New Hampshire

“ Did you but know of him, New Hampshire has
One real reformer who would change the world
So it would be accepted by two classes,
Artists the minute they set up as artists,
Before, that is, they are themselves accepted,
And boys the minute they get out of college. ”

“ There's Bungey; and for Bungey there are towns,
Whole townships named but without population. [9]
Anything I can say about New Hampshire
Will serve almost as well about Vermont,
Excepting that they differ in their mountains.
The Vermont mountains stretch extended straight;
New Hampshire mountains curl up in a coil.
I had been coming to New Hampshire mountains.
And here I am and what am I to say?
Here first my theme becomes embarrassing.
Emerson said, "The God who made New Hampshire
Taunted the lofty land with little men." ”

“ Too many of the old homesteads of New Hampshire have gone to decay. Deserted and dilapidated buildings, decrepit fences, and unharvested crops of briers and weeds, where but a generation ago there were the homes of comfort, industry, and thrift, tell a sad story of what our state has done to supply the brain and brawn which have developed the resources of others. ”

“ It never could have happened in New Hampshire.
The only person really soiled with trade
I ever stumbled on in old New Hampshire
Was someone who had just come back ashamed
From selling things in California.
He’d built a noble mansard roof with balls
On turrets like Constantinople, deep
In woods some ten miles from a railroad station,
As if to put forever out of mind
The hope of being, as we say, received. ”

“ The legislature of New Hampshire, therefore, deem it unnecessary, by any train of arguments, to attempt further illustration of the propositions, the truth of which, it is confidently believed, at this day, is very generally seen and acknowledged. ”

“ The nearly even balance of parties in New Hampshire, the vigor and intensity with which the battles are always fought, and the skill necessary in every department, demand abilities and energies of the highest order. ”

“ Starting with integrity and great strength of purpose, possessed of a keen perception, a shrewd judge of men, and an impressive bearing, he has attained an eminence which all may admire. Well may New Hampshire point with pride to such a man. ”

“ While the state of Massachusetts has drawn from our midst a large proportion of the men whose labors have brought the prosperity and distinction which that proud old commonwealth enjoys, she has given New Hampshire in return some of her own sons, whose efforts have contributed in no small degree to advance the honor and welfare of the state of their adoption. ”

“ New Hampshire used to have at Salem
A company we called the White Corpuscles,
Whose duty was at any hour of night
To rush in sheets and fool’s caps where they smelled
A thing the least bit doubtfully perscented
And give someone the Skipper Ireson’s Ride.
One each of everything as in a show-case.
8 More than enough land for a specimen
You’ll say she has, but there there enters in
Something else to protect her from herself.
There quality [4] makes up for quantity.
Not even New Hampshire farms are much for sale. ”

“ And are a figure of the way the strong
Of mind and strong of arm should fit together,
One thick where one is thin and vice versa.
New Hampshire raises the Connecticut
In a trout hatchery near Canada,
But soon divides the river with Vermont.
Both are delightful states for their absurdly
Small towns—Lost Nation, Bungey, Muddy Boo,
Poplin, Still Corners (so called not because
The place is silent all day long, nor yet
Because it boasts a whisky still—because
It set out once to be a city and still
Is only corners, cross-roads in a wood) . ”

“ In almost every instance, those who, during the first half of the present century, laid about the waterfalls of New Hampshire the foundations of our manufacturing villages, builded better than they knew. They were generally men of limited means, moderate ambitions, and democratic instincts ”

“ The natural scenery of these States reminds me of our Scandinavian north. Massachusetts has the romantic lakes and broken landscape of Sweden. New Hampshire the rocky valleys and white mountains of Norway.
New York and Pensylvania, the Emperor and the Quaker States, with a milder climate, emulate each other in wealth of population and in beauties of nature. Rivers and valleys become wider; commercial life grows like a giant. ”

