strength of what he appears to be, full respect and confidence. * * * * * [Illustration: Oliver Ames] OLIVER AMES. By JAMES W. CLARKE, A.M. [Editor of the Boston Traveller]. The descendants of William Ames, the Puritan, who settled in Braintree, are a representative New England family. Their history forms an honorable part of the history of Massachusetts, and fitly illustrates in its outlines the social and material advancement of the people from the poverty and hardships of the early Colonial days to the wealth and culture of the present. In the early days of the Colony they were poor, as were their neighbors of other names, but they honored toil and believed in the dignity of honest labor. Industry was with them coupled with thrift. They recognized their duty to the State and gave it such service as she demanded, whether it were honest judgment in the jury box, the town meeting and the General Court, or bearing arms against the Indian marauder, and the foreign foe. State and Church were virtually one in these primitive times, and such services as were delegated to individuals by church, by school districts, or by the town, were accepted by the members of this family as duties to be unostentatiously performed, rather than as bringing with their performance either honor or emolument. With their thrift they coupled temperance. They labored subduing the forests, on the clearing and at the forge. Artisans, as well as agriculturists, were needed; and they became skilled artisans. Muskets were as indispensable to these pioneers as hoes or spades; and so they made guns, then farming tools. They made shovels first for their neighbors, then for their township, then for their State and country. As their state advanced they kept pace with it. They found an outlet for the products of their skill at a neighboring seaport, and through this and other outlets secured markets in distant countries. Industries and enterprises which would in time develop other industries and enterprises became the special objects of their encouragement. Where avenues of prosperity and success were lacking, they must be created; and in recognition of this necessity this family took the lead in making the seemingly inaccessible, accessible, and the far, near, by building a railway across the Continent. In this barest and most meagre outline of the history of a single family may be found in miniature an outline of the history of the development of Massachusetts, of New England.