USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Hyde Park > Memorial sketch of Hyde Park, Mass., for the first twenty years of its corporate existence : also its industries, statistics, and organizations, together with the anniversary addresses delivered by Rev. Perley B. Davis and Rev. Richard J. Barry > Part 9
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* Theodore D. Weld, Esq.
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doors. A portion of our streets are shaded by graceful trees, the product largely of private taste and effort, whose success in this direction should stimulate to much larger private and public expenditures to the same end. Providence has greatly favored us in giving to our town a most desirable situation. Our diversi- fied area of hills and vales affords a landscape whose variety and beauty are seldom equaled. Ours also, to a remarkable degree, is a healthful location. No prevailing epidemic has visited us, and the rate of our mortality is small.
I need not say that energy and enterprise have characterized our community. We have far more internal vitality than per- tains to most towns so near a great metropolis. We are some- thing more than a mere sleeping-room to Boston. Our manu- factures, of various kinds, have been from the first, and are more and more becoming, an important factor in our prosperity and growth. Some of our manufacturing buildings are, in structure and appointments, as well as in the aspect of neat- ness they and their surroundings bear, models worthy of study and imitation. A pleasant feature, noticeable especially of late, is the endeavor widely prevalent to gather about our homes the appearance and appliances of taste and comfort. This aim cannot be too assiduously cultivated. A community is gauged as in no other way by the quality of its homes. Whatever elevates these lifts society, and enriches and purifies life in every part. Your speaker has often been glad to welcome strangers to our town, conduct them along our streets, bid them note our natural and acquired attractions, and from the heights which overlook our village point out to them the results achieved during this score of years. When - and may the time be hastened - upon our principal business street a better class of mercantile buildings shall prevail, and these be supplemented by an attractive and commodious hall, our satisfaction in drawing attention to the growth and enterprise of our town will be materially enhanced.
I have said that homes and morals are closely related. I think the morality of our community bears favorable compari- son with almost any town in the Commonwealth. I am glad to be informed that Hyde Park affords far fewer cases at the county court than other places of corresponding size.
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When our town was founded there was a deep-seated purpose to create a public sentiment and inaugurate a policy respecting temperance, which should give to the town on this subject a pronounced attitude. This attitude has been maintained. From the first, with a single exception, our vote has been for prohibition ; and never before by so large a majority as at the last election .* Our town has also the high distinction that from us has arisen a temperance reformert of more than national repute ; through whose agency, mainly, a majority of those who at the end of another twenty years will, by their votes, rule this country, are receiving in the public schools the latest inculcation of science as to alcoholics and narcotics. This success Joseph Cook declares to be an " eighth wonder of the world." We may, therefore, well be glad that our temperance record and influence have been so good and so wide. Let us not, however, in the least abate our zeal or remit our efforts. Let us by all means seek to combine our strength against a united foe, and take especial care that by no divisive measures or specious arguments those who should be co-laborers are drawn apart, leading to the result that they who are willing to lower the temperance standard are elected to places of official influence, gaining their victory because the friends of temper- ance stand in disunited ranks. It is the policy of our enemy to divide our forces while they mass their own. Let it not be ours to be less sagacious than they.
I have elsewhere implied that education was fundamental in the thought of the founders of the town. For this they sought to provide the amplest opportunities possible. They felt that the child of to-day was the citizen of to-morrow; that the school- house of to-day was the townhouse, legislature, and courthouse of the future. To this purpose the town has steadily adhered, and there is doubtless no danger that from this it will ever depart. To the question now somewhat discussed, Has the state the right to share in the education of her future citizens ? there can be in America but one answer : Who, if not she, has
*The vote for no license was 663; the vote for license was 267.
¡Mrs. Mary H. Hunt.
