USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Longmeadow > Proceedings at the centennial celebration of the incorporation of the town of Longmeadow, October 17th, 1883 > Part 6
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" A charm from the skies seems to hallow us here."
We feel here an inspiration and uplifting to good endeavor to do well our part, and so be followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
" Our boast is not that we deduce our birth From loins enthroned and rulers of the earth; But higher far our proud pretensions rise, The sons of parents passed into the skies."
: At the close of Rev. Mr. Colton's Address, in introducing the next speaker, the venerable Mrs. Mary Reynolds Schauffler, the widow of the distinguished and lamented missionary Rev. Dr. William G. Schauffler, and the devoted partner of his missionary labors at Constantinople, but since his death residing with a son in New York city,-the President said :
"It is with rare pride and pleasure that the Mother welcomes back to-day, a beloved daughter, whom she might almost more properly call a sister ;- one, certainly, whom all her younger children will gladly recognize as a mother, revered and beloved. Will our dear Mother Schauffler enrich our Centennial feast with any reminiscences from an experience so honorable to herself and to her native town ?
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MRS. SHAUFFLER'S REMARKS.
My Dear Friends :
It is with great pleasure that I am permitted to be here on this Centennial day, in this place so dear to me as the place of my birth, the home of my childhood, and the home of so many of my honored ancestors.
I have listened, with great delight, to the history of my great- grandfather, Dr. Stephen Williams, and his family. It reminds me of the story of the first family, that of Robert Williams, who came from England to this country in the year 1638.
Mrs. Williams was unwilling to leave her English home to come to this, then howling wilderness; so the voyage was deferred from time to time. At length Mrs. Williams awakened one morning, and said to her husband, "My dear, I am now ready to go to America. I had a very remarkable dream last night. I dreamed that we went to America, had a numerous posterity, and that among them were many men of influence in the land, and, especially, many ministers of the gospel."
You have heard, this morning, that many of the name of Williams have been graduates of our best colleges. Of the sons of my great-grandfather, three were ministers of the gospel, and several of their sons and grandsons. It is remarkable how many of the descendants of the Williams family have been clergymen.
When my great-grandfather returned from captivity in Canada, his sister Eunice could not be found to be redeemed. She was a child of eight years when taken captive, and had been at once sold by the Indians to some of the Catholic nuns in Quebec ; they secreted her for years, and at last married her to an Indian chief, who thought it an honor to take an English name, and was ever after called Williams.
After years, Dr. Stephen Williams learned where his sister was, and sent to her to come and visit him. She came, with her husband and some other Indians, to Longmeadow, but they would not lodge in the house. They built a wigwam in the orchard, behind the parsonage, and slept there.
MIR MARY KAYNE
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' One day my grandmother and her sisters got their Aunt Eunice into the house, and dressed her up in our fashion. Meantime the Indians outside were very uneasy, and when Aunt Eunice went out in her new dress, they were much dis- pleased, and she soon went into the house, begging to have her blanket again. Nothing could induce her to remain in New England, although great efforts were made to persuade her hus- band and herself to remain.
Some years later, one of Aunt Eunice's sons came for a visit, and was induced to bring two of his sons for education. One of them, Eleazer, became a missionary to the Iroquois Indians.
I wish to congratulate Longmeadow that she has sent out so many missionaries, six of them born here, and five of their children also having taken up the work. I trust Longmeadow will send out many more of her sons and daughters to the foreign field. Young men are greatly needed, as well as more women.
Last year, the American Board sent out only four new mis- sionaries. We greatly need more men and more money. The world is wide open to receive the gospel, and shall we not be more than ever in earnest to send the glad tidings of salvation to the ends of the earth? Are there not, in this large assembly, some who will devote themselves to this blessed work?
May the blessing of the God of our fathers ever rest upon dear old Longmeadow.