“ The convention of New Hampshire was to assemble in February. A large portion of the State lay remote from the channels of intelligence, and a considerable part of the people in the interior had not seen the Constitution, when they were called upon to elect their delegates. The population, outside of two or three principal places, was a rural one, thinly scattered over townships of large territorial extent, lying among the hills of a broken and rugged country, extending northerly from the narrow strip of sea-coast towards the frontier of Canada. ”

“ On the other hand, there were very substantial advantages under the new régime. Although, owing to an obscure and probably not very reputable intrigue, New Hampshire was given a separate government, the bounds of the new Massachusetts were extended to include Plymouth, Maine, and the 450eastern country as far as Nova Scotia. [1141] Moreover, the colonists had never really possessed anything like the rights which they had claimed and exercised under the old charter. The whole system of town government, for example, had been extra-legal. ”

“ Other men in New Hampshire have attained greater wealth and more varied public honors; but when all the elements of substantial success are considered, there are none, certainly, who outrank the subject of this sketch. Cautious, sagacious, and methodical; with a well balanced mind, and executive ability of a high order; scrupulously exact in the performance of every duty and the discharge of every trust, public or private ”

“ They have not only built up a prosperous and influential commonwealth at home, furnishing a talent and genius too great to be circumscribed by territorial lines, but they have greatly aided in laying the foundations and building up the newer sections of our country. Let any person pass through the mighty West, and thence to the great Northwest which to-day is doing vastly more than any section to supply the world with bread, and he will be surprised to find the great number of sons of New Hampshire who have attained reputation, position, and influence. ”

“ Colonel Webber and Fellow-citizens—I think it might be said to-day that New Hampshire has "gone wet," as they say when the election returns come in on a vote against prohibition. I am very much obliged to you for this extraordinary manifestation of your interest, for to stand in this downpour of rain is certainly an evidence that you have a most friendly interest in this little party of tourists, who touch in a journey through Vermont the mainspring of the State of New Hampshire. ”

“ He was born in New Hampshire, a queer sort of a State, with fat streaks of soil and population where they breed giants in mind and body, and lean streaks which export imperfectly nourished young men with promising but neglected appetites, who may be found in great numbers in all the large towns, or could be until of late years, when they have been half driven out of their favorite basement-stories by foreigners, and half coaxed away from them by California. New Hampshire is in more than one sense the Switzerland of New England. ”

“ The frontier north of Massachusetts had thus, for the most part, come into being without any action on her part, except in the two settlements last noted. Owing to the location between the French and English, and the uncompromising geographic factors of soil and climate, the vast forested area, comprising over two thirds of all New England, increased but little in population throughout the century; and by 1700 New Hampshire had but six thousand souls, or less than that of the Bay Colony at the time that Wheelwright left it. ”

“ As chairman of the committee, and ex officio commander-in-chief of the Republican forces in New Hampshire for ten years, he was a tireless worker,—the very incarnation of energy and persistent industry. He had a genius for political organization and warfare. His vigor and magnetism surmounted all obstacles and swept away all opposition. ”

“ The authority of New Hampshire is like that of Massachusetts. Her Constitution declares:—
[Pg 283]
“All power residing originally in, and being derived from, the people, all the magistrates and officers of government are their substitutes and agents, and at all times accountable to them.” [295]
Here the word “officers” obviously means the substitutes and agents of the people. But who are substitutes and agents of the people more than Senators?
Then again, in the same Constitution, it is declared:—
“No office or place whatsoever in government shall be hereditary.” ”

“ It is needless to say, that, while such a man always has enemies, (as what man of ability and energetic character has not?) he has firm and lasting friends,—friends from the fact that they always know where to find him. Among the many self-made men whom New Hampshire has produced, he takes rank among the first; and by his indomitable energy, industry, and enterprise has not only made his mark in the world, but has achieved a reputation in his profession and business on which himself and friends may reflect with just pride. ”

