I T was July 4th, 1893. The lake breezes in the early morning floated over the White City. Flags filled the air; eight hundred acres of flags? Yes, more: in fact, Chicago was a sky of flags; and so was the State of Illinois.
Hundreds of thousands of people were pouring, like a multitude of tides, toward the scene of enchantment. The avenues of the Exposition were thronged early in the day, and the crowds grew. The Lake was here white with craft and there shadowed with steamers. There was music everywhere.
The flags of all nations mingled; the national airs of all nations mingled; people of all nations mingled. The White City was the festival of the World.
Guns boomed, the wonder grew, and high noon was a scene of glory.
Our trio were early on the grounds.
“What is wanting here?” asked Mr. Marlowe, as they stood in front of the Administration Building, and looked down the Court of Honor toward the Peristyle and Lake.
“Only a White-Bordered Flag,” said Grandfather Marlowe, looking up to the allegorical figures of the elements controlled and uncontrolled,—“only a Peace Flag to lead the future, and stand for the brotherhood of all mankind.”
While he was speaking, from his Quaker view, as it were, out of the Inner Light, there was a gathering of people, and it was led by a woman, with a new flag. It presently shot into the air and unrolled, amid the allegories of the uncontrolled and the controlled world. Its border was white. It was hailed with cheering.
The old Quaker looked up, and saw it. It was like a vision to him. He had dreamed of it through all his life: the fact had been within prophetic sight, but he had never expected it in a vision so glorious.
Could it be true? The flags of all nations filling the air, the sea, the prairie; hundreds of thousands of bright, happy faces passing, their eyes filled with scenes of marvellous beauty, and their ears with the patriotic musical inspirations of struggles for liberty and progress for the ages; and with the crown of the great throne of the Administration Building, the White-Bordered Flag of Peace, floating in the shining sky, radiant, glorious—could it be true!
“Manton,” said the old Quaker, “that is the grandest sight that you will see at the Fair; you need look no further. That is the grandest sight that has appeared since angels sang over the Plains of Bethlehem. I can go home now content, and die in peace. The world is destined to follow that flag!”
“I expect to see no grander sight than that,” said Mr. Marlowe. “I have almost made up my mind that the sympathetic, good-humored laughter in the Street of Cairo is the funniest thing we have seen; the Philadelphia Working-Man’s house, the most useful thing; and I am sure that the White-Bordered Flag in the Court of Honor on this Independence Day, will be the prophetic glory of the Fair. I have now to study the most noble lesson of the Fair.”
The reader may like to know something of the history of the inspired, unselfish, and most earnest woman, Mary Frost Ormsby, whose influence caused the White-Bordered Flag to be raised over the Court of Honor on this thrilling day.
That patriotic magazine “Home and Country” for February, 1893, has an article from Mrs. Ormsby’s pen, in which that lady gives an account of how she carried the White Flag to Rome. We quote a part of the article:—
As an accredited delegate of the Universal Peace Union, founded by the Quakers, or Friends, twenty-six years ago, also as a substitute for the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, D.D., of Boston, Massachusetts, and Mr. William O. McDowell, of Newark, New Jersey, in representing the Pan-Republic Congress and Woman’s Freedom League, it was my good fortune to carry the flag of peace to Rome.
It was not until the day of my departure I learned that alone and unattended I was to cross the ocean and the Continent with this treble duty intrusted to me. With the New Orleans matter then unsettled, and the diplomatic relations between Italy and America inharmonious because of what to the Italian people seemed an utter indifference on the part of our government officials in regard to the massacre of Italian subjects, it was no easy task to present the flag of our country to a peace congress at Rome. But the influences that emanated from friendly discussions at this gathering, the fact that many of its members were also members of the Italian parliament, and the influence exerted by letters sent to the American press,—all were, in my estimation, most efficient aids in speedily and amicably adjusting the much-deplored New Orleans tragedy. The starry flag was never so precious to me as when it was consigned to my care until it should grace our congress in Rome.
This particular flag was made by American women from American silk wrought by the Woman’s Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia.
Pennsylvania women arranged it: ever from its earliest history this State has proved the power of justice to obtain peace.
