USA > New Hampshire > Grafton County > Hanover > Hanover, New Hampshire, a bicentennial book : essays in celebration of the town's 200th anniversary > Part 26
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The library's last major renovation was in 1938 when the elec- tric wiring and structure of the old building were thoroughly in- spected and new ceilings put up. It was then that the 1773 date of the erection of the Mansion, written in pencil by some long-dead workman on a beam in the adult reading room, was uncovered and photographed before it was hidden by new plaster. In the summer of 1960 the library was re-papered, and painted outside and in, in preparation for Hanover's bicentennial year of 1961 and the historic building's one hundred and eighty-eighth.
The library opened in 1900 with a budget of under a thousand dollars, a book stock of about 1,200 volumes, and an average weekly circulation of 149 books.
The latest annual report, for 1959, shows a book stock of 27,175 volumes, an estimated budget of $22,894 and an average daily cir- culation of 219 books, with Howe ranked first among libraries in the state in towns between two and ten thousand population.
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From a single librarian working by the hour the staff has grown to three full-time members and two part-time. Its budget for books alone in 1960 was $3,800 and in addition it makes full use of the State Bookmobile services, borrowing every ten to twelve weeks. It has 2,670 adult card holders and 820 juvenile. Still adamantly refusing to let Dartmouth students hold its library cards, it does make some books available to them with Baker Library the inter- mediary, and to the Dartmouth faculty it offers the relaxation of frivolous reading. Its large collection of mysteries and westerns pays for itself through rental.
The library has been continuously fortunate in the imagina- tion, devotion and professional capabilities of its succession of librarians, Miss Mabel Read, Miss L. Edith Chandler, Miss Har- riet Storrs, Miss Etta M. Clark, Miss Grace E. Kingsland, Mrs. Oliver L. Lilly, Miss Frances E. Haslett and Miss Dorothy A. Hurlbutt. With the Town Library in Etna and Baker Library, Howe completes that "chain of libraries of which Hanover can well be proud," whose influence on Hanover's children is beyond reckoning since, as Eleazar Wheelock's First Book for Children noted in 1763:
Children like tender oziers take the bow; And as they first are fashion'd always grow; For what we learn in youth, to that alone In age we are by second nature prone.
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22 Town and Gown by Francis Lane Childs
E LEAZAR WHEELOCK came to Hanover and established Dartmouth College in the summer of 1770, just five years after Edmund Freeman had arrived with his family to be- come the first permanent settler in the township. Thus town and college grew up together, inseparably intertwined, yet, as in all college towns, with interests that were sometimes the same and re- sulting in cooperation, at other times different and culminating in disagreements. The cooperations, although less talked about, have always been the more important, but the disagreements have been the more colorful and therefore longest remembered. Some of them have passed from factual anecdote into fanciful legend, and it is not always easy when striving for historical perspective to separate truth from fiction.
Certain problems have been perennial. Eleazar Wheelock's first difficulties with townspeople arose from the surreptitious furnishing of liquor to students by local tradesmen, and from his day to the present that question has never been entirely and satisfactorily solved. Student pranks, often annoying and some- times harmful but seldom malicious, have persisted throughout the years and have aroused justifiable resentment among the citi- zens as well as among the faculty.
Throughout the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth cen- tury farmers, tradesmen, and village residents alike were plagued by petty thefts on the part of students. An undergraduate of early days attempted to excuse them by saying that they stole only "chickens, turkeys, apples, watermelons, wood and bees"; I sup- pose the last item really means honey. Poultry were taken from their roosts in henhouses and were cooked in dormitory quarters, and wood, as long as undergraduates were obliged to heat their own rooms, was purloined from any convenient woodpile. Stu- dents apprehended in such activities were of course severely dealt with by the college authorities.
Much more serious was the criminal act of "body-snatching" by medical students. Many unsubstantiated stories of such acts
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have come down to us, but only a few can be definitely placed in Hanover. In the autumn of 1809 a medical student removed the body of a boy from a newly-made grave in the cemetery of a town not far distant from Hanover and brought it here, unknown to the officers of the medical faculty. Inadvertently he had dropped a pocket-book with his name in it in the cemetery; irate citizens accompanied by legal authorities promptly came and searched the medical building, finding the body concealed beneath the floor of the lecture room. The guilty student fled on their arrival and was not captured; he never returned to Hanover. Great excite- ment and excessive hard feelings in this and all the surrounding towns continued for some time, and cemeteries were carefully guarded.
