USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Memorials of the bar of Lincoln County, maine, 1760-1900 > Part 3
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Hark ! Is it a song of echoing centuries ? On the banks of the Sheepscot near the old fort, Chief Justice Peters was caught in an oak. Not like Absalom by the hair of his head, But in toils of beauty and strength it is said. This oak responsive to the judicial caress Put out its fronds with a view to impress A due sense of gratitude and promised fruit. Acorns soon fell in copious showers To win the judge from all other bowers, And give a new name to judicial sitting, A name in fact of rural fitting. So we have it now in full, and firm
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Our Chief Justice Peters' "Acorn Term."
The oak and its acorns have blocked the way,
To close a term with a gala day : Not with Longfellow hanging his crane, Illustrative of life's domestic train : Nor yet with fronds of the old tree top, But the hanging of an acorn drop. Or if preferred, you soon shall see Memorial hidings in a junior tree ; And that none shall ever doubt or croak It's a scion true of the "Penobscot Oak" !
The story we will give in a summary of this judicial finding.
In his service on the bench of Lincoln bar, at Wis- casset, his honor became enamored of the pure spring water of the old town ; also, of its rural environments. The labors of the day suggested recreation and exercise, by rambling in the woods, and extensive walks. Lured by the long bridge to quaff refreshing sea airs across the Sheepscot tides, and to revel in the scenic beauties of landscape and forest attractions of "Folly Island," the site of the ancient military defenses of Wiscasset Harbor and the heart of Maine as well, the island still pitted with earthworks frowning over the narrows, and through the port-holes of the gun deck of a wooden castle, known as the "block house," the judge encountered an oak tree of remarkable features. It excited interest and commanded admiration. Members of the bar were wont to share his honor's athletic perambulations.
It was the October term of Lincoln bar, A. D. 1873, and Wales Hubbard and Hiram Bliss, Esqs., were with the judge at the oak finding of the court. It was a beau- tiful October afternoon, the party came upon the tree. The sight of the tree arrested the party, striking them with awe and the judge with inspiration.
(INVIS APIO4,, NO aSJOH MaO'l d'JO
١
PENOBSCOT OAK.
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In its proportions, the tree seemed majestic ; not so exceptionally tall as it was massive and heavy. Its wide- spreading branches were large and ponderous.
The character of its fruit was a matter of admiration, and won marked attention of all as it lay spread on the ground. Its acorns were then and are now the largest ever seen in Maine. Every nut picked in season, is thoroughly sound and handsome in shape : shells smooth as if varnished, and almost uniformly exact in size with each other.
There was then no evidence that the place where the tree stood had been frequented. It appeared a stranger to humanity.
Its site is one of the most picturesque spots on the river or bay. The judicial tramp had been one of dis- covery. The discovery called for a name. What should the tree be called ? The discussion suggested a variety of names. The judge was in doubt. He thought the most appropriate name would be "Neal Dow Oak," be- cause it drank nothing but water and takes any quanity of that! Finally the problem was solved in a call for "Penobscot"; and Penobscot Oak has ever since attach- ed. It has been the charm of the venerable chief justice's October term, for years ; and this term he has been wont to call "Acorn Term."
In the plentitude of his inspiration, the judge has profoundly and instructively soliloquized, ravished with visions of psychological novelties, in possible virtues of vegetable life in his favorite oak, he asks, "Has it sen- sation, or the function of thought ?"
His answer, "Certainly! anything that is alive, has sensation to a certain degree. This monarch looks as if it might know something! It can adapt itself to storms
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and wind. It is said the difference between man and the grades of animal life below, is, that while animals may be conscious they do not know they are conscious, but man is conscious that he is conscious.
So vegetation in the form of a huge oak, may have consciousness. Who knows?
"This great tree has likewise in form and shape its twists and turns, its straightness and crooks, its upward slopes and downward declensions, its vigor and weakness, its beauties and deformities, like to many a human being, illustrative of character, mentally and bodily. Most any character, from the judge on the bench himself, to the court crier, or janitor of court room where the judge sits, may be found in the multifarious limbs of this great oak tree! And there, innumerable, are both beauties and deformities yet to be discovered in the manifold branches thereof, illustrative of human character through the imagination of the philosophic humorist and investi- gator."
