McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4, September 1893Various
General
McClure's Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 4, September 1893
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
Filling the Syringes. 339
The Rabbits' Quarters. 340
"The Flyer" Leaving the Grand Central Station, New York City. 357
EDWARD E. HALE.
THE MAN WITH A COUNTRY.
BY HERBERT D. WARD.
When General Ward drove the British out of Roxbury in the reign of
George the Third, the valuation of the town was about sixty
thousand dollars. I do not know at what high figure the historic
city that guards the ashes of John Eliot is held now, but I do
know that, in this age of rapacious corporations and untrustworthy
trusts, genius outranks gold, and that Roxbury receives no small
increment of her value from the fact that Edward E. Hale is one of
her most distinguished citizens. To one fond of perceiving the
innate or accidental fitness of things, it is, perhaps, more than a
coincidence that Doctor Hale lives on Highland Street, and that
his house reminds one, with its massive front and Ionic columns, of a
Greek temple.
This large house was built, about sixty years ago, by Mr. Bradford,
for his brother-in-law, Reverend Mr. Kent, and was used for a young
ladies' boarding-school. Even now, on some of the upper panes, girls'
names and girlish sentiments are to be read. When Doctor Hale took the
house, some twenty years ago, he introduced a carpenter to make what
are called "modern improvements."
"Mr. Hale," said the carpenter, after a thorough inspection, "you are
fortunate in your bargain. _This house was built on honor._" Mr. Hale
has had a great mind to make this reply the motto over his doorway.
When Doctor Hale once described his house to an eminent editor of one
of our leading magazines, he said: "You cannot mistake it; it is a
Greek temple just above Eliot Square."
The editor, with the gentle blush that frisky memory will bring to the
cheeks of the staidest, quickly answered: "Yes, I have often
worshipped there."
This is not a biographical paper. The readers of the "Atlantic" will
remember Doctor Hale's description of his father, the first of New
England's great railroad pioneers. Every one knows that our Mr. Hale
was named after his uncle, the great Edward Everett; but perhaps it is
not so generally known that Mrs. Hale is the granddaughter of Lyman
Beecher, and the niece of Mrs. Stowe. What may not be expected of
Doctor Hale's boys, with Beecher, Hale, and Everett blood in their
veins? There is no better selection, and the problem is an interesting
one.
But, to many of us, the most interesting of Doctor Hale's connections
is his distant relation, Helen Kellar. The first time that wonderful,
blind, deaf-mute child, then not eight years old, came to his home,
there happened to be an Egyptian statuette of the god Terminus outside
the piazza steps. The child touched it, and, with her marvellous
discernment, starting back, said in her own way: "Oh, the ugly old
man!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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