USA > New York > Monroe County > Rochester > The semi-centennial souvenir : an account of the great celebration, June 9th and 10th, 1884, together with a chronological history of Rochester, N.Y. > Part 5
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The dramuas of suffering by vice and hate, of cxal- tation of life by goodness, tove and truth, cut in marble or painted on canvas by gerinses now dead, draw all intellectual life to a higher plane of cul- ture and action-A gallery of art is the Parthenon of a city ; a parent of virenes in the living and a glorious tradition in history.
A little aside from the center of the city in a classic shade of elm and English oaks the unique memorial of the life of a great man under his own hand takes shape and permanence. He has not desired the fame of a statesman. anthor or orator, all easily achieved. Around him for thirty years has centered the intellectual growths of the city we love and of the villages of Western New York. His pupils swell the ranks of every profession, equip the faculties of schools, organize vast busi- ness enterprises and are the thousand hands and hearts and brains with which the solitary mind is content to monld the generation he walks among for future good. Stone upon stone he builds a just fame to out live the breath of eulogy. Atmorning and eventide, with reverence of filiallove, a whole people led by bis goodness and greatness of mind and heart, lis noble gift of a university to his fel- lows, breathe the name of President Anderson. When the generals of the army wrote upon the billets of wood at the altar the names of the men who had most achieved, e ich wrote his own name first and that of Themistocles second. To Eur pides in Sparta was given the prize of valor and to Thetaistocles the prize of wisdom and the crown of olives. Anderson is our Themistocles, " Sage he stands,
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies; his look Draws audience and attention still as night Or summer's noon-tide air."
We point out these master minds of our city's life and growth to show that the conditions of our time still admit of the production of great men. Said Metternich, forty years ago, speaking of Eng- land! : " Wor to the country whose condition aud institutions to bagger produce great men to man- ageits affaire." 'In the attempt to realize the full measure of the growth attained and of the condi- tion of future progress, we are led to study the cities which have existed in history and borne a part in impetting civilization to its present advance- ment. Not more steeds does the mathie and can- va Baprison the geniusof Phideas and Rembrault. and the written page picture forth the highest. thought of a Cervantes and Bacon, than do the tablets of laws and public buildings in their ruins
illustrate the habit of life, moral culture and ton- dencies of ancient cities. They had their public marts in which the products of the known world !. brought by vessel or caravan, were eschanged. They were builded for security from attack in torreses provided by nature upon hillsides and cliffs, and were compacted within walls of stone defended by brazen gates. They sprang up about the palace walls ot royalty to be enriched by its largess, or about some cathedral of a century's growth to tax the piety of myriad pil- grims to sustain their splendor. They grew rich and powerful almost alone, at the mouths of great rivers or at the harbors of the seas, upon the front- age of maritime commerce. They enjoyed sover- eignty beyond their borders. received tribute of subject peoples and made peace or war as rations do now. The growth of absolute power in kings and the aceretion of empires changed the condition of cities of modern Europe. A few tradesmen as- sembled in Guild Hall voted to the king the price of a charter making their guild the body corporate with the right to tax and rule their neighbors and perpetuate their power by methods of self-election now known as distinguishing elose corporation. They kept a soldiery to furnish to the use of the king for defense or conquest as part of the price of power. They had representatives as cities in the councils of the king to consent or refuse the de- mand of money to be drawn from the municipal treasury, for support of royalty. They had a con- tract, in the guise of charter or graut, by which the franchise of the city abided in perpetuity with all its obsolete, useless and humdensome privileges.