Two or three years earlier a strange event had taken place here. One Hezekiah Jones, who lived in an old house on lower Main Street, near the top of Nigger Hill, died of typhoid fever and was buried in the Dartmouth Cemetery. A few days later his body was discovered in the early morning hanging over the cemetery fence. The story at once spread through the village that he had come to life and had got this far on his way home! The man who resur- rected and abandoned him was never identified.
The most spectacular clashes between the students and the vil- lagers on the Plain, however, were those of the long-continued feud between the two factions over the pasturing of cows on the College Common (now called the Campus). For sixty years after the founding of the College the Common was unfenced and-to use a word of that time-"unstumped." On this rough, uneven area, in among the old white pine stumps, the residents of the village were accustomed in the summer season to turn their cows loose at night, to the annoyance and disgust of the students. Up- perclassmen for many years imposed upon the freshmen the duty of "cow-driving" during the weeks just preceding commencement in order to keep the Common reasonably clean. But at any time the undergraduates were likely to band together and drive the cows to some distant point or herd them into the cellar of Dart- mouth Hall and erect a barricade to prevent their removal. Col- lege records and student reminiscences show that hardly a year passed without open and sometimes violent rioting between the cow-owners and the cow-drivers. Two of these contests had reper- cussions that make them worth recalling here.
Judge Samuel Swift of Middlebury, Vt., a graduate of Dart- 264
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mouth in the class of 1800, recorded when in his ninetieth year his recollections of his undergraduate days in Hanover. He has this to say about cows:
The college common was not enclosed or in any way ornamented with trees or shrubbery but was used especially in the night for yarding all the village cows. Whoever undertook to cross the common, espe- cially in the night, was liable to soil his boots. This nuisance had, for a long time, occasioned a violent and increasing complaint among the students. One night a number of the boys formed a conspiracy to avenge the wrong and abate the nuisance, and drove the whole body of trespassing cows up the Connecticut river three or four miles and forced them into, and, by their swimming, across the river into Ver- mont. In the morning there was great inquiry for the cattle, but soon it was ascertained where they were and how they came there. The owners were enraged, and one of the men, who suffered most, threat- ened to prosecute the offenders. One of the ring-leaders, who had per- haps obtained some legal advice, went to the prosecutor and confessed that he was guilty, but told him that he was obliged to go home and wished to settle the claim against him before he left, and offered to give him five dollars for a discharge, so that he could go away without leaving a lawsuit behind him. To this the man consented and dis- charged him.
Meanwhile suit was prosecuted against the other defendants. The receipt the plaintiff had given the student who confessed was presented in court as their defense on a principle of law that the discharge of one of joint trespassers is a discharge of all. In an ap- peal to the highest court in the state, the judgment given in favor of the students was upheld and they went free.
Amos Kendall of the class of 1811 in his Autobiography refers to the frequency of shutting cows in the college cellar and gives much detail in regard to the three most serious conflicts that arose from this practice during his college course. The most interesting of these occurred on June 8, 1808. That night the cows were col- lected and driven into the large empty cellar under Dartmouth Hall and the entrance was blocked up. Next morning when the owners came for their cattle they were told they could not re- possess them until they agreed to yard them at night. Emotions rose quickly; attack was being prepared by the citizens and de- fense was already under way by the students. At this juncture a freshman named Benjamin Darling picked up an abusive town boy, John Baldwin, and tossed him over the fence behind the
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college. Soon after, the lad's father, Jedediah Baldwin the village goldsmith, rushed up and hurled a large stone through one of the windows in Dartmouth Hall. Immediately the turmoil became general, and the students quickly scattered the villagers under a shower of stones and brickbats.
Then a constable appeared and arrested Darling for assault and battery on the boy. The whole crowd followed him into the pres- ence of the local justice of the peace who was to try him. There was no question about the assault, but it was proved that the boy had been very insulting and was unharmed by the plunge over the fence. The justice therefore fined Darling two dollars. A yell- ing group of students paraded down Main Street to Baldwin's house and watchmaker's shop, which stood where Rand's Furni- ture Store is now located, and threw stones at it but did no fur- ther damage then.
