Alleghanies was ever practiced; and yet a person need not be very old to
have enjoyed the experience. I myself, for example, can just remember
riding from Buffalo to New York by a line of stages that came round by
the Alleghany Mountains, and crossed the State of New Jersey, passing
through Morristown. We were just six days in performing the journey.
This excellent man, after a tranquil and happy life, died in 1849, aged
seventy, and left considerable sums to benevolent societies. His estate
proved to be of about two hundred thousand dollars value, which was then
considered very large, and he bestowed something more than half of it
upon institutions for mitigating human woe. Ten thousand of it he gave
for the promotion of pleasure, and the evidences of his forethought and
benevolence are waving and rustling above my head as these lines are
written. His memory is green in Newburyport. All the birds and all the
lovers, all who walk and all who ride, the gay equestrian and the dusty
wayfarer, the old and the invalid who can only look out of the window,
all owe his name a blessing.
FREDERICK TUDOR,
ICE EXPORTER.
Edward Everett used to relate a curious anecdote of the time when he was
the American minister at London. He was introduced one day to an Eastern
prince, who greeted him with a degree of enthusiasm that was altogether
unusual and unexpected. The prince launched into eulogium of the United
States, and expressed a particular gratitude for the great benefit
conferred upon the East Indies by Mr. Everett's native Massachusetts.
The American minister, who was a good deal puzzled by this effusion,
ventured at length to ask the prince what special benefit Massachusetts
had conferred upon the East Indies, wondering whether it was the
missionaries, or the common school system, or Daniel Webster's Bunker
Hill oration.
"I refer," said the prince, "to the great quantity of excellent ice
which comes to us from Boston."
Mr. Everett bowed with his usual politeness, but was much amused at the
excessive gratitude of the prince for the service named.
The founder of this foreign ice business, which has now attained such
large proportions, was a Boston merchant named Frederick Tudor, son of
that Colonel William Tudor who studied law under John Adams, and who
served his country on the staff of General Washington, and afterwards
became a judge. Frederick Tudor, who was born in 1783, the year of the
peace between England and the United States, entered early into
business, being at twenty-two already owner of a vessel trading with the
West Indies.
It was in 1805 that the idea of exporting ice first occurred to him--an
idea which, as he was accustomed to relate in his old age, was received
with derision by the whole town as a "mad project." He had made his
calculations too carefully, however, to be disturbed by a little
ridicule; and that same year he sent out his first cargo of a hundred
and thirty tons, to the Island of Martinique.
The result justified his confidence. The ice arrived in perfect
condition, and he was encouraged to follow up his single cargo with many
others larger and more profitable. During the war of 1812 business was
somewhat interrupted by the English cruisers, which were ever on the
alert for prizes in the West Indian waters, but, after peace was
declared, his trade increased rapidly. He supplied ice to Charleston and
New Orleans also, those cities at first requiring but a ship-load each
per annum, although the demand increased so rapidly that a few years
later New Orleans alone consumed thirty cargoes.
Almost from the first, Mr. Tudor had believed that ice could be
transported as safely and profitably to Calcutta as to Havana; but he
could not bring others to share this opinion--at least, not to the point
of risking money upon it. It was not, therefore, until 1834, twenty-nine
years later than his Martinique experiment, that he sent his first cargo
of one hundred and eighty tons of ice to India. Notwithstanding a waste
of one third of the whole cargo during the voyage, he was able to sell
this Massachusetts ice at one half the price charged for the
artificially frozen ice formerly used in Calcutta by the few families
who could afford such a luxury.
The cold commodity which he provided met, therefore, with a warm welcome
from the English inhabitants. They recognized the boon afforded them,
and expressed their gratitude by raising a subscription and presenting
to the enterprising Yankee merchant a fire-proof building in which to
store his ice. He met them in the same spirit of wise liberality, and
sold the article at no more than a reasonable profit--about three cents
a pound--which enabled the great body of English residents to use the
ice habitually. Mr. Tudor used to boast that in Jamaica he sold the best
Wenham ice at half the price which an inferior article brought in
London; and even at Calcutta he made ice cheaper than it was in London
or Paris. On the passage to the East Indies, ice is four or five months
at sea, traverses sixteen thousand miles of salt water, and crosses the
equator twice; and on its arrival it is stored in massive double-walled
houses, which are covered by four or five separate roofs. It has also to
be unloaded in a temperature of ninety to one hundred degrees.