After a perilous journey, having encountered a storm at sea, and having been compelled to ride alone all night in a closed compartment while crossing the Continent, I reached the Eternal City on the morning that congress was to convene.
Here at Italy’s capital had gathered a corps of philosophers, scientists, artists, statesmen, authors, and journalists, to advance the cause of peace and prevent bloodshed. They came from different points of the compass, from every form of government, with a variety of aspirations, judgments, and tastes, but with, one common purpose.
This remarkable assemblage of three hundred delegates, representing eighty-eight different peace societies, and speaking seventeen different languages, had gathered on the historic spot from which went forth the edict that “All the world should be taxed.” In full view of the ruins of the Forum and the hill of the Cæsars we proceeded to discuss the one common sentiment,—“Peace on earth, and good will to men.”
Flags of every nation decked the capitol. Music from the municipal band stationed near the Aurelian statue stirred every heart with its inspiring strains. It was on this spot that Antony and Pompey once swayed the people and urged them to fresh carnage and conquests. Now we came to pray that the temple of Janus would forever be closed, and war reign no more.
Up the splendid stairway and over the beautiful serpentine road guarded by gendarmes, in company with Rev. Dr. Sturgis and Miss Rutter, of England, I carried the American flag,—the Flag of Peace. The formal presentation was made on the succeeding day, accompanied by an appropriate speech, which was enthusiastically applauded, especially by the Italians, although the New Orleans tragedy was then fresh in their minds.
Briefly relating the Columbus incident in the discovery of America, I stated that in behalf of my sister countrywomen I had come to his native shores to unfurl under Italian skies the Stars and Stripes, our “Banner of Liberty” and “Flag of Peace.” I had also to thank Columbus’ countrymen for all that his discovery had accomplished for those of my own sex. In America, as nowhere else, women have attained intellectual and moral advancement, independence of support, and peaceful happy homes.
I said, “Under this flag dwell sixty-five millions of people whose interests, in common with those of all nations, are to be promoted by the universal settlement, through arbitration, of all international difficulties.”
At this juncture a gendarme handed me the flag, which I unfurled and presented to the president as a contribution from America’s daughters. It was greeted with most enthusiastic applause, lifted gracefully to a niche at the right of the president, and placed in the arms of the gladiator Steigile. Its silken folds fell over the cleft arm of the statue, partially concealing the figure representative of cruelty and death.
Pointing to the Stars and Stripes I suggested that its tricolor made it a fitting emblem of the third assembling of our Peace Congress.
Standing on the dome of our capitol in Washington the Goddess of Liberty holds the scales of Justice, and standing upon an island in New York harbor she bears aloft the symbolic torch that enlightens the world. Women of America are forming associations of all kinds whereby they can benefit humanity.
“We are not unmindful of the fact that the discovery of America by Columbus was accomplished through the self-sacrifice of a woman,—Queen Isabella,—who pawned her jewels to defray the expense of the expedition. Ought not America then to be, as it is, the favored land for women? And woman continues her good works.
“From the prison to the paupers’ home, from the health-saving to the soul-saving house, you will find armies of women, not clothed for war, but in the garments of charity, chanting and living the song, ‘Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good will to men.’”
The same flag was carried to Bern last summer by the Italian delegation.
Germany was represented in our third congress by delegates from five societies, England from sixteen, France from five, Italy from seventy-one, Servia and Switzerland each from two; while Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Hungary, Norway, Holland, Roumania, and Sweden, each sent one representative.
General Howard’s brother, Rev. Rowland B., was the only delegate from America besides myself, who crossed the ocean for the express purpose of attending the congress. His journey cost him his life. He died in Rome after a long illness.
Captain Siccardi, one of the bravest soldiers of Italy, who resigned from the army because he felt it was a fratricidal occupation, in the course of an able address before the Peace Congress at Rome, made the following points, which are worth repeating: 1st, The army costs more in the otherwise possible gain which it interrupts or prevents than is wasted in what it consumes; 2d, The maintenance of the army increases taxes and duties; 3d, The workman whose son is in the army, loses an income, and thus is left in debt; 4th, The soldier, on his return to his deserted family, receives no indemnity; 5th, Organized liberty and justice do not abide with the army of to-day; 6th, What we expend on the army is no insurance against losses by war; 7th, By the removal of so many workmen from their industrial pursuits the army is one of the greatest enemies to civilization.
