The Canton mail. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 18??-1882, 1876-04-22