Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1875-11-30
WILSON md SUMNER.

WILSON IND SUMNER.
In the eulogy of Rev. DR.. Rankin upon Henry
Wilson delivered at Washington occurs the fol
lowing
Henry Wilson was the product of New England.
If there was iron in his blood if there was strength
in his muscles if there was backbone in his frame
he owed it in part to the tuition of that sterile and
| rocky soil; to the cold and inclement, the stern
and serious aspects of his native New England
Aye, more than this, Henry Wilson was the pro-
duct of the New England idea that man Is man
and nothing can be greater; and that when God
made man in His own image lie made him to
have dominion, first, over himself, and then over
Just as vast an empire among men a., under God
he could subject to himself. Henry Wilson was
| ambitious. Let us thank God that he was When
on the 10th day of February, 1872, he first
the light of mortal life, he the heir of three
| generations OF poverty; the descendant of three
generations of ancestors, who had hardly Kept
body and soul together, who in that rough and
rugged half-wilderness of his native New Hamp
shire, had one after the other, fought losing
battle with life, until the grave covered them. APP
prentced to small farmer at ten years Of age,
and taking the hard knocks and sore deprivations
of chore-boy, at that period, when more favored
young men are nursed and pampered, and crammed
in school and in college; studying the rudiments
of his native tongue and the history and politics
Of his native country by the light of pine knots,
and by the midnight flashes of smolderng back
s.,
was ambitious, but his ambition was ambition to
serve; to bear burdens, to assume responsibility,
to perform abors; to stand in the front rank not
so much that he might lead, as that he might take
the hard knocks of leader; that he might, some
| where, and in some line do the country yeomen
service; like that Of Washington and Jefferson
| and Adams that he might enter into the abors
of those men, into whose spirit he had been bap-
| tized. As he walked that sterile Yankee farm,
| and during all that dreamy apprenticeship of his
| hCyh nd Iur1uU de
night hours Of toll, and, later, in life at Natlck in
the State of his adoption, under the shadow of
| Bunker Hill Monument, and in close neighbour
| hood to Lexington and Concord, where he was
thinking out his thoughts to the music of the ham
mer upon his apstone. where he was measuring
| his sword in debate with the merchants and law
yers of Boston, he was girdng himself, less for
leadership, less for dignities and honors, than for
| fel long service. He sought places of service.
lie always served in them. 1t was to him as
though he had caught this counsel from his com
munings with the revolutionary period, as though
the genius of his native land had said to him, in
the dreams of his bsyhood "Whosoever of you
will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all ;" as
though he had then determined in his inmost
soul that by that sign he would conquer
In making up our estimat of this mans charac-
ter, and the vast, the prodigious achievements oil
his life, let us remember that when Charles Sum
ner, the Chcvalier Bayard of Freedom, whose
white colors were always seen in the thickest Of
the fight, and stained, too, with his own blood
was studying classics ia the Boston Latin School,
and walking beneath the favored shades of Har-
ward, lad to whose moral intutions, as a free
soil movement he was to owe his first seat in the
United States Senate, and who was to become his
worthy associate and compeer in this foremost
body of the nation, was earning his livelihood by
day and storing his mind by night on poverty
stricken farm in New Hampshire; and that when
Charles Sumner sitting at the feet of such
men Judge Story, was in the Cambridge law
school as scholar and teacher, was travelling and
H.. H.. -,
at the fountain heads, both at home and abroad,
the principles Of international law, Henry Wilson
was working in the shoemaking shop at Natick,
until midnight, speaking in debating societies
made up Of his fellow workmcn, and slowly lifting
himself up until he became the man whom Massa-
chusetts delighted to honor, and in the great
cause of human freedom. 1t is beautiful to see
how these two eat men of Massachusetts, born
one year apart, starting differently in life, edu
| Gated so differently, supported and cOmplimened
| each other. The one a man OF books the other
man of men. The one man Of ideas, the other
man of fact. The one a man of the few, the other
q man of the many. The one sometimes almost
losing himself in his distance of advance before
the tioD the other always keeping step with the
grand movement of the people, going forward on
y so fast as his true popular instinct taught him
that the people were ready to follow In these
| two men, unlike and yet so representative OF
the extremes in American society; was the New
England idea, incarnated, represented this
| floor.
POLITICAL.
Chief Justice Waite positively declines to run
for the Presidency. He docs not believe that the
Chief Justice of the United States has any right
to seek for the Presidency.
Senators Christiancy, Cameron, Mcmillan and
Paddock, nominally Independents, will all act
with the republican party. Mr.. Booth will be the
only Senator who will 60 into neither caucus.
The Graphic remarks ono party afford to
20 into Presidential campaign next year with
no recommendation but a muck-rake. If the
democrats content themselves with trying to show
what a scaly set .of fellows the other party has
they will be simply dcspised."
Judge Jeremiah S. Black has been brought out
as democratic candidate for the Presidency by
the Pittsburg Post, which remarks casually that
che is Pennsylvania favortc son, than whom
none bears prouder front in the forward ranks Of
tatesmanship."
The whisky trials at st. Louis appear to afford
good evidence Of the sincerity Of the Government
IN bringing criminals to justice. The republican
administration arrests, convicts and sentences
those found fathless. The democrats were ac-
cusomed to give timely warning to the culprits
that they might seek comfortable quarters in Cuba
or Mexico.
The Committee on Contested Seats in the next
House Of Representatives will find material for
the entire Winters light reading in the case Of
Judge Abbott against Rufus S. Frost, in the WITH
Massachusetts, District. The papers in the case fill
box five feet long, two feet five inches deep, and
twenty-one inches wide, and weigh over half
ton.
Gov. Hendricks in the field early for the Presi
dental nomination. lie has organized Hen
bricks Club in indianapolis, where speeches are
made at frequent intervals, setting forth his emi
nent fitness for the Presidential chair He seems
also to have begun operations in Michigan, for a
special dispatch to the Cincinnati Commercial, from
Detroit, announces that within the last few days
the friends Of Gov Hendricks in the State have
taken series Of adroit steps VIII ich promise to
cure to him the States delegation to the next Dem
ocratic National Convention