The American city is a unique and consummate memorial of the changes wrought by the centuries of toi! and thought in commerce, population. and social and political ideas. New . dynasties of ideas hold sway over new conditions of growth. Our cities spring into life among the hills where the sources of great rivers part to course either way across a continent, or the bowels of the earth ate torn open for hidden treasure, and in the valleys where thunderous music of waterfalls overcomes the outery of multiplied machinery. They rise, like the legendary tents of the weird army of ghosts that beseiged the walls of Prague in a night, where the rumbling earth tells of the power of man io join the mountains with steel and pass over them upon the wings of the wind, but they linger after many suns have scattered the pavilioned clouds of the night. They sit like lazy deities of Midas-touch amid the cloth of gold of vast prairie belts glisten- ing in the harvest sun and wave welcome to the far distant sails that tack through. seas, rivers, and lakes up to the granaries of the world. Unlike the academies of old, no patost of nobility nor wealthy patronage opens the balls of our schools to the ambitious student. The stamp of the image of the Creator opens the approach along the paths of technical learning up the ascent to the rich discount of the thought of great minds. The rudiments of knowledge, the serene philosophy of Plato and Hamilton, the rise and corruption of socialy sys- tems, the surge of population, the philosophy of history, the discoveries of continents, the catt ns of literature and art, the tongues of ancient aud modern nations, the mysteries of outstretching fields and waters of earth, the greater harmonies of nature by which planets, suus and cycling stars composing one vast universe hold their eternal rounds in deference to a purpose that sweeps through ages of wondrous evolution, all are taught to expand the conception of the mind. of the duty and possibilities of man. A common school system has drawn knowledge down from the clonds to sit at the firesides of the people. The workman disputes with the master of scientific methods, for priority of invention in the appliances of trades. He passes independent judgment upon vagaries of leaders of thought. AA generous rival- ry in the attainment of absolute truth has set the toilet free from the wormp of the Fetich of ise- ma and poured into the schoolsa fide of direi- eries to stimulate new enquiry. Freedom of thought bas been the prolific parent of all the lin- erties that dweil in social and political forms.
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No metes or bounds are set to man's study of the reason of things. The plowshare of tolera- tion has turned up to die the rooted prejudice of centuries. Yet humility sits upon the brow of thinkers as the knowledge that they stumble in the vestibulo of creation teaches them the possible grandeur of the temple of the master mind, and that the scroll written upon the starsis vet unread. Knowledge and worship hand in hand bow in the market-place and sanctuary, and speak in all the forms of social, business and moral life of man's moral accountability as a corollary of absolute freedom. A living popular conscience, like the mills of the Gods, grinds brazen immoralities nn- covered to the light. This enlarged moral sense has marked the cities of our time with charities to which all churches are tributary. and has fastened upon municipal lite duties of relief to the poor of communities, Hospitals and homes of the poor, of private and public maintenance, rise like a cross by the wayside to receive homage of the citizen as one or the moralities of life. Later, but with quickened force, this sense of human duty strikes off the manaeles of the prisoners, lets the light of hope shine into the cells of criminals and builds a new system of detention of child and man whom society separates from itself by penal laws. In this year of jubilee it attacks like an iconoclast the monldy cells, rotten timbers and charnel house damps of yonder jail, which a mizerly economy has cherished too long.
Man in his individual condition and purposes could not thus center the .... world's thought withont expanding his political -relations and field of action. His advantage meas- ures the limits of power and the condi- tions of its exercise. Power is drawn down from the high places in which it was guarded and Las been scattered among the people as the true sov- erciens of nations. Multiplied forces of modern civilization have turned and overturned the forms of society until nothing abides but the dominant will of citizenship, ascertained by means that dom- inant will itself prescribes. Political forms have gathered abont seething thoughts of liberty as the mountains and continents about the molten fires of earth. Here a mountain wall of constitutional decree of judicial power has been thrown np to limit encroachmentsof government upon individual liberty. There deep gullies guide rivers of revenue to the defence of national integrity, while like broad prairie land, between, lie myriad regulations of social peace and political convenience. Consti- tutions prescribe the general laws for large terri- tories and place all functions of government ucarest the homes and lives of the people in the dwellers in localities. A portion of sovereignty is allotted to them in which all bear a share. The whole field of controversies as to the rights of per- sous or of property, public works, police regulation of social order, the adjustment of burdens of tax- ation, are remitred to the municipality and its citi- zenship. The power to devise public measures, the power to execute them, and the duty to receive fithings of the people are committed to distinct de- partments of local offices, with varied checks to intercept greed of power or of corrupt entolment. Evils may infest one department without corrupt- ing the life-blood of others. The tendency to cen- tralize responsibility in single heads of departments keeps up with the tendency to distinguish depart- ments, while over all, with vested power to enforce in the administration of each the will of the com- munity, is placed an officer whose discretion is the safeguard of the general welfare. More direct and servile obedience of officers to the people, more summary power of removaland ulthonte recogni- tion that public office is a public trust, is the strong tendency in municipal lite. Sophocles said, " Swift in its march is evil counsel. The planning of gigantic schemes of public taxation, swiftly ex- veuted and of doubtful propriety, has engrafted on the constitution amendments to check the rapaciry of the officers of the people. Said Stratoniens facetiousty : "I would order the Athenians to have the conduct of mysteries and processions; the Brains to preside in games, and
the Lacedemonians to be beaten if the others did amiss." The taxpayer has given over the Lace- demonian part to the official, and taught him the virtue of integrity and economy. Thus far we have been contont to note the forms of our life cou- trasted with those produced by different condi- tions. We have mentioned the conspicnons changes in the physical and political growth of our city, and sought to note the moving spirit and tendencies of our time ; but written laws are the mere arteries of the body politie in which flows the lite blood of citizenship. Around us are an hundred thousand men and women who have shared the struggles and burdens of fifty years of history. They are not girt with walls of class distinction ; with lines of nationality, or bar- riers of seet. Together as one people, with similar language and customs, passions and hopes, they have toiled to build an American city. They have shared adversity in financial panic: have freed blood and pestilence, and sat.
