USA > New Hampshire > Carroll County > Tamworth > Centennial souvenir, 1792-1892 : Tamworth, New Hampshire > Part 1
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GEN
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
3 1833 02799 2442
Gc 974.202 T15HI HIDDEN, WILLIAM BUFFET, 1837- CENTENNIAL SOUVENIR, 1792-1892
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/centennialsouven1792hidd
1992
1892
Tamworth' Then Hampshire
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CENTENNIAL SOUVENIR 1792-1892.
TAMWORTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE.
W. B. HIDDEN, M. D. BALTIMORE.
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
REV. SAMUEL HIDDEN.
TAMWORTH, N. H.
Every Town, City, State and Nation has some epoch or turning point in its history from which its tem- poral and spiritual progress dates, while Providence points out the right man to accomplish the great work. Such an event and union occurred when Rev. Samuel Hidden was ordained as minister of the town of Tamworth, N. H., on the famous " Ordi- nation Rock," September 12, 1792. The day seemed to smile on the proceedings and made the people happy, as only an early autumnal day can, when abundant harvests and forests foreshadow a comfort- able winter to such hardy pioneers.
From all the surrounding towns came people of all ages, in home-spun and home-made clothing, on foot and horse, guided by spotted trees, fifteen or twenty miles, to witness the event which was to
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make "the wilderness a fruitful field " and cause " the Rose of Sharon " to blossom in their own borders.
When the day was far spent, in an orchard near by the rock, discussing the question of baptism, the time and method of administration and the quantity of water to be used, &c., Mr. Hidden proposed that " we exercise all due candor and benevolence in con- descension to each other's 'infirmities '; that none should be considered offenders for acting agreeably to the dictates of their own consciences and no form of baptism should be a bar to Christian communion and fellowship." At length Mrs. William Eastman came into the council and declared, with great energy and decision, " Mr. Hidden shall be ordained to-day." And it was so. The council accepted the proposal and the joy was unbounded. "The people kneeled on the ground and gave thanks to God, while tears of gladness flowed freely." Christianity has wrought great reforms, but in non-essentials the Christians of to-day are much less inclined to overlook each other's "infirmities " than was this primitive church and pastor. The council, with the pastor-elect, ascended the old rock, whose environment it taxes the imagination to depict. In the midst of a dense forest, at that hour when everything that has life voices its eventide praise to the Great Creator and mingles harmoniously with the evening breeze among the leaves of the forest and the singing of
SWIFT RIVER VIEW.
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the brook, all constituting nature's orchestra, and led by the common instinct to praise; with the great rock for a pulpit, the town for the floor to the house, the mountains, like those round about Jeru- salem, for the walls of the house, and the canopy of heaven for a roof, the impressiveness of the scene can be pictured only by the exercise of a vivid imagination. The people, clad in garments as prim- itive and varied in color and texture as the sur- rounding forest, gathered about the rock, completing the picture. Would that we could reproduce that charming scene: those upturned faces, strong in resolution, inured to hardship, with eyes full of hope, longing for "the words of life," were they not caught in the camera of divine love, only to be visible to us in the flashlight of eternity? The ordination exercises were of necessity brief, and described as intensely interesting. From this small beginning on the great rock 503 united with this church during Mr. Hidden's ministry and 56 pastors and teachers went out from it who received the directing impulse of life from his preaching and teaching. Mr. Hidden's early environment and experiences, his great thirst for knowledge, vicissi- tudes as a soldier and sailor in the war for inde- pendence, as a school and music teacher, in his struggle with poverty, working his way through Dartmouth College, gave him great strength of character and power to overcome the antagonisms of
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life, and a knowledge of human nature and sympathy with struggling humanity, that made his personal influence over those about him so great.
The "dreamer boy " thus by force of environment became the rock-Samuel, not Peter-upon which this church was built, and from which has flowed so many streams of "living water " to thirsty souls in our land.