The spoken word is indeed here; but no words can report the sweet and gracious Presence of the venerable matron, who, with great natural diffidence, yet with perfect self-possession, addressed to the multitude of affectionate listeners her loving reminiscences and earnest missionary appeal. Erect in form and quietly dignified in bearing, the presence around her of loved schoolmates and the throng- ing memories of earlier years seemed, for the moment, almost to renew for her the glow of her girlhood's feeling. Public speakers, too, might well take a lesson from the apparent ease with which the distinctly uttered words and perfectly modulated tones of this delicate voice reached every part of the spacious tent. The very presence of this dear Mother in Israel was felt by all to be both an inspiration and a benediction.
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After music by the band, the President said :
The Mother gladly sees with her here to-day a grandson not only of herself, but of a beloved pastor of her early years-bearing in full, third in a sacred succession, an honored name which he has himself yet more widely interlinked with literature and with life. Will the Rev. Richard Salter Storrs, D. D., of Brooklyn speak words of cheer for the Mother to whom his own father's heart, untraveled, ever fondly turned with tenderest affection ?
DR. STORRS' ADDRESS.
Mr. President : Dear Friends :
As I stand before you for a few minutes, preceding others whom you are naturally impatient to hear, I am reminded, by the very kind words with which I have been introduced, of an inci- dent of somewhat recent occurrence-which had been recalled to me, also, in the course of the excellent historical discourse to which we listened with so much pleasure this morning.
The Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon of New Haven, a beloved and honored friend of many of us, was accustomed, I believe, in the later years of his life, after his active pastorate had ceased, to introduce to his congregation, with the grave and graceful courtesy which belonged to him, those who were to preach in his pulpit. On one occasion he did it in substantially this way : " The first Pastor of this Church was the Reverend John Daven- port," on whom he then proceeded to pronounce a brief eulogy. " The grandson of that pastor was the Reverend John Daven- port, of Stamford. The son of that pastor was the Reverend James Davenport of Southold, Long Island. We are to-day to be addressed by a lineal descendant of John Davenport, our first pastor." A friend of mine, who was in the congregation, noticed that the face and forehead of the minister so introduced flamed suddenly into a blush which seemed more vivid than was necessary on the occasion ; but the secret of it was perhaps explained when he announced his text : " Visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's chil- dren, unto the third and fourth generation."
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I don't know, I am sure, what iniquities my grandfather can have ever committed, in consequence of which I have been put, on his account, into this early place among the speakers. I have . always understood that he was an excellent man. Probably he must sometime or other have been careless about the duty of making a after-dinner speech on a centennial occasion. At any rate I feel at this moment much as the lawyer did who was about to be married-of which story also, by the way, I was reminded this morning. He was well esteemed in his profession, but rather remarkable for never being quite ready to try his case, and always desirous of a postponement.
At last he was to be married, as I have said, but when the minister asked him : " Dost thou take this woman to thy wedded wife?" the old habit got the better of him, and he answered that he was not altogether ready to proceed with the case, and would like an adjournment for two weeks. It seemed to me, when we were told this morning of the elaborate ceremonies at the marriage of the Reverend Dr. Williams to Miss Abigail Davenport, that if he had known beforehand what these cere- monies were to be, he might have been excused for wishing a temporary adjournment ; and that if she was really as deferential to him a's the letter which was read from her seems to indicate, she would not have objected. I don't want a two weeks adjourn- ment for my remarks ; but really wish they might have come a little later in the afternoon.
However, it ought not to be difficult to say a few words of hearty affection and admiration for this beautiful village, and for those who live in it, on this pleasant occasion.
I remember the village as it was more than fifty years ago, when I first came to it as a lad, with my father and mother, both of whom have now been walking for years-one of them for many years-in the gardens of God. And I remember the impression which it then made upon me ; how wholly retired it seemed to me, and set by itself.