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vital interest in the training of those who are soon to be her blood and sinew? This truth of the state's essential connec- tion with education was brought to these shores in the May- flower, and is as firmly imbedded in our minds as is the granite in our hills. From every schoolhouse in every hamlet comes a voice that to the state belongs both the duty and the right, the obligation and the privilege, to provide for every child such an education as shall fit him for his place as an American citi- zen. That phrase, American citizen, bears to our ears a deeper, sweeter meaning than the words, Roman citizen, bore in the land of the Cæsars. For its definition we go not back to the 15th century, nor do we ask of monarchies or inquire of ecclesiastical hierarchies. The phrase is indigenous to this soil. Its birthplace is in this "Land of the free, and home of the brave." The parent, the church, and the state are to the child not rival, but co-operative, educators. Neither can remit its part, nor take away from another its own. Macaulay's words are, "The education of the people should be the first concern of the state." This is England's thought. Germany has it as a fundamental principle that what is to be in the nation must be taught in the school. Has our Republic less vital interest in education than these monarchies ? The period of school life ends with many at the age of twelve or fourteen years. The duty of the state to share in this early education of those who are soon to be parts of herself appears from two considerations :
First, the state is bound to provide the best for all her patrons, present and prospective. Now, all experience demon- strates that for the masses the public schools are the best ; that there a higher knowledge, a broader outlook, a wider acquaintance with the nation and the world, and hence a loftier manhood, can be gained than is possible in sequestered nooks, where, isolated, withdrawn from their future companions in the race of life, - their comrades in life's battle, - deprived of the stimulus and inspiration born of contact with their fellows, they are expected to develop like plants hidden from the sun. Happily, most parents in this respect, as in others, desire for their children the best, and are not willing to have
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it denied them. It is the duty of the state to see that they are protected in the full possession and enjoyment of this their right and privilege.
Secondly, the state owes it to herself, to her own well-being, to educate those whom she is about to absorb within her own body. This right is inherent, and cannot be surrendered. In our schools are those who, in a few years, are to make and administer our laws ; those who are to be among the mayors of our cities, the governors of our states, and the judges in our courts. It is self-evident that those who are thus to be partici- pants in all branches of American government should first be trained in American ideas. Not to do this is to rely for our future dependence upon a nerveless arm, or else one in which has been placed a dangerous weapon. America, in the spirit and method of her government and institutions, must be directed by Americans ; not necessarily those whose bodies are born upon our shores, but those whose souls are infused with American ideas. If ever a voice is heard contrary to this, you may know it is not American. It is a stranger among us. Its speech betrayeth it. It is here to graft an alien scion on our stock ; to plant a foreign seed within our soil. It is neither of America, nor from America, and should not be heeded in America. It is not strange, however, inasmuch as from the first our public schools have been among the most potent agencies for instilling American ideas into the nation's life, that those who would un-Americanize our youth should aim at the subversion of our system of public instruction. Is America ready to yield to this ?
But if the state, through her schools, would give to her future citizens the best, and best protect herself, she must make her schools the best. To this end something must be provided for the heart as well as the head. There is no danger to our country so great as lack of conscience, issuing in a low stand- ard of morals. When morality is gone the nation perishes. Therefore, in our public schools there should be correct moral, as well as secular instruction. The Bible is the highest standard of morality. Hence the Bible, now too much ignored, must be given a prominent place, and from its imperial throne
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be allowed to proclaim its broad, benign, unsectarian truths. Those were wise words of Germany's new-crowned Emperor, sent by him throughout his wide domain : " Only a generation growing up upon a sound basis, in the fear of God and in sound morals," can endure. That from one of Europe's strongest thrones! On this basis our fathers founded this Republic. Remove this basis and the noble fabric they builded crumbles. Let us beware of any seductive arguments or efforts which would seek to eject the Bible from our public schools, thus making them practically Godless, and then condemn them because they are such.
Well do I remember the organizing of our first school board. It was in the study of the speaker. Reverently we kneeled, while one - still with us -lifted his voice and all our hearts in fervent prayer that God's blessing might rest upon the present and all the future interests of our schools. Shall I not be pardoned, if, out of a full heart, I express an earnest desire that that prayer be answered? As sure as God is God His blessing is the beginning and the ending of all true success, and the entrance of His words giveth light and understanding. To Him and to His words, then, let us cling,-" That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth ; that our daughters may be as corner-stones, polished after the similitude of a palace. Happy is that people that is in such a case ; yea, happy is that people whose God is the Lord."
