CHAPTER XXXXVII

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The marriage laws of Massachusetts prevailing today are different from those in force all through my youth. As early as 1786 a law was passed by the General Court of Massachusetts establishing the methods to be pursued by those intending to enter into marriage, which provided that all persons intending to be joined in marriage, should “cause notice of their intention to be filed with the town clerk fourteen days before their marriage, which notice should be published by the clerk, either by posting up a written notice in some public place in the town of which he is clerk, fourteen days at least before the marriage or by making public proclamation thereof at three public religious meetings in the town on separate days, not less than three days distant from each other, exclusive of the days of publication.” This law with slight amendments remained in force until 1850, when the present law was enacted requiring only a notice to the town clerk, by whom the necessary certificate would be issued. I remember well the little box with a glass front attached to the wall in the vestibule of the meeting house in which the marriage intention was posted, and I have often heard it read from the pulpit on the three Sundays required by law, much to the embarrassment of the loving pair sitting within the gaze of the congregation.

One of the most remarkable developments within my memory has been the number of articles claimed to be associated with the Mayflower and the Pilgrims. Not a month passes without the reception at Pilgrim Hall of a letter offering for sale a Mayflower relic. It may be a tea pot, though the Pilgrims had no tea; or a porcelain mug, though the inventories recorded in Plymouth contained no porcelain ware until 1660; or a fork, which the Pilgrims did not use, or a mahogany table, though no mahogany was known in England before 1700.

Three articles claimed to have been associated with the Pilgrims I have myself proved to bear fictitious labels. One of these exhibited a few years ago at a portrait exhibition in Copley Square as a miniature of Governor Edward Winslow, when he was six years of age, I have found to be a picture of a son of Capt. Thomas Dingley of Marshfield, painted about the time of the Revolution. Another article labelled the “Knocker” from the door of Governor Winslow’s house, was taken from the door of a house built by Isaac Winslow, grandson of the governor, about 1720. Still another article presented to the Pilgrim Society as a part of the doorstep of a church in Delfthaven where the Pilgrims held service on the eve of their departure, owed the origin of its record to a miss-reported speech of one of the building committee of a church in Chicago, who had at its dedication stated that he had imbedded in its walls a piece of Plymouth Rock, a stone from Scrooby, and a piece of the pavement of a church in Delfthaven, which, perhaps, the Pilgrims may have visited. Of course the piece of doorstep has never found a lodgment in Pilgrim Hall. These fictitious historic relics are interesting as showing the veneration in which the Pilgrims are held, which is not shared by the Winthrop Colony, or by any other body of men since the days of Christ.

It will be remembered by my readers that at the dinner of the Old Colony Club on the 22d of December, 1769, the first course was “a large baked Indian Whortleberry pudding.” I have often been asked how long the custom continued of serving the pudding before the meat, and whether I remembered such a custom, and my reply has been that the only relic of the custom existing within my day was a legend of the promise once made at dinner to children, that the more pudding they ate the more meat they might have. I always supposed that this promise was intended to restrict indulgence in meat, either from motives of economy, or to confine the youthful diet to a more wholesome food. I have recently read an extract from a book of travels written by Henry Bradshaw Fearon, an Englishman, who visited the United States in 1817. The book is in the Congressional Library in Washington, and probably never had a circulation on this side of the ocean. It contains much of interest to an American reader, including an approximately accurate answer to the question concerning the custom above mentioned. Mr. Fearon left New York on the 8th of September, 1817, on the steamboat Connecticut, bound for New Haven, and he described the boat as having an engine of forty horse power, and fitted up with one cabin for ladies, two for gentlemen, and an extensive kitchen. Arriving at New Haven in twelve hours, he was transferred to the steamboat Fulton, bound to New London, from which place he took a stage via Providence for Boston. The fare from New York to New Haven, including table board, was seven dollars. On a Sunday, while in Boston, he went to Quincy and dined with ex-president John Adams. The dinner was served at one o’clock, and consisted of a first course of Indian meal pudding and molasses, and a second course of veal, bacon, neck of mutton, cabbage, carrots, and Indian beans, with Madeira wine. He said that Boston was the headquarters of Federalism in politics and Unitarianism in religion, and that the Bostonians were the most intelligent and hospitable people he had met in America. Thus it is certain that the pudding custom was in vogue in 1817, and was discontinued not long afterwards.

