preceding centuries, the first fact which strikes our attention is the
increase in the rate of growth. In 1680 the population of Cambridge
seems to have been about 850, and the graduating class for that year
numbered five. In 1793 the population--not counting the parishes that
have since become Brighton and Arlington--was about 1200, and there was
a graduating class of 38. Thus in more than a century the population
had increased barely fifty per cent. In 1793 there were only four houses
east of Dana Street, but that year witnessed an event of cardinal
importance, the opening of West Boston Bridge. The distance between
Boston and Old Cambridge was thus reduced from eight miles to three, and
a direct avenue was opened between the interior of Middlesex County and
the Boston markets. The effect was shown in doubling the population of
Cambridge by the year 1809, when another bridge was completed from
Lechmere Point to the north end of Boston. These were toll bridges, in
the hands of private corporations, and their success led to further
bridges,--the one at River Street in 1811, the one at Western Avenue in
1825, and Brookline Bridge so lately as 1850. The principal
thoroughfares south and east of Old Cambridge were built as highways
connecting with these bridges: thus River Street and Western Avenue were
tributary to West Boston Bridge, and to that point the Concord Turnpike
was prolonged by Broadway, the Middlesex Turnpike by Hampshire Street,
and the Medford Road by Webster Avenue; while Cambridge Street,
intersecting these avenues, formed a direct thoroughfare from the
Concord and Watertown roads to the northern part of Boston. The
completion of these important works led to projects for filling up the
marshes and establishing docks in rivalry of Boston,--plans but very
slightly realized before circumstances essentially changed them.
In this way, Cambridge, which had hitherto faced the Brighton mainland,
turned its face toward the Boston peninsula, and two new villages began
to grow up at "the Port" and "the Point," otherwise Cambridgeport and
East Cambridge. It was not long before the new villages began in some
ways to assert rivalry with the old one. The corporation which owned the
bridge and large tracts of land at Lechmere Point naturally wished to
increase the value of its real estate. Middlesex County needed a new
courthouse and jail. In 1757 a new courthouse had been built on the site
of Lyceum Hall, but in 1813 there was a need for something better;
whereupon the Lechmere Point Corporation forthwith built a courthouse
and jail in East Cambridge, and presented them, with the ground on which
they stood, to the county. In 1818, a lot of land in the Port, bounded
by Harvard, Prospect, Austin, and Norfolk streets, was appropriated for
a poorhouse. Soon afterward it was proposed to inclose our
common,--which with the lapse of time had shrunk to about its present
size,--and to convert it from a grazing ground into an ornamental park.
The scheme met with vehement opposition, and the town meetings in this
growing community suddenly became so large that the old courthouse in
Harvard Square would not hold them. Accordingly, a bigger townhouse was
built in 1832 on the eastern part of the poorhouse lot, and thus was the
civic centre removed from Old Cambridge.
This event served to emphasize the state of things which had been
growing up with increasing rapidity since the beginning of the century.
Instead of a single village, with a single circle of interests, there
were now three villages, with interests diverse and sometimes
conflicting as regards the expending of public money, so that feelings
of sectional antagonism were developed.
In New England history, the usual remedy for such a state of things has
been what might be called "spontaneous fission." The overgrown town
would divide into three, and the segments would go on pouting at each
other as independent neighbours. We need not be surprised to learn that
in 1842 the people of Old Cambridge petitioned to be set off as a
separate town; but this attempt was successfully opposed, with the
result that in 1846 a city government was adopted. In that year the
population had reached 13,000, and was approaching the point at which
town meetings become unmanageable from sheer bulk. For small
communities, Thomas Jefferson was probably right in holding that the
town meeting is the best form of government ever devised by man. It was
certainly the form best loved in New England down to 1822, when Boston,
with its population of 40,000, reluctantly gave it up, and adopted a
representative government instead. The example of Boston was followed in
1836 by Salem and Lowell, and next in 1846 by Roxbury and Cambridge.