Such lessons are the judicial suggestion of the find of a Penobscot oak on the Sheepscot, in a niche of the history of Lincoln bar.
But the oak has a history as a memorial. In vege- tation it is the forest king. In industrial hands, it is the strongest rib of the builder's art. In the annals of hu- manity, it has been the hiding place of precious memo- ries : a beacon light to retrospection : a charm to sacred association, a symbol to inspiration of immortality !
This forest king to the Roman was "Quercus," and to the Greek "Druis." Near two thousand years before Christ, and more than thirty-six hundred years ago, an oak stood a memorial factor to the family of Jacob, the Hebrew, a monument of fraternal goodwill, in a family
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jar ; and was made a memorial of the purgation of his household of heathanism.
The strange gods of his family-"their earrings" and trappings of idolatry, offensive to the conscience of the old patriarch-"he hid under an oak of Sechem." This endowed it with a religious character, and so made the oak a hiding place from sin in aid of reformation.
The dead nurse of Jacob's mother was buried under an oak to mark the spot as a "place of weeping," and so made it a memorial of departed worth and a keepsake of affectionate regard.
But the oak has been used to have legal matters in memorial keeping. Joshua, the great Hebrew captain, during the Canaanitish wars, codified rules of govern- ment for his nomadic race ; and when he had written up the book of the law of the Lord, he took a great stone and set it up under an oak. (Jos. xxiv. 26.)
The stone and the oak were used as memorials of a legal crisis in the nation, viz: codification of its laws. Gideon too, in a crucial stage of servitude of the Hebrew race, in seeking divine relief, met God under an "oak of Ophra."
These facts show the early eminence of the oak, in use for memorial service, in the dawn of civilization. Hallowed memories were its secrets.
The oak in history appears to hold no mean distinc- tion as a memorial of beneficient events in society, worthy of perpetuity.
Its robust durability is suggestive of fitness for me- morial uses. It has therefore been built into human history as a rib of perpetuity of affectionate and sacred reminiscences.
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Humanity has voiced the idea of immortality : and in the oak, in the idealism of nature, to our Saxon fathers, its symbol.
The Druids of Britain hung their memories of the past, as well as hopes of the future, on the oak in the tree tops of sacred groves.
Is it not fit, therefore, that the bar of old Lincoln, crowned with hoary memories of the colonial local civil life of New England of near three centuries,-the suc- cessor of old Cornwall in jurisdictional service of the common law of England, should take the oak as its memorial keepsake and adopt the family of the Penob- scot oak (a loan from the Sheepscot,) and make it a liv- ing symbol of the service of the venerable chief justice of the bench and bar of Maine?
Shall we not adopt its scion, or acorn, in perpetuity of the respect and affection of Lincoln bar, for our hon- ored chief justice of the judiciary of Maine, John A. Pe- ters, of Bangor, whose "acorn terms" have so honored and adorned our bar ?
Shall we not hold these living symbols in perpetuity of his services to society and civilization (and of partial- ity to our bar), of the green old age of our venerable chief, and in memorial of a useful life, in conserving the peace and good order of society, the stability of our civ- ilization, the eminence of Maine, in a wise and just juris- prudence and adornment of her bench with decisions of law, of merit and sense ?
To Lincoln bar it will be a crown of honor that the honored chief of the judiciary of Maine has made it the sittings of the "acorn terms" of his court, and so given it a place in the niche of the legal history of New Eng- land ; and the name of Peters a worthy place in the crowning eminence of the grand old past of Lincoln county.
Now, gentlemen, with an apology for the use of your time and patience-and of the thunder of the chief justice, to get the lightning for this occasion-I take my leave of the motherhood of Lincoln bar.
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LINCOLN BAR COURT ROOM OF ACORN TERMS.
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