The allusion above made to the steamboats Connecticut and Fulton, leads me to again refer to the steamboat Eagle, which came to Plymouth in 1818 under the command of Capt. Lemuel Clark. That boat was built in New York, but like other boats was enjoined under a New York law from operating in New York waters, on the ground of a monopoly in the use of the rivers and harbors of New York, which had been granted by the state. Resistance to this monopoly led to the famous case of Gibbons against Ogden, in which, while the monopoly was held good by the state courts, it was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States to be unconstitutional. Pending the decision in that case, steamboats sought business in other waters, and the Eagle, before coming to Boston and Plymouth, cruised in Chesapeake bay, under the command of Capt. Moses Rogers, who was in 1819 commander of the steamship Savannah, which in that year was the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. A picture of the Eagle is owned by the Pilgrim Society. Capt. Rogers was the grandfather of our townsman, Dr. Charles Rufus Rogers, and it is the story of the Savannah, which leads me into a digression which may make necessary an additional chapter of memories which I had intended to close with the next chapter. A memoir of Capt. Moses Rogers states that the Savannah was a full rigged ship of three hundred and fifty tons, built at Corlear’s Hook, New York, by Francis Fickett, and launched August 22, 1818. She was bought by Scarborough and Isaacs of Savannah, and her machinery, with a ninety horse power engine, having forty-inch cylinders, and a five foot stroke, was put in under the supervision of Capt. Rogers. Besides the Eagle he had already commanded the steamboat Fulton on the Hudson river, and the Phenix on the Delaware river. A picture of the Savannah, a copy of which I have seen, represents her as a vessel of fine model, with round stern, a medium clipper bow, and a graceful, easy shear. Her wheels were made adjustable, and so affixed to the shaft as in stormy weather to be unshipped and removed to the deck in twenty minutes. Her wheels consisted of eight radial arms held in place by one flange, and arranged to close like a fan. With her allowance of seventy-five tons of coal and twenty-five cords of wood, she sailed from New York, March 28, 1819, and arrived at Savannah April 6, in two hundred and seven hours from Sandy Hook lightship, having steamed four days during the passage. On the 22d of May she began her voyage from Savannah to Liverpool, where she arrived on the 20th of June. Her log kept by Stevens Rogers, the sailing master, a brother-in-law of Capt. Moses Rogers, is in the possession of the descendants of Moses, and contains an interesting account of the voyage. On the 23d of July the Savannah set sail from Liverpool for Cronstadt, touching at Copenhagen and Stockholm on the way, reaching the first named port on the 9th of September. A few days later she arrived at St. Petersburg, where she remained until October 10, receiving while there visits from the Russian Lord High Admiral Marcus de Travys. On the 30th of November she again reached Savannah, and was run as a packet between that port and New York, until she was wrecked on Long Island.

Questions are often asked in newspapers and elsewhere concerning the circumstances attending the composition of popular hymns and songs, and I have already told my readers about the origin of “Sweet Home,” and the “Star Spangled Banner.” I have lately read in the Boston Sunday _Herald_ an account of the composition of “My Country ’tis of Thee,” by Samuel Francis Smith, which may be interesting to those of my readers who did not happen to see it. Mr. Smith was born in Sheafe street, Boston, October 21, 1808, and after attending the Eliot school and the Boston Latin school, graduated at Harvard in 1829. After graduating at the Andover Theological Seminary in 1832, he was settled as pastor of the Baptist church in Waterville, Me., and served as Professor of Modern languages in Colby University until he removed to Newton, Mass., where he resided until his death. At a meeting in the Old South Church in Boston, Mr. Smith said, in giving a history of the hymn, that many years before Mr. W. C. Woodbridge brought from Germany a number of books containing words and music used in the schools there, and gave them to Mr. Lowell Mason, who gave them to him, requesting him to either translate them or write words to such of the music as pleased him. In looking these books over, Mr. Smith found the notes of our National anthem attached to a patriotic hymn, and was inspired by it to write the hymn in question. To the tune of “God Save the King,” Mr. Smith’s hymn was sung for the first time at a Sunday-school celebration on the Fourth of July, 1832, and received at once such popular commendation as to re-christen the tune with the name of “America.” We, of course, ought to accept Mr. Smith’s word, but it seems almost increditable that he should have never heard of the tune until 1832, when it had been known in England as “God Save the King” at least two hundred years. It is also singular that the origin of many national airs should be involved in doubt. The Marseillaise, Yankee Doodle, and to a certain extent the “God Save the King” had an obscure, if not doubtful, authorship. The last, however, which has by some been attributed to Henry Carey, a musical composer who flourished in the time of James the First, seems to have been established by good evidence, to have been composed by John Bull, a contemporary with Carey, who died in 1622. As I have not been able to trace the name John Bull as applied to the English people, farther back than about the early part of the 17th century, I think it is a reasonable conjecture that Dr. Bull was not only the author of the National anthem, but also through his authorship of that popular air that he gave the name for all time to his fellow countrymen.