The cows were released that evening, but student sense of jus- tice was not satisfied, and a few mornings later Baldwin's horse which he kept in a pasture nearby presented a strange appearance. During the night someone had coated him with whitewash and painted the words "TWO DOLLARS" in large black letters on both his sides. Then the goldsmith's sign was stolen and a large stone was thrown through the bow window of his shop, scattering the watches hung there and damaging some of them. The students had subscribed one hundred and thirty dollars to help Darling prosecute an appeal, but cooler heads among both the college group and the townsfolk effected a compromise, and the suit was dropped. Relative quiet descended on Main Street and the Com- mon for another brief spell.
In 1831 the College removed the stumps and leveled the ground of the Common, and in 1836 surrounded it with a fence of sub- stantial granite posts and heavy wooden rails. This fulfilled a plan of many years standing that had been delayed by a lack of the necessary funds, and it is interesting to note that its accomplish- ment was brought about by a joint effort of town and gown. The College subscribed $100 and the rest of the expense was met by voluntary subscriptions from the citizens.
This fence brought an end to the cow trouble, but it raised new difficulties. The main highway from Hanover to Lyme, laid out in early times, ran diagonally across the Green from southwest to northeast and was now by necessity thrown around its sides in- stead of across it. Some villagers, resentful at the loss of their cow-
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yard, took up the matter of the changed highway and for years threatened, in town meeting and outside, to have the road re- opened across the Common.
The last serious flurry came in April 1873. Up to that time the Common had extended thirty feet further south than it does to- day; the town authorities, in order to straighten the line of East and West Wheelock Streets, now took a strip from the Common for the road and moved the fence so much to the north. The stu- dents considered this an encroachment on the rights of the Col- lege and showed their resentment by tearing down and burning the south line of fence. Feelings quickly flared, and the selectmen threatened to reopen the diagonal road which had never been legally discontinued. But the College countered by replacing the fence within a few days, the townspeople calmed down, and Presi- dent Smith persuaded the undergraduates to foot the bill for the new construction. In 1893, cows and roads forgotten, the fence was removed, with only a few posts and rails left on the west side of the Green as an historic memento, designated "The Senior Fence."
Another source of friction in the nineteenth century grew out of military training as a compensation for voting rights. In 1817, when the College was putting forth every exertion to ensure a representative in the state legislature who would be favorable to their cause, students who were of age and eligible to vote were urged to attend the March meeting. They did so and were peace- ably allowed to cast their ballots, but when May training day came around found themselves enrolled in the militia (although the law at that time exempted students from militia service) and warned "to appear on the parade at East Hanover at nine of the clock A.M." They applied to the selectmen for arms, but none came; so they arrived without them, and pretending ignorance of all military orders, turned the training into a farce. The town had one more ace up its sleeve, however, and they were soon notified to work out their tax upon the highway. In this task they managed through a friendly highway surveyor to get off more easily than perhaps they deserved.
Although student voting irked some of the politicians in the town, no further trouble was encountered until 1833, when Ebenezer Symmes, tavernkeeper at the lower stand on Main Street (now the municipal parking lot) and politically unfriendly to the College, as a representative to the legislature from Hanover that
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year succeeded in getting a law passed that repealed the general exemption from military service of students over twenty-one years of age. Under this new law students who voted and all others over eighteen were "warned to appear" at May training and fall muster on the parade ground at East Hanover. The faculty disapproved, fearing disorder between the students and the throng of citizens from the countryside around, but the students hailed the muster with delight as an opportunity for skylarking. They were enrolled in the "Floodwood" or "String Bean" company of the militia under the captaincy of Ulysses Dow, "an honest farmer from East Hanover." "Dressed, or sometimes half-dressed, in every conceiva- ble costume which sophomoric ingenuity could invent," wrote Dr. Barstow, "with miscellaneous equipment and with all re- straint laid aside, they literally 'trained' to their hearts' content but to Captain Dow's unspeakable woe. They had fun with Repre- sentative Symmes too-at one parade they bore aloft a banner with a rude portrait labeled Symmes, with the devil holding him by his nose and prodding him with a pitchfork." After enduring two years of such antics Captain Dow could take no more and resigned his command. Everyone was tired of the situation by this time, and through the state adjutant a compromise was reached by which the students were to organize their own company, choose their own officers, manage their own affairs and report their roster each year to headquarters.