“ You will live in New Hampshire. In your sharp need and distress the Brown family will succor you—such of them as Pike the assassin left alive. They will be benefactors to you. When you shall have grown fat upon their bounty, and are grateful and happy, you will desire to make some modest return for these things, and so you will go to the house some night and brain the whole family with an ax. You will rob the dead bodies of your benefactors, and disburse your gains in riotous living among the rowdies and courtesans of Boston. ”

“ All those interested in New England could not fail to recognize, with varying emotions, that the situation had altered. The possibility that England might at last be able to exercise authority over her dependencies could bode nothing but evil to the rulers of Massachusetts, in view of their record, theological beliefs, and political aspirations. To the proprietors of Maine and New Hampshire, on the other hand, it meant the possibility of recovering their properties, which, in turn, portended unsettlement and trouble for the inhabitants of those provinces. ”

“ At present the boundaries of New York to the Northward are unknown, and as soon as it shall be His Majesty's pleasure to determine them, New Hampshire will pay a ready and cheerful obedience thereunto, not doubting but that all Grants made by New Hampshire that are fulfilled by the Grantees will be confirmed to them if it should be His Majesty's pleasure to alter the jurisdiction. ”

“ As early as 1749, a dispute concerning the boundaries of their provinces had arisen between the governments of New Hampshire and New York, when Governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire had communicated to Governor Clinton of New York his intention of granting unimproved lands within his government under instructions received from his Majesty King George Second, and inclosed his Majesty's description of the province of New Hampshire. ”

“ And a rough time he must have had of it now and then. New Hampshire was full of fine young men in those days. But nowadays most of them have gone away to seek their fortunes in the West. Do they find them, I wonder? ”

“ The men who owned its homesteads had been born in the heat of political struggle. Their mothers' birth-pangs coincided with those of a nation. They were born individualists and democrats. New Hampshire, a mountainous state, originally covered with dense forests, had presented to its settlers a stern struggle with nature. ”

“ New York a serted that, under the grant to the Duke of York, that province included 'all the lands from the west side of Connecticut River.' New Hampshire claimed that its boundary extended to the line approximately twenty miles east of the Hudson corresponding roughly to a prolongation northerly of the westerly boundaries of Massachusetts and Connecticut. The controversy was referred to the Lords of Trade, who made their report of July 10, 1764. ”

“ New Hampshire (377) , the second most northerly of the New England States (q. v.) , and from the beauty of its lake and mountain scenery called the “Switzerland of America,” lies N. and S. between Quebec province and Massachusetts, while the Atlantic washes part of its eastern borders; is more engaged in manufactures than in agriculture, and obtains valuable water-power and waterway from its rivers, the Piscataqua, Merrimac, and Connecticut; Manchester, on the Merrimac, is the largest city. ”

“ From among the hills of Vermont and New Hampshire have sprung many renowned citizens, whose talents, industry, moral worth, and practical wisdom have been by no means unimportant factors in the prosperity and progress of the nation, and in the due discharge of its legislative, administrative, and judicial functions. ”

“ And this result, so far from being bad faith to Vermont, is indispensable to keeping good faith with New Hampshire. By no other result can the six thousand men be obtained from the two States, and, at the same time deal justly and keep faith with both, and we do but confuse ourselves in questioning the process by which the right result is reached. ”

“ The old governor was a prominent character in the history of New Hampshire, being one of the heroes of Bunker Hill, afterwards becoming governor of the State of New Hampshire, a man revered and loved, not only by the military element of the State but by politicians as well. ”

“ There is no position that more truly shows the strength and power of a man than that of moderator of a New Hampshire town-meeting; but for many successive years he was chosen to preside over the deliberations of the annual and other meetings in this, then, large town, and always did so with great dignity, and to the perfect satisfaction of all. He was also chosen one of the board of selectmen, and represented the town in the legislature, and while a member of that body introduced and supported a bill to repeal the law authorizing imprisonment for debt. ”