Such, in brief, fellow-citizens, are some of the objects my eye rests upon as I look upon the past and present of our town. The review is instructive. It is also stimulating. To-day our record of twenty years closes. A new page now opens to us. We have accomplished much. Much remains to be accom- plished, and the chief value of this memorial season is its influence on the future. An important work remains to us in what we have to do among and for ourselves in improving our homes, and developing our own social and public life. A no less important work awaits us in the wider relations we sustain to the state and nation of which we are a portion. In moulding the nation's future each town is to share an important part. The nation is but the town enlarged. Our Republic has not
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passed its period of probation. It is to be doubted if it has yet reached its most crucial hour. Numerous critical problems lie before us unsolved. It cannot be denied that dangerous forces are actively and widely working. Conflicting elements are marshalling on many fields. The spirit of discontent is broadly rife. Illiteracy, superstition, anarchy, passion, joined with cunning craft, are, with ghastly hand, feeling for the nation's life, aiming to destroy it, or poison it at its core. The sounds we sometimes hear are like the muttering of the sea about to be smitten by the blast. The storm signals already set are fluttering in the breeze. It is at a time like this our young town, athletic in its early manhood of a score of years, moves out upon the arena and takes its stand. Its loins are girded, and its spirit brave. It is ready for action. In the past our town has not been afraid to be a pioneer, a leader in thought and deed. The time has not gone by when the call will cease for those who are willing to stand in the front, perhaps at cost and sacrifice. Shall we be ready to heed the summons, and, firm in principle and obedient to duty, act well our part in an age when the nation and the world wants heroes ? We hold up the lamp of our past history that it may cast its rays forward. We study the way we have thus far come that we. may advance the better, with firmer tread, larger faith, and loftier aim. As the traveller among the Alps often in his climb- ing finds, in sheltered nooks, grottoes, where he may rest awhile and refresh himself with honey from snow-fed flowers, and milk fresh from the peasant's flock ; till, his eye having retraced the already finished journey, and surveyed the now widening landscape, he, strengthened and cheered by the prospect, again seizes his Alpine stock, and with elastic step pursues his way toward loftier heights and broader visions ; so we tarry for an hour, that by the review of the past and the survey of the present we may gain fresh courage and inspiration for our further pilgrimage.
We are grateful that as a town we have been able to do so much and so well. We recognize a beneficent Hand that has thus far guided us. Therefore, to express our gratitude do we set up in the way our " stone of help," and inscribe thereon, "Hitherto
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hath the Lord helped us." Still seeking Divine assistance we intend to be true to the motto of our town, Si tentas perfice- If you begin, finish. It is not claimed that no mistakes have entered into our past record. It is to be regretted that a broader and more generous policy did not in some respects earlier display itself in the planning and pioneering of our town. In certain other respects a better studied and more conservative procedure at times would doubtless have saved us some embar- rassments, financial and otherwise. There is wisdom in the adage, " Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow." It is never well for Icarus with wings of wax to soar too near the sun. The way, however, to retrieve an error is first to discover it, and at every turn at which we have been led amiss let us erect a warn- ing pillar, as did Bunyan's pilgrim at the stile over which his feet strayed into By-Path Meadow. As to sectional jealousies, prejudice in judging private or official acts, methods affecting our individual, social, or public transactions, which tend to blem- ish the fair reputation of our town -let none of these be so much as named among us. From our own experience and the observation we have had of other towns, we may, I think, learn some lessons of profit, among them these :
That towns as well as persons have an individuality, some- thing which marks them as superior or inferior to others ; that to a town it is a great advantage to have a good name ; that a town will be essentially what the individuals are who compose it ; that in discharging one's duties as a citizen there is need of much wisdom and large charity, and that it is no sure sign one is a knave or an imbecile if he does not agree with us ; that in public as well as private, abuse is far less effective than argu- ment, and generally indicates fewer brains and an inferior man- hood ; that in one's relation to town affairs as well as else- where, honor is a jewel of priceless worth, and when once lost is hard to be regained ; that manliness may be sacrificed at the ballot box, and whenever bartered there is always sold cheap ; that true public spirit is a willingness to serve others, not a scheming to be served by others, and hence that public offices are not to be sought for private ends ; that caucuses and town meetings are often places where masks are thrown
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off, and hence become remarkable revealers of real character ; that victory, whenever gained unjustly, is worse than defeat, and that a chaplet unfairly won is apt to turn to a crown of thorns ; that a good name is of more value than great riches ; that integrity of character and uprightness of life are of su- preme worth, bringing their own sure and permanent reward; and that the best record one can leave behind is that he did justly, loved mercy, and walked humbly with his God.