The composition of the favorite Pilgrim hymn “Sons of Renowned Sires” by Judge John Davis of Boston in 1794, is interesting. Coming to Plymouth on the evening of the 21st of December to attend a celebration of the anniversary of the Landing on the next day, the regret was expressed to him that no original hymn had been prepared for the occasion, as had been intended. He expressed no intention to write one, but at an early hour retired to his chamber with his wife. Instead of going to bed he began to walk the room to the annoyance of his wife, and against her earnest remonstrances. Mrs. Davis fell asleep, waking occasionally, and finding him still walking, and the bed candle unsnuffed and smoking. Not having the remotest idea what he was doing, she became alarmed for his sanity, and again and again her sleep was broken by the noise of his footsteps. At last the candle was extinguished, and in the morning Mr. Davis surprised the committee with the hymn, which was sung that day to the tune of “God Save the King,” thirty-eight years before Mr. Smith, the author of his anthem, had ever heard of it, and which has been sung probably at every Pilgrim celebration since.

The story of the inspiration of “The Breaking Waves Dashed High,” written by Mrs. Hemans, is also an interesting one. In 1825 she was living with her brother at Rhyllon, a parish of St. Asaph at the mouth of the river Clwyd in North Wales. After shopping one day, one of her purchases was sent home in a bandbox covered with a newspaper, which she noticed was a Boston daily. Before throwing the paper away or burning it, she had the curiosity to look over its contents in which she found a long account of the Pilgrim celebration in Plymouth on December 22, 1824, and copious extracts from the oration delivered by Edward Everett. The Pilgrim story was a new one to her, and the account, which she read with great interest, was so circumstantial as to inspire her with the grandeur of the theme. She told Rev. Charles T. Brooks on a visit to her later home in Dublin, that she at once, after reading the account, turned to her desk and wrote the immortal lines. The original manuscript of the hymn she gave to James T. Fields of Boston, and it is now preserved in the cabinet of the Pilgrim Society, a gift from Mr. Fields.

It is singular how many of our best hymns have been the work of an hour. It has been said that the missionary hymn by Reginald Heber, was one of those sudden inspirations. It was written in 1819, while he was occupying a living in Hodnet in Shropshire, which had been given to him by his brother Richard, who was a member of parliament, and an owner of large estates in that shire. In 1823 he was consecrated Bishop of Calcutta, and died in India in 1826. Before going to India he devoted himself to literary pursuits, and wrote many hymns, which won a permanent place in hymnology, among which was that sweetly flowing hymn:

“By cool Saloam’s shady rill How sweet the lily grows.”

I have heard it said that on one occasion Mr. Heber was invited by a brother clergyman in a neighboring parish to officiate at a missionary service to be held in his church. In the course of the evening, before the day of the service, his friend asked him if it would be possible for him to compose a hymn appropriate to the occasion. Mr. Heber said he would try, and retiring to another room, composed the hymn which for appropriateness and beauty, has rarely been equalled. His brother Richard was an author of note, and left at his death perhaps the largest private library ever collected in England. It contained 146,875 volumes, and after his death, the library was sold at an auction which continued through two hundred and sixteen days, and realized sixty thousand pounds.

