T Nineteen Eleven HE year 1910 has been a good year for Worcester, and the year 1911 is going to be a better one. The terrible calamities that have afflicted other communities have passed us by unscathed. Strikes and lockouts and suffering, economic waste through great fires and floods and embezzlement, have all been conspicuous by their absence. Business might have been better, but capital has not failed to yield a return, and labor has found employment at remunerative wages. Our people, if they are a year older, are a year wiser, and the municipality as a whole is greater and richer and better than it was twelve months ago. A vast amount of money has been spent in permanent improvements calculated to benefit not only the present but future generations. No great plague or epidemic has decimated our population, and never has so much attention been paid to hygiene and the preservation of human life. The manufacturers and merchants' agreement whereby the health of the operatives in our factories and stores is conserved, is in full working order, and provides security for the working men and working women of Worcester obtainable in no other industrial center on this continent. Our schools and colleges are filled with ambitious youth dreaming dreams of future greatness and preparing themselves for lives of usefulness and truth and beauty. Our pulpits are filled with men who feel that they have a message to humanity and have dedicated their manhood to helpfulness and love. Our homes are crowned with the graces of womanhood and the sweet and sacred sanctities of social service, and our State and Nation, delivered from the perils of hypocrisy, anarchism, and internal dissension, stand to-day at a higher point in the toilsome climb up the stony road of civilization than they have ever reached before. Yes, 1910 has been a good year. We bid it adieu with the fond assurance and the firm belief that what 1910 has failed to bring us of joy and love and happiness will be ours in the little fragment of eternity that is just around the corner, that we call time and label 1911. 1011 The WORCESTER MAGAZINE Little Visits to the Homes of Worcester County's Famous Sons and Daughters An Unusual Sketch of Interesting Houses and an Unwonted Portrayal of Yet More Interesting Characters, whose Impress upon Mankind has been Worldwide, whose Genius has Lightened the World's Tasks, and whose Influence has Energized into Action the World's Head and Heart BY REV. PERCY H. EPLER HAPPILY the birthplace of Miss Clara Barton country-side. Here, too, people throughout the nation, 66 exists. It is the first of the three shown in the pictures of her homes, and recalls Stephen Barton, Mad Anthony Wayne's Colonel in 1812. He was the parent who said on her start for the Civil War, Go, if it is your duty to go." The location of the birthplace, still occupied, is Taft Hill, North Oxford, ten miles from Worcester via Southbridge Street, by road turning to right at the Bartlett place, where it has been posted; by electrics it is reached by Webster car. The second Oxford residence is the one with the four white pillars and the colonial portico on Charlton by train and auto, hold house parties every summer. Here she gets up with the birds and remains awake till near midnight. The butcher, the baker, if not the candlestick-maker, have told me they can never get there soon enough in the morning or late enough at night to find her napping. She is always at work, whether it be sweeping off the sidewalk in the morning, or bending over a manuscript under the evening lamp, or receiving the respects of some visitor at noon. "We miss the most beautiful part of the day if we don't get up with the birds," she said to my wife as she "GLEN ECHO," THE WINTER HOME OF MISS BARTON teen out of twenty-four! You mean eighteen out of twenty-four!" As we sat at dinner together in September, she and I alone, looking out of a window at a grass plot in the rear yard, she exclaimed, "There, my conscience again! That land now a grass plot will support enough to keep a family, and next year I think I'll have to have it plowed up!" Later she remarked, "It is such a joy to feel one's self doing something useful, making two blades of grass where one was before something out of nothing." Miss Barton fairly suffers from this economic conscience which, as her humane conscience, is active for others' good-not for her own. Constant concern for others is a secret of her power, her peace, and I think also of her age. The third home is the double-towered frame structure with ivy clambering up the two corners and a semicircular grass plot and car-track in front. Glen Echo," Maryland, is in the vicinage of Washington, D. C. Here Miss Barton elects to add new winters of her life to the near cycle she has already lived, her eightyninth birthday being Christmas day. Glen Echo's very homeliness carried with it a story I think one of the greatest of her wonderful life. It is a secret of sacrifice and a deed which makes it monumental. It was formerly the old ware house she used for the Spanish War. Here she stored all the Red Cross stores she used on the fields of disease and death. At the time of her return from the front, she dispensed with her own mansion near the Washington Army and Navy Building, and fitted up the old warehouse, wherein she chooses to live " as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing, yet possessing all things." Miss Barton's homes are all surrounded by veterans of her beloved Red Cross. Her winter home has Dr. J. B. Hubbell, the famous Red Cross field officer, still faithfully serving at her side. This year, though she arrived in Oxford in June, Miss Barton told me she did not come for an entire season. The first week in August, contrary to her usual custom of staying in Oxford, she was already making plans to depart. Indeed this last summer she has been mostly on the wing. The first of May she traveled to Chicago" entirely alone," entirely alone," as she wrote me," from first to last able to occupy my entire time unhindered by the desires or necessities of traveling companions." Miss Barton went West as the principal guest of the famous Social Economic Club, who honored her by a great reception and ovation. The founder of the Red Cross shook hands with two thousand persons at their annual May breakfast before reaching the tables. Chicago followed this ovation with three weeks of lunches, dinners and addresses. On a Sunday she occupied, alone, the pulpit of the First Congregational Church at Oak Park and, as here at the Adams Square Congregational Church two years ago, held the crowded auditorium spell-bound. The fourth week in May, after a visit with former field-workers in Indiana, whom her intense