Of those who aided in laying the foundation of our town, some of sainted memory, crowned with years and full of honors, now rest from their labors and their works do follow them. In a few more years all who saw the beginning of our town will have passed away. Instead of the fathers will be the children. When we shall have rendered our last service, and others shall build on our foundation, may they, however loftily their walls shall rise, take care so to rear their structure that it shall abide when judgment is laid to the line and righteousness to the plummet. And if eventually a city shall stretch beside these streams and along these pleasant hillsides, may it come to pass that both we who wrought at the foundation, and they who bring forth the topmost stone, shall each, at length, be wel- comed by Christ Himself, with the words, " Well done," into that city He hath builded, whose walls are jasper and whose gates are pearl.
ADDRESS.
BY REV. RICHARD J. BARRY.
[Substantially as follows :]
Each Sunday we assemble here before the altars of our God to renew our fealty of affectionate love and to invoke the Divine assistance. "Piety is useful for all things." It teaches a man to love God and his country. After father and mother, the land and people among whom we live ought to be the objects of our dearest solicitude. It is, then, in words of con- gratulation, words of joy, words of exultation, that I would speak to-day on this festival of our beautiful town. The sacred edifice, where we are assembled, reminds us of our duties to God. But words of good will and brotherly love are part of religion. By the providence of God we are citizens of one common country, children of one common Fatherland, and our townspeople are our kindred. Their happiness, their pros- perity, their peace, their welfare, their defense should be the object of our most sincere and self-sacrificing devotion. We are as one family, as passengers in the same steamer,-all have a common interest, all are alike in safety or in peril. There- fore what concerns our town is to us an object of piety. Loyalty to God and patriotism walk hand in hand. Such is the doctrine of the church, and if we take part in the celebra- tion it is not from self-interest, it is not because it chimes in with public opinion, but because it is a duty and tribute of piety.
We read the history of Hyde Park in the happy, peaceful homes of the people, in its noble enterprises, its charitable and manufacturing institutions, all manifesting a wondrous
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growth, all illustrating the enlightenment of the people, all pointing to a brilliant future, all manifesting the mercy and fidelity of God to His people. It is edifying to see a people turn reverently to God in thanksgiving, invoking the co-operation of the Almighty for the future prosperity of their commun- ity ; for " Unless the Lord build the house, in vain do they labor that built it." We take a genuine pride in our town, we are interested in its welfare, and we shall always endeavor to uphold its honor and good name. This temple is erected to the honor and service of Almighty God. In its grandeur and beauty it stands as a monument of the generosity of this com- munity. Rich and poor are alike here. But it is especially the poor who find comfort here after their days of hardship and toil ; it is their opera house, their resting place. Here they find true rest of heart and courage to continue the battle of life.
In speaking of this edifice, I would say that it has been built mainly out of the pennies of the poor ; but I cannot allow this happy occasion to pass without publicly thanking those, not of my faith, who have been generous in word and deed. This congregation owes a deep debt of gratitude to Mr. Robert Bleakie, who from first to last stood ready to make any sacrifice to assist us. Less than this I cannot say in justice to this generous hearted gentleman, and more than this I might easily add in truth, but I know that his deeds were all done to help the people and not to win praise from men. (The speaker then went on to trace the associations connecting the church with the history of the town and with the history of the country.)