Notwithstanding all this, the inhabitants of the most distant tropical
seaports are supplied with ice every day of the year at the moderate
price mentioned above.
It was Frederick Tudor also who originated and developed the best
methods of cutting, packing, storing, and discharging ice, so as to
reduce the waste to the minimum. I am assured by a gentleman engaged in
the business that the blocks of ice now reach Calcutta, after the long
voyage from Boston, with a waste scarcely noticeable. The vessels are
loaded during the cold snaps of January, when water will freeze in the
hold of a vessel, and when the entire ship is penetrated with the
intensest cold. The glittering blocks of ice, two feet thick, at a
temperature below zero, are brought in by railroad from the lakes, and
are placed on board the ships with a rapidity which must be seen to be
appreciated. The blocks are packed in sawdust, which is used very much
as mortar is used in a stone wall. Between the topmost layer of ice and
the deck there is sometimes a layer of closely packed hay, and sometimes
one of barrels of apples. It has occasionally happened that the profit
upon the apples has paid the freight upon the ice, which usually amounts
to about ten thousand dollars, or five dollars a ton.
The arrival of an ice ship at Calcutta is an exhilarating scene. Clouds
of dusky natives come on board to buy the apples, which are in great
request, and bring from ten to thirty cents each, according to the
supply. Happy is the native who has capital enough to buy a whole barrel
of the fruit. Off he trudges with it on his back to the place of sale,
or else puts it on a little cart and peddles the apples about the
streets. In a day or two that portion of the cargo has disappeared, and
then the ice is to be unloaded. It was long before a native could be
induced to handle the crystal blocks. Tradition reports that they ran
away affrighted, thinking the ice was something bewitched and fraught
with danger. But now they come on board in a long line, and each of them
takes a huge block of ice upon his head and conveys it to the adjacent
ice-house, moving with such rapidity that the blocks are exposed to the
air only a few seconds. Once deposited there, the waste almost ceases
again, and the ice which cost in Boston four dollars a ton is worth
fifty dollars.
When Frederick Tudor had been employed twenty-five years in this trade,
finding it inconvenient to be separated from the great body of
merchants, he embarked again in general mercantile business, by way of
re-uniting himself to his former associates. The experiment resulted in
ruinous losses. In less than three years he was a bankrupt, and owed his
creditors two hundred and ten thousand dollars more than he could pay.
The ice business being still profitable and growing, it was proposed to
him that he should conduct it as the agent of his creditors, retaining a
specified sum per annum for his personal expenses. To this he objected,
and said to them:--
"Allow me to proceed, and I will work for you better than I can under
any restriction. Give me the largest liberty, and I will pay the whole
in time with interest."
He was then fifty-two years of age, and he had undertaken to pay an
indebtedness, the mere interest of which was about ten thousand dollars
a year. By the time he had got fairly at work the treachery of an agent
whom he had raised from poverty to wealth lost him his Havana monopoly,
his principal source of profit. Then it became necessary to buy land
bordering the lakes from which he gathered ice, and to erect in
Calcutta, New Orleans, and elsewhere expensive and peculiarly
constructed buildings for storage. Occasionally, too, he experienced the
losses and adverse incidents from which no business is exempt.
Nevertheless, in fourteen years from the date of his bankruptcy he had
paid his debts, principal and interest, amounting to two hundred and
eighty thousand dollars, besides having acquired a large quantity of
real estate, some of which had increased in value tenfold. Thus, while
paying his debts, and in the very process of paying, and while thinking
only of his creditors' interest, he had gained for himself a very large
fortune. He continued an ice merchant for more than fifty years; or, as
he said himself:--
"I began this trade in the youthful hopes attendant on the age of
twenty-two. I have followed it until I have a head with scarcely a hair
that is not white."