loyalty never forgets, she returned to her Oxford summer home only too soon to depart. She now is wintering at Glen Echo. To Major General Ward, Commanding at Roxbury, Cambridge 3 March 1776 Sir: My letter of last Night would inform you that the Gen'l officers at this place thought it dangerous to delay taking post on Dorchester Hills, least they should be possessed before us by the Enemy, and therefore Involve us in difficulties which we should not know how to extricate ourselves from-This opinion they were inclined to adopt from a belief, indeed almost a certain knowledge, of the Enemy's being apprised of our designs that way. You should make choice of some good Regiments to go on the morning after the Post is taken, under the command of General Thomas-the number of men you shall judge necessary for this Relief may be ordered. I should think from two to three thousand, as circumstances may require, would be enough. I shall send you from thence two Regiments to be at Roxbury early on Tuesday morning to strengthen your lines and I shall send you from hence tomorrow evening two Companies of Riflemen, which with the three now there may be part of the Relief to go on with Gen'l Thomasthese Five companies may be placed under the care of Captain Hugh Stephenson subject to the Command of the officer Commanding at the Post (Dorchester). -They will I think be able to gald the Enemy sorely in the march from the boats in landing. A Blind along the Causey should be thrown up, if possible while the other work is about; especially on the Dorchester side, as that is nearest the Enemy's Guns and most exposed. We calculate I think that 800 men would do the whole Causey with great ease in a night if the marsh is not got bad to work again and the tide gives no great Interruption. 250 able men I should think would soon fell the Trees for the Abettes but what number it may take to get them, the Fascines, Chandeliers etc. in place I know not-750 men (the working party carrying their arms) will I should think be sufficient for a Covering party, these to be posted on Nuke Hill-or the little hill in front of the 2nd hill looking into Boston Bay-and near the point opposite the Castle sentries to be kept between the Parties and some on the back side looking towards Squantum. As I have a very high opinion of the defense which may be made with barrels from either of the hills, I could wish you to have a number over. Perhaps single barrels would be better than linking of them together, being less liable to accidents. The Hoops should be well nailed on else they will soon fly and the casks fall to pieces. You must take care that the necessary notice is given to the Militia agreeable to the plan settled with General Thomas. I shall desire Col'n Gridley and Col'n Knox to be over tomorrow to lay out the work. I recollect nothing more at present to mention to youyou will settle matters with the officers with you, as what I have here said is intended rather to convey my ideas generally than wishing them to be adhered to strictly. I am with esteem etc. Sir Yr most Obed. Servt At Julia Ward Howe's late death, coming as it did near that of the Genevan founder of the European Red Cross, Dunant, and of England's Florence Nightingale, Miss Barton, the greatest heroine of our nation's greatest epoch, wrote me as follows: "As the leaves fall, how fast one's friends fall with them and the nations are called to give up their best. England has given her Florence Nightingale, Switzerland her Dunant and her Moynier, the pillars of the Red Cross, and America our beloved Julia Ward Howe. Rich contributions these to that other world! They had made the most of this and take their gathered wealth of culture, intellect, integrity, goodness, Chris the first week of September, 1786, he was greatest when, though single-handed and alone against the populace and his old army, he broke the power of Shays' Rebellion." Few people that first see this spot at Court House Square, surmounted as it is with the noble temple of justice, approached by wide terraces of stone and guarded by a martial figure in bronze, pass by without a word of surprise and admiration. All read the motto carved over all on the facade "OBEDIENCE TO LAW IS LIBERTY." The Boston architect who placed there this inscription builded better than he knew, for in 1786 General Ward dealt Shays' Rebellion its first death-blow and literally made obedience to law-Liberty. His decisive and tragic act upon this stage of national history was soon bulwarked by the Constitution, whose making was no doubt hastened by the uprising of Shays' Rebellion, which his spirit was the first to crush. Because of this master-stroke of patriotism, intensely pertinent is the motto marking the spot. The attention thus caught at the Court House by the national figure, the spirit of whose life should have long ago been there commemorated in an heroic, colonial bronze, we proceed to his home, the Revolutionary mansion. We can reach it direct by auto, carriage or electric car from Worcester to Shrewsbury, where six miles from Worcester City Hall, one mile from Shrewsbury centre, it stands on the right of the old King's highway, a nobly preserved monument of the Revolution. THE BIRTHPLACE OF GEORGE BANCROFT, THE HISTORIAN tian humility, fortitude, justice and faith to lay on the shrine of that other world, a tribute to the possibilities of this. Great souls they were! God's own children! To me every one was a personal friend. I am lonesome when I think of them as gone out of my life, but glad when I feel how much richer and more ample that other field to which they must have gone!" 回 ㄖㄖ As to a roof-tree of American liberty, Senator George Frisbie Hoar was fond of taking national statesmen, when they visited Worcester, to the Shrewsbury home stead of General Artemas Ward. I think it was to VicePresident Fairbanks that at such a party in the hearing of the late Miss Harriet Ward, then hostess of the simple mansion, he made this historic appraisal: "General Ward was great as first commander-inchief of the American Revolution and later as first Major General under Washington when he headed the right wing that achieved the evacuation of Boston at Dorchester Heights. But on the Court House steps If you go there this year and are so fortunate as to find any of the neighboring Ward family there (the house is not formally open to the public), first drink to the health of the nation. Drink to the memory of the Revolution. Drink it from the old oaken bucket in the huge covered well-house on the cool flat flags that floor the kitchen way. No wonder the well-house lasts perennially. For it is of old time worth even to the enormous twisted thongs of corded rawhide that hold the bucket as |