Following this speech, resolutions regarding the disarmament of all nations, and the establishment of permanent international arbitration, were offered and accepted.
The delegates were from the world’s highest ranks of scholars and humanitarians. Many distinguished officials and representatives of their respective governments were present.
We were entertained during and after the Peace Congress at Rome, by members of the Italian Peace Society. Its president was Signor Rugurio Bonghi, an ex-minister, philosopher, and author, whose masterly works on the conduct of national affairs have greatly interested statesmen and humanitarians of many lands.
“The flag has begun a new era of the achievements of Columbus,” said Mr. Marlowe. “It leads what in old Rome would be called a new Seculum. The history of this incident will live and grow. Let us go to La Rabida!”
The trio pressed through the crowds, and found their way to the reproduction of the old Spanish convent, where Columbus had found a friend in Father Perez. Here was the original Commission of Columbus, and the supposed anchor of the “Santa Maria.” They rested in the court of the convent, amid the cool air of the Lake, and were grateful to the genius of Mr. Ober, which had caused this most realistic Columbian Museum to be erected.
Here, amid the relics of a long historic past, they talked over the events of the day. Sundown found them there. As the shadows of evening fell, all the White City thrilled with electric light, and shone in outlines of unimagined splendor. It was at the convent that replicas of the ships of Columbus came to be exhibited, and afterwards the “Viking,” or the Northmen’s ship.
The hour of nine found the city, the Lake, and the air a living glory. The Court of Honor blazed, and the many-colored fountain threw its rainbows into the air.
Then if ever the trio felt the force of the great discovery, and the long procession of progress that had led up to this wonderful hour!
T HE New England Kitchen was a double house in colonial style, such as was once to be seen on the roads running between Boston and the coast towns. Across the promenade was the specimen building of the Co-operative Society of Philadelphia. A little way beyond it, the Irish village presented a curious contrast, and the Blarney Castle rose in the sunny air.
In the kitchen of the typical old-time New England cottage the homely food of the descendants of the Pilgrims was served,—brown bread and baked beans, pumpkin pies, doughnuts and cheese, home-made relishes. The waiters were dressed in colonial costumes, and sometimes wore calashes. The reception-room of the house was furnished after the manner of the Plymouth Colony.
The Marlowes were made welcome here, and used to take their suppers in the kitchen, after becoming foot-weary. When the supper was over, they would linger among the New England people, who daily gathered here, and relate colonial wonder-tales.
One of these tales well fitted the unique room. It was told by Mr. Marlowe, and we give it here:—
The scene to which we introduce the reader on this Thanksgiving Eve was in the old Winslow house at Green Harbor, now Marshfield, Mass. No house in America, we may safely say, ever had so many colonial legends of Thanksgiving Day as this.
“Silas,” said I, one night to an old stage-driver, “tell us the story of the dog that said ‘Silas!’”
The company eagerly demanded the tale.
It was a strange room. In one corner were bushel baskets heaped with corn. Uncle Silas shelled corn, as he said, “for company,” on other than holiday or Sunday evenings.
Over the corn baskets were strings of dried apples, pumpkins, and red peppers. Near the fireplace were rennets of cheese, and under the rafters were candle-poles.
The fireplace revealed great fore-sticks, apple-tree wood, which made an especially hot fire, and was used on Thanksgiving Eves, and at special times.
Apples in rows were toasting on the hot hearth.
The family consisted of an old couple, named White, and their sons and sons’ wives and children from towns near Boston, and a few invited guests.
Uncle Silas caught up his chair and lifted it in the jumping way of the old colonial time to a place nearer the fire. A shutter banged, and he cast his eyes mysteriously toward the window. The room grew very still.
