Notes by a Medford Vacationist of long ago.
Sixty-three years ago some one who had visited Medford, which then had about three thousand five hundred people, contributed an article on ‘New England Villages, &c.,’ to the Massachusetts Ploughman. He wrote over the signature of ‘D. E. N.,’ perhaps from Springfield, and the Ploughman coming under the notice of Mr. Alfred Brooks, it was by him sent to a friend, seventeen years after its publication. Medford (for a village) was then making a marked growth, and the writer, after mentioning the general features of New England villages, touches upon the march of improvement, and alludes to some of the public men of our old town. [p. 21]A few extracts follow:—
‘New England villages vary, of course, in attraction and interest, but it would be difficult to find one devoid of both.’[p. 23]‘If any Convention is needed here, it would be to relax the ardor of industry, not to quicken it.’
‘What they pray for, is to be let alone to work out their own salvation, satisfied that they possess the qualifications for doing it.’
‘Suppose an individual should have fallen asleep twenty years ago in Springfield, and have reawakened at this time—he walks out, and sees the earth strapped down with iron bands—the entire product of a village conveyed, en masse, in two hours, to the commercial capital—Boston and New York exchanging thoughts and signs, like birds in the same cage, bargains for thousands proposed and ratified 500 miles distant in ten minutes, and sundry other operations little less than marvellous. What suddenly restored vision could survive this array of wonders?’
‘In winter “ our man” goes to school and does the “chores” for his board and lodging.’
‘Poor people do not seem so poor here, nor the rich, so rich as elsewhere.’
‘Here is a strange misapplication of words even among the educated—one of them is “beautiful,” which is applied to barn, doors, band-boxes and crooked-necked squashes.’
‘If a son is stupid, lazy, or inclined to bad habits, he is frequently urged into a voyage to Canton or Calcutta, to have his faculties jogged into something like activity.’
‘To the unpretending stranger, the domiciles of the inhabitants are accessible, and when we look back on the summer months, we can recall the matchless panorama which passed in review before us with feelings no other period of our life has inspired.’
‘Among the clergy (in all, four) there was one who led us not only through green fields and by still waters, but into sundry white houses, some situated on the great thoroughfare to Boston, others perched on gentle elevations embracing a river that put to shame the Laocoon serpents, by its windings, and a few whose regal adornings indicated both wealth and refinement. To this clerical friend1 we feel greatly indebted, not only for strewing our path with flowers, but permitting us to inhale the fragrance of those that spring up in the exuberant soil of his own mind. In the pulpit he poured forth the most comprehensive periods, redolent of truth and duty, aiming always to supplant the kingdom of this world by the Kingdom of Heaven. . . . You might presume that his sermons were written with doors ajar, the sentences did so creak and slam, but this was only another use of means for an effect—fortunately there was nothing mystic about him, though living near to its source. [p. 22] Nobody could say that the dinner-table was more grave for his presence, or that it was perfect without him—he not only had sallies of wit, but whole hours of it.’
‘We became acquainted with only one lawyer2 in this village—he was grey, but not through professional labor; not rich, for the sage economy and peaceful bent of the people would starve the most brilliant talents if confined to exercise among them; but rich in good reputation and a clear conscience. Such are his fine discrimination and ethical accomplishments, that lay preaching revived, he would probably be the first invited to the pulpit.’
‘The medical faculty are too well represented here to pass unnoticed—it embraces gentlemen not less eminent for professional skill and knowledge, than for grace and amenity that mark their private intercourse. One of their number is a Howard by nature,3 and no pen can do him justice who is enshrined in the heart of every man, woman and child . . . his character can never be portrayed till the dead rise and give their account.’
‘The influence of woman is here marked with the distinctness of a sunbeam; almost every house contains that most respectable character and overseer, an old maid, sometimes two or three, and if things do not go on straight, and exactly so, it is not their fault ... Old maids have held their heads very erect since the days of the English Elizabeth, and many a forlorn biped of a bachelor has felt the shock of an Elizabethan shell as it falls upon the citadel of his comfort.’
‘Among the unmarried ladies of this rather remarkable place is one on whose head and heart a half century has set its seal, without sealing either up. Nature bestowed upon her the regal title to intellectual eminence, and the heavenly gift has neither been soiled or dishonored. Her conversation is a sort of incarnation of Johnson and Addison, and her chat, when the mood is on, not unlike what we presume to have been Horace Walpole's and not entirely free from his severity. Had fate ordained her to a wider sphere of action she might have been the “Opie” of New England.’4
‘A sterile soil and savage neighbors called upon the early settlers for thought. To live and not die, was a great motive. Thought and action were then married, and continuous labor did for the physical, what an unfailing trust in Providence did for the spiritual. . . . The great miracle of 1620 is still mightily working. The rod of the Puritan enchanter is still unbroken.’
The Ploughman of that day was a weekly blanket sheet, and the article occupied two columns. The Regis-Ter reproduces the above extracts as the ‘&c.’ of the author, ‘D. E. N.,’ only wishing that he might revisit his old haunts and witness the present ‘array of wonders’ which he might think a ‘Heaven of enchantments.’
