Princetown

“ With an impatient exclamation I jumped to my feet. The only question was, could I find my way out of the wood, and if I did, how on earth was I to strike the right line over North Hessary? It was quite on the cards I might wander back into Princetown under the happy impression that I was going in exactly the opposite direction.
For a moment I hesitated; then I made up my mind to risk it. After all the fog was as bad for the warders as it was for me, and even if I failed to reach the Walkham Valley I should probably find some other equally good shelter before it lifted. ”

“ The problem of dealing wisely with crime has not yet been solved; and the best that can be said for Princetown is that it is undoubtedly healthy, in spite of its bitter cold in winter; and in some sort it may be regarded as a compulsory sanatorium. Whether the moral effects are as good as the physical must be left for students of punishment to decide. Whether characters are reclaimed or no, there is an effort to reclaim the moor, which is the typical stony ground of the parable ”

“ In size Princetown is only a village, with a population permanently increased by the presence of about a thousand convicts and their warders; and it may be feared that a majority of visitors to the place, reaching it by train from Yelverton, are drawn by a curiosity to see the prison. They are rewarded by little but a sight of the grim bare walls. Lovers of the moor have never looked with favour either at the prison or at the tortuous little railway line that climbs to it, however much this line may be admired as a feat of engineering ”

“ Shortland, clanking his chains, weeping, wailing and gnashing his teeth! It is a fact that the market people have not sufficient courage to pass this moor in the night. They are always sure to leave Princetown by day light, not having the resolution of passing this dreary, barren, and heaven-abandoned spot in the [Pg 157] dark. Before the bloody massacre of our countrymen, this unhallowed spot was believed, by common superstition, to belong to the Devil. ”

“ Their search was rewarded, the precious metal was found in paying quantities, and miners flocked to the valley and spread themselves over the adjacent country. The name of one of the early prospectors was Prince, and a township being swiftly formed, there was a certain fitness in dubbing it Princetown. All the adjuncts of a town which bade fair to be prosperous were soon gathered together. At the heels of the gold-diggers came the storekeepers, with tents in which to transact their business, and drayloads of goods wherewith to stock their stores. ”

“ On the road from Princeton to Fitchburg we passed fields which were entirely covered with the mountain-laurel in full bloom,—as splendid a spectacle, in its way, as could be imagined. Princeton is a little town, lying on a high ridge, exposed to all the stirrings of the upper air, and with a prospect of a score of miles round about. The great family of this place is that of the Boylstons, who own Wachusett, and have a mansion, with good pretensions to architecture, in Princeton. ”

“ A MINSTREL BROTHER But we didn’t reach Evansville, for all our declaration and pretence of our need. A delightful run along a delightful road, overhung with trees (and now that we were out of the valley between the two rivers, cut between high banks of tree shaded earth) , brought us to Princeton, a town so bright and clean looking that we were persuaded, almost against our wishes, to pass the night here. Some towns have just so much personality. They speak to you of pleasant homes and pleasant people—a genial atmosphere. ”

“ Way down below the level road on which I stood, way on the opposite side of the river, Pittsburgh lies a dark, low mass, hemmed in by its rivers, lorded by its hills; in the hollow the smoke hangs so dense often I could not see the city at all, but once in a while a breeze falls on the town, and the great white skyscrapers come forth from the thick, black cloud, and the effect is glorious—the glorification of Work, for Pittsburgh is the work-city of the world. ”

“ The heat which often lingers about the Fourth was at its height, and the thought of Princeton’s bracing air was so refreshing we gladly started in that direction. We drove leisurely, taking in the pretty views and gathering flowers, camped by the roadside two hours at noon, and then on through Princeton to Rutland. We visited that pretty town three years ago, when the Mauschopauge House was being built, and we resolved then to spend a night some time under its roof. It is finely located, commanding extensive views, and is in every way a charming place to spend a scorching summer night. ”

“ And I remember our wandering farther, north and south, east and west—interest, beauty, picturesqueness never failing us—in the end Philadelphia transformed into a vast Wonderland, where in one little section people might spend their lives dancing, paying calls at noon, eating chicken salad and croquettes from Augustine's, but where in every other they were striving, struggling, toiling, to carry on Penn's traditions and to give to his town the greatness, power and beauty he planned for it. ”

“ Princeton is chiefly known as the seat of the College of New Jersey, officially called Princeton University (q. v.) . The battle of Princeton took place at the bridge on Stony Brook, about 3 miles W. of the town. During the engagement, which was very severe, General Mercer fell mortally wounded. The action resulted in a decisive victory for the Continental army. The British lost nearly 200 in killed and wounded, and 230 captured. The American loss was about 37. After his retirement ex-President Cleveland made his home in Princeton. ”

“ The result was that, at the moment, I saw in the Centennial chiefly a violent upheaval shaking the universe to the foundations, with Philadelphia emerging, changed, transformed, unrecognizable, plunging head-foremost into new-fangled amusements, adding new duties to the Philadelphian's once all-sufficing duty of being a Philadelphian, inventing new attractions to draw to its drowsy streets people from the four quarters of the globe, and, more astounding, giving itself up to these innovations with zest. ”

“ PRINCETON, a borough and township of the United States, in Mercer county, New Jersey, on the Delaware and Rariton Canal, 3 miles north by rail from Princeton Junction, which is 48 miles south-west of New York and 42 north-east of Philadelphia on the Pennsylvania Railway. Standing on high ground, it commands a fine prospect towards the east and south. ”

“ Three more of the colonists died in that first haven, and there little Peregrine White began his earthly peregrinations. In view of all these occurrences,—the signing of the compact in Provincetown harbor, the first landing of the Pilgrims on the tip of Cape Cod, the explorations, the first deaths and the first birth,—it would seem that Provincetown is fairly entitled to a share of those historic honors which are lavished, none too freely, but, perhaps, too exclusively, upon Plymouth. ”