“The clouds are scudding over the moon,” he began,—and I will tell the tale as he told it, as nearly as I remember,—“the wind is rising—I can hear it in the tops of the trees. Many’s the time I have gone down in the old stage-coach on nights like this, and leaped from the seat and snatched the mail-bag from the boot, and when I said ‘Silas,’ there would creep out of the boot that old coach dog.
“That dog was given to me by a sailor, who was about to go to sea from the old North River. He was a pup then.
“I never knew a dog that seemed to think so much of his master as that dog did of me. His eyes were never off of me.
“I taught him a number of tricks, such as to stand up on his hind legs and beg, which he did by uttering a sharp, pitiful cry. While begging one day, he made a sound like ‘Silas.’ I repeated it, and he uttered it again.
“After that I would hold back from him his food until he had made that sound. ‘Say Silas,’ I would say, and after a time he would utter the word, or what sounded like it.
“The old stage-coaches had great leather boots that covered the driver’s legs, and in cold and stormy days could be raised so high as to protect nearly the whole body. Under the boot I carried the mail-bags, and such packages as we to-day send by express.
“The mail-coach was sometimes robbed, when the boot was known to cover valuables. I carried my own money in a large wallet in a side pocket of a great gray coat, and money for others in the same way.
“I drove the stage for ten years, but I was never molested or robbed; and in those ten years my dog Silas always slept at my feet among the mail-bags.
“While I was driving the stage there was some strange things that happened in the old Dedham woods. Several travellers who had gone through those woods at night had met with strange adventures.
“They had seen a window and a light in a lonely place a little distance from the way, and heard the ringing of a bell like a supper-bell.
“Two of them had turned in toward the window, but as they attempted to approach it, it seemed to draw back into the heart of the woods. After walking toward it for a considerable distance, it seemed to them no nearer, and they had become alarmed, and suddenly turned and fled, believing it to be a ghost.
“One traveller, who had entered the road at dusk, had never been heard of again.
“After these events any one who saw the window at night took to his heels, and at last few persons would go through the woods after dark, except in a carriage or in company.
“The Dedham woods began to bear a bad reputation, but the dark events that had happened there were assigned to ghosts, and the vanishing window and light were spoken of as the ‘Phantom inn that travelled away.’
“Was I ever afraid when riding alone in the old Dedham woods? I always speak plainly, and I must say that I sometimes was. A sort of shadow of a fear would come over me.
“I never believed in ghosts or haunted houses after my early years. Yet a superstitious nature clings to me. It has often made me feel creepy, until I stopped to reason. It stands to reason that dead folks don’t appear with leather boots on, and hats and buttons and clothes woven in looms.
“The Dedham woods used to be a lonely place. It is mostly farms now. They stretched then away toward the coast. There were no towns like Hyde Park then; no Ponkapoag with villas; no costly summer homes.
“The sunlit spaces between the trees were full of bluejays, that would eye the coach with outstretched necks. I can seem to see them now.
“The Indian-pipe used to grow by the wayside, and back of it wild roses and green brakes and clematis, which bloomed and feathered late. The horses liked to slack up in summer, and walk under the cool shadows of the trees.
“Oh, those were lonely roads in winter. The winds used to whistle like this—woo-oo-oo. Just as though they were spinning—woo-oo-oo. They seemed to catch the spirit of the sea, which was not many miles away—woo-oo-oo; like that.
“People began to move away to York State. They called it up ‘country’ then. The Mohawk valley seemed as far away at that time as the prairies do now.
“I had a good offer to go to Albany and take a stage-route from there to Buffalo. I caught the up ‘country’ fever, and resolved to go.
“I may seem weak, but one of my greatest regrets on parting was that I would have to leave my old friend Silas, and I might never see him again.
“One day as I was stopping at the old Scituate inn, just before setting out for Albany, I met a stranger there. He called himself Searle. I shall never forget the eyes of that man. There seemed to be a hidden spirit, not himself, looking through them. They reminded me at once of the travelling window and light, or the Phantom inn.
“But Silas, the dog—I never met such a mystery as when the dog’s eyes first met those of that man. It used to be said in old New England times that dogs would see ghosts coming, and start up and howl, before people could see them. That dog seemed to see something mysterious in that man’s eyes.