The church is at home in every time and place, in every class of the community, in every stage of cultivation. She has always a work to do, a harvest to reap. The Catholic Church is the oldest and best tried institution in the world. That ancient church has accompanied society through nearly nine- teen centuries. She has had trial of east and west, of monarchy and democracy, of slaves and freemen, of marts of commerce and centres of manufacture, of old countries and young, of cities and towns.
The Catholic Church came to America with Columbus. She has accompanied America through her four hundred years of
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history. She has been in this country from the very dawn of the morning. She spread her tent here in the earliest days of the town's history and she has grown with the development of the community. Her influence will always be felt on the side of liberty, manhood, and truth. She will fulfil her heavenly mission to the end. Many think that the church aims at ostentation and effect. She must be splendid, majestic, influential ; fine services, music, courtesy. These they fancy are weapons of the church. Well, the church cannot help being strong and beautiful ; it is her gift from God. But this is not her aim. She goes forth on one errand. She is sent to heal the diseases of the soul, to chasten the hearts of men because "out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, thefts, false testimonies, blas- phemies. These are the things that defile a man." The church has a real, earnest work to do, and she holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven than that a soul should offend God by even telling one deliberate falsehood. Her enemy is sin.
The history of ages testifies that the church has been the source and cause of numberless temporal blessings to the world. These, however, she does not promise. She is in the world to save souls-to warn the proud-to be the solace of the forlorn, and the guide of the wayward. In her fold all men are equal. And her mission is to labor for the moral elevation of the world. In the fulfilment of her design she asks no civil aid. She seeks no state patronage. All the church wants is an open field and freedom to act. She will teach her children to be faithful to God and true to society. (Speaking more directly to Catholics, he said :) Let each one stand on his own ground, let each approve himself in his own district. Your mission is to be good Chris- tians and good citizens-to edify men by leading exemplary lives. We live in a thriving, growing town. Grow it must ; you cannot stop it. It will be the mission of the church to see that the moral development keeps pace with the material extension. (In concluding he said :)
May the blessing of Almighty God descend upon this fair town, making its homes sacred and refined, the manners of the people Christian and courteous, its citizens united and
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contented, and all patriotic and happy. May religion be in honor ; teaching morality, temperance, and brotherly love, and illumining the dreary, weary ways of common life with the hopes and the radiance of a better world. Amen.
(The decorations of the church were elaborate, the music of the finest order, and the whole service a credit to the society and an illustration of the elevated taste of the people of Hyde Park.)
1868. I888.
EXERCISES
-OF THE-
TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY - -OF THE -
TOWN OF HYDE PARK,
-- ON-
SUNDAY, APRIL 22, and MONDAY, APRIL 23, 1888.
COMMITTEES OF ARRANGEMENTS,
JAMES E. COTTER, EsQ., Chairman, CHARLES F. JENNEY, EsQ., Secretary.
SUB-COMMITTEES,
FINANCE,-Robert Bleakie, Chairman ; Ferdinand A. Wyman, Secretary ; Henry A. Rich, Treasurer ; Orin T. Gray, Stephen B. Balkam, Melville P. Morrell, Fred'k N. Tirreil, David C. Marr, Samuel R. Moseley, J. D. McAvoy.
CHURCH EXERCISES,-Col. John B. Bachelder, Chairman ; Amos H. Brainard, John R. Fairbanks, C. Fred Allen, E. S. Hathaway, R. M. Johnson, C. P . Vaughan, C. B. Peare.
MUSIC,-H. J. Whittemore, Chairman ; Chas. E. Huggins, Secre- tary; E. L. Jennings, Wm. H. Harlow, John F. Loughlin, Geo. L. Ridley, Chas. F. Holt.
BANQUET,-E. I. Humphrey, Chairman ; Chas. S. Norris, Secy ; Galen L. Stone, Treasurer : Frank B. Rich, Charles F. Jenney.
OPEN-AIR EXERCISES,-John S. Bleakie, Chairman; Wallace D. Lovell, Secretary ; Benj. F. Radford, Horace W. Killam, Rinaldo Williams, Robert Scott, Jr., John H. McKenna, Daniel Sheedy, E. J. Hickey, H. L. Johnson.
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