Out of this arrangement grew the Dartmouth Phalanx, made up of one hundred students and attached to the 23rd Regiment of the New Hampshire Militia, which until it was disbanded in 1845 was considered one of the crack companies in the state. Its train- ing days were held on the College Green and were a source of pride and enjoyment to both students and citizens. It was a com- mittee of townspeople who chose the Phalanx to do the honors of escort on the occasion of the long-famous visit of Col. Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky to Hanover and Norwich in 1843. Dr. Josiah Barstow of the class of 1845 and himself a member of the Phalanx has left a vivid account of the proceedings, the full pro- gram of which was printed in The People's Advocate, with some acid comments by the editor. Col. Johnson, today a forgotten man, was the reputed slayer of the Indian chief Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames, November 5, 1813, and Vice-President of the United States under Van Buren, 1837-41. Previously a satellite of Andrew Jackson, he was now touring the country in the for-
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lorn hope of finding someone to nominate him for the Presidency. He broke his stage journey at White River Junction to visit Han- over and Norwich October 24 and 25.
There was an early touch of winter that year, and two and a half inches of snow fell on the 23rd. It was still spitting snow at 11 o'clock the next day when the Phalanx met the Colonel and his entourage at the top of the hill south of Mink Brook on the West Lebanon road and with "a cavalcade of citizens" escorted him to the north end of the Common and back to the Dartmouth Hotel, where Squire Duncan, the leading Democrat in the town, mounted a barrel outside the inn and "with his long curly hair waving in the wind," in his best oratorical style delivered a flattering address of welcome. Colonel Johnson, who from 1829 on had worn an ill-fitting coat and a scarlet waistcoat whenever he appeared in public, made a flowery reply. "Yes, gentlemen, Tecumseh was killed, and," he said, slapping his red vest, "this was the man that killed him." He went on to relate the killing to his half-frozen auditors, thanked them for their reception, con- gratulated the Phalanx on its soldierly bearing and, said Dr. Barstow, "concluded with the fervent hope 'that each member might be semper parata (sic) to meet an invading foe and drive him from the soil of the Republic.' The Colonel's Latin was of course employed in deference to his classic surroundings and was received with tremendous applause, not undiluted with criticism. One Hanover lady, I remember, remarked that 'A military gentle- man, however distinguished, should be very careful of his genders in a college town.'"
A public dinner in the hotel at 2, and a "Levee in the Hall of the Dartmouth Hotel for the introduction of the Ladies" at 7 concluded the day's program. William W. Dewey wrote in his diary that night that "Col. Johnson ... was not very cordially greeted by the better and more serious portion of our citizens and was not noticed at all by the Faculty of the College. His conduct formerly on the floor of Congress in reference to the running of the Sabbath mails was not forgotten by the friends of good order here." The faculty, Whig to a man, may not have been cordial, but it is certain that like everybody else they turned out to see the red vest.
Wednesday the 25th everybody went over to Norwich for a still noisier celebration and longer and louder speeches, for Norwich was strongly Democratic. The band was silent and the Phalanx
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broke step crossing the bridge on command of Col. Amos Brew- ster, grand marshal of the day, who lisped ponderously, "lest with marching step we emperil the safety of the structure!" The Nor- wich climax was to be a "Barbacue" at noon before the University Barracks-a roasted ox, spitted on a hemlock sapling, "legs absent but horns and tail decorated with evergreens and patriotic em- blems,"-but it was instead an anti-climax, for the ox was only half-cooked ("smoked and scorched, called roasted," wrote Dewey) and all found it quite unpalatable. Pails of malmsey freely passed around helped to make up for the inedible meat, however, and also helped to make it difficult for some of the Phalanx to get home without assistance. Here town and gown had met on equal terms.