“He leaped into the air when Searle appeared, and said ‘Silas.’
He then shook all over, dropped on his feet, and ran around me, whining in a fearful tone. What did it mean? I have thought of it an hundred times—what did it mean?
“‘Goin’ up country, I hear,’ said Searle.
“‘Yes, I have concluded to take the Albany route,’ said I. ‘There is more money in it.’
“‘Goin’ to take your dog here along with you? He’s a fine one.’
“‘No,’ said I; ‘I’ll have to go by the way of New York, and up the river to Albany, and I must leave him behind. If I were going by the way of Springfield I would take him along. I set a store by that dog.’
“‘Don’t want to sell him, do ye?’
“There came a strange light into the man’s eyes. I cannot describe it. It made me think of the travelling window in the woods again.
“I hesitated.
“‘Stranger,’ said I at last, ‘where do you live?’
“‘Oh, in a lonely place down by the Dedham ponds. They say it’s getting dangerous there, and I want a dog. I need one. Say, as you’re goin’ off, what will you take for him?’
“‘I don’t know; I wouldn’t sell him for anything if I didn’t have to.’
“‘I’ll give you ten dollars for him. That is high, but I’m lonely like, and they say them woods are getting dangerous. What do you say?’
“‘You may have him.’
“I felt somehow that I had done an unworthy thing,—that I had sold my dog to an unworthy master. That dog had such a true nature that he would never have tricked me with any act.
“How should I part with Silas? I felt my head ache at the thought of it—the dog had been so faithful. I decided I would have Searle put a rope on his collar, and would leave him in the evening in the office of the inn with him, and so steal away from him unknown. I did so,—and if ever I felt like a coward, it was then.
“Five years passed, when one November day I received a letter. My old friends, the Whites, had remembered me, and they invited me to spend Thanksgiving with them at Green Harbor.
“Wife’s folks lived in the old town of Dedham, and she urged me to accept the invitation, as she wished to go with me to Dedham. Her folks were getting old—but, poor woman, they outlived her.
“So I secured a driver to take my place for a few weeks, and we set out together for Boston and Dedham. One day, late in November, I left my wife among her folks, and set out, intending to walk over to Weymouth to see some friends, and there to take the stage for Marshfield.
“I had expected to start in the morning and make a day of it, but I was delayed until the afternoon. It was delightful Indian summer weather, and I did not mind a night walk, as I could rest in Weymouth.
“‘Don’t stop at the Phantom inn,’ said my wife, as we parted.
“‘I sha’n’t stop at no phantom inns,’ said I, ‘if I expect to reach Randolph to-night. There will no acorns sprout under my feet.’
“‘But,’ said my wife’s mother, ‘they do tell strange stories still about those woods. Are you armed?’
“‘Yes, as much as I ever am.’
“‘But you used to keep a dog.’
“I stalked away, laughing.
“Nightfall overtook me on the border of the old Dedham woods.
“I remember the strange mysterious feeling that came over me as I entered the shadow of the pines of that lonely road among the skeleton trees. I stopped and looked back.
“As I stood listening, there came a vivid impression that somehow I was in the companionship of the old coach dog, as I used to be. I could feel my heart shrink as I recalled how meanly I had treated him, and I eased my conscience with the reflection that I had done as well for him, and myself, as I could.
“That a dog might make his presence felt in some way by electrical force is possible I cannot say, but I repeat it,—I seemed to feel that the old coach dog was somewhere near me in these woods, and had a sense that I was there.
“I entered the lonely way, when another strange thing began to haunt me. It was the eyes of Searle. I had never forgotten them. I could almost see them again now. Every rattle in the savin bushes seemed to bring them back again.
“As I walked along with a witch-hazel stick for a cane, a great light rose like a fire among the tops of the gray rocks and skeleton trees. It was a full hunter’s moon coming up from the sea. After a time it went into a cloud, but the way was still clear. It was almost as still as death.
“Occasionally a timid rabbit would cross the way; once a white rabbit leaped out before me, and I felt my heart beat, and thought again of the old coach dog, Searle’s dreadful eyes, and the tales of the Phantom inn, at which I used to laugh when I drove the cape stage.