From that time forth the making of cities went on more rapidly. It was
the beginning of a period of urban development, the end of which we
cannot as yet even dimly foresee. This unprecedented growth of cities is
sometimes spoken of as peculiarly American, but it is indeed not less
remarkable in Europe, and it extends over the world so far as the
influence of railroad and telegraph extends. The influence of these
agencies of communication serves to diffuse over wide areas the effects
wrought by machinery at different centres of production. With increased
demand for human energy, the earth's power of sustaining human life has
vastly increased, and there is a strong tendency to congregate about
centres of production and exchange. In 1846 there were but five cities
in the United States with a population exceeding 100,000; New York had
not yet reached half a million. To-day New York is approaching the
two-million mark, three other cities[28] have passed the million, and
not less than thirty have passed the hundred-thousand. During this half
century the 13,000 of Cambridge have increased to more than 80,000. The
Cambridge of to-day contains as many people as the Boston of sixty years
ago.
The causes of this growth of Cambridge might be treated, had we space
for it, under three heads. Our city has grown because of its proximity
to Boston; it has grown by reason of its flourishing manufactures; and
it has grown with the growth of the University. That Cambridge should
have shared in the general prosperity of this whole suburban region is
but natural. But persons at a distance are apt to show surprise when we
speak of it as a manufacturing city. This feature in our development
belongs to the period subsequent to 1846, and has much to do with the
growth of the eastern portions of Cambridge, where the combined
facilities for railroad and water communication have been peculiarly
favourable to manufactures. In the early part of this century, the
glassworks at East Cambridge, which have since departed, were somewhat
famous, considerable manufactures of soap and leather had been begun,
and cars and wagons were made here. At the present time some of our
chief manufactures are of engine boilers and various kinds of machinery,
of which the annual product exceeds $2,000,000. Among the industries
which produce in yearly value more than $1,000,000 may be mentioned
printing and publishing, musical instruments (especially pianos and
organs), furniture, clothing, carpenter's work, soap and candles,
biscuit-baking; while among those that produce $500,000 or more are
carriage-making and wheelwright's work, plumbing and plumber's
materials, bricks and tiles, and confectionery. Not only our own new
Harvard Bridge, but most of the steel railway bridges in New England,
have been built in Cambridge. We supply a considerable part of the world
with hydraulic engines; the United States Navy comes here for its pumps,
and our pumping machines may be seen at work in Honolulu, in Sydney, in
St. Petersburg. In the dimensions of its pork-packing industry,
Cambridge comes next after Chicago and Kansas City. In 1842 all the
fish-netting used in America was made in England; to-day it is chiefly
made in East Cambridge, which also furnishes the twine prized by
disciples of Izaak Walton in many parts of the world. Last year the
potteries on Walden Street turned out seven million flower-pots. Such
facts as these bear witness to the unusual facilities of our city, where
coal can be taken and freight can be shipped at the very door of the
factory, where taxes and insurance are not burdensome and the fire
department is unsurpassed for efficiency, where skilled labour is easy
to get because good workmen find life comfortable and attractive, with
excellent sanitary conditions and unrivalled means of free education,
even to the Latin School and the Manual Training School. It is well
said, in one of the reports in our semi-centennial volume, that "to
Cambridge herself, as much as to any other one thing, is the success of
all her manufacturing enterprises due, and all agree in acknowledging
it."
Among Cambridge industries, two may be mentioned as especially
characteristic and famous. Of the printing establishments now existing,
not many can be more venerable than our University Press, of which we
have spoken as beginning in 1639. Of the wise and genial founder of the
Riverside Press--who once was mayor of our city, and whose memory we
love and revere--it may be said that few men of recent times have had a
higher conception of bookmaking as one of the fine arts. These two
institutions have set a lofty standard for the Athenæum Press, which has
lately come to bear them company. The past half century has seen
Cambridge come into the foremost rank among the few publishing centres
of the world, where books are printed with faultless accuracy and
artistic taste.