There was no air of foreignness about it, no breath of the sea. In the towns along the eastern shore, with which I was acquainted -Boston, Salem, Weymouth, Wareham, New Bedford, and the others-one was constantly reminded of distant counties. There
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were ships at the docks from India and China; sailors rolling and rollicking on the streets, or in the taverns ; foreign orna- ments and furniture in the houses ; a general fragrance of orien- tal spicery in the air. Here, on the other hand, appeared a . typical, interior, New England village, where all was home-born, home-bred ; with no noise in the air, no hurry in the streets ; " a happy harbor of God's saints."
So it seemed to me as a boy ; and the first impression has never departed ; in fact it has been deepened and revived in my subsequent visits, which have been somewhat numerous. Very likely there has been more or less of tragedy here, in life and character ; undoubtedly there must have been ; animosities, perhaps, there may have been, and sharp disputes about line- fences. But the total impression made by the village has always been that of quietness, peace, and a charming rural beauty. I remember the sense of incongruity which I felt-it had really almost an element of wit in it-when I saw, some years since, a brisk old gentleman driving a young horse along these streets, at what must have been about a 2.40 pace. He was a Colton, I am sure; therefore, according to our friend who has just spoken, a born deacon; and I think he was then already over eighty years old. The whole thing seemed amusingly inappropriate, in the leisurely stillness of these shadowed streets.
I am not sure but one feels this quietness all the more as he comes to Longmeadow through the haste and bustle of Spring- field. I know something of the wealth of character and of cul- ture which are in that prosperous and famous town. I know that by its great manufacturing establishments, and its enter- prising processes, its lines have gone out into almost all the earth, and its words nearly to the end of the world. But it is certainly, in some parts of it, a pretty noisy town ! A man was riding with me in the cars, some years since, from one of the southwestern States, who had been visiting rapidly several of the eastern cities, and we talked about them. I asked him if he had been at Springfield ; at first he thought not, but then recalling it he said, "O yes, ' That's the right smart town that's built around the Massasoit Hotel.'" I was reminded of his remark when, sometime after, I had occasion to pass the night at that famous
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hostelry. Coming to it without previous arrangement, I was put into a room on the railroad side of the house, and one might almost as well have tried to sleep in the great bell at Moscow, with twenty men beating on the outside with steel hammers all night! I fully determined that if I had occasion to stop again in this neighborhood I should come to Longmeadow, at least for the night. Isn't it possible, by the way, that the people who formed this separate town a hundred years ago may have done it on the principle of elective affinities ? that they found the drive of enterprise up there too much for them, and wanted to get where they could rest in the bosom of encompassing quiet- ness. At any rate they have liked it all the better ever since because it was quiet.
My father's attachment to it has been referred to ; it was a very deep and tender affection, and seemed to grow continually stronger all his life. To the end of his days, I am sure that he thought of this village as nearer to heaven than any other place of which he knew on earth. I have known a good many others who had gone out from it into the world, and who have felt about it in after-life as the old bachelor felt about the state of single-blessedness, when a friend who had shared his lot of loneliness for a good many years was about to be married, and he could think of nothing to send him as a wedding present so perfectly suitable as a fine copy of " Paradise Lost !"
There has been nothing accidental, either, ladies and gentle- men, in the development of this lovely village. One cannot stand in it, I am sure, without feeling the power of those mold- ing forces from which it has come.
No doubt the spirit of the early settlers has contributed to it ; God-fearing, prosperous, middle-class English emigrants. No doubt the fact that the original blood has continued here without any general admixture of foreign elements, has contributed to it ; and the very configuration of its territory has had an influ- ence in the same direction ; the placid river, the mellow mea- dows, the long level reaches of the higher table land. But after all, there has been something back of all these, to produce the result in which we delight ; and that has been simply the force
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of the Christian religion, here resident and regnant from the beginning. I do not say this as a minister, but as a student of history, accustomed to trace effects to causes.