“The way grew more lonely, amid the oaks and the russet leaves, savins, pines, and rocks. In places the road was strewn with fallen nuts, and at some points with rustling leaves. Once the eyes of a white owl confronted me on a decaying limb—I thought again of Searle.
“I hurried on, hoping to reach Randolph before midnight, when suddenly I heard a sound that stopped my feet at once and sent a chill over me. It was a hollow tone, like the ringing of a supper-bell, such as used to be common in the farmhouses and inns.
“I looked in the direction of the sound, when I saw a little way from the road a window and a light among the trees. I stopped nervously.
“‘Is it imagination,’ I asked myself. ‘Is it a dream of the old story? Shall I run, or turn toward the bell?’
“I was frightened and my heart beat, but I am not a man to run. After hesitating for a few moments I turned into the wood in the direction of the window and the light, and found a path there which I began to follow cautiously.
“I walked to the place where I had first heard the bell and seen the window and the light, but the window and the light were apparently as far away now as when I started from the road. As I watched I could see it move back, but I could hear nothing.
“I stopped again. The window and the light soon seemed to stop. Should I run? No. I would shout. So I cried out, ‘Hullo!’
“The rocks answered my loud call with many echoes. A startled partridge rose on whirring wings from some wild alder-bushes near me. Then all was still, or—did I imagine it?—I thought I could hear the low piteous suppressed whine of a dog. The light vanished.
“I knew not what to do. I was unarmed. I went forward very slowly and cautiously, when the path grew soft, and the earth began to crumble beneath my feet. I paused and listened.
“A cry pierced the hollow air. How can I describe it? It thrilled every nerve in my body. I can hear it now; it seemed as though all the intensity of a human heart was in it—it said, it shrieked as the cry of some pent-up force,—it said,—
“‘Silas!’
“I knew the voice. It was a warning tone. I knew that dog’s tone of warning. I stepped back and listened again.
“I heard a struggle down in the distance. Where was I? It came to me. I was on the border of a ledge of rocks. Below me was a pond. Had I taken a few steps more I would have gone over into the water.
“I felt that the way led to a false projection over the water. I had been drawn toward a trap to destroy me. I felt the situation then as clearly as I can see it now.
“My every nerve quivered with terror, but my will grew stronger than ever before. I never knew how strong or how weak I was till then.
“As I stood listening, a fearful oath rose from the pond. Then all was still. I looked up to the sky. It was the only object that seemed friendly. The clouds parted below the hunter’s moon, and a wide silvery light swept over the scene. I was surely on a projecting edge of rock, or platform, over a pond.
“Suddenly I heard a sound in the bushes. It was a patter of feet. A dog came bounding out of the savins toward me. He rose up, springing as it were into the air, shook his paws, and cried,—I can hear it now,—
“‘Silas!’
“It was my old coach dog.
“I hurried back to the road, followed by the dog. Was it a dream? What had happened?
“At near midnight I came to my old friend’s farmhouse at Randolph, and roused the family. Before any one could speak I pointed to the dog.
“‘Tell me, for heaven’s sake, what is that?’ I cried.
“‘That is a dog,’ said my old friend, the farmer,—‘your old coach dog. What did you think it was? Where did you find him?’
“We went the next morning to the scene of my night’s adventure. One of the first things that we saw was the dead body of Searle, floating on the pond.
“The light in the window of the Phantom inn had allured me to the edge of a broad, false precipice, and I was just about to fall over into the pond when my old coach dog’s warning word had saved me. The dog had evidently dragged his dark-minded master over the rocky cliff into the pond.
“Searle had carried the window and light in his hand, and with covered feet had moved back to allure travellers.
“‘Silas?’ Yes, I must answer that question. What became of him? I took him back to Albany with me. He was an old dog then, and used to repeat that word in his distress. He said it more than once on the day that he died.”
Another story, related by Mr. Marlowe, which was quite appropriate to the place, was as follows:—
The Masons, whose history I used to hear, were among the founders of New Providence, the vanished village of the autumnal Berkshire Hills. I well recall the stories of Elder Leland that I used to hear in my old Swansea home, and especially the awful ghost-story that the courtly evangelist used to relate confidentially to a few friends. No Rhode Island farmer’s boy of thirty years ago will ever forget that, and any allusion to it would make, in those days, young feet nimble in dark chambers and on lonesome roads.