Some years ago I heard the story of an incident which suggested “The Hanging of the Crane,” one of the most charming poems of Longfellow. In the early married life of Aldrich, the poet, Longfellow dropped into his house one night and found him and his wife sitting alone at their evening meal. “Ah,” said he, as he entered the supper room and took a seat at the table, “here Aldrich, is a whole poem, and I will give you the subject to work out.” His friend, believing that the artist who paints a scene in his imagination, should put it on the canvas, said, “No, Longfellow, use it yourself.” After some years of elaboration the poem appeared, depicting the changing scenes in married life, which the following selected extracts sufficiently describe. Happy are the father and mother who live to witness the scenes which time discloses as it unrolls the canvas:

“And now I sit and muse on what may be, And in my vision, see or seem to see, Through floating vapors interfused with light. Shapes indeterminate, that gleam and fade, As shadows passing into deeper shade, Sink and elude the sight. For two alone, there in the hall, Is spread the table round and small.

* * * * *

Seated I see the two again, But not alone; they entertain A little angel unaware. With face as round as is the moon; A royal guest with flaxen hair Who throned upon his lofty chair Drums on the table with his spoon.

* * * * *

There are two guests at table now; The King, deposed and older grown, No longer occupies the throne— The crown is on his sister’s brow.

* * * * *

I see the table wider grown, I see it garlanded with guests, As if fair Ariadne’s crown Out of the sky had fallen down.

* * * * *

And now like the magician’s scroll That in the owner’s keeping shrinks, With every wish he speaks or thinks, Till the last wish consumes the whole. The table dwindles, and again I see the two alone remain. The crown of stars is broken in parts. Its jewels brighter than the day Have one by one been stolen away To shine in other homes and hearts.

* * * * *

What see I now? the night is fair; The storm of grief, the clouds of care, The wind, the rain have passed away; The lamps are lit, the fires burn bright. The house is full of life and light; It is the Golden Wedding Day. The guests come thronging in once more; Quick footsteps sound along the floor; The trooping children crowd the stair; And in and out and everywhere Flashes along the corridor The sunshine of their golden hair. On the round table, in the hall, Another Ariadne’s crown Out of the sky hath fallen down; More than one monarch of the moon Is drumming with his silver spoon; The light of love shines over all. The ancient bridegroom and the bride Smiling contented and serene Upon the blithe, bewildering scene, Behold well pleased on every side Their forms and features multiplied.”

The impromptu remark of Mr. Longfellow to Aldrich might have been like many other impromptus thought out before. If so, however, it was under authority of a poet’s license. Perhaps it was like another of Mr. Longfellow’s impromptus, of which I heard many years ago. While attending as a delegate the National Republican Convention in Cincinnati in 1876, a party composed of James Russell Lowell, Judge E. R. Hoar, Mr. Roosevelt, the father of the President, who were also delegates, and myself, took a carriage and drove out to the estate of Nicholas Longworth to call on him and see his wine vaults. Mr. Longworth told us that Mr. Longfellow had made a recent call on him, and when introduced had said: “Mr. Longworth, you have the advantage of me, for you know Pope says, “That worth makes the man, and the want of it the fellow.” Some men would have thought of the _bon mot_ the next day, and realized what the French call _l’esprit d’escallier_, a good thing thought of too late. But Mr. Longfellow was quick witted enough to think of the good thing “while going up stairs and not while going down.” There have been severe critics of Longfellow who would not have hesitated to pronounce the above impromptu deliberately prepared. They have charged him with plagiarism, and have said that the “Psalm of Life” is composed of thoughts from Gœthe and Calderon and Schiller, and have declared that “there is not one striking image, and barely one striking phrase in the poem which originated absolutely with himself.” They also claim that from Soame Jennyn’s was taken the substance of those beautiful lines:

“Still like muffled drums are beating Funeral marches to the grave.”

But these critics cannot deny that the dress in which the above thoughts were clothed, and in which they captivate the reader, were his own. Would any one on the following statement of facts claim that Webster was a plagiarist? Rev. Dr. John Pierpont wrote for the Plymouth celebration on the 22d of December, 1824, a hymn containing the following stanza:

“The Pilgrim Fathers are at rest. When Summer’s throned on high, And the world’s warm breast is in verdure dressed Go stand on the hill where they lie. The earliest ray of the golden day On that hallowed spot is cast, And the evening sun as he leaves the world, Looks kindly on that spot last.”