together within the sanctuary of the living . God. They have given to stricken sister cities of the overflow of their fire- wealth; to famine stricken foreigners their bounty, and to lovers of liberty in all lands, money and aris to strike at tyranny. They have welcomed Lafayette, have heard the eloquent voice of Web- ster, and bowed with grief as the bier of great Henry Clay, moved on to its Kentucky rest. through the streets of the city. The maimed vet- erans of 1512 and of the Mexican battles of Ist7, like fragments of a mighty vessel wrecked in a storm. have been thrown up at their doors to receive shelter. They have heard the lips of Seward de- clare the strife of the Cages was again joined be- tweer great civilizations seeking to master our con- tinent. They watched the picket lines of liberty driven in by border ruffians upon the far plains of Kansas, and caught the hand of the fugitive from the house of bondage, whose creaking hinges smote against the heavens with the awful appeal to the sword of eternal justice. They saw the smoke curl up from Moultries iron mouths, and their quivering hearts, seized by the whirling ele- ments God's wrath had unloosed, answered to Monltries flame, " With life and honor on the al- tar of country, we march to uphold the imperilled flag." They picketed and bivouacked. they marched along the swamp and builded bridges, they dog in the trenches and drew the cannon into place, they burnished the bayonet and wiped the sword, they kissed the Bible of mother gift and wrote a brief line of farewell. They de- filed in the carly sunlight upon the plains of An- rintam, along the Chicahominny, before Freder- irKAburg, and upon the crest wave of war rode triumphant to death at Gettysburgh. They sang the battle hymn. "His Soulis Marching On, " at Coll Harbor aud Spottsylvania, and amid the throng that watched the truce flags of Appomat- tox pass to and fro, while the seal of eternal truth was traced by the sword of the living God upon the emancipation proclamation, stood the living sons of one loyal city. They marched with the battered veterans of the South and West, with the heroes of Shiloh and Vicksburg, with amins and uniforms rusted and stained, in the great spectacle of American history down Pennsylvania avenue. They lingered but a little to rest, and regiment upon regiment rolled in upon our homes bringing visions of honor and glory earned by priceless sacrifice. Some came not with them. Their names are memorials of patriotism to all times. Yonder hills hold up to heaven their deeds inscribed on stone. Their names are upon the rolls of inmortality. Their chieftain, great, good, of imperishable fame on earth, the martyred Lin- coln, marshals the Union dead he loved and pitied along the battlement of a great city which is filled with a voice saving "Ye are my well beloved." Who shall say that a city whose bistory is so replete with honorable achievement in five decades studi not vatnet itself upon its citizenship. If you would find the valor of Thermopylne, the constancy of the old Guard, the endurance of the soldier thuitt guarded the retreat from frozen Moscow, the stuo-
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boru loyalty of the army of the great Frederick surpassed, lift the shadows of the past from the battle fields of the Republle stiffened with blood and littered with death, and people them again with the Grand Array of the Umuon. Speak life to the bones of O'Rourke, Sullivan and Ryan, that they may show how grandly patriots die. In this hour of our jubilee let this proud city thrill in every fiber with the memories of her sons living and dead. Let ner to her sons and daughters of the future say : "You may rival in labors but not in achievment, my children, whose names I have written on the deathless : scroll of patriotism." To you, my fellow citizens,
comes the appeal
of
all who have honored the past of this city to carry their fame and that of the city as a sacred legacy to posterity unstained by avarice, by breach of public trust or private duty, broadening and deepening the cur- rent of municipal life to enrich the hearts and lives . of all her people. Cherish the school, the church, the purity of her government, and honor the un- selfish labor of her chief citizens to advance her material and intellectual growth. When the cen- tennial of our city dawns let it find the way of her advance still full of honor, her citizenship pure, patriotic and vigorous, her glory sustained and as- sured to all generations.
