Autographs of citizens of New Haven, Conn., the native city of the
author who generously assisted him in his enterprise by a contribution
to a loan fund. The numbers correspond to their names elsewhere

16*

14 *

given.

44 Bishop

15*

17

drs Beach RM Event Frank & Hotchkiss, Lyman Bissell

18*

2.6 *

SOME REMINISCENCES.

OF

My Early Days in New England and of Historic Travel, Largely Pedestrian, over Four States of the Union-New York, New Jersey, Virginia and Ohio-in the Seven Years from 1840 to 1847.

BY HENRY HOWE.

SEVENTY years ago the American people were mainly confined to a mere fringe on the Atlantic coast; not a railroad existed; the few steamboats we had were shunned by many for fear of an explosion, slowly moved, timidly hugged the shore, afraid to go to sea; gas, petroleum, anthracite, India-rubber garments, steel pens, and envelopes were unknown; knives were mostly used to eat with; anything beyond two-tined forks was unknown; napkins at table, in the sole use of infants; books and newspapers were scarce; machinery in its infancy; and life simple and narrow, the people rarely going away from home; the vision of many being restricted to but a little more than such a circumference as they could obtain from their own housetops.

Withal they were a strong people; unlike their successors, they almost universally owned the houses in which they dwelt. They married early, married for love and married strong, for divorces were almost unknown. Having thus started right, they consequently had large families, acting on the principle of the good Vicar of Wakefield when he said, "I was always of the opinion that he who marries and raises a family does better than he who remains single and talks only of population."

A Bird's-eye View.-One then in imagination might have taken the wings of the morning and soared aloft over the beloved land of New England, everywhere seeing only a few miles apart, on the hillsides, in the valleys, by the margin of pure, rippling streams, little villages of white, clean houses, with white church spires rising to the skies, and inhabited by a people neat, thrifty and intelligent beyond precedent, made so because they feared the Lord, fought the Devil and boarded around the schoolmaster; always treating that useful, hardworking individual to the best they had, all prepared, too, by the hands of thoughtful mothers and good, home-blessing daughters. Then they had their little town meetings, which instructed in republican institutions for the entire land.

Everybody believed in heaven and in a dreadful eternal elsewhere, or said they did. Everybody then felt there was a God above, whose all-seeing eye was constantly upon them, and every idle word, sinful thought and deed made a matter of simultaneous eternal record. These convictions, and the law of imprisonment for debt, restrained evil doing and made the people honest, truthful and careful in all business matters. In those days there was no haste to get rich. None became so in a hurry; and lest they should, ministers sometimes preached from

Good sermons these,

the text, "He that hasteth to be rich shall not be innocent." but too early shot off by several decades; so they hurt nobody. The New England of that day is no more. "Man that is born of woman must die," but the broad ocean moves on as of yore, while the sound of new waves is heard breaking, foaming, and dying upon the sands. A new people from far distant lands are taking possession, and with new ideas, from which we must look for more changes.

"The bride shall have the stalk, the groom the wall;

All old customs will I turn and change,

And call it reformation."

The Year of the Cold Summer.-Eighteen hundred and sixteen was long alked of in New England by the old people as the year of the cold summer. There was frost in every month; the boys wouldn't go a-swimming, the pumpkin vines withered in August; the leaves of the woods shriveled, and along in the fall the corn refused to ripen. It was a shivery time. Nothing could be expected to grow big. It was along in October, some time after the eleventh it must have been, that a farmer came into my native town of New Haven, then a place of some seven thousand people, with some things for sale. He stopped before a house out on the Derby turnpike, on the edge of the town. It was a large, white house with ample grounds, orchard, garden, door-yard, with shrubbery and a huge elm in front. On entering he saw a new-comer, an untravelled stranger, weighing about three pounds and carried about on a pillow, whereupon he exclaimed: "Dew tell! what a leetle fellow! he's scurcely wuth the raisin'!" I heard that remark-couldn't help it, for I was there.