“ Philadelphia is, in truth, such a beautiful town that I am surprised the world should be so slow in finding it out. The danger to it now is the Philadelphian's determination to thrust beauty upon it at any cost, not knowing that it is beautiful already. There is too much talk everywhere about town-planning as a reform, as a part of the whole tiresome business of elevating the masses. As I have said, Penn talked no nonsense of that kind, nor did Sir Christopher Wren when he made the fine design that London had not the sense to stick to, nor L'Enfant when he laid out Washington. ”

“ It may be said that these are harmless innovations, part of the change in town life as lived in any other town as big. But the marvel to me was their conquest of Philadelphia, the town that used to pride itself on not being like other towns, and there they exaggerated themselves in my eyes into nothing short of revolution. The craving for novelty—that was at the root of it all: of the restlessness, the willingness to do what the old-fashioned Philadelphian would rather have been seen dead than caught doing, of the deliberate break with tradition. Nothing now can be left peacefully as it was. ”

“ And Pittsburgh is but one of the renewed cities which encompass the eastern half of the valley where once stretched the chain of French forts futile in defense but powerful in prophecy.
When we see the American city, even through the eyes of Walt Whitman, that poet of democracy, it seems a desperate hope that is left her: "Are there, indeed, men here in the city," he asks, "worthy the name? Are there athletes? Are there perfect women to match the generous material luxuriance? Is there a pervading atmosphere of beautiful manners? Are there crops of fine youths and majestic old persons? ”

“ I had grown up to accept life as a pageant for me to look on at, with no part to play in it. After my initiation into work, I could never forget, in the quietest, emptiest sections of the town, not even in placid little backwaters like Clinton Street and De Lancey Place, the machinery forever crashing and grinding and roaring to produce the pageant, to weave for Philadelphia the beautiful serenity it wore like a garment. ”

“ For my part, I am just as glad I shall not live to see the Philadelphia that is to emerge from the present chaos, since I have not the shadow of a doubt that, whatever it may be, it will be as unlike Philadelphia as I have just learned to know it again, as this new Philadelphia is unlike my old Philadelphia, the beautiful, peaceful town where roses bloomed in the sunny back-yards and people lived in dignity behind the plain red brick fronts of the long narrow streets. ”

“ At first I thought it was horrid visiting a relative who kept boarders but afterwards I learned that here in Provincetown someone else lives in nearly all the houses besides the families, because they are not nearly enough houses for all the people who want to come to Provincetown. Mr. Dugald says that artists and poets and musicians come here from all over the world for the inspiration. I cannot tell the men artists from the fishermen for they wear things like sailors but the women artists all wear big hats and smocks all covered with paint. ”

“ The town has been a prominent port and fishing community since colonial days when wharves lined the shores and hundreds of sailing ships filled the harbor. Today Provincetown is still a major port, but cod, mackerel, and hake have long since replaced whales as the major catch. And today, the town is full of art galleries, theaters, sidewalk cafes, restaurants, and shops that come alive in the summer when the population jumps from about 3,000 to 30,000. ”

“ From the car windows I had seen my old Convent at Torresdale transformed beyond recognition, many new stations with new names by the way, rows and rows of houses where I remembered fields, Philadelphia grown almost as big as London to get into, a new, strange, unbelievable sky-line to the town, the bridges multiplied across the Schuylkill—change after change where I should have liked to find everything, every house, field, tree, blade of grass even, just as I had left it. ”

“ Provincetown grows steadily between the sand hills and the sea and stretches daily nearer Long Point at one end of the curve and the North Truro line on the other. The town which began with a single little row of houses and the long slant of the beach for a street, is now miles long, has grown somewhat back among its sand hills, and is steadily topping some of them. The fishing hamlet seaport of a half century ago is rapidly merging in the summer resort of to-day; is fast becoming a Pilgrim shrine also, whither come Mayflower descendants to comfortably worship their ancestors. ”

“ Philadelphia lost power as New York City gained it. Though the counties tributary to Philadelphia constituted the old center of population and political power, the significant fact of growth in Pennsylvania was the increasing importance of Pittsburgh at the gateway to the Ohio Valley. In the Great Valley beyond the Blue Ridge lived the descendants of those early Germans and Scotch- Irishmen who early occupied the broad and level fields of this fertile zone, the granary of Pennsylvania. ”

“ But the foreigner, to whom Philadelphia is a station between New York and Washington or New York and Chicago, has never heard of it, nor has the rest of America to whom Philadelphia is the junction for Atlantic City. With the exception of Stenton, the old Germantown houses are for use, not for show, still lived in by the families who have lived in them from the beginning, and I love them too well to want to see them overtaken by the fate of sights starred in Baedeker, even while I wonder why they have escaped. ”

“ The University and Bryn Mawr could not have played the same social part in the Philadelphia I remember. Perhaps I shall express what I mean more exactly if I say that, returning with fresh eyes, I saw Philadelphia ready and pleased, as I had not remembered it, to acknowledge openly talents and activities it once made believe to ignore or despise—to go further really and, having for the first time squarely faced its accomplishments, for the first time to blow its own trumpet. The new spirit is one I approve. ”

“ I had discovered only shortly before Philadelphia as the scene of the first Colonial Congress, and the Declaration of Independence, and the first big International Exposition in America, and now I added to these other discoveries the fact that Philadelphia had been the first American town to publish a daily paper, the last discovery bringing me face to face with Benjamin Franklin who, it appeared, besides flying that tiresome kite and being the ancestor of Mrs. Gillespie, was the first printer and publisher of the paper that set an example for all America. ”