What wonder that, when this gigantic human oak which had braved so many storms, had become plant-
RESIDENCE OF MRS. NATHANIEL HUBBARD.
ed on the "Rock of Ages," "he came into a wilderness and left it a fruitful field ?" Mr. Hidden was all enthusiastic optimist. No cloud long darkened his
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horizon. His patriotism and optimism are well illustrated in the following, written after enlistment, when about 18 years of age, to the lady he subse- quently married :
A WAR SONG.
Come all ye sons of tempest stead, come, hark to war's alarm ; Leave sports and plays and holidays, and haste away to arms. A soldier is a gentleman, his honor is his life,
And he that won't stand by his post, will ne'er stand by his wife.
For love and honor are the same, or else so well allied,
That neither can exist alone, but flourish side by side. So fare ye well, sweethearts, awhile, ye smiling girls, adieu, And when we've drove these dogs away, we'll kiss it out with you.
The spring is up, the winter's gone, the fields are green and gay, And all-inviting honor calls, away, my boys, away ;
To shady tents, by cooling streams, with hearts so firm and free, We'll toss the cares of life away in songs of liberty.
No foreign king shall give us laws, nor British tyrants reign, For independence makes us free, and independence we'll maintain. We'll charge our foes from post to post, attack their works and lines, Or by some well laid stratagem, we'll make them all Burgoynes.
And when the wars are over, boys, then down we'll sit at ease ; We'll plow and sow, we'll reap and mow, and live just as we please. Each hearty lad shall take his lass, all shining like a star, And in her softer arms forget the dangers of the war.
The rising world shall sing of us a thousand years to come, And to their children's children tell the wonders we have done. Come, honest fellows, here's my hand, my heart, my very soul, With all the songs of liberty, good fortune and the bowl.
A monument was placed upon the rock September 12, 1862, by a grandson bearing his name, when Rev. Ezra E. Adams, D. D., delivered the following oration :
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"Friends and Fellow Citizens :
" Toward this day your minds have long thought- fully, hopefully turned. It is a happiness to the people of Tamworth and of the neighboring town- ships to celebrate such an occasion, to recount together the past and link themselves anew and more firmly, if that were needful, to the origin of their present social and religious pre-eminence.
"Nor is it less joyous to us, who come up from the plain, from the city, from the places of political
MOUNTAIN VIEW.
strife and commercial friction, where the wheels of life grate and grind against each other for want of the generous oil of charity, from the central places of power, where care sits on the brow and agony
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wastes the heart, and from the hot fields of battle, on which brothers bleed and the question is decided whether we shall keep or lose the inheritance bequeathed to us by the glorious dead ; to stand in the shadow of these old mountains, listen to 'wood notes wild,' look on the streams as they run in their beneficent mission to the sea ; to take in the lessons of this changing foliage, to grasp the hand of honest labor and refresh our eyes with a view of the true sources of national mind, virtue and hope. It is worth a journey from the most distant shore to breathe this air, to lift our eyes to these pillars of heaven and crown by our transactions here a history of seventy years. We may almost hear, in the words of the minstrel, the voice of God putting to us the solemn question :
"'Oh, how canst thou renounce the hidden stores Of charms that Nature to her votary yields-
The warbling woodlands, the resounding shores, The pomp of groves and garniture of fields, And all that echoes to the pomp of even ; All that the woodland's sheltering bosom shields,
And all the dread magnificence of heaven- Oh, how canst thou renounce and hope to be forgiven ? '
"We are here to consecrate this marble to the memory of a great and good man. To place among these hills-themselves undying mementoes of his labors, his virtues and his prayers-a silent, endur- ing cenotaph, that all who pass this way may read the name that hallows it and be reminded of no ordinary worth.
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"In this work of our hands we pay tribute to filial piety, for no other son ever felt or demonstrated a deeper self-sacrificing devotion to parental want. From the toil of months and years he laid all his gains on the board, which the hands of a mother spread and the lips of a father blessed. We honor consistent, personal, modest godliness ; for no man of his time stood before the people of our State with more convincing proof of that divine endowment. We pay homage to mind, which, while it grasped with intuitive vigor subjects of philosophic thought and academic culture, was equally at home among the deeds of history, in classic lore, in the glories of poetry and sentiment and in the amenities of social life. We commemorate the spirit and the deeds of a lofty patriotism which, born in his soul among the first warm passions and glowing aspirations of youth, grew into fruition on his country's war-fields and on her seas. At the age of fifteen years he desired his master, in accordance with an old militia law, which had been too much neglected, to procure for him a musket, with the stipulated amount of powder and balls, with bayonet, knapsack, cartridge- box and flints.