" To the sages who spoke, to the heroes who bled, To the day and the deed strike the harp-string of glory; Let the songs of the ransomed remember the dead, And the tongue of the eloquent ballow the story; O'er the bones of the bold be the story loug told, And on fame's gokien tablets toeir triumphs en- rolled. Who on freedom's green hills freedom's banner un- furled. And the beacon fire raised that gave light to the world."
"The Golden Year" (words by Tennyson, music by Henry Lesli) was sung by the quar- tette, and Rev. Joseph Allen Ely delivered the poem, as follows:
Rochester. 1812-1854.
BY REV. JOSEPH ALLEN ELY .*
Out of the forest sprung City of ours ! Fondly thon dwelt'st among Trees that with they were young. Now be thy praises sung, City of flowers :
O'er thee no castle walls Proudly look dowo; No mythic glory falls, No storied past enthralls. Marble nor bronze recalls Ancient renown.
Yet on the traveller's thought, Where'er he roams, O'er lands where art hath wrought, Lands with all memories fraught. Thine image comes imsought. City of homes !
Beauteous thy vale of old, Fair Genesee : +
* Rev. Joseph Allen Ely was born in Rochester, in 1846; graduated from the University of Rochester, 1506: graduated from the Rochester Theological Som- mary. 1st0: pastor of the Congregational church at Orange Valley. S. J. from FREto December, 5%.
+ The Indian name for Genesee was Gen nis he vo meaning the beautiful valley. - Morgan's League of the Iroquois.
Down from the mountains rolled. Bearing the manifold Wealth of the harvest gold, Onward with thee.
Hovering on snowy wings O'er the rock's crest, Strength of thy gathered springs. Down thy swift current flings.
Then, with soft murmurings. Glides to its rest.
Hidden thy charms fromn view,
Unheard thy roar, Winding the forest through Long ere the city grew, Long ere the light canoe Pushed from the shore:
We are of yesterday, Dateiess thy tide: Men, like the drops of spray Born of the cataract's play, Glisten and pass away, Thou dost abide.
Amid your choirs of green, Sing all ye birds! Sing what your eyes have seen, Nestling the leaves between, All that your thoughts have been, Songs without words.
Songs which the redman heard And understood; Paused, for his heart was stirred, Ere the swift arrow whitred, Itself another bird, Born of the wood.
Sweet to his ear at morn Came your glad toue. When, through the ripening corn. Passed. like a wait forlorn Of the Great Spirit boru, The wind's low moan .*
Sweet in the lonely night To him your lay, When. from the watch-fire bright, The trembling sparks of light Held to the forest height Their silent way.
Often that ranger wild By grove and stream, He, too, a forest child, Grew in bis fierceuess mild, So by your strains beguiled As by a dream.
Mid sterner eries that woke Thoughts in his heart: Flooda ver the charts that broke, Crashings of mighty oak, Skies that in thunder spoke, Ye had your part.
E'en to the savage breast, Your notes were dear, For he, too. might be blessed, Tossed between toil and rest, And lightened or oppressed By hope or fear.
* The Iroquois called the corn, the beans and the squash, OUR LIFE, OF OUR SUPPORTERS, and they be- lieved that the core of each was entrusted to a separate spirit There is a legend in relation to corn that it was originally of easy cultivation and yielded abundantly. The Evil minded. envious of this great gift to man, went forth into the fields and spreat over it a universal blight Sitive then it has been barder to cultivate and virkis less abundandy. When the riding wind waves the corn leaves with a moaning; sono, the pions Indian taucies that he bears the spirit of the corn bemeaning in compas- sion her blighted fruitfulness. - Morgau.
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VIEW OF MAIN STREET BRIDGE IN 1812.
LOG CABIN ON THE PRESENT SITE OF POWERS' BLOCK.
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And when his soul, let free. Would soar on high, He set at liberty A captive bird to be His spirit's wing to thee Thou distant sky .*
Then when the pioneer, Weary and lone, Built his log cabin here, Girt by the forest fear, Yours was the welcome cheer Of voices known.
Round him were all things new : 'The red -faced throng ; Men wild and strange to view, Strange in their speech ; but you, You from the old he knew, Aud knew your song.
Oft had he heard your strain In lands loved best. Joyed now to hear again Still the old sweet refrain, Here, too. unchanged remain, Far in the west,
Forests have passed away, And, where they stood, Stretch in their bright array Hamlet and town to-day, Fields with the winds at play, A mimic wood.
O birds do ye not know, Above our strife. What changes pass below, What surgings to and fro, As on the swift waves flow Of human life !
Where those few structures rude, The settler's care, Huddled, a little brood, Mid the vast solitude, Now, in its pride, is viewed A city fair.
But ye, light-hearted race, Free as the air, Bound to no dwelling place, Your home the round of space, Who pass and leave no trace, Ye are still there. .
Changing, the permanent: Fixed is the free; When, from the firmament, Stars plunge in swift descent, Melts every element. We shall still be.
On through the fleeting years Man shall abide, With the same hopes and fears, Still the same joys and tears, . Though all the earth appears New at his side.
Not on the wave that flies Build we secure: Deep from within must rise Strength which all change defies, Manhood alone supplies What shall endure.
Founders of older worth, Builders of Rome. Brought from their land of birth Each his own clump of earth, Dug from the family bearth, To the new home.
A beautiful custom prevailed in ancient times among the Iroquois of capturing a bird and freeing it over the grave on the evening of the burial. to bear away the spirit to its heavenly rest. - Morgan.
Came thus, the land to bless. Closed in the clods. Pledged to the work's success, Guardians of happiness, Refuge in all distress, The ancestral gods.
Ou the new altar dwelt- All the old fires, Round it the children knelt, To it their homage dealt, In it the presence felt Still of their sires .*
So were they girt around Who builded here: Here, too, was native ground. Here, too, might home be found, Anthem and psalm resound By altars dear.
Lived their loved East again Here in the West, Borne by heroic men Through river, lake and glen, Mid the wild forest. theu, Seeking its rest.
Long may the city's fame Honor their worth, Long, where the fathers came, Children their praise proclaim, Bearing a noble rame Wide through the earth.
SPEECHES BY VISITING MAYORS.
When the last strains of the much-admired "Festival Hyn"t (music composed expressly for the occasion by Professor Albert Sartori) had died away, Mayor Parsons introduced
' In the foundation of Rome Romulus dug & small trench of a circular form and threw into it a clod of earth which he had brought from the city of Alba. Then each of his companions threw in a little earth which he had brought from the country from which he had come. Their reli; ion forbade them to quit the land where the family bearth had been established and where their ancestors reposed. It was necessary then. in order to be free from all impiety, that each of these men should carry with him, under the symbol of a clod of earth, the sacred soil where his ancestors were buried and to which their manes were at- tached. A man could not quit his dwelling place with- ont taking with him his soul and his ancestors,sothat he might say, in pointing ont the new place which he had adopted: This is still the land of my fathers; here is my country, for here are the manes of my family .- De Conlanges' The Ancient City.
+ The poem by S. F. Smith, author of the words of "America," were as follows :
God ever glorious! . Sovereign of nations, Waving the banner of Peace o'er the land; Thine is the victory, Thine the salvation, Strong to deliver, Own we thy hand.
Still may thy blessing rest, Father.most. Holy. Over each mountain, rock, river and shore; Steg Hallelujah! Shout in Hosannas! God kern our country Free evermore.
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Mavor Low, who was received with applause and three cheers, and who spoke as follows :
Mr. Mayor and citizens of Rochester :-- I wish to cordially thank you for the kind invitation you ex- traded me to be present on this occasion, and the hearts welcome I have met. I think it is highly proper that, at a time like this, the city of Brook- Ivn should send Rochester a congratulatory ines- sage, as very few of you probably realize how near these two cities came to bring twin sisters, for Brooklyn received her charter from the same leg- islature as did Rochester, only the former's was se- cured April 8, 1831, while yours was received in the June following. This difference in the age of the two cities, you can easily observe by looking at the two present Mayors, as Brooklyn, you will see, is somewhat stricken in years. The government of Brooklyn has not adopted any resolutions regarding your celebration, but the 650,000 inhabitants of that city through me extend their hearty congratulations and wish you joy in your celebration and prosper- ity in all your future history.
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