Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1871-04-24
Letter from Boston.
The French Fair-A Good Subject for
MISUNDERSTANDING Days in Vermont
The Welsh Miners.
lFRoM OUR REGULAR CORRESPONDENT.

The welsh NWlners.
IRON OUR REGULAR CORRESPONDENT
Boston, April o. 1871.
The last days of the French relief fair are
brilliant; the tables are crowded with every i'm
aeinable thing that was ever seen at fair and
the ladies look as fresh as if their labors had
just begun 1.-THE beauty of the gray-haired ladies
excites great admiration); the gay decorations;
the brilliant lights; the fauciful booths and
tables; the youthful attendants, in picturesque
dresses, extravagant sashes AMI norman caps;
the galleries crowded with spectators; the floor
crowded with the fashion of the city, the scenery
at the back of the stage; the music; the fire.
queut announcement from one of the boxes of
rattle to be drawn, and the surging toward that
place of crowd of male heads with smooth
hair parted in the middle, and female heads,
with no parting, but a frizzed tangle instead;
the burly figures and conspicuous badges of nu-
merous policemen, all make a striking and
attractive scene; and the fair is well worth see
ing, simply as a spectacle. The Curiosity shop"
is in one of the smaller rooms of the theatre,
and is comparatively quiet; yet it contains
articles of great value, beauty and interest. A
sine collection of old autographs, and of curious
books; old maps and pictures of Boston; mag
nificent garments, stiff with embroidery, that
the Quinceys Of past generations used to
| wear; gorgeous costumes Of Greeks, Turks,
| Japanese and Chinese; untold treasures of
| Chinese art, collected from the imperial palace
during the revolution; the emperor's own seal
| of Jade LARGO and plabOra lv
wrought; japanese worries with marvellous
wealth and intricacies ofcarving; curious col
lection of silver and gold spoons of the sixteenth
and SEVENTEEN centuries, with handles wrought
artistically by the finest goldsmiths of the time
Lord Byron's helmet, with the motto fCrede
Biron,' upon it, presented 10 DR.. Howe when he
was in Greece; tea caddy that had belonged to
Byron, to Thakeray and to Dickens; and hun
dreds of other curious and valuable things, the
description of which would ill book. Boston
merchants and Boston travellers were very gen
erous in lending for public exhibition the price
less treasures which their foreign trade and
antiquarian taste have enabled them to collect
Tomorrow will be the last day of the fair, and
everybody is curious to know how much has
been made by the largest, the longest, the most
brilliant, the most expensive, the most labor
ious, and the most fashionable fair ever held in
Boston. wonder if Every Saturday will not
give us two large pictures called "Peace and
War;" or "Charity-its labors and its recip-
ients;" one representing the splendid scene of
the last fortnight at the Boston theatre; the
other a savage fight in the streets CT Paris;
where the only desire CT the living seems to be to
increase the number of the dead; and death is the
aim as well as the end of life.
The opening of the fair and its first week
did not see, but it could hardly have surpassed
these last days. | was in Vermont, in a small
town nesting amongst grand mountains that
were dark with pine and hemlock, and beautiful
with spring flowers; arbutus, hepaticas and
violets, blue, white and yellow, were in perfec-
ton; thick white clusters of saxifrage dotted
the green grass, land soft little wooly tufts showed
where the summer would bring a great growth
of ugly mullens. The region is rich in lakes;
Bomasine stretches away for miles, and the
drive along its margin can hardly be surpassed
in beauty or grandeur of scenery. Glen lake is
very irregular in shape, and gives the traveller
an endless variety of views of mountains
woods and water; here Poultney river pauses to
take breath and then filings itself over a wild
rocky precipice in two magnificent falls, whose
roar and rush and foam and rainbows, whose
perilous places for climbers, and smooth rocks
for picuics, and sheltered hooks for rest, ought
to give them a great reputation; but they are
almost unvisited; no highway leads to them, no
house is near them; you leave the Travelled road,
and loiter in smooth fields till you reach the
river, and then follow it to its mad leap; it
falls into quadrangular basin of smooth rock,
from which rises hill sides that by and by will
be white with the blossoms of the large trillium,
aud then it turns and quietly pursues
its way. All the country in this
region is broken by slate quarries, and purple
and green slate in immense heaps make part
of the color of the Landscape. Here are colony
of Wech workmen; and learned for the first
time what an interesting people the Welsh are.
All of them read and write; all of them, men
women and children, sing; fine voices
and great beauty of face are not I'M
common amongst them. They have an
nual literary festivals, at which prizes are
awarded for the best poems and essays on
subjects given out the preceding year. They are
in Welsh, and limited in length. These testi.
walls are like great family meetings, attended by
both sexes and all ages. At Farhaven about three
hundred persons gather together; at the more i'm
portant meeting in Utica two thousand collect
There is a great variety Of subjects, and the
prizes range from fifteen to thirty dollars. These
poets and essayists are men who do hard, rough
work, generally in mines and quarries; they are
clannish, and have strong feeling of nationali-
ty, which does not prevent them from being
| good citizens here; in New England and New
| York they are republicans, democrat being al
most unknown amongst them. l do not know
about the politics of the sixty thousand who
work in the Pennsylvania mines; but there also
they all read, write and sing, so are probably on
the right side in politics.
Very recently one of the Welsh clergymen,
Methodist in theology, has been tried for beresy
by the Methodist conference meeting in Troy.
1t was a singular trial; two hundred ministers
were present, and the most eloquent of them
were appointed counsel for the church: the cuI-
prll Is slight, delicate looking gentleman
= with quiet manners that do not betrav in the
least his real force of character. For tyolve
years he has done the work of two ,,a, Co.
: salary only half enough for one: nreachir,r j.,
: both Welsh and English, on SUNDAYS 81 49,
D week days, and never neglecting his parish
/, duties These weekday sermons add greatly 10
] his labors, for it is Welsh custom to have a
: long sermon at every funeral He was notified
} Of bis trial week before it took place, and
, furnished with the charges against him, which
a amounted to this: that he had preached the doc
= trine that souls could not be cleansed from sill
0 by the blood of Christ. Witnesses were called
| 10 OH oI<
S this damnable heresy, and it seemed as il tn
little man at the bar must be utterly aanihilated
9 but he serenely bided his time, and when i
n came, he called no witnesses, he trusted to n,
e ! counsel, but stood up aud told the truth tolt