"This petition was not heeded. At length the gallant boy managed, by additional labor, to procure the coveted equipment. He at once showed it to his master, saying, 'What I have earned I may use; this shall make the British dogs howl.' At the age
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of twenty-one he had enlisted four different times and served through stipulated periods of the war, having distinguished himself in all, especially in the battle of Stillwater, when Burgoyne surrendered his whole army as prisoners of war.
" His last enlistment was on board the ship Pil- grim, commissioned by the State of Massachusetts, his native State, to harass British commerce. A few days after the sailing of the Pilgrim she fell in with the British brig Alfred, which she captured, and Hidden was sent into Salem with the prize. We erect a monument to affections most lively and pure, to a heart that beat in generous sympathies with all who suffered and sinned, giving electric power to the utter- ances of the pulpit, to every word spoken in private life, to every line which flowed from his pen, to his prayers and praises, his persuasions and his rebukes.
" In all these his people and his family felt the gush of a fountain flowing up, not for its own dem- onstration, but for the happiness of others, as the rills flow out from these mountain steeps, giving birth to the spring verdure and summer bloom, making the valleys jubilant with springing grass and the uplands to deck themselves in the glory of harvests. Rearing this stone to the memory of him whose name it bears, we honor labor ; for not with the head only, but with his hands, did he work in these granite fields, causing them to teem with abundance, and making the wilderness and solitary place glad for him.
MIDDLE WANALANCET FALLS.
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" He caused the music of labor to ring from these rocks, to mingle with the song of the robin and with the roar of the mountain winds. Like Oberlin, he toiled with his people, demonstrating the power of Christianity over the dumb and rigid earth. And at this day, when in the deadly strife so many brave men have met to vindicate the honor of labor against the imagined glory of a slave system, it is a refresh- ment. The venerable, holy man whose memory we so fondly cherish here had character ; he was origi- nal, strong, tender, full of sympathy with nature, with truth, with sorrow, with greatness of thought and of soul. The people who dwelt in these towns looked up to him, and were overshadowed by him, while their happiest hours were spent in his pres- ence. His greatness was not like that of the Gothic temple, exaggerated to the eye by giving length and height to a narrow nave, but like that of St. Peter's in Rome, whose grand dome, filled with statues and adorned with richest art, seems to stoop to the beholder, and conciliate where its vastness would otherwise overpower him. We are drawn to such a mind ; it is fresh, strong, original. Our thoughts bloom and ripen in its beams. It is to such, and near such, as Goethe said, 'that thoughts come, like blessed children, from the presence of God.'
"Said one who knew him, and knew also how to delineate character: 'There was a decision, a daring, an untameableness in the structure of his mind even
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in boyhood, combined with a tone of authority to command, and a talent in the exercise of these qual- ities, to which the minds of his associates yielded in implicit subjection. Fear of consequences never entered into his view; opposition, particularly if accompanied with anything like severity or oppres- sion, awakened unrelenting resistance. Yet this bold, untameable spirit was allied to a noble and generous disposition. There was a magnificence in his mind. It was too noble to have recourse to other means, or to aim at other ends, than those which he avowed, and too intrepid not to avow those which he did entertain so far as might be required or expedient. Notwithstanding this trait of char- acter, he possessed a deep sympathy, which sprang less from that softness and sensibility which are the ornament of the female character, than from the generosity of his disposition. He would have all men happy, and it gratified his generous, noble nature to ease the burdens of suffering man.' And, we may add, when these qualities became so inany Christian virtues they constituted a character at once commanding and gentle, filling men with awe, and yet winning them to grateful confidence and love. We recognize by this memorial an instance of distinguished success in the ministry of the gospel.
