Part 16 (1/2)
You are graduating froh aies, more than are accorded usually in our ti of heart and will as well as intellect, and much is expected of you You are rich in real education and a stewardshi+p of great intellectual and iven over to you, and you must be better than others and be, above all, ever helpful to others Your education was not given for your benefit, but for that of the cohbors are all round you See that at the end of your life they shall all be happier because you have lived If you do not do so you shall sadly disappoint the hopes of your teachers and, above all, you shall be false to the trust that has been confided to you
Pass on the torch of charity Let all the world be dear to you in the old-fashi+oned sense of that dear old word charity, notGreek ter your lives and you will not have the burden of philanthropy that soof in your older years, and, above all, {430} you will not have the contempt and aversion of those who may accept your bounty, but who kno questionably you acquired theit and are not really thankful
I have done but for just one word Be just and fear not If you will be just in your dealing with men, you will have no need for further advice and no need for repentance I thank you
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NEW ENGLANDISM
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”It isn't so norance ofsoas ”Uncle Esek” in the ”Century”_
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NEW ENGLANDISM [Footnote 27]
[Footnote 27: The material for this was collected for a banquet address in Boston on Evacuation Day, 1909, before the Knights of Columbus It was developed for various lectures on the history of education, in order to illustrate how easy it is to produce a tradition which is not supported by historical documents In its present forazine_ for July, 1910, at the request of the editor, Mr John S McGroarty, hoo than either of us care to recall now, I had learned the New England brand of United States history at a country school]
There is a little story told of a supposed recent celestial experience, that seems, to soeration, to land--to illustrate very well the attitude of New Englanders, and especially of the Bostonese portion of the New England population, towards all the rest of the world and the heavens besides St Peter, the celestial gate-keeper, is supposed to be disturbed from the slumbers that have been possible so much oftener of late years because of the infrequent admissions since the world has lost interest in other-worldliness, by an iate ”Who's there?” he asks in a veryexperience that that kind of knocking usually coions The reply, in rather imperative {434} tone, is, ”I am Mrs Beacon from Boston,” with emphasis on the Boston, ”Well, madam,” Peter says in reply, ”you may come in, but,” he adds with a wisdom learned doubtless from many previous incidents of the saoing adland people, and especially of Bostonians, for all that is New England, and, above all, all that is Boston, has been well recognized for a long while and has not failed of proper appreciation, to soland itself To Oliver Wendell Holhtful characterization of it in the ”Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,”
”Boston State House is the hub of the solar system You could not pry that out of a Boston man (and _a fortiori_ I think it may be said out of a Boston wohtened out for a crowbar” James Russell Lowell expressed the same idea very forcibly in other words in some expressions of his essay on ”A Certain Condescension in Foreigners,” that have been perhaps oftenest quoted and are dear to every true New Englander's heart Of course, he reat deal more than half in jest, but who of us who know our Down Easterners doubt that most of them take it considerably more than half in earnest? Their attitude shows us very well how land was ready to take aftersoto others
Lowell's expression is worthy to be placed beside that of Oliver Wendell Holuidance of American minds They are keys to the situation ”I know one person,” said Lowell, ”who is singular enough to think Calobe 'Doubtless God could have made a better, but doubtless he never did'” It only needed his next sentence fully to conificance of Boston and its acadeood Bostonian ”The full tide of human existenceCross and in a larger sense”
Of course there is no insuperable objection to allowing New Englanders to add to the gayety of nations in this supreladly suffer thelandism on some of the most important concerns of the nation But that is iland that has written most of the history of this country and its influence has been paramount on most of our education It has supplied most of the writers of history and moulded most of the school-teachers of the country The consequence has been a stalandisenerations for the better part of a century, with a {436} perversion of the realities of history in favor of New England that is quite startling when attention is particularly directed to it