On the 17th of June, 1825, Mr. Webster delivered his memorable oration at the laying of the cornerstone of Bunker Hill monument, containing the well known passage, “Let it rise till it meet the sun in his coming; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and

## parting day linger and play on its summit.”

## CHAPTER XXXXVIII.

During my boyhood there was an article which had been for many years in the cookery department of our house, but which had recently gone out of use. It was called a roasting Jack, and preceded the tin kitchen in roasting meats and poultry. I remember it well, but I have little doubt that like many another relic of the past, it found its way into the junk heap of William Nye on the approach of some muster or election day, when we boys wanted money for lobsters and lemonade and other promoters of a stomachache which, perhaps, in these days of fads would have been called appendicitis. It was an iron cylinder about four inches in diameter and six inches long, attached at the top with an intermediate swivel to the chimney crane, and at the bottom to a hook or some other contrivance which held the meat. Inside of the cylinder there was a clock work machinery, which when wound up would keep the hook constantly turning before the fire. It probably went out of use between 1800 and 1820.

There was another kind of roasting Jack, consisting of a spit resting on hooks attached to the andirons to which a wheel was affixed, which was kept turning by a chain band running from a larger wheel moved by clock work attached to the under side of the mantel piece. I have no doubt that many of my readers have seen the hooks on old andirons without knowing the purpose for which they were intended. These hooks may be seen on a pair of andirons in the Pilgrim Hall Library.

There was another article closely associated with my childhood, which I have thus far omitted to mention. How often have I sat in a high chair with a bib under my chin, and a pap spoon in hand, feeding myself out of a porringer. I supposed that the porringer was the sole prerogative of children; that it was designed expressly for their use, but I had not then learned the fictions of legendary lore, and that the world is all a fleeting show for a child’s illusion given. I learned the true origin and use of the porringer some years ago. A lady wrote to me that an elderly lady in Roxbury in somewhat reduced circumstances owned a china soup tureen which was once used in the household of Queen Anne, and would be glad to sell it. I went to see it, and found a very handsome tureen, but I saw at once on its cover a knob representing a rabbit’s ear, the exclusive mark of Wedgewood, who flourished during the time of Queen Charlotte, and made a very beautiful cream colored ware, of which this tureen was a specimen, and in honor of Queen Charlotte called it “queen’s ware.” The story accompanying the tureen was that an ancestor of its present owner was at one time attached to Queen Anne’s Court, as one of the ladies in waiting, and afterwards becoming reduced, emigrated to New Brunswick, carrying with her the tureen, which she received as a present during her service in the household of the Queen. It is easy to account for the legend of its origin by the supposition of some later owner, knowing it was called queen’s ware, that it was a part of the ware of the queen of whose household an ancestor was a member. Not being satisfied with the result of my examination I began a further investigation of the origin of soup tureens as articles of table ware, and found that in the reign of Queen Anne, they were neither used or known. The custom was to have soup brought to the table by the servants in porringers, one of which was placed before each guest. This was the design and purpose of the porringer, and this was its use until the appearance of the tureen about the middle of the eighteenth century, when it was relegated to the use of children. In my day the porringer was made of either silver or pewter, but as the fashion of its use has gradually gone out the silver porringer has found its way to the melting pot, and the pewter one to the bric-a-brac store.

There are doubtless many genuine relics of the Queen Anne period in existence. I have a hammered brass wine cooler of that period, which came down in my mother’s family from John White, son of Peregrine White, born in Marshfield about 1660. It is about the size and shape of an ordinary soup tureen, with solid brass handles and slots around its edge, in which wine glasses were hung with their bowls in the water. It was called a “Monteth,” and took its name from the inventor. The poet William King, who was born in 1663, and died in 1712, alluded to the article in the following lines:

“New names produce new words, and thus Monteth Has by a vessel saved his name from death.”

Among the books which I have examined with reference to the articles above mentioned, is a very interesting one entitled “Social life in the reign of Queen Anne,” to which I refer the student of habits and customs in the early part of the 18th century.

In the flowers and fruits and trees of Plymouth the changes in my day have not been striking. The garden flora are the same as in my youth, except that new flowers have been introduced, and new and improved varieties of the old ones. Fashion has occasionally relegated some flowers to temporary obscurity, but in many instances has restored them to their old rank or to a higher one. In my youth the tulip filled every border in yard and garden, but in time fashion called it vulgar, and it retired from the floral social life. But it returned in due season, like a girl from a fashionable school with the flush of beauty and with cultivated taste, and became instead of the wall flower, one of the belles of the ball. The hollyhock once banished to the back yard, is now the guardian of our doorway, and nods a graceful welcome to every guest, while the sunflower, once the occupant of the poultry yard, now stands in splendid defiance under our windows, and hourly challenges the sun to do his best.