"Father Hidden possessed qualities which ensure success in any calling, especially in the work of pastor and preacher. Along with his genuineness
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of character, his stern purpose, his vigorous under- standing, knowledge of human nature and solid sense, he had a large and familiar acquaintance with the Scriptures, fervent piety, an earnest soul, strong assurance of faith, love for his work and for his people, a studious habit, adaptation to the varied circumstances in which he was placed, abounding wit, a faculty for governing men, a cheerful bearing, the spirit of contentment, a clear, strong voice, deep feeling, which spoke in his features, his gestures and his tears, and a soul of song which mellowed his severity and charmed those whom his sterner attributes had awed. If these endowments would lead us to expect success in any man, actual history furnishes us with their complete realization in point of fact. For surely he did succeed who, in the course of a ministry of forty years, was blest with at least six revivals, some of which lasted successive years with but little intermission ; who added to his church more than five hundred members gathered from the world and out of a sparse population; who formed churches in all the neighboring townships, diffused the light of education throughout the county, pre- pared scores of young men for college and hundreds for their various professions; who gained such an influence among the people that the militia did not meet without listening to his prayers, nor elections proceed until he had addressed the citizens on behalf of their duty and God on behalf of themselves; to
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whom the poor came for aid, the rich for counsel, the ignorant for light, and all for sympathy; who stood at the head of the ministry for judgment and wis- dom; who preached 12,000 sermons-many written in full or in part-each containing some new, pro- found, attractive thought, and who, when he de- parted to heaven, left none upon earth that could refuse to his memory the tribute of tears.
"But here we check the strain of eulogy. Were he now looking down on us from his beatitude, were his celestial ear to catch the words we utter, he would turn away from our worthless praise. He entertains nobler themes. He would have us bless God for the life he was permitted to spend here, for the work he was enabled to do, for the glory of truth by which his life realized its end, for the grace that wrought in him, and through him upon multitudes of men. Not one note of praise would he accept, if it were offered to anything less than the glory of the Master. While, then, we gratefully recognize all the qualities we have already named, while we unite our sentiments and our affections with those of his grandson, who bore his name and inherited many of his virtues, whose . devotion to his grandfather prompted him to provide this lasting memorial, as he himself was about to rejoin him in heaven, we would rise to a still higher theme; we would see in the life of the venerable servant of God the illustra- tion of a power which, however the world overlooks
THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.
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it, is really at the foundation of all true social happi- ness, of all vital, lasting nationality. We mean the religion of the Bible, as enforced and preached by a pure and qualified Christian ministry. This thought may be embodied in a variety of formulas. I have chosen this: 'The pulpit a civilizer.' By the pulpit in this connection we mean the preacher, the pastor, the minister of God-we mean preaching. We take the container for the contained-the cup for that which sparkles and glows within it. By civilization is understood the condition in which man is most developed, not individually only, but socially, unitedly. We believe in the unity of the race, and that man is to be elevated as a unity. No single portion of mankind is ever permitted permanently to rise at the expense of another portion. When one part of our species gets from another part more than it gives, God adjusts their relations anew. This is the law of progress. Egypt rejected this law; she lived on the sweat of other brows and the agony of other hearts. But the Red Sea washed out the enormity-the grand national lie. Babylon tried that abnormal state, and her grandeur became her ruin; the black scorpion basked in her palaces. Rome tried it, and the blood of slaves, mounting into patrician life, coursed in the veins of the Scipios; and Rome went down like a smitten giant into the dust. We have tried it, and our nation now groans as in death throes, and we are giving back
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the wealth, the power, the glory, which have ripened for us in cotton balls and rice fields. We are wading with broken chariot wheels in the Red Sea of sorrow. Civilization, says Guizot, is progress in the indi- vidual and the state-physical, intellectual, moral. The increase of comforts, of sentiment, of taste, of culture. A writer of considerable power and correct- ness maintains that there is civilization where there is not progress.