The visitor to Cambridge from Brookline, as he leaves the bridge at
Brookline Street, comes upon a pleasant dwelling house, with a private
observatory, and hard by it a plain brick building. That is the shop of
Alvan Clark & Sons, who have carried the art of telescope-making to a
height never reached before. There have been made the most powerful
refracting telescopes in the world, and one of the firm, more than
thirty years ago, himself acquired fame as an astronomer for his
discovery of the companion of Sirius.
From this quiet nook in the Port one's thoughts naturally turn to the
Harvard Observatory, which in those days the two Bonds made famous for
their accurate methods of research, their discoveries relating to the
planet Saturn, and their share in the application of photography to
telescopic observation. The honourable position then taken by the
Observatory has been since maintained; but as we note this, we find
ourselves brought to the consideration of the University and its last
half century of growth. And here my remarks cannot help taking the form,
to some extent, of personal reminiscences.
When I first came to Old Cambridge, in 1860, it still had much of the
village look, which it has since been fast losing. Pretty much all the
spaces now covered by street after street of wooden "Queen Anne" houses,
in such proximity as to make one instinctively look for the whereabouts
of the nearest fire alarm, were then open, smiling fields. The old house
where the Shepard Church stands was rural enough for the Berkshire
Hills; and on the site of Austin Hall, in the doorway of a homestead
built in 1710, one might pause for a cosy chat with the venerable and
courtly Royal Morse, whose personal recollections went back into the
eighteenth century. The trees on the common were the merest saplings,
but an elm of mighty sweep, whose loss one must regret, shaded the whole
of Harvard Square. Horse cars came and went on week days, but on Sunday
he who would visit Boston must either walk or take an omnibus, in which
riding was a penance severe enough to atone for the sin. "Blue Laws" in
the University were in full force; the student who spent his Sundays at
home in Boston must bring out a certificate showing that he had attended
divine service twice; no discretion was allowed the parents.
College athletics were in their infancy, as the little gymnasium still
standing serves to remind us. There were rowing matches, but baseball
had not come upon the scene, and football had just been summarily
suppressed. The first college exercise in which I took part was the
burial of the football, with solemn rites, in a corner of this Delta. On
Class Day there was no need for closing the yard; there was room enough
for all, and groups of youths and maidens in light summer dress, dancing
on the green before Holworthy, made a charming picture, like that of an
ancient May Day in merry England, save for the broiling heat.
The examination days which followed were more searching than at other
American colleges. The courses of study were on the whole better
arranged than elsewhere, but during the first half of the course
everything was prescribed, and in the last half the elective system
played but a subordinate part. The system of examinations did not extend
to the Law School, where a simple residence of three terms entitled a
student to receive the bachelor's degree. The library at Gore Hall had
less than one fifth of its present volumes, with no catalogue accessible
to the public, while one small table accommodated all the readers. For
laboratory work the facilities were meagre, and very little was done. We
all studied a book of chemistry; how many of us ever really looked at
such things as manganese or antimony? For the student of biology the
provision was better, for the Botanic Garden was very helpful, and in
the autumn of 1860 was opened the first section of our glorious Museum
of Comparative Zoölogy.
Here one is naturally led to the reflection that in that day of small
things, as some might call it, there were spiritual influences operative
at Harvard which more than made up for shortcomings in material
equipment. There is a kind of human presence, all too rare in this
world, which is in itself a stimulus and an education worth more than
all the scholastic artifices that the wit of man has devised; for in the
mere contact with it one's mind is trained and widened as if by
enchantment. Such a human presence in Cambridge was Louis Agassiz. Can
one ever forget that beaming face as he used to come strolling across
the yard, with lighted cigar, in serene obliviousness of the University
statutes? Scarcely had one passed him, when one might exchange a
pleasant word with Asa Gray, or descry in some arching vista the
picturesque figures of Sophocles or Peirce, or, turning up Brattle
Street, encounter, with a thrill of pleasure not untinged with awe,
Longfellow and Lowell walking side by side. In such wise are the streets
and lawns of our city hallowed by the human presences that once graced
them; and few are the things to be had for which one would exchange the
memories of those days!
