was about 4,400. The number of letters taken out fifty years later was 523,808. Main street reaches Lincoln Square, where stand the two court houses. The old one has been removed a few feet, and refitted. In it the criminal courts are held; there too are the offices of the court of probate and insolvency.
The New Court House was built in 1845 of Quincy granite, at a cost of about one hundred thousand dollars. In it the civil terms of the courts are held, with numerous ante-rooms for the jurors and for consultation. The lower floor is occupied by the office of the register of deeds, and by the clerk's and treasurer's offices.
Close neighbor to the court houses is the building containing the rooms of the American Antiquarian Society, one of the leading learned bodies of our country. It was founded in 1812. It possesses a very valuable library, especially rich on subjects of local interest to Americans. The newspapers filed here include over four thousand volumes, beginning with the Boston News Letter of 1804, and closing with the great journals of to-day. This same society also possesses a very interesting collection of pre-historic American relics.
In Lincoln Square stands the old Salisbury mansion, an interesting specimen of a colonial house, which has been standing a century or so, since the time when those substantial buildings, with their wide halls, high ceilings, and strong walls, were built on honor. There it has stood in its dignity, more flimsy, more showy architecture springing up around it, until now the fin de siècle eye discovers that nothing is more to be desired than one of these same sturdy old colonial houses.
Main street contains many churches. On it is the large, ugly-looking, but justly celebrated, Clark University, which is devoted to scientific research, with its wonderfully equipped chemical laboratory.
Any one who wants a bird's-eye view of Worcester and its environments, can easily have it by strolling out Highland street to Newton Hill. It is only about a mile from Lincoln Park, but it is six hundred and seventy feet above the sea level, and from it "the whole world, and the glory thereof," seems spread out at one's feet.
On Salisbury street, one mile from the square, stands the house in which George Bancroft, the historian, dear to American hearts, was born.
A mile and a half from the square, on Salisbury Pond, are located the famous Wire Works of Washburn and Moen.
There are many buildings to interest the visitor in Worcester. The State Lunatic Asylum, with its one thousand patients; the free Public Library on Elm street, containing eighty thousand volumes; the High School on Walnut street; the Museum of the National Historical Society, on Foster street; All Saint's Church; the Polytechnic Institute; the College of the Holy Cross, six hundred and ninety feet above the sea, and many another place of interest, calling on the passers-by to look, and learn of the world's advancement.
Standing on one of the heights overlooking the little river, the surrounding hills, the busy city, throbbing with its many manufactories, it seemed to me I had before my eyes an object lesson of the wonderful resources, the vim, the power of making "all things work together for good," which I take to be the vital characteristic of American manhood.
I remembered reading that in 1767 a committee was appointed to decide whether it would be wise to attempt to locate a village on the present site of Worcester.
They reported that the place was one day's journey from Boston, and one day's journey from Springfield, that the place was well watered by streams and brooks, and that in eight miles square there was enough meadow to warrant the settling of sixty families, adding these words: "We recommend that a prudent and able committee be appointed to lay it out, and that due care be taken by said committee that a good minister of God's Word be placed there, as soon as may be, that such people as be there planted may not live like lambs in a large place."
That was only a little more than a century ago. As I stood overlooking it all, "thickly dotted with the homes of the husbandmen, and the villages of the manufacturer, traversed by canal and railway, and supporting a dense population," proving so strong a contrast between the past generation's humble anticipations, and our overflowing prosperity, I asked myself what those old Puritans would have thought of our railroads, our electric cars, our modern machines, our telephones; and I said, with a spirit of self-gratulation,
"We are living, we are dwelling,
In a grand and awful time;
In an age on ages telling,
To be living is sublime."
There is little doubt that future generations will look back upon this age as the brightest in the world's history.
Third and Fourth Days
Lowering clouds and a slight fall of rain again confronted me as I mounted Paul at seven o'clock on the morning of the Third Day in front of the Bay State House, Worcester, and rode out to the Boston and Albany Turnpike. The prospect of meeting my wife and daughter, whom I had not seen for several months, and the lecture appointment for Springfield made this one of the memorable days of my journey for speed and endurance. Fifty-four miles were whirled off in eight hours and the fact established that Paul could be relied upon to do all that was required of him.
I had hardly dismounted in front of the Bates House when Mrs. Glazier and Alice came running from the hotel to greet me. They had been visiting in Hartford and had come up to Springfield early in the morning, reaching the city several hours before my arrival. This visit with my family at Springfield was one of the pleasant episodes of my journey and long to be remembered in connection with my ride across the Bay State.
My lecture was delivered at the Haynes Opera House, whither I was escorted by comrades of the G. A. R. The introduction was by Captain Smith, Commander of the Springfield Post, who spoke pleasantly of my army and prison experiences and of the objects of my lecture tour.
Hastening back to the Bates House after the lecture, the remainder of the evening was spent with my wife and daughter and a few friends who had called for a social talk and to tell me something of the early history of Springfield and vicinity.
As the lecture appointment for Pittsfield was set for the fifteenth I readily discovered by a simple calculation that I could easily spend another day with Hattie and Alice and still reach Pittsfield early in the afternoon of the fifteenth. The leisure thus found was devoted to strolls in and around Springfield and a careful study of the city and its environs.
When King Charles the First had dissolved his third parliament, thus putting his head on the bleeding heart of puritanism, there lived in Springfield, England, a warden of the established church. "He was thirty-nine years of age, of gentle birth, acute, restive, and singularly self-assertive. He had seen some of the stoutest men of the realm break into tears when the King had cut off free speech in the Commons; he had seen ritualism, like an iron collar, clasped upon the neck of the church, while a young jewelled courtier, the Duke of Buckingham, dangled the reputation of sober England at his waistcoat. A colonial enterprise, pushed by some Lincolnshire gentlemen, had been noised abroad, and the warden joined his fortunes with them, and thus became one of the original incorporators mentioned in the Royal Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company in America. This was William Pinchon." After reaching this country he became treasurer of the colony, and a member of the general court. He formed plans for a coast trade, and for a trade with the Indians.
Such was the man of mark, who in 1636, with a colony of friends, made a settlement on the fertile meadows of the Indian Agawam. The spot was obtained by a deed signed by thirteen Indians, and Pinchon, in loving remembrance of his old English home, christened the new settlement Springfield. From the little we can glean of them, the ancient inhabitants of the village must have been a grim old race.
Hugh