"It is evident, however, that civilization is either actual progress or the result of it. If a state is civilized, it has come out of barbarism and gone on toward some high goal of material, mental and moral attainment into social comforts, into art and science, into knowledge of law, of property and its uses, into a juster view of social and civil relations. ‘To civilize,' says Webster, 'is to reclaim from a savage state, to introduce among a people civility of man- ners and the arts of regular life.' Contrast Great Britain now with what she was in the time of the Druids, and you have the definition of civilization. Contrast the Indian tribes that roamed and hunted among the mountains and lakes of New Hampshire a hundred years ago with the population that now dwells here, and you have a just idea of civilization. And yet there are degrees of civilization as there are of harmony. In an organ two-thirds of the notes may be in accord, while the rest are discordant. So in the organism of society. The varied elements
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are discordant, and it is the office of the Gospel through the ministrations of the pulpit to harmonize these elements, and lead men up to a nobler life and larger hope. Grace sanctifies every affection and hallows every tie. It is the office of the Christian minister not to deal with dry formulas, to rattle on the desk the skeletons of dead creeds, to smother his
SUMMER RESIDENCE OF CHARLES H. DOW, TAMWORTH VILLAGE.
hearers with the dust of scholastic championship, but to stimulate their minds with truths, which, while old as eternity, are ever new. To set before them not alone the majesty, the power, the stern laws of Jehovah, but also to make them feel that ' the beauty of the Lord Our God is upon them.'
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The pulpit is thus an educator of the understanding, the conscience and the heart. The clergy have been and still are educators in a more minute and super- visory manner. They guarded learning, history, philosophy, even during the ages of moral gloom, from which, like morning from midnight, the reformation sprang. Throughout the East, in Europe's universities and libraries, and in our own land, the voices, the pens, the watchfulness of the ministers of God have promoted, and still promote, learning and art. They write the books, they stim- ulate and control the press, they give law to litera- ture, they superintend the education of youth. In New England especially is intellectual culture under the guiding minds of the clergy. They began the work of education at Plymouth Rock, and among these States the people have not yet been disposed to set their agency aside. It is this very influence that has gone forth in a thousand channels, spring- ing up in Western colleges, appearing in the books and schools of the nation, breathed in song, radiant in poetic conceptions, thundered in oratory, sounded in a thousand pulpits, revealed in the wisdom of state papers, lived in the retreats of literary labor, and in the silence of cottage homes. The pulpit is 0 an exponent of law.
" There cannot be civilization without govern- ment, this men need, to this their instinct prompts them; but those instincts must be urged by stern
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necessity, or aided by the influence of example, before they will break the chains of barbarism and bear man on to organize national life. It is the work of Christianity to honor law. It recounts a mighty sacrifice for the moral order of the universe. It teaches that the power is ordained of God. Legis- lators, therefore, owe much to the pulpit for a high sense of law, and where the preacher of divine truth is bold, and honest, and enlarged, where society is formed and taught under the healthful power of the decalogue, under the example of Christ and the Apostles, the government is comparatively secure. Church and state touch each other here. And why should they not? There are three divine institu- tions among inen-the family, the church and the state. They are distinct, and yet united. The family is to be the nursery of the church and of the state. The church gets its materials naturally from the household, and by conquest from the state. The state receives its materials from the family and its solidness, its life, from the church. This is God's theory. He inaugurated it in the family of Noah, repeated it in the household of Abraham, and again in the May Flower. But man sinks below that standard, that divine ideal; man labors downward. God finds it necessary in successive epochs to lift the race to a higher platform. The base element drags us down. The Gospel uplifts, ennobles, is our anchor and hope.
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" We render all honor to the pioneers of the New Hampshire pulpit. We speak with glad hearts and grateful of those whose light shone on the last gen- · eration ; but we do not surrender even to them the power of the pulpit in these times. We believe there is more learning, more fervid eloquence, better knowledge of the Bible and equal piety now. We have not the Puritanic magnificence of mien, the stern, rock-like command, the mysterious distance from secular things and men, but we have a pulpit that comes nearer to the affections, nearer to the homes and bosoms of men, to prepare the way for which the illustrious Father Hidden did not a little.