The most remarkable change in our gardens has been in connection with the tomato introduced from Mexico, and there called tomatl. In 1831 Dr. Jas. Thacher of Plymouth, who was fond of introducing new things, secured some seed and gave my mother some, which she planted. I remember the plant well, with its burdens of gorgeous fruit, which was looked upon rather as a garden ornament than food for the table. It was not long, however, before it came into general use as a summer vegetable, and finally as a preserve in cans for winter use, until it may now be said that in the extent of its use it stands next to the potato. Though long supposed to have been of Mexican origin, it has been recently found that nations in Africa had long used it, and esteemed it a valuable article of food. I have an impression that in the summer of 1831 it ripened much earlier than it does now. It is a serious objection that as a crop it ripens so late that practically the whole crop ripens at the same time, and as a perishable vegetable is rushed into the market at prices too low to make its cultivation profitable. The canning, however, of large quantities, has served in recent years to help prices by increasing the demand. A writer in Blackwood says, “the tomato is a noble fruit, as sweet in smell as the odors of Araby, and makes an illustrious salad. Its medicinal virtue is as great as its gastronomical goodness. It is the friend of the well to keep them well, and the friend of the sick to bring them back into the lost sheepfolds of Hygeia. The Englishman’s travelling companion, the blue pill, would never be needed if he would pay proper court to the tomato.”

Among the fruits brought into use in Plymouth from foreign fields, the banana has had the most striking history. I remember the first one I ever saw, and the first brought to Plymouth. It was about the year 1833 that Capt. Samuel Rogers in command of the schooner Capitol, belonging to Daniel and Abraham Jackson, brought to Plymouth several bunches of bananas, one of which he gave to Mr. Abraham Jackson, in whose yard I saw it hanging on a tree. The bunch was of the yellow variety, and Capt. Rogers called it plantain. As the demand for this fruit has increased, the banana fields of Porto Rico, Jamaica and Costa Rica have been immensely enlarged until regular lines of steamers from those places now bring into the United States twenty-five millions of bunches annually, or twenty-five hundred millions of bananas, enough to supply annually thirty bananas to every man, woman and child, including negroes. The fruit is now sold at so low a price, and is so universally used that I think it safe to say that no fruit, not excepting apples, has so large a consumption.

The most striking change in fruits during my time has been in the cultivation of cranberries. They have always been known as a native of New England, and John Smith found them in a visit here in 1614. They have always found their best natural growth in grassy meadows or swamps, where decay of vegetable matter has supplied the soil with organic acids. I know some patches of such meadows today where the cranberry has borne fruit hundreds of years. These natural berries are better than the cultivated ones, probably because the sand with which the made bog is covered has diminished the supply of organic acids. The general consumer has not yet discovered that the native berry weighs a number of pounds more to the bushel than the cultivated one, and has a richer flavor. In 1855 the statistics of Plymouth showed an acre and a half of cranberry bog valued at $15—while at the present time there are 984 acres valued at $393,600.