The noisiest meetings of town and gown, however, took place annually throughout the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century at commencement. Not only for the citizens of Hanover but for the inhabitants of the towns for twenty miles around it was a general holiday celebrated in much the same manner as fall mus- ter or the agricultural fair. Indeed, the activities engaged in re- sembled more closely those of a muster or a fair than anything connected with a dignified academic occasion. Roswell T. Smith, who resided in the 183os on the main road to Lyme, wrote: "This was the great highway for the Connecticut Valley and it had a large amount of travel. Over this road by 4 o'clock on the morning of Commencement day there would begin to pass an almost con- tinuous line of carriages, keeping it up until about 9 o'clock A.M. and beginning to return about 5 P.M." And every other road lead- ing into Hanover was equally crowded. This huge throng, which packed the village to overflowing, had little interest in the gradu- ating class or the academic exercises of the day; it had come to enjoy the sights, sounds, and tastes upon the campus. The entire south end of the Green and nearly half of the sides had every available spot occupied by booths and tents, from which were dis- pensed all kinds of food and drink, patent medicines, knickknacks and gewgaws, soap and cologne, and an endless variety of mis- cellaneous articles. Cider and strong beer were sold openly, and hard liquor scarcely concealed. Jugglers, mountebanks, sideshows and auctioneers were numerous. At the 1833 commencement we are told there were thirty gambling places open on the Green, and twelve auctioneers shouted so loudly that they could be heard inside the meeting house during the graduation exercises. By
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night the revelry and noise became unbearable, and brawls often broke out between groups of drunkards.
In 1835 commencement was moved from the last week in Au- gust to the last one in July, a much busier season for the farm population. This resulted in a sharp decrease in the number of visitors, and a corresponding diminution in tippling and gam- bling, with a notable improvement in general decorum on the campus. Yet in 1845 William Dewey's diary records "an unusual rush of all kinds of people from the circumstance that there was uncommon attractions for them. A somewhat extensive Menag- erie of wild animals (in most miserable plight however)-The Boston band of Musicians and the famous foreign Violin player named Ole Bull-and 4 Albinos or white negros-everything to pick away money and lead the minds of people from the great con- cerns of eternity and their duties of charity to their needy fellow citizens and the perishing heathen. Even clergymen were so en- raptured with the mere report of the fame of Ole Bull that they could not resist the inclination to hand out their half dollar to hear him scrape his catgut and another quarter to hear the brass band perform." Although Dewey is obviously not an impartial observer, his comments are always interesting to the researcher; . he said near the end of his life that he had attended sixty-two commencements, "more than any other living man."
By the 186os conditions had improved greatly, with Ross the stentorian "soap man" the most prominent peddler. In 1872 com- mencement was moved into June and began to assume its modern character. Nevertheless, the commencement issue of The Dart- mouth in 1883 announces the arrival of a trained bear, and fur- ther notes that "The enterprising 'Lenno' man cannot be sat upon -driven from his usual station at the foot of the Campus, he pitches his tent on the field by Conant Hall" (which we know as Hallgarten). Today we have only venders of balloons and pop- sicles.
Politically, town and gown have always got along reasonably well together. Campaigns for state and national office were some- times hotly contested here as elsewhere, but there was no hard and fast division between town and gown. In local elections from early times there was amicable give and take. For one hundred and fifty years two of the selectmen were chosen from outside the college district and one from within it, but in recent times with the shift in population that proportion has usually been reversed.
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Student voting, except in the instances already discussed, has never carried much weight, although in 1836, 1837 and 1839 stu- dent votes were in the majority in the school meetings of District No. 1; in 1836 they elected one of their own number to serve as prudential committee and in 1839 voted to build a new school- house-the brick one now the home of the Christian Science So- ciety. In both these cases, surprisingly, the district profited by the result. The wild stories that are often told of "the time the stu- dents invaded town meeting and voted to build a board walk from Hanover to Lebanon" and the like are pure fiction.
Socially, there have always been distinctions between the town group and the college group, but they have grown much less with each passing generation. Mrs. Martha Bridgman Wright, born at Hanover Center in 1820, in writing her memories of her child- hood, began with this definition: "To distinguish it from another section of the town where was located the College and where most of the business was carried on and where the aristocracy lived it was called Hanover Center." No one today talks of the aristocracy of our town, but the term crops up frequently in the early days and always seems to designate the college people. This arose, one supposes, from the fact that the professional group everywhere was then set off from the mercantile, artisan and farmer group. It was as true in Lebanon and Lyme as in Hanover; the minister, the lawyer, the doctor were "aristocracy" in all eighteenth century towns; the addition of an assemblage of classical scholars here only made the distinction more marked. It was primarily the diversity in intellectual interests that made the difference; professors had a formality of dress, manners, and modes of entertainment that did not prevail among the townsfolk in general. In the interchange of everyday activities, however, all met on common ground and mingled with natural ease. Many citizens and college officers ig- nored these artificial lines entirely and moved freely from one group to the other, though it was seldom that anyone attained the sublime indifference of the Rev. John Richards, pastor of the College Church from 1842 to 1859. It is related of him that when a fellow minister once said to him, "You must have had a difficult congregation to preach to, composed as it is of villagers, the fac- ulty of Dartmouth College, and the students," he replied, "Well, the fact is the villagers don't know enough to make me afraid of them, as for the faculty I know more than all of them, and in re- gard to the students I don't care a copper for any of them."
