilt milk, you know; and besides, that fellow the manager has failed, so that it's all blanks and no prizes, and I am as well off as others. But if I could dream as well as that Mr. Clark did, with his eyes open, in Richmond, I should like to go into Yates & M'Intyre's next scheme. It's well enough to have honest managers, you know."
"Very true, friend Wheelwright; but even then, it is the last 'way to wealth,' in my opinion, that any sensible man would take—on calculation." ”

“ Daniel Wheelwright is known to have had a father and mother, so likewise he must have had grand-parents. And these were, doubtless, sensible and judicious people, more desirous of being industrious and useful, than what the world calls great. ”

“ Whatever else may be said of the writer, it cannot be predicated of him, as by Addison of a certain class of biographers of his day, "that they watched for the death of a great man, like so many undertakers, on purpose to make a penny by him." The subject of this little volume is neither a great man, nor, happily, is he yet numbered among the dead. Should it then be asked, Why write about small men at all, or, in any event, until after they are dead? The answer is at hand: it is the fashion of the times in which we live. ”

“ Let the parent learn, before he resolves to educate his son, the importance of ascertaining whether his son was ever designed for professional life. The weak vanity of a parent has frequently ruined his son, and brought down his own gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. ”

“ My hands were my only resources from day to day;—my working tools, and every article of furniture in the house, to the last blanket, the last shirt, and my wife's last shawl, have been pawned at the broker's, to enable us to keep the breath of life in us. ”

“ Wheelwright was in turn discomfitted, and compelled to descend headlong down stairs, in rather too quick time for her comfort, with a cataract of Irish women tumbling after her. Wheelwright ran to the rescue of his help-meet, and pulling her through the door, endeavored to shut it on the instant, to keep out the foe; in doing which the proboscis of Mistress Pettit, which was truly of the Strasburgh order, was unhappily and literally caught in the door crack, and beyond all question somewhat injured thereby. ”

“ The taste of the Greeks in the arts has contributed more to their glory than their deeds in arms. The chisel of Phidias carved for him a name of more true renown, than the sword did for Alexander; and the name of Sir Christopher Wren will live as long in English history as the Duke of Wellington's. Every patriotic Gothamite, therefore, should rejoice at each successive indication of an improvement in architectural taste amongst us. ”

“ The sufferings of the wicked in hell will be indescribably great. Think what is represented by torment, by burning flame, by insupportable thirst, by that state when a single drop of water would afford relief. Remember that all this is but a representation of the pains of the damned, and that this will have no relief, day nor night, but will continue from year to year, and age to age, and without any end, and you have a faint view of the sufferings of those who are in hell. ”

“ In a frequented establishment, each day unfolds an ample catalogue of sorrow, misery, and guilt, developed in forms and combinations almost innumerable; and if the history of each customer could be known, the result would be such a catalogue as would scarcely be surpassed even by the records of a police-office or a prison. Even my brief stay while arranging for the redemption of Dr. Wheelwright's personals, afforded materials, as indicated in the last chapter, for much and painful meditation. ”

“ My friend's common-school education, therefore, was judged by his father to be all that was necessary for an honest man. But the woman prevailed,—as women generally do. It happened that at the distance of some sixty or seventy miles farther up the vale of the Mohawk, lived a man whom she had previously known in New-Jersey, and whose occupation was that of "teaching young ideas how to shoot"—not grouse and woodcock, but to shoot forth into scions of learning. He had a son whom he desired exceedingly to send to college ”