No village like this was possible in the Pagan times, or is pos- sible now in Pagan lands. The whole spirit of society in the ages before Christ pressed steadily in other directions. There . was not even that love of charming natural landscape which is here so constantly gratified. It does not appear in the writings of the historians, or the philosophers, or even of the poets. It stands connected with a higher conception of God than then existed ; and Theocritus himself-whose idyls have so long been famous in the world-seems to have got something of his lan- guage, as well as of the better part of his spirit, from the psalms, with which he may well have become acquainted, in the then recent Septuagint version, while he tarried at Alexandria. I know, of course, that Horace has some delightful lines, express- ing his own wish for a moderate portion of land, with a garden, and a fountain in it, a brook beside the house, and a little wood- land not far off. But even he says that it is only when the mer- chant dreads the stormy winds and the Icarian waves that he commends tranquillity, and rural retirement ; and though he represents the sated usurer as envying the happiness of the man who lives removed from business, and cultivates his paternal acres with his own oxen, he adds that the man so moved toward the country called in his money at the Ides, only to put it out again at the Calends !.
The gentler sensibilities, the finer and more tranquil tastes, were not then nurtured as they have been in the times since Christ. Men who had no clear expectation of a life beyond the present were eager to crowd the life which they had with fierce excitements, brilliant success, and passionate pleasures. So the tendency was constant with them toward splendid spectacles, and the fascinating pageantry of life. An existence without these appeared monotonous, unrewarding. Slavery, too, was uni- versal in those times, as it has not been since, and can never be again ; and the labors of the field, as performed by slaves, came to seem despicable.
Mich, S, Hotis
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Women were not honored, either, as they have been since Christ ; as they have always been honored here; and their deli- cate influence was not widely and intimately felt. It is to that, that these villages of New England owe much of their beauty. If there was any defect in the large and admirable presentation this morning of the history of this town, it seemed to me that it lay in the want of the full recognition of its indebtedness to woman,-which no doubt will be abundantly supplied when we come to read the addresses in their completeness. I, for one, should like to know what Abigail Davenport did for Longmea- dow, as well as what Doctor Williams accomplished. I should like to know what that saintly mother of my father,-whom of course I never saw, but of whom in his very last weeks on earth he spoke with tender, filial love-did for the village, as well as what was done by her husband. These very trees around us seem to represent such a feminine influence. The oak, or the hickory, is a natural image of the robust masculine force. The elm in its graceful and symmetrical sweep, appears to represent the more refined and delicate, yet not less strong, feminine nature. And all this great cathedral of the elms, through which we walk as through a nave along these streets, seems typical of the influences here long exerted by faithful and cultured Chris- tian women.
So it was-in the absence of the forces prevailing in our times -that village life had almost died out of Italy in the time of Augustus, and it took centuries to establish it again ; in fact it never has been there fully re-established. And so it is that a vil- lage like this becomes a fruit and a trophy of the Divine Faith which came out of Nazareth. It is certainly a grander attesta- tion of that Faith than could be furnished by many elaborate argumentative proofs.
It must not be forgotten, either, that it has been Christianity in what are often regarded as its more austere and less attractive forms, which has built up this remarkable beauty and peace. The most orthodox of doctrines have always here been preached ; of Law, and Sin, Atonement by Christ, Regeneration, eternal Judgment and Recompense.
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Men say often, in our time, that these doctrines only repress and repel ; that they have no affinities with fine and delicate intellectual and social culture ; that a gentler, daintier, and more soothing Faith is necessary to such. All history disproves the assertion. I have never believed it; I think I believe it less than ever to-day.
The doctrines here preached have been the same which Paul proclaimed, and in which he found the sure source and support, for himself and others, of love, joy, gentleness, peace. They have been the same which Augustine preached, and in which his heart rested in security while the Vandals raged around his death-bed. They have given seriousness to life here, no doubt ; even solemnity ; but they have not impaired, they have only added to, true beauty of character. Out of fiery heats comes the purest gold. It is the cloud from which the lightnings leap which is touched, when the sun's radiance smites it, with ame- thyst and gold. It is the vast earthquake force which crushes mountains, which also, they say, fashions the inestimable crys- tals of the diamond. And so from the teachings of divine truth which many call stern, sterile, and harsh, has come this loveliness unsurpassed, in human work and human life. A gleam from the immensities has touched the common activities of men. The solemn voices out of eternity have only given emphasis to the message always connected with them of the Divine patience and grace ; and men have been reverent, submissive, faithful, by reason of their religion, while also frugal, industrious, and free.