It was this enterprising merchant who may be said to have created the
beautiful seaside retreat near Boston called Nahant, where he invented
many ingenious expedients for protecting trees and shrubs from the east
winds which lacerate that rock-bound coast. His gardens and plantations
in Nahant were famous many years before his death. He died in 1864, aged
eighty-one, leaving to his children and to his native State a name which
was honorable when he inherited it, and the lustre of which his life
increased.
[Illustration:
Yours
Myron Holley]
MYRON HOLLEY,
MARKET-GARDENER.
Fifty years ago, this man used to sell vegetables and fruit from door to
door in the streets of Rochester, N. Y. He had a small farm a few miles
out of town, upon which he raised the produce which he thus disposed of.
An anecdote is related of a fine lady who had recently come to Rochester
as the wife of one of its most distinguished clergymen. She ran up into
her husband's study one morning, and said to him:--
"Why, Doctor, I've just seen the only gentleman I have yet met with in
Rochester, and he was at our basement door selling vegetables. How
wonderful! Who is it? Who can it be?"
"It must be Myron Holley," said her husband.
Another of his lady customers used to say that he sold early peas and
potatoes in the morning with as much grace as he lectured before the
Lyceum in the evening. Nor was it the ladies alone who admired him. The
principal newspaper of the city, in recording his death in 1841, spoke
of him as "an eminent citizen, an accomplished scholar, and noble man,
who carried with him to the grave the love of all who knew him."
In reflecting upon the character of this truly remarkable person, I am
reminded of a Newfoundland dog that I once had the honor of knowing near
the spot on the shore of Lake Ontario where Myron Holley hoed his
cabbages and picked his strawberries. It was the largest and most
beautiful dog I have ever seen, of a fine shade of yellow in color, and
of proportions so extraordinary that few persons could pass him without
stopping to admire. He had the strength and calm courage of a lion, with
the playfulness of a kitten, and an intelligence that seemed sometimes
quite human. One thing this dog lacked. He was so destitute of the evil
spirit that he would not defend himself against the attacks of other
dogs. He seemed to have forgotten how to bite. He has been known to let
a smaller dog draw blood from him without making the least attempt to
use his own teeth in retaliation. He appeared to have lost the instinct
of self-assertion, and walked abroad protected solely, but sufficiently,
by his vast size and imposing appearance.
Myron Holley, I say, reminds me of this superb and noble creature. He
was a man of the finest proportions both of body and of mind, beautiful
in face, majestic in stature, fearless, gifted with various talents, an
orator, a natural leader of men. With all this, he was destitute of the
personal ambition which lifts the strong man into publicity, and gives
him commonplace success. If he had been only half as good as he was, he
might have been ten times as famous.
He was born at Salisbury, Conn., in 1779, the son of a farmer who had
several sons that became notable men. The father, too, illustrated some
of the best traits of human nature, being one of the men who make the
strength of a country without asking much from the country in return. He
used to say to his sons that the height of human felicity was "to be
able to converse with the wise, to instruct the ignorant, to pity and
despise the intriguing villain, and to assist the unfortunate." His son
Myron enjoyed this felicity all the days of his life.
After graduating at Williams, and studying law at New Haven, he set his
face toward western New York, then more remote from New England than
Oregon now is. He made an exquisite choice of a place of residence, the
village of Canandaigua, then only a hamlet of log huts along the border
of one of the lakes for which that part of the State is famous. The
first step taken by the young lawyer after his arrival fixed his
destiny. He was assigned by the court to defend a man charged with
murder--a capital chance for winning distinction in a frontier town.
Myron Holley, however, instead of confining himself to his brief and his
precedents, began by visiting the jail and interviewing the prisoner. He
became satisfied of his guilt. The next morning he came into court,
resigned the case, and never after made any attempt to practice his
profession.
He was, in fact, constitutionally disqualified for the practice of such
a calling. Having a little property, he bought out a bookseller of the
village, laid out a garden, married, was soon elected county clerk, and
spent the rest of his life in doing the kind of public service which
yields the maximum of good to the country with the minimum of gain to
the individual doing it.