My class of 1863, with 120 members, was the largest that had been
graduated here. It would have been larger but for the Civil War, and a
period followed with classes of less than 100 members,--a sad commentary
upon the times. Boundless possibilities of valuable achievement must be
sacrificed to secure the supreme end, that the commonwealth should not
suffer harm. How nobly Harvard responded to the demand is recorded upon
the solemn tablets in this Memorial Hall. For those who are inclined to
dally with the thought that war is something that may be undertaken
lightly and with frolicsome heart, this sacred precinct and the monument
on yonder common have their lesson that may well be pondered.
The vast growth of our country since the Civil War has been attended
with the creation of new universities and the enlargement of the old
ones to such an extent as to show that the demand for higher education
more than keeps pace with the increase of population. The last
graduating class in our Quinquennial Catalogue numbered 350 members. The
University contains more than 3000 students.[29] The increase in number
of instructors, in courses of instruction, in laboratories and museums,
in facilities and appliances of every sort, has wrought changes like
those in a fairy tale. The Annual Catalogue is getting to be as
multifarious as Bradshaws Guide, and a trained intellect is required to
read it. The little college of half a century ago has bloomed forth as
one of the worlds foremost universities. Such things can come from great
opportunities wielded and made the most of by clearness of vision and
administrative capacity.
To this growth of the University must be added the most happy inception
and growth of Radcliffe College, marking as it does the maturing of a
new era in the education of women. We may well wish for Radcliffe a
career as noble and as useful as that of Harvard, and I doubt not that
such is in store for it. A word must be said of the Episcopal
Theological School, based upon ideas as sound and broad as Christianity;
and of the New-Church Theological School, more recently founded. We must
hail such indications of the tendency toward making our Cambridge the
centre for the untrammelled study of the most vital problems that can
occupy the human mind.
But the day we are celebrating is a civic, not a university occasion,
and I must dwell no longer upon academic themes. We are signalizing the
anniversary of the change which we once made from government by town
meeting to city government. Have we a good reason for celebrating that
change? Has our career as a civic community been worthy of approval? In
answering this question, I shall not undertake to sum up the story of
our public schools and library; our hospital and charity organizations;
the excellent and harmonious work of our churches, Protestant and
Catholic; our Prospect Union, warmly to be commended; our arrangements
for water supply and sewage; and our admirable park system (in which we
may express a hope that Elmwood will be included). This interesting and
suggestive story may be read in the semi-centennial volume, "The
Cambridge of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Six," just issued from the
Riverside Press. It is an enlivening story of progress, but like every
story it has a moral, and I am going to pass over details and make
straight for that moral. Americans are a bragging race because they have
enjoyed immense opportunities, and are apt to forget that the true merit
lies, not in the opportunity, but in the use we make of it. Much
gratifying progress can be achieved in spite of the worst sort of
blundering and sinning on the part of governments. The greater part,
indeed, of human progress within historic times has been thus achieved.