Some fruits which were abundant in our gardens during my youth, have entirely disappeared. I knew then scarcely a garden without its plums, gages and damsons, the latter of which were especially prized for preserving. When it is asked what has become of these trees, it is often answered that they have run out. But such an answer is absurd, because if they had run out in one place, they would have run out everywhere. But the plum and gage are raised in California and sold in Boston and Plymouth at a profit to the producer after a travel of three thousand miles across the continent. The trouble is that the soil has run out after nearly three centuries of cultivation without renewal of those properties and ingredients which successive crops have exhausted. If the virgin soils of California were analyzed, and their fertilizing constituents when discovered were applied to our worn out gardens, they would doubtless be rejuvenated. Our people have not even been content with robbing the ground of its crops without adding to and restoring its vitality, but they have year after year raked out every stone, great and small, leaving the ground a mere black paste, instead of a vigorous loam. They have yet to learn that the feldspar in granite contains potash enough if we knew how to extract it to fertilize the fields in which the farmer looks on stones as nuisances to be rid of. I have seen some evidence in the rank growth of grass around stone heaps and under stone walls that nature may have found some method by chemical action of eliminating the feldspar potash which the rocks contain. The condition of the trees on Boston Common, of which in late years we have heard much complaint illustrates in my opinion the necessity of restoring to the soil precisely those qualities which year after year the trees have been using up. Mr. Doogue, the superintendent, last season, or the season before, ploughed the ground and planted grain as if the surface needed loosening and enriching to permit the access of rain to the roots of the trees, but I do not believe that he has reached or remedied the trouble. If he would come to Plymouth I could show him by an object lesson what the trees need. Let him make a visit to our woods, where with no more than two inches of soil on a substratum of sand and gravel, a thick growth of oaks and pines sends up every season a foot or more of upward growth, and preserves through the dryest summers a rich foliage. They simply live on the leaves which they shed in the autumn for their own use, and which they find in the spring that no robber has carried away. If Mr. Doogue, instead of raking the common and carting off the leaves will deposit them in trenches around the trees covered with a little earth, his trees will doubtless revive.

Among the trees which have practically disappeared in my day are the Buttonwood and Balm of Gilead. The Buttonwood or Sycamore or Plane tree, grew in various localities within the town, and until about the year 1845, a row of Buttonwoods stood on the front of the lot which now includes Cushman street and the lots on both sides. Jas. Russell Lowell was undoubtedly familiar with it when he wrote in his “Beaver Brook.”

“Beneath a bony buttonwood The mill’s red door swings open wide; The whitened miller, dust imbued, Flits past the square of dark inside.”

The Buttonwood bush is an entirely distinct plant deriving its name from the globules it bears resembling buttons in shape.

There was during my youth a row of Balm of Gileads or Balsam poplars five or six in number, standing below the stone wall opposite the North side of the Plymouth Rock House. The buds of the trees covered with a resinous matter, were much sought after as cures for cuts and wounds. Only a very few of these trees are now standing in Plymouth.

There is the hornbeam tree often spoken of in the division of lands in the early days of Plymouth Colony, of which very few specimens are now found in our woods. Wood in “New England’s Prospect,” under date of 1639 says, “the horn bound tree is a tough kind of wood that requires so much pains in riving as is almost incredible; being the best to make bowls and dishes, not being subject to crack or leak.” He says:

“The horn-bound tree that to be cloven scorns; Which from the tender vine oft takes his spouse Who twines embracing arms about his boughs.”

The trees of New England seem to have been the same as those which were natives of England. The English poet Spencer in the first book of the first canto of “The Færie Queen” enumerates the latter in the following lines:

“Much can they praise the trees so straight and hy, The sayling Pine; the Cedar proud and tall; The vine-propt Elme; the Popplar never dry; The builder Oake, sole king of forrests all; The Aspine, good for staves; the Cypresse funerall; The Laurell, meed of mightie conquerors And poets sage; the Firre that weepeth still; The Willow, worne of forlorne paramours; The Eugh, obedient to the bender’s will; The Birch for shaftes; the Sallow for the mill; The Mirrhe, sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound; The warlike Beech; the Ash for nothing ill; The fruitful Olive, and the Platane round; The corner Holme; the Maple seldom inward sound.”

The sapling pine was the tree of which staffs were made; the builders’ oak was the white oak; the sallow was a kind of willow; the platane was the plane, and the holm was the holly. The olive may have been some tree now known by another name.

The beech tree at one time within my recollection was almost extinct in Plymouth woods, and was rarely found except on islands in the woodland ponds. I have heard that the same was true of the beech in the Middlesex Fells, which suggests that woods fires which could not reach the islands may have thinned the beeches out. The fact that in recent years the beech is again making its appearance in the Plymouth Park and other protected localities, adds force to the suggestion.