With such orthodoxy of doctrine has been connected, also, a most exact and simple democracy in the administration first of church affairs, then of the parish, and then of the town ; so that, as we were told in the morning, the moderator of the society must always be one chosen by its distinct vote, and a layman at that. Men say sometimes that such democracy tends to rude- ness, roughness of manner, and a sharp self-assertion. On the other hand, it has manifestly tended here to a just self-respect, to independence of character, to mutual good will, and to kindly offices among neighbors.
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Its effects are seen in the common interest of all in the church of their worship, and in the village of their love. And if any one thinks that the more aristocratic institutions in society and in the church, work more naturally toward beauty and grace, I don't know that we could answer him better than by putting this village, as it stands before us, in comparison with any village to be named on English soil, and leaving the disputant to decide for himself ! The cathedral is not here, to be sure; nor the ivied and ornamental parish church ; nor the castle, and the park ; but the surrounding prosperity and distributed beauty are such as no English village can show ; and no one like this ever sprang from the loins of any prelatical or aristocratic system on earth.
It is well for us to remember this ; and remember, also, how long-continuing has been that energetic life in the past of which the blossom is here around us. We have had the history of a hundred years told us this morning ; but back beyond the time of the earliest settlers in these meadows reach the influences whose fruit we see. Governor Bradford said, in his history of the Plymouth Plantations, that the Pilgrims were ready to come from Leyden to these wilderness shores that they might be, if needful, " stepping-stones to others." Our Fathers made them- selves stepping-stones for us. We walk reverently amid their graves as we come to this celebration. In yonder cemetery is the seed-field of this abundant harvest. Back even beyond that, beyond the great age of Elizabeth, back to the Reformation, back to the advent of Christ on the earth, are to be traced the secret forces of which we see the lovely outcome. The stars which to-night will look down on these streets only represent the numbers and the glory of those who have really, though often unconsciously, been working and suffering for this result.
This same development which we see around us is to continue, too, I trust, for other generations and other centuries, while the conditions of this peculiar moral and social life remain essenti- ยท ally unchanged.
This seems prophesied by the past. All the changes, of which there have been so many, in the country and in the world, swirling around this peaceful village, have not hitherto touched
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it, unless to add to it new beauty and charm. I remember the whirlwind which a few years ago swept over Deerfield, Hadley, Northampton, and laid many of their majestic elms level with the turf. I happened to be riding northward, through the edges of that hurricane, and I wondered at the time whether these elms, too, would have to go. But even the turbulent and tem- pestuous air seemed to have heard the command laid upon it- Don't touch Longmeadow !
And as long as this village shall continue, in its attraction and restful beauty, it will show and will cultivate a much needed ele- ment in American life. We think very well of ourselves as a nation, and have no doubt some reason for doing so ; but we are certainly a noisy people, and a hurrying people. The jump has got into the mind and spirit, as well as the muscle ; and we need very much, now and then, what Charles Lamb said he went into the Quaker meeting to get-" a bath of silence." We need such spots of restfulness as this, where tastefulness, quiet industry, economy, and temperate enterprise flourish together, under the influence of an educating religion, and combined with a remark- able social equality. Our country will never be at its best, until there are many such villages in it. I had almost said that the Millenium will be here whenever there are! There seems a sort of premonitory gleam from that promised future already upon these charming and tranquil streets and homes ; even as on the fra- grant and smiling regions amid which, before Bunyan's Pilgrim, the shining ones walked. But, however many villages there may be in coming time, showing the same general character which we rejoice to recognize here, I am sure that there will not be one of them all, even to the end, more serene or delightful, or more illustrative of the influences which have founded and fashioned it, than this of Longmeadow.
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