Times have, indeed, changed. No ghost-story, however vivid, would be likely to make a Rhode Island boy nervous to-day.
I recall also the more cheerful story of the great Cheshire Cheese, as we used to hear it, and have often repeated, in my young churning days, the New Providence receipt for turning cream into butter under the miracle-working influence of the old-time dasher:—
“Come, butter, come;Peter stands at the gate,Waiting for the butter-cake,Come, butter, come.”The rhyme of this persuasive ditty is not perfect, and I am unable to say who “Peter” was, though the name sounds Apostolic; but the Cheshire and Rhode Island farmers’ wives could all declare that this brief invocation gave a wonderful efficacy to the churn-dasher.
I shall never forget my first excursion into Cheshire to visit the once famous farms of New Providence, and the graves of Elder Leland and the heroes of Bennington. It was a glimmering September day, such as brings the tourist of New York to Lenox, not far away.
The sky was an over-sea of gold. The Housatonic lay, here like a mirror of glass in the brown woodland pastures, there purling amid purple gentians over mossy dams.
The wrecks of old orchard trees dotted the landscape; fading beech-trees, with their bark perforated by the long bills of the golden-winged woodpeckers; aftermath in alluvial meadows; cornfields with orange banners on the uplands, and, over all, Greylock, green-wooded and maple-tinted, looking down the valley.
Graveyards—like little villages of the dead—with mossy stones, touched the heart and fancies, and the town at last came full in view, with its white spire and faded inn.
“Where is New Providence?” I asked of an old man who had stopped to rest on the cool russet sward under a leafy maple, where the locusts were singing in the bright air.
“There is no New Providence any more,” said he. “It is all gone: the hotels, the stores, the churches, all—there is not a house left. There is where it was.”
He pointed toward a sunny slope. How beautiful was the situation! But there was not so much as a house or an orchard. Shades of Oliver Goldsmith! Could it be possible that here in New England was a veritable Deserted Village?
“The inhabitants of New Providence all sleep in a little graveyard under the hill,” said the stranger, filling his pipe. “That was once New Providence Purchase, and was settled from Providence Plantations. It is now called Stafford Hill.
“Old Captain Joab Stafford, the hero of Bennington, is buried in the old graveyard, near the road. You can see his grave as you pass by.”
New Providence began in a pleasant joke. Old generous Captain Stafford, who was brought wounded at last from Bennington to his pleasant home and tavern, built his house in New Providence Purchase before he brought his wife from Rhode Island.
When his fine house was completed, he went after Mrs. Stafford, but refused to give her any description of his new place. Across the Connecticut on horseback they hastened toward the mountains.
“Now as we ride along,” said he, “and notice the new settlements, tell me when we come to just such a house as you would like.”
They rode through Cheshire, once called the Kitchen, and at last the good woman lifted her eyes to a bowery hill almost in the shadow of Greylock.
“How beautiful!” said she. “There is just such a home and place as I should like to have. If I could only live there, I would be perfectly satisfied.”
“You shall live there,” said her gallant husband. “That is our home.”
Out of that vanished house he was borne down the hill to his last resting-place in the valley below, and poets and orators spoke his praise.
Elder John Leland, born in Grafton, Massachusetts, in 1754, came to Cheshire when quite a young man. He was on one occasion called upon to speak from the pulpit, when the pastor was absent. There came to him a flow of words and ideas which astonished his hearers much and himself more, and he felt that he was allotted to be a preacher. He was a Baptist-Quaker, like Roger Williams.
It has been asserted that his influence made Madison President. He travelled to a distance of many thousand miles, preaching; crowds followed him everywhere, and queer stories of his eccentricities were repeated by every fireside.