The war of 1812 filled all that region with distress and want. It was he
who took the lead in organizing relief, and appealed to the city of New
York for aid with great success. As soon as the war was over, the old
scheme of connecting Lake Erie with the Hudson by a canal was revived.
It was an immense undertaking for that day, and a great majority of the
prudent farmers of the State opposed the enterprise as something beyond
their strength. It was Myron Holley who went to the legislature year
after year, and argued it through. His winning demeanor, his persuasive
eloquence, his intimate knowledge of the facts involved, his entire
conviction of the wisdom of the scheme, his tact, good temper, and,
above all, his untiring persistence, prevailed at length, and the canal
was begun.
He was appointed one of the commissioners to superintend the
construction of the canal at a salary of twenty-five hundred dollars a
year. The commissioners appointed him their treasurer, which threw upon
him for eight years an inconceivable amount of labor, much of which had
to be done in situations which were extremely unhealthy. At one time, in
1820, he had a thousand laborers on his hands sick with malaria. He was
a ministering angel to them, friend, physician, and sometimes nurse. He
was obliged on several occasions to raise money for the State on his
personal credit, and frequently he had to expend money in circumstances
which made it impossible for him to secure the legal evidence of his
having done so.
In 1825 the work was done. A procession of boats floated from Lake Erie
to New York Harbor, where they were received by a vast fleet of
steamboats and other vessels, all dressed with flags and crowded with
people. In the midst of this triumph, Myron Holley, who had managed the
expenditures with the most scrupulous economy, was unable to furnish the
requisite vouchers for a small part of the money which had passed
through his hands. He at once gave up his small estate, and appealed to
the legislature for relief. He was completely vindicated; his estate was
restored to him; but he received no compensation either for his services
or his losses.
He returned to his garden, however, a happy man, and during the greater
part of the rest of his life he earned a modest subsistence by the
beautiful industry which has since given celebrity and wealth to all
that fertile region. He remained, however, to the end of his days, one
of those brave and unselfish public servants who take the laboring oar
in reforms which are very difficult or very odious. After the abduction
of Morgan, he devoted some years to anti-masonry, and he founded what
was called the Liberty Party, which supported Mr. Birney, of Kentucky,
for the presidency.
One of his fellow-workers, the Hon. Elizur Wright, of Boston, has
recently published an interesting memoir of him, which reveals to us a
cast of character beautiful and rare in men; a character in which the
moral qualities ruled with an easy and absolute sway, and from which the
baser traits appeared to be eliminated. He was like that great,
splendid, yellow king of dogs which escaped perfection by not having
just a spice of evil in his composition.
Let me add, however, that he was as far as possible from being a
"spoony." Mr. Wright says:--
"He had the strength of a giant, and did not abstain from using it in a
combative sense on a fit occasion. When his eldest daughter was living
in a house not far from his own, with her first child in her arms, he
became aware that she was in danger from a stout, unprincipled tramp who
had called on her as a beggar and found her alone. Hastening to the
house, without saying a word he grasped the fellow around body and both
arms, and carried him, bellowing for mercy, through the yard and into
the middle of the street, where he set him down. Greatly relieved, the
miserable wretch ran as if he had escaped from a lion."
Mr. Wright adds another trait: "Once in Lyons (N. Y.) when there was
great excitement about the 'sin of dancing,' the ministers all preaching
and praying against it, Myron Holley quietly said: 'It is as natural for
young people to like to dance as for the apple trees to blossom in the
spring.'"
THE FOUNDERS OF LOWELL.
We do not often hear of strikes at Lowell. Some men tell us it is
because there are not as many foreigners there as at certain
manufacturing centres where strikes are frequent. This cannot be the
explanation; for out of a population of seventy-one thousand, there are
more than twenty thousand foreign-born inhabitants of Lowell, of whom
more than ten thousand are natives of Ireland. To answer the question
correctly, we must perhaps go back to the founding of the town in 1821,
when there were not more than a dozen houses on the site.
