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

the text, "He that hasteth to be rich shall not be innocent." Good sermons these, 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 Daniel, 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 meh 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

then without waiting for the keys pried open a desk and carried off its valuables. The desk still remains in the family with the marks of their bayonets upon it. As they burst into the room Sarah, the little three-year-old daughter of Ebenezer, did not forget her manners. She made the red-coats her best courtesy. That was my mother's achievement-bowed to the British, while my father in due time jingled the bells. My own military experience came later-in 1862, when with the squirrel-hunters I crossed as a home-guard the pontoon at Cincinnati, bearing my musket, but did not ache to kill anybody, nor to get killed.

Such were my earlier lessons in patriotism. All through that era Independence Day was a great time. Nobody called it the 4th of July. From the liberty pole -nobody called it a flag-staff-fluttered the bright banner, while the loudvoiced artillery spoke for America and freedom, and as the small boys chased the wads they exclaimed, "Thunder! how we did lick the British!"

Lessons in Religion.-As the young were strongly impressed in that day with patriotism, so they were with religion. Our churches were not warmed; carrying a foot-stove "to meeting" is among my earliest recollections, as beside my parents I trotted on short pegs through the snow across the New Haven green to hear parson Merwin preach and pray. His prayer was long and fervent ; and invariably he brought in the sentence, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool."

Ghost Stories.-In my childhood days some of the more ignorant people believed in ghosts. Round the kitchen fire children often sat winter evenings, and by the light of the flames listened to awful stories, until cold chills in successive waves ran over them and they sat shuddering, fearful to look back over their shoulders at the window, lest some horrid face of demon impressed against the pane should be seen glaring in upon them. When I was put to bed and left alone in the dark, sometimes the whole room was filled with ghostly faces, floating in the air, when I in vain hid my head under the clothes to shut out the horrid vision.

The intensity of the religious life so impressed children with the actuality of the spirit world, that even ghost stories were rendered more vivid. To prepare for death was the one great lesson continually inculcated. Death was literally made the King of Terrors, and this life of no value except as a preparation for eternity. And hence the stigmatizing expression "worldly" was applied to those so absorbed in the things of this life as to forget that they were in a "dying world," and must soon be summoned before " Jehovah's awful throne." Funerals were rendered peculiarly solemn, for the people, mourners and all, in many cases walked to the grave; while the coffin, in some districts, was borne by bearers, there being an extra set as a relief-adults being bearers for adults, and children for children, little girls often officiating where the life of one of their mates had gone out.

It filled the soul with awe to see the long, sad procession, with its weeping mourners draped in garbs of woe, moving two by two with slow and melancholy step, following their dead; while at intervals the funeral bell sounded its single note from the tower, and then fainting, died trembling away. But ere it died, the trembling, quivering note passed beyond houses, over hills and fields and woods, through a wide area, everywhere dropping down and penetrating and chilling human hearts, young and old-this toll for the dead.

And what did the death-bell say?

A hymn of the time wailed out this warning:

"Hark! from the tomb a doleful sound :

Mine ears attend the cry,

Ye living men come view the ground,
Where you must shortly lie.

"Princes, the clay must be your bed,
In spite of all your power;

The tall, the wise, the reverend head,
Must lay as low as ours.

And thus the great lesson was impressed, coming from the funeral bell, coming from the solemn dirge, coming from the dull, heavy thud, from out the yawning grave, in the spadefuls of earth striking down upon the coffin.

As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children."

This religious education had a wonderful influence in making that New England people the strong people they were. The leading idea was that this world was a mere state of probation, heaven and hell awful realities, which were preached from the pulpit by trembling lips and believed in by the entire people. "What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" was an ever-present question that sank into their hearts and gave an intense earnestness to life of which we see but little now-a-days.

Whatever goes to make a life and give direction to character is of value. It is the start that we first obtain that determines the journey. A few lessons came to me early such as come to every one, trivial matters one would say, but nothing is trivial that has a permanent outcome. I will relate a few

Childhood Experiences.-When a child of some four years I saw an animal with beautifully spotted fur asleep under some lilac bushes in my father's yard. It struck my child sense of admiration and I crawled up and pounced upon the purring beauty; frightened she fought me like a tigress and scratching me I grew angry, seized her by the hind legs, beat out her life against a stone wall, threw her dead body over, and then repenting at my destruction of so much beauty and harmless life, I sat down and nearly brokenhearted wept. It was my first lesson in the folly of indulgence of anger and revenge, and the first and last cat I killed.

The Salt Anecdote.-About that time my father's family, by invitation, were invited by a neighbor to partake of a Christmas dinner. My head just reached above the table, whereupon my host exclaimed, pointing at me, "What, don't that boy eat salt?" That remark directed my attention to the salt-cellar, and all my life I have been a great consumer of salt--a habit I believe greatly conducive to health as a consequence also a great water drinker. Such the effect of a remark made by a man with a complexion like a Mohawk and an irritable temper, on that Christmas day, A. D. 1820.

The Water-Proof Hat.-A mile or more from my father's house was a clear beautiful stream of water, winding through grassy meadows, between near softwooded hills, such as are the charm of New England scenery. One Saturday afternoon as was my wont, with other boys I was on my way thither for a swim.