"Many problems are yet to be solved in politics, in science, in philosophy ; but the Gospel shall live on unchanged. Christ will adjust the world and man to it. The time is at hand when Himself and His truth shall take their place in the centre of the universe, and throw out their glories over all minds. His shall be the law. He shall make all things new. Till then let us thank God for the pulpit. Let us thank God for such preachers as he was whose memory we hallow to-day. Let us become such our- selves, and pray that thousands more may arise like him to lift up the voice in the wilderness, to change the desolate places into Edens, and to glorify the work, the truth and the holiness of God. Let this old rock preach to us. It is henceforth and forever the property of history and of the church. Let no flood remove it ; no force of nature or man rend it
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.
ROAD VIEW.
and elm vie with each other in spreading out their protecting green arms over all who need shelter from the sun's rays, and affording homes for the natural occupants of the woods; forests where the fir, spruce and pine, in close bond of fellowship, protect the " stay-at-homes " from the cold blasts of winter, and in whose dense shade the wearied city pilgrim can lie upon a soft bed of moss or pine needles, and, as Emerson says, hear
"The Gods talk in the breath of the woods, They talk in the shaken pine,
And fill the long reach of the old seashore With dialogue divine.
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"And the poet who overhears Some random word they say, Is the fated man of men Whom the ages must obey."
Pen can not describe nor words portray the beauties, the charms, the melodious cadences of nature as seen and heard in the forests of Tam- worth. If we visit them at dawn of day the stillness is almost painful, but when the tops of the trees first catch the rays of the morning sun, everything that hath life bursts forth in rapturous welcome to a new day ; the birds and squirrels in the tree tops seem to lead the grand orchestra, which, without the usual painful process of tuning, harmoniously sends up a pæon of joyous praise to the Great Creator. Again at eventide, as the waning twilight slowly fades into the gloom of night, nature's orchestra closes the day with a similar outburst of melodious song, only the evening concert is prolonged by the answering notes of the sparrows and the plaintive tones of the cricket, the owl and the whippoorwill. So liquid are the notes of this sparrow, and so full of melody, that the twig he tilted on seemed a conductor through which the mingled magnetism of brook and forest flowed into him and were precipitated in song. He who would enjoy to the fullest this high mass in nature's grand cathedral must enter the forest aisles silently and reverently ; then, unobserved, he may participate in that grand chorus which raises to the
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Creator the most sanctified of praise. From the highways of Tamworth, Chocorua presents a great variety of charming views, and soon becomes to the lover of nature a delightful personality; catches his eye from every turn in the road and gives a different aspect from every hilltop. At its base to the south- east is a pretty body of water bearing its name, which, as the sun declines, often through fleecy clouds mirrors on its placid bosom, in perfect har- mony of green and gold, the mountain and adjacent forests. It is worth a season's watching to catch a glimpse of such a marvelous display of reflected color and beauty, as the writer once beheld from its shore. Silver Lake, or White Pond, situated on the plains near the road leading from the railroad sta- tion to the village, is one of the prettiest bodies of water in the world. It is fed almost wholly by springs near its centre, has a smooth, rockless beach, clear, transparent, sparkling water, in which a car- riage can be driven nearly round it with safety and satisfaction to man and beast. The day is near at hand when its beauties so lavishly spread out will be utilized and a carriage drive constructed around it, with bathing houses and boats in abundance. The points of interest in the town are very numer- ous, and the lovers of nature will here find delightful occupation. The roads are excellent and usually kept in good repair. The rushing mountain torrents which, leaping down the sharp declivities, have laid bare the massive rock which now forms their bed ;
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UPPER WONALANCET FALLS.
the babbling brooks, forming cascades and pools among the giant boulders, left here and there as memorials of the great ice period, interest and soothe those who ride or walk beside them. No malaria lingers round the streams and meadows of Tam- worth, and though St. Patrick never visited the town, there are no harmful reptiles within her bor- ders. The soil does not reflect the heat, as would sandy soil ; hence, when the sun declines, it quickly becomes cool, and a hot night is very rarely exper-
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ienced. The air is dry and invigorating. Said a visitor : "I never realized what the Psalmist meant when he said, ' O God, for the strength of the hills we thank Thee,' until I looked upon these hills and breathed this pure, life-giving air."
