Nor is this all, nor the most, for the MIRROR has made the name of John B. Clarke a household word in nearly every school district in Northern New England and in thousands of families in other sections. It has given him a great influence in the politics, the agriculture, and the social life of his time, has made him a power in shaping the policy of his city and state, and one of the forces that have kept the wheels of progress moving in both for more than thirty years. In a word, what one man can do for and with a newspaper in New Hampshire John B. Clarke has done for and with the MIRROR, and what a great newspaper can do for a man the MIRROR has done for John B. Clarke. * * * * * DENMAN THOMPSON. Throughout the United States where-ever the name of New England is held in respect there is the name of Denman Thompson a household word. His genius has embodied in a drama the finer yet homlier characteristics of New England life, its simplicity, its rugged honesty, its simple piety, its benevolence, partially hid beneath a rough and uncouth exterior. His drama is an epic--a prose poem--arousing a loyal and patriotic love for the land of the Pilgrims in the hearts of her sons, whether at home, on the rolling prairies of the West, in the sunny South, amid the grand scenes of the Sierras, or on the Pacific slope. That Denman Thompson was not a native of New Hampshire was rather the result of chance. His parents were natives of Swanzey, where they are still living at a ripe old age, and where they have always lived, save for a few years preceeding and following the birth of their children. In 1831 the parents moved to Girard, Erie County, Pennsylvania, when, October 15, 1833, was born their gifted son. The boy was blessed with one brother and two sisters, and death has yet to strike its first blow in the family. At the age of thirteen years Denman accompanied his family to the old home in Swanzey, where for several years he received the advantages of the education afforded by the district school. For his higher education he was indebted to the excellent scholastic opportunities afforded by the Mount Caesar Seminary in Swanzey. At the age of nineteen he entered the employ of his uncle in Lowell, Massachusetts, serving as book-keeper in a wholesale store, and in that city he made his _debut_ as Orasman in the military drama of the FRENCH SPY.