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It is easy to exaggerate this town-and-gown feeling, but when one considers the close interrelations of the two groups it is seen that cooperation has always exceeded disagreement. The unifying factor has been the natural love of place that most men feel for the towns in which their lives are cast, combined here with the pride that all have felt for Dartmouth College, even when dis- agreeing strongly with some of its policies and actions. In days of crisis for the institution, the townspeople as a whole have stood loyally by it. When, for example, the news of the great decision of the Supreme Court in 1819 reached Hanover, an undergraduate wrote home: "The expressions of joy are excessive. The officers entreated the inhabitants to desist, but to no purpose. In Norwich the shoutings were very great, and in most of the towns in the vicinity."
With the development of athletics in modern times, the towns- people were drawn still closer to the College; they considered the Dartmouth teams "our boys." Moreover, they have always ap- preciated the cultural advantages that have accrued to them from the presence of the College; lectures, entertainments, concerts, plays, and visits from distinguished personages from all over the world have become an accepted part of their lives and they are grateful for it. Today, as the population rapidly increases and the close intimacies of the old-time small village disappear, neither town nor gown finds much place left for sensitive feelings over class distinctions.
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Afterword
H AVING glanced backward over the record of two hun- dred years, focusing here and there on occurrences and personalities which have formed varied chapters in Han- over's story, there is upon reaching the bicentennial milestone 1961 something of an urge to peer forward as well, to attempt to discern what may lie ahead as further elements of this continuing narrative. History, however, amply documents the incapacity and ineptitude that the present has so often demonstrated in foresee- ing or forecasting the future. What is yet to come can be guessed at, but not precisely known.
In the practical sphere of municipal development, for example, it may well be that the careful projections of present-day town planners will prove a good deal more valid than the calculations of their colonial counterparts whose 1761 metropolitan district of "town lotts" remains to this day a phantom city, but their attain- ment of success in anticipating the town's growing and changing needs can hardly be based on any sure knowledge of a fully pre- dictable future.
Not only do movements and events defy prediction but so also do factors of social structure and values. Life in Hanover had not yet rounded out its first generation when New Hampshire's great historian, Jeremy Belknap, wrote:
Were I to form a picture of happy society, it would be a town con- sisting of a due mixture of hills, valleys and streams of water: The land well fenced and cultivated; the roads and bridges in good repair; a decent inn for the refreshment of travellers, and for public entertain- ments: The inhabitants mostly husbandmen; their wives and daugh- ters domestic manufacturers; a suitable proportion of handicraft work- men, and two or three traders ; a physician and lawyer, each of whom should have a farm for his support. A clergyman of any denomination, which should be agreeable to the majority, a man of good understand- ing, of a candid disposition and exemplary morals; not a metaphysical, nor a polemic, but a serious and practical preacher. A school master who should understand his business and teach his pupils to govern themselves. A social library, annually increasing, and under good
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regulation. A club of sensible men, seeking mutual improvement. A decent musical society. No intriguing politician, horse jockey, gambler or sot; but all such characters treated with contempt. Such a situation may be considered as the most favourable to social happiness of any which this world can afford.
Such was the ideal of the eighteenth century, one that has proved, of course, sharply at variance in many of its particulars with the more complicated reality of the twentieth; and who is to doubt that any like definition for a twentieth-century Utopia would in future time seem, though similarly idyllic, equally singular and antique.
If the present is at all to insinuate itself into the future, such interjection ought, probably, to be in terms of broadly stated hopes, rather than specific expectations or prophecy. Accordingly, perhaps 1961 in looking onward into Hanover's third century may simply record a general wish for the years ahead: that this historic town may always be for all its citizens a pleasant, an interesting, and a rewarding community, whatever the character of its so- ciety or the nature of its institutions at any given time.
E.C.L.
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