The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1876-08-25
Gen. Hayes's Childhood.


Mr. Howells, in his sketch of the Life and
Character of Rutherford B. Hayes to be pub
lshed Immediately by Hurd & Houghton,
writes as follows of General Hayes's early
years:
The mother OF General Hayes was Sophia
Birchard. whose family had removed from
Connecticut to Vermont near the close of the
last century. She too has left diary, in which
we recognize many of the same religious traits
80 strongly marked in her mother-in- law. The
circumstances of her widowhood in the strange
new country MRS. Chloe Hayes, on her daugh-
ter's departure tor the West, speaks of her
leaving her native land" as if ''the Ohio"
30 called in that day, were some unattainable
foreign strand)' whittier she had followed her
husband, no doubt tended to deepen the sad
aspects of her faith at the expense of those
happier hereditary instincts which in her
brother became a strong love of art She and
her husband united with the Presbyterian
church-the Western Puritanism-and their
children were reared in that faith, but the sole
survivor of her family is not now member of
the sect in question, nor of any other. though
regular attendant with his wife at the Metho.
dist services. Not many years after her hus-
bands death their Oldest son was drowned and
there remained to the widowed mother only
two of her children, brother and sister. who
grew up in friendship most tender and affec-
tomato on her part and of passionate rever-
ence and admiration on his. In manuscript
memoir of This adored sister, which must be
sacred from more than a passing allusion,
General Hayes recorded shortly after her death
the simple facts of their early childhood in Del
aware. 1t is now pretty town of some eight
thousand souls, seat of a Methodist college,
and deriving its prosperity chiefly from one of
the richest farming regions of Central Ohio.
Its situation on the borders of the Olentangy is
charmingly picturesque, and the painter Girls
void drew his first inspirations from the sur
passingly lovely country in which it lies. AT
the early period of which the memoir treats
the land was yet new, though the pioneer
period had quite passed.
Mrs. Hayes dwelt in substantial brick
house in the village, and drew large part of
her income from farm left her by her hus-
band in the neighborhood. Besides the guar
dianship of her brother she had in the care of
her children and house the help of one of those
faithful friends whom in this case the children
both regarded with flial affection. But life in
that time and country was necessarily very
simple; this early home was in no sense an
establishment; when the faithful Asenath
Z,
er and the sister did all the work of the house
hold themselves. The greatest joys of
happy childhood were the visits the
brother and sister made to the farm in the
sugar-season, in cherry tme at cider-makIng,
and when the walnuts and hickory nut were
ripe; and its greatest cross was the want of
children's books, with which the village law
yer's family was supplied. When their uncle
Bicrhard began in business he satisfied their
hearts desire for this kind of literature, and
books of a graver and maturer sort seem always
to have abounded with them. They read
Hume and Smollett's English History together;
the sister fof twelve years interpreted Shake
speare to the brother of ten; they read the
poetry Of Mr.. Thomas Moore (then SO mach
finer and grander than now, and they paid Sir
Walter Scott the tribute of dramatizing together
bis LADY of the Lake." and were duly aston
ished and dismayed to learn afterwards that
they were not the sole inventors of the dramatic
cation of poems,-that even their admired
LADY of the Lake. had long been upon the
stage. The influence of an elder sister upon
and it is largely to this sisters unfailing in
stincts and ardent enthusiasm for books that
her brother owes his lifelong pleasure in the
best literature. She not only read with him she
studied at home the same lessons in Latin and
Greek which he recited privately to gentleman
of the place; she longed to be a boy, that she
might go to college with him; in the futile way
she must, SO remote from all instruction, she
strove to improve herself in drawing and paint.
ing. One of their first school-masters was Dan
iel Granger, ga little, thin, wiry Yankee" of
terrible presence but of good enough heart,
whom ''the love he bore to learning" obliged
to fog Swapping boys of twice his own bulk,
with furious threats of blowing them through
the school house walls, and Of making them
.'dance like parched pease, which dreadful
behavior and menaces rendered tall the young
er children horribly afraid of him." and per-
haps did not 80 much advance the brothers
and sisters education as their private studies
and reading had done; that is frequently the
result of too athletic zeal on the part of in
structors. The children were not separated
for any length of time until the brothers four
tenth year, when he went away to the Acade-
my at Gorwalk, Ohio, and after that they were
little together during his preparation for col
lege in Middletown, Connecticut, and his col
lege years at Kenyon College, Ohio. But
throughout this time they wrote regularly to
each other; she took the deepest interest in all
his studies, their devoted affection continued in
their mature life, and when her death parted
them it left him with the sorrow of an irrepa-
rabe loss