At that time the great water-power of the Merrimac River was scarcely
used, and there was not one cotton manufactory upon its banks. At an
earlier day this river and its tributaries swarmed with beaver and other
fur-yielding creatures, which furnished a considerable part of the first
capital of the Pilgrim Fathers. The Indians trapped the beaver, and
carried the skins to Plymouth and Boston; and this is perhaps the reason
why the Merrimac and most of its branches retain their Indian names
Merrimac itself is an Indian word meaning sturgeon, and of its ten
tributaries all but two appear to have Indian names: Contoocook,
Soucook, Suncook, Piscatagoug, Souhegan, Nashua, Concord, Spiggot,
Shawshine, and Powow.
Besides these there are the two rivers which unite to form it, the names
of which are still more peculiar: Pemigewasset and Winnepiseogee. The
most remarkable thing with regard to these names is, that the people who
live near see nothing remarkable in them, and pronounce them as
naturally as New Yorkers do Bronx and Croton. It is difficult for us to
imagine a lover singing, or saying, "Meet me by the Pemigewasset, love,"
or asking her to take a row with him on the lovely Winnepiseogee. But
lovers do such things up there; and beautiful rivers they are, flowing
between mountains, and breaking occasionally into falls and rapids. The
Merrimac, also, loses its serenity every few miles, and changes from a
tranquil river into a--water-power.
In November, 1821, a light snow already covering the ground, six
strangers stood on the banks of the Merrimac upon the site of the
present city of Lowell. A canal had been dug around the falls for
purposes of navigation, and these gentlemen were there with a view to
the purchase of the dam and canal, and erecting upon the site a cotton
mill. Their names were Patrick T. Jackson, Kirk Boott, Warren Dutton,
Paul Moody, John W. Boott, and Nathan Appleton; all men of capital or
skill, and since well known as the founders of a great national
industry. They walked about the country, observed the capabilities of
the river, and made up their minds that that was the place for their new
enterprise.
"Some of us," said one of the projectors, "may live to see this place
contain twenty thousand inhabitants."
The enterprise was soon begun. In 1826 the town was incorporated and
named. It is always difficult to name a new place or a new baby. Mr.
Nathan Appleton met one of the other proprietors, who told him that the
legislature was ready to incorporate the town, and it only remained for
them to fill the blank left in the act for the name.
"The question," said he, "is narrowed down to two, Lowell or Derby."
"Then," said Mr. Appleton, "Lowell, by all means."
It was so named from Mr. Francis C. Lowell, who originated the idea. He
had visited England and Scotland in 1811, and while there had observed
and studied the manufacture of cotton fabrics, which in a few years had
come to be one of the most important industries of the British Empire.
The war of 1812 intervened; but before the return of peace Mr. Lowell
took measures for starting the business in New England. A company was
formed with a capital of four hundred thousand dollars, and Mr. Lowell
himself undertook the construction of the power loom, which was still
guarded in Europe as a precious secret. After having obtained all
possible information about it, he shut himself up in a Boston store with
a man to turn his crank, and experimented for months till he had
conquered the difficulties. In the fall of 1814 the machine was ready
for inspection.
"I well recollect," says Mr. Appleton, "the state of admiration and
satisfaction with which we sat by the hour watching the beautiful
movement of this new and wonderful machine, destined as it evidently was
to change the character of all textile industry."
In a few months the first manufactory was established in Waltham, with
the most wonderful success. Henry Clay visited it, and gave a glowing
account of it in one of his speeches, using its success as an argument
against free trade. It is difficult to see what protection the new
manufacture required. The company sold its cotton cloth at thirty cents
a yard, and they afterwards found that they could sell it without loss
at less than seven cents. The success of the Waltham establishment led
to the founding of Lowell, Lawrence, Nashua, and Manchester. There are
now at Lowell eighty mills and factories, in which are employed sixteen
thousand men and women, who produce more than three million yards of
fabric every week. The city has a solid inviting appearance, and there
are in the outskirts many beautiful and commanding sites for residences,
which are occupied by men of wealth.