Elm trees have always abounded in New England, doubtless including Plymouth, and are much handsomer than the English elms, though the latter retaining the custom of their habitat, leave out earlier in the spring than the American, and hold their leaves longer in the autumn. As far as I know there is no positive record of an elm tree from the natural forests in New England. The ages of the old elm on the Common in Boston, and of the Brookline and Pittsfield elms, is not known. There are contemporary records of an elm in New York city, standing on the corner of Wall and Broad streets as late as 1670, which measured more than thirty feet in circumference, and was called by the Dutch, “der Groot Tree.” The trees now standing in Town Square, three of the five planted by my great-grandfather, Thomas Davis, in 1784, are young compared with the New York tree, and ought not to be in the languishing condition they now exhibit. With the ground in the square packed solid, it is impossible for rains to reach their roots. If a fence were built around each tree, and the ground within it dug up and kept loose, there can be no doubt that water would find its way to the roots and along them to the most distant rootlets. There is the same trouble with all the ornamental trees along our concreted sidewalks. We are spending hundreds of dollars each year in spraying their foliage to check the ravages of the beetle and miller, and at the same time by grass and concrete and macadamizing sentencing them to certain death. I commend the subject to the Plymouth Natural History Society, who on examination of the beautiful tree in the front of the new fire station, a central jewel in our coronet of trees, will find that we have been pursuing the policy of a physician who would treat a patient for loss of hair, who is dying of hunger and thirst.

Among other adopted trees are the European Linden, and the English Birch. Mr. George B. Emerson, the eminent naturalist, told me once he thought the latter the most beautiful tree in America. It undoubtedly has the merit of putting out its leaves earlier than our trees, and holding them longer, but I have never seen one standing erect if alone, or if more than forty years old retaining life and vigor in its upper branches. On the other hand I think the European Linden, of which we have noble specimens in Plymouth, is on the whole the most satisfactory ornamental tree for a bleak sea exposure like that of Plymouth. I have found in Holland, the country of Lindens, none to compare with the Lindens on North street, which grow straight and regular, under blasting winds, and I have seen them as late as the 6th of October without a yellow leaf.

Of the animals and birds and their changes within my day, I can say little. They are very much the same as in the days of the Pilgrims. The wild turkey disappeared before my time, and I think that they are only to be found in Massachusetts today in the Berkshire hills. All through my youth the wild pigeons were abundant in our grain fields and huckleberry woods, but they are now rare. Martins also were flying about our houses, and nearly every householder had a martin box under the eaves of his dwelling, or on a staff standing in his yard. The English sparrow stole their nests, and they fled like the aborigines before the English immigrant.

The fish are the same as those described by Wood and Josselyn, writers in Pilgrim days, some, however having disappeared for a time and returned. I remember being at Holmes Hole during the Civil War, and being told that the weak fish or squeteague had returned after an absence of twenty-five years. In Josselyn’s New England’s rareties a fish called Gurnard is spoken of, and is also mentioned in a poem by Steendamn, a Dutchman, written, perhaps, about 1640 or 1650, in the following lines, descriptive of fish in New York waters:

“The bream and sturgeon, drum fish and gurnard The sea-bass which a prince would not discard; The cod and salmon cooked with due regard Most palatable.”

I am anxious to know what fish under its American name the gurnard is. The Gurnet, at the entrance of Plymouth harbor, was named after a headland in the English Channel, which in shape resembled the Gurnet, a fish in English waters. On the coast of Wales there is another headland named Gurnard, after the fish gurnard, the French name of the fish called in English, gurnet. The gurnard has lost its French name with us, and I was not aware until I saw the name in Wood and Josselyn, that the gurnet fish was found in our waters under the name of gurnard.

There was a piece of household furniture in my youth which I believe has gone out of use. The trundle bed was introduced by the Dutch, by whom it was called “een slaapbauck op rollen.” The bedsteads were universally four posted and high enough from the floor to permit the trundle bed to be kept under it, and to be rolled out at night when the younger children were sent to bed. When the baby grew to be too large for the cradle, or was deposed by a new comer, it was promoted to the trundle bed, and when a newer comer appeared the trundle bed held two until the bedstead, with its chintz curtains, became the court of last resort. In old Colonial days the bedsteads were made of sassafras wood, which was believed to be an effectual protection against vermin. For hundreds of years the curative properties of sassafras were highly esteemed by the Indians, and when Champlain first sailed up the St. Lawrence he carried back to France large quantities of it to be used especially as a cure for venereal diseases. Within my day sassafras poles have been used as roosts in hen houses as a protection against hen lice.

The treatment of whiskers has changed almost as often as each generation came on the stage. The use of the razor is as old as the history of man. In the book of Isaiah it is written in the twentieth verse of the seventh chapter, “In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor.” Ezekiel, in the first verse of