To those who desire to renew their youth and recuperate their exhausted energies by air and exer- cise, with good, wholesome food, Tamworth affords a
WIGGIN HOUSE.
superior environment. Her hotels and cottages have been enlarged and improved from year to year ; farmers have opened their homes to summer visitors, and are making efforts to supply early vegetables, &c. She offers special inducements to those seeking country homes.
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SUMMER RESIDENCE OF MRS. GIGNOUX. TAMWORTH IRON WORKS.
In the eastern section of the town, especially, there is a boom in real estate, which promises to increase and extend to all parts of the town. Farms and attractive building lots and building materials are surprisingly cheap. People are beginning to realize the fact that the greatest need of the well- to-do city family is a country home, where they can spend the summer and return in the fall, free from that class of ailments incident to the heated term and physically strong for the active duties of city life. Parents can make no investment for their children that will be of so much help to them all through life as to give them the freedom and exer- cise of outdoor country life during the summer. It
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has been truly said that our cities have never bred their own giants. They who have towered to pre- eminence among their fellows in the professions or in the busy marts of commerce, the most healthful, energetic and enterprising citizens, were once coun- try boys and girls ; and if we are to maintain in our children the same physical stamina, we must give them the same experience with old Mother Earth.
The familiar and attractive Chocorua grows more and more interesting as we approach the top. A carriage road has been constructed almost to its base and a stone house been built there to accommodate those who wish to refresh themselves or remain to see the sun set and rise in all its glory.
TIP TOP VIEW OF CHOCORUA.
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The view from the top of Chocorua well pays the effort made in the ascent, and surpasses that of any other peak in the variety and grandeur of scenery. Not only do we behold mountains piled together in
C
WONALANCET FARM HOUSE. MISS SLEEPERS.
massive majesty, with lavish prodigality, as though they were a "very little thing " to the Great Creator, but interspersed among the hills and valleys, the forests and green meadows, lie more than a score of lakes and ponds, in full view, giving variety with
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most fascinating contrasts. And when the early autumn days tint the whole picture, the variety and harmony of color surpass any possible description or conception of the imagination. The highest and most inaccessible of the neighboring mountains, Passaconaway, was explored last season, and through the influence of the enthusiastic proprietress of "Wonalancet " Farm, a road was opened to its sum- mit. Indeed, that corner of the town has taken on "a new life." The Wonalancet Union Chapel, fres- coed and painted, has become the centre of an organi- zation which promises well for the future. The old farm house has grown to be a rustic paradise, where many a city pilgrim has found health and comfort ; which shows what an influence a refined, intelligent and enthusiastic young lady can exert, as a farmer, in a farming community.
We present photographic views of the old and the new, showing the improvements that have been made as an example of what is to be on a larger scale, and views of scenery old and yet ever new with each returning season, hoping to give the reader some idea of what is and is to be in the near future in this interesting old town.
We close with a few lines linking the past and present in the history of the "Old Rock."
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To this rugged old rock our forefathers came One cent'ry ago, midst the earth's desolation, To form here a church, and ordain in His name One, to tell them of Him who redeemeth our nation ; That the banner of Jesus should here be unfurled, And the seed here be sown that shal' conquer the world ; And the banner of Jesus those pilgrims unfurled, As they sent forth their loved ones to leaven the world.
We come here to-day, and how wondrous the change, " The Rock," decked with marble, is vocal with glory, While rocks, hills and plain, with the vast mountain range, Re-echo our songs and repeat the glad story- How this servant of God so untiringly wrought,
That the whole region round heard the word, and besought That the banner of Jesus in triumph might wave O'er the homes of our country, most mighty to save.
His life, in the lives of this people enshrined, Became potent in moulding his own generation ; Gave impulse to preachers and teachers, refined, Who taught and proclaimed to the youth of our nation, That the Gospel of Jesus true freedom imparts, Exalteth our nature and cleanseth our hearts ;
That the banner of Jesus, those pilgrims unfurled On this famous old rock, shall yet conquer the world.
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A. HOEN & CO., BALTIMORE.
HECKMAN BINDERY INC.
FEB 96
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