An Incident at Ohio's Centennial.-Eighteen hundred and eighty-eight came around, and Marietta led off with her celebration of Ohio's Centennial; had two, one in the spring and one in the summer. Senator Daniels, of Virginia, in the big wigwam, in the summer celebration made a masterly speech to the assembled thousands. His reputation is of being the finest orator in the American Congress. As he closed, the people-enthused by his fervid eloquence, glowing as his sentences had with the broadest spirit of patriotism-crowded on to the platform to grasp his hand in their delight. I was there, but not this time on a pillow. Approaching him, I said: "If I tell you who I am, you will meet me with interest-in 1843 I travelled over your State, Virginia, and made ‘a book upon it,'" and then I told him who I was. Instantly he dropped my hand, threw himself back, raised both arms aloft and then, placing an open palm on each shoulder, looked me square in the face as he exclaimed: "My heavens! two men I have been wanting to see from boyhood, Peter Parley and Henry Howe, and now I see one of them."

On comparing notes I found he was born the very year I was travelling over his beloved Virginia, 1843. His speech to me was a pleasing specimen of oratory -Patrick Henry himself could not have excelled it in delivery.

To another of Virginia's choice orators at the spring celebration, Judge Randolph Tucker, to whom I had in like manner introduced myself, he exclaimed with equal unction, as though it had been Rip Van Winkle himself that had appeared: "Is it possible?"

When one has had seventy-two years of life, and those out of the ordinary course, he must necessarily have had some experiences that justify their printing. Multitudes who have read my books, like the Virginia gentlemen, will to this say

"Amen;" and will not say I had been "scarcely wuth the raisin.'" And then why should I through timidity and shyness withhold valuable facts of personal history that will instruct. Rather should I be guided by the wisdom of Isaiah when he said, "Who art thou that shouldst be afraid of a man that shall die, and the son of a man which shall be made as GRASS?"

Eminent Characters.—I have seen much, enjoyed much, suffered much; it is for us all the inevitable. I have seen General Lafayette, received a bow from Andrew Jackson, looked down upon the bald, shining pate of John Quincy Adams, and listened to the high, shrill tones of this "the old man eloquent," in his place in the halls of Congress, where he finally sank in the arms of death, his last words being: "This is the last of earth; I am content." I have been joked by Daniel Webster, and when alone in his presence in his private parlor in the Astor House, as he was on the eve of his departure on his enjoyable and notable visit to Old England; the great Daniel Webster, he with the eagle eye, of whom it was said, "God Almighty never made a man that was as great as he looked to be." But I got the advantage of him-saw the most.

Then I have taken a pinch of snuff with Henry Clay-this in his parlor at Ashland, where, with his red bandanna spread over his knees, he leaned over and talked to me, then a young man, in a fatherly way in those sonorous tones that had swayed multitudes, his feet resting on a rug in which was worked the sentence," Protection to American Industry," and then as I anglicised the name. of the eminent French statesman, Richelieu, he corrected me, "You should say Rish-e-loo."

Early Advantages.--I ever regarded myself as well-born, coming as I did from out of the old New England stock. My father was by profession a bookseller, man and boy, for over half a century. His was probably the most famous bookstore in New England-a gathering point for scholarly men from far and wide, brought to our little city by its attractions, for it was the seat of Yale College. In my boy days I was thus brought in the presence of much learning-some of it in eccentric bindings. It stared at me in rows from the shelves: a back stare it was. It walked into the front door singly and sometimes by twos, bowed, and blandly said "Good-morning." Polite learning that, often old-fashioned, attired in knee-breeches, buckle-shoes and broad-brimmed hat.

Lessons in Patriotism.-At that early period men who had fought in the revolutionary war were around and impressed me. The thoughts of the young were largely upon the events of the great struggles of the two wars with the British. My father had a hand in the last. He served in a military capacity, had command of the town of New Haven, and they called him General. His great military achievement was when a British fleet appeared in Long Island Sound off the harbor when he ordered the town bells to be rung. It was a success! The women straightway sprang and buried their silver and choice china. The fleet passed on, doubtless remembering the bloody reception they had on the occasion of their invasion, Monday, July 5, 1779; may be heard the bells.

My mother also had her achievement. It was on the occasion of the invasion on the Monday aforesaid. The British had been popped at by the townspeople and Yale students from the moment they landed at sunrise, five miles away, until noon, when finally they got into town. A party of red-coats burst into the house of Ebenezer Townshend, shipping-merchant, later called the merchant prince of New Haven-he owned so many ships. They first attacked Mrs. Townshend, snatched at and broke away a string of gold beads from around her neck, and