the proper location, the words Indian Profile, but a reading glass only showed the same to be but topographical shading marks.
Later reports contain half-tones, showing the dam and water tower in construction; and on page 200 of Medford Reports, 1898, is a fine view of the completed works, which were for a time the high service of Medford's water system, now a thing of the past and partially removed.
The town records show that as long ago as 1738 a map of Medford was suggested, and by vote er 29 received the signature of Governor Belcher on January I, 1736-7 (see Massachusetts Archives, also elsewhere in this issue). There being no legislation requiring it, that committee probably considered the plan of Medford as unnecessary.
In 1898 there was published by G. W. Stadly & Co. an Atlas of Medford, consisting of twenty-one double pages.
Upon one of these is the Tufts map of 1794 and the reprint of the Walling map we have alluded to. The first plate shows the entire territory of
oetic license, he gives the states as thirty (really thirty-one then), though some were badly out of tune.
The planet Neptune had been known as such by astronomers only fifteen years. The coercion he quoted had been a political bugaboo, held impossible by many who held state rights doctrines; and certainly everything was ablaze with the lightning and thunder of civil war. It was given him to see that great strife closed and the reconstruction begun that demonstrates to all the world that the nation is one, and on the last Sabbath of his life, the day before his passing, to worship where he had preached, and from thence be borne to his rest.
We fancy that had he been living in 1898, his rejoicing that the many are one would have found expression in verse.
How much more so today.
The thirty-one, grown to forty-eight, are united as never before, and wherever the music to which his verses were sung in 1861 is heard, the people, because of that unity, give visibly respectful attention.
part of the Porter house has been put. Then after a vacuum (or vacancy rather) for about a year with adverse conditons—war or otherwise—below, the Medford Publishing Company has taken the old house and in its first issue of the Mercury, there printed, gave an account of its history.
Its existence covers the period of constitutional government of our country.
All our presidential campaigns, our wars and our politics have there been discussed.
Past its old walls the Medford men of 1861, of 1898 and 1918 have marched away, the latter to help do away with the royal motto that so recently was Meinself und Gott.
It was fitting that from out these old walls the following issue of the Mercury should send out the story of how Medford received the news of their success and of the retirement of the senior partner on November 11th, and how it celebrated Victory Day.
Excepting the removal of the front door and the introduction of plate glass, the general appearance of the old Porter house
works of art which surrounded them.
The character of the whole city was rapidly changing.
In 1899 the school committee summarize the changes made recently as follows: The erection of the Lincoln (1894), Hillside (1895), High (1896) and Brooks (1898) schoolhouses, the enlargement of the Tufts (1898), and the improvements in sanitation and ventilation of the Centre, Cradock, Everett, Swan and James (1896), while they have cost us money, have in six years changed Medford from a town with a lot 1898), and the improvements in sanitation and ventilation of the Centre, Cradock, Everett, Swan and James (1896), while they have cost us money, have in six years changed Medford from a town with a lot of small, old, unsanitary, ill-ventilated and badly crowded schoolhouses to a city with creditable, substantial, commodious and healthful buildings.
As the culmination of this new modernized public school system stood the high school, setting the standard for the entire city.
As rapidly as accommodation in the various grammar grades of the city permitted, the members of the ninth grade were removed from the high school building.
The work of the teachers was still, however, heavy, with large c
he front of the cellar wall was put in, and sections of front piers of brick begun a little outside of the former building but within the property line.
Then the aldermen promptly passed the act over the mayor's veto, and a change of work resulted.
Next followed the removal of the Kent store and Wyatt-Cheney house, and the erection on the new line of a seven-store block of white cast stone—just completed.
In the latest nineties the phrase Fin de siecle was considerably employed, and in 1898 people thought the builders were at the end of their rope (perhaps they were financially), and remarks were made—It is twenty years ahead of the times.
Perhaps so. But now that block is called the Sagamore Masonic Building and Community Hall.
Nahum E. Wilber came as successor of Reuben Willey as station agent just prior to Mr. Richardson's appointment as postmaster in 1881.
He established a little store in the depot between the waiting-rooms, a picture of which has been preserved.
Afte