A good deal of the progress of which Americans are wont to boast has
been thus achieved. Now the moral of our story is closely concerned with
the fact that in the city of Cambridge such has not been the case. Our
city government has from the outset been upright, intelligent, and
helpful. We are satisfied with it. We do not wish to change it. In this
respect the experience of Cambridge is very different from that of many
other American cities. The government of our cities is acknowledged to
be a problem of rare difficulty, so that it has begun to seem a natural
line of promotion for a successful mayor to elect him governor, and then
to send him to the White House! In some cities one finds people inclined
to give up the problem as insoluble. I was lately assured by a
gentleman in a city which I will not name, but more than a thousand
miles from here, that the only cure for the accumulated wrongs of that
community would be an occasional _coup d'état_, with the massacre of all
the city officers. So the last word of our boasted progress, when it
comes to municipal government, is declared to be the Oriental idea of
"despotism tempered by assassination"! Now to what cause or causes are
we to ascribe the contrast between Cambridge and the cities that are so
wretchedly governed? The answer is, that in Cambridge we keep city
government clear of politics, we do not mix up municipal questions with
national questions. If I may repeat what I have said elsewhere, "since
the object of a municipal election is simply to secure an upright and
efficient municipal government, to elect a city magistrate because he is
a Republican or a Democrat is about as sensible as to elect him because
he believes in homœopathy or has a taste for chrysanthemums." Upon
this plain and obvious principle of common sense our city has acted, on
the whole with remarkable success, during its half century of municipal
existence. The results we see all about us, and the example may be
commended as an object lesson to all who are interested in the most
vital work that can occupy the mind of an American,--the work of
elevating the moral tone of public life. For it is neither wealth, nor
power, nor cunning, nor craft that exalts a nation, but righteousness
and the fear of the Lord.
_May, 1896._
XI
A HARVEST OF IRISH FOLK-LORE
Since the days when Castrèn made his arduous journeys of linguistic
exploration in Siberia, or when the brothers Grimm collected their rich
treasures of folk-lore from the lips of German peasants, an active quest
of vocables and myths has been conducted with much zeal and energy in
nearly all parts of the world. We have tales, proverbs, fragments of
verse, superstitious beliefs and usages, from Greenland, from the
southern Pacific, from the mountaineers of Thibet and the freedmen upon
Georgia plantations. We follow astute Reynard to the land of the
Hottentots, and find the ubiquitous Jack planting his beanstalk among
the Dog-Rib Indians. At the same time, the nooks and corners of Europe
have been ransacked with bountiful results; so that whereas our
grandfathers, in speculating about the opinions and mental habits of
people in low stages of culture, were dealing with a subject about which
they knew almost nothing, on the other hand, our chief difficulty
to-day is in shaping and managing the enormous mass of data which keen
and patient inquirers have collected. It is well that this work has been
carried so far in our time, for modern habits of thought are fast
exterminating the Old World fancies. Railroad, newspaper, and
telegraphic bulletin of prices are carrying everything before them. The
peasant's quaint dialect and his fascinating myth tales are disappearing
along with his picturesque dress; and savages, such of them as do not
succumb to fire-water, are fast taking on the airs and manners of
civilized folk. It is high time to be gathering in all the primitive
lore we can find, before the men and women in whose minds it is still a
living reality have all passed from the scene.
The collection of Irish myth stories lately published by Mr. Jeremiah
Curtin[30] is the result of a myth-hunting visit which the author made
in Ireland in 1887, and is one of the most interesting and valuable
contributions to the study of folk-lore that have been made for many
years. "All the tales in my collection," says Mr. Curtin, "of which
those printed in this volume form but a part, were taken down from the
mouths of men who, with one or two exceptions, spoke only Gaelic, or but
little English, and that imperfectly. These men belong to a group of
persons all of whom are well advanced in years, and some very old; with
them will pass away the majority of the story-tellers of Ireland, unless
new interest in the ancient language and lore of the country is roused.
"For years previous to my visit of 1887 I was not without hope of
finding some myth tales in a good state of preservation. I was led to
entertain this hope by indications in the few Irish stories already
published, and by certain tales and beliefs that I had taken down myself
from old Irish persons in the United States. Still, during the earlier
part of my visit in Ireland, I was greatly afraid that the best myth
materials had perished. Inquiries as to who might be in possession of
these old stories seemed fruitless for a considerable time. The persons
whom I met that were capable of reading the Gaelic language had never
collected stories, and could refer only in a general way to the
districts in which the ancient language was still living. All that was
left was to seek out the old people for whom Gaelic is the every-day
speech, and trust to fortune to find the story-tellers."