Among the old Cheshire humorists and the old story-tellers of the tavern at New Providence, and the half-way inn at Cheshire on the old Boston and Albany stage-route, were gallant Captain Stafford, the Bennington hero, Freelove Mason, the jolly mistress of the first regular stage-route hostelry, William Brown, or “Sweet Billy,”—the “Artemas Ward” of Berkshire,—Elder John Leland, whose jokes were echoed ever by the sounding-board over his tall pulpit, and the rich old farmers by the name of Mason, Brown, Wood, and Cole, and the stage-drivers.
The story of the great Cheshire Cheese was once a New England wonder-tale, but was seldom correctly told, in all of its essential details. The making of it furnishes a picture of the early humor of the village, than which few pastoral scenes can be more pleasing, or more widely in contrast with many of the grim Puritan legends. Cheshire has a cheese-factory now; then every farm had a cheese-press. There was joy among the industrious dames of Cheshire, when the old stage-driver of the Berkshire Hills blew his horn, and swung his hat, and shouted, “Hurrah for President Jefferson!” The buxom dairy-women had been well-schooled in Democratic politics by Elder Leland, himself an intimate friend of Jefferson, and a disciple of the broad principles of the Declaration.
“Toot, toot for Jefferson!” rung out the horn and voice of Cameralsman, the lusty stage-driver, as he passed through the thrifty Mason farms.
“Jefferson it is!” said Freelove Mason, the ruddiest dame of the Berkshire Hills; “and how shall we celebrate our victory like free and honest people that we are?”
“How?” said the Cheshire dames. “We will make the biggest cheese ever pressed in America,—such an one as the farmers have been joking about,—and send it to the new President for a present. Every cow in Berkshire shall furnish the milk for the curd.”
I need not say that the great cheese was made. All the Yankee world knows that. The summer of bobolinks and morning-glories that followed the political spring of happiness in Cheshire saw a great gathering of curds on a certain day, and all the kirtled dames met at Elisha Brown’s, and compounded the mammoth gift to the President.
It was pressed in a cider-mill, and if it did not require four horses to draw it, it is said that that number was harnessed to the vehicle that brought it from the press, where it had been pressed for ten days. It weighed one thousand two hundred and thirty-five pounds, was carried to the Hudson and shipped to Washington. Elder Leland went with the great cheese, “preaching,” as he said, “all the way.”
The stately correspondence between Leland and Jefferson, in offering and accepting the gift, is still preserved. Those were the days when every voter supposed himself to be a born king by right of the Constitution, and it took the old formal style of writing to express the sentiments of the new monarchs. Jefferson’s letter, accepting the great cheese, was worthy of the author of “When in the course of human events.”
Elder Leland, tall and courtly, was well adapted to the dramatic part of the occasion. A grander commoner never entered the Republican court. Jefferson had often met the great revival preacher in Virginia, for Leland depopulated towns to listen to his fiery eloquence wherever he went. His calling to the ministry, like Saint Paul’s, had come, as he believed, in the form of a voice out of the skies, and his tongue, to use the old Hebrew simile common in the old days, had been “touched by a burning coal from the altar.”
There are few preachers like Leland to-day. Eloquent as the old Methodist field preachers, elegant and courtly as a Camille Desmoulins, witty as a Swift or Steele, and far in advance of his times in the liberality of his opinions, a theological disciple of Roger Williams and Samson Mason, and a political follower of Jefferson, he was not only a remarkable preacher, but one of the most noted men of his time. He labored as a winter revivalist in Virginia for many years, before he made his home in Cheshire.
It was one of the humors of the time to relate events of a pleasing character in the style of the Hebrew Chronicles, and the Chronicle of the Cheshire Cheese was once well-known in the story-telling town. It began:—
“And Jacknips said unto the Cheshirites, ‘Behold, the Lord hath put a ruler over us that is after our own hearts. Now let us gather together our curds, and carry them into the valley of Elisha, unto his wine-press, and there make a great cheese, that we may make a thank-offering unto the great man.’ Now this saying pleased the Cheshirites, so they did as Jacknips had commanded.”
The great Cheshire Cheese was shared by the President with the governors of several States, to whom samples were sent. The story of it was a great advertisement of Berkshire County; and it was resolved to make a still larger cheese, which should weigh sixteen hundred pounds.