The editors of the ”Cae modern History,” in their preface, called attention to the immense differences bethat may be called documentary and traditional history They declare that it has becoe to trust without reserve even to the most respected secondary authorities The honest student finds himself continually deserted, retarded, misled, by the classics of historical literature, and has to hew his oay through multitudinous transactions, periodicals, and official publications in order to reach the truth” Most people reading this would be prone to think that any such arraignuished Caeneral, would be quite out of the question After all, our history, properly speaking, extends only over a couple of centuries and ould presumably be too close to the events for any serious distortion of the to realize what an unfortunate influence the fact that our writers have coland spirit has had on our American history
Every American schoolboy is likely to be possessed of the idea that the first blood shed in the Revolution was in the so-called Boston Massacre {437} It is well known that that event thus described was nothing more than a street brawl in which five totally unarhtest resistance, as an act of retaliation on the part of drunken soldiers annoyed by boys throwing soballs at thenified into an important historical event Two months before it, however, there was an encounter in New York with the citizens under arms as well as the soldiers, and it was at Golden Hill on Manhattan Island and not in Boston that the first blood of the Revolution was shed
Miss Mary L Booth, in her ”History of the City of New York,” says: ”Thus ended the Battle of Golden Hill, a conflict of two days'
duration, which, originating as it did in the defense of a principle, was an affair of which New Yorkers have just reason to be proud, and which is worthy of far iven it by standard historians It was not until nearly two months after that the Boston Massacre occurred, a contest which has been glorified and perpetuated in history, yet this was second both in date and in significance to the New York Battle of Golden Hill”
Practically every other incident of these times has been treated in just this way, in our school histories at least Every American schoolboy knows of the Boston tea party, and usually can and does tell the story with great gusobcause {438} it delights his youthful dramatic sense Not only the children, but every one else seeanization of the tea party was entirely due to the New England spirit of resistance to ”taxation without representation”
Ho of theht that this destruction of the tea had been definitely agreed upon by all the colonies and that it was only by chance that Massachusetts happened to be first in the execution of the project My friend, Dr Thomas Addis Emmet, in his article on ”Soazine of History_ (February, 1905), has stated this aspect of the question very forcibly ”Previous to the arrival of the shi+ps in Boston, concerted action had been agreed upon, as has been already shown, in regard to the destruction of the tea, from Charleston, S C, to Portsmouth, N
H The people of Philadelphia had been far more active and outspoken at the outset than they of Boston, and it was this decisiveness which caused the people of Boston to act, after they had freely sought beforehand the advice and moral support of the other colonies”
It would be utterly unjust to limit the movement which culminated in the Boston Tea Party to any one or even several of the colonies; to make so much of the Boston incident is to falsify history in fact, but, above all, in the ieneration that Boston was a leader in this movement The first {439} tea-shi+p arrived in Boston November 28, 1773, and two others shortly after, but it was not until the evening of December 16th that their contents were thrown overboard Over six weeks before this a precisely similar occurrence had taken place in New York without any such delay, and though the movement proved futile because it was undertaken on a false alariven to those who took part in it for their thoroughgoing spirit of opposition to British reat collection of Americana made him probably more familiar with he sources of Aeneration, has been, in the article already quoted, especially emphatic
”On November 5, 1773, an alarm was raised in the City of New York to the effect that a tea-shi+p had entered the harbor A large assee of the uised as Mohawk Indians This alaranized a series of resolutions was adopted which was received by the other colonies as the initiative in the plan of resistance already deterhout the country Our schoolbooks are chiefly responsible for the almost universal impression that the destruction of tea, which occurred in Boston Harbor, was an episode confined to that city, while the fact is that the tea sent to this country was either {440} destroyed or sent back to England from every seaport in the colonies The first tea-shi+p happened to arrive in Boston and the first tea was destroyed there; for this circuiven the Bostonians But the fact that the actors in this affair were disguised as Mohawk Indians shows that they were but following the lead of New York, where this particular disguise had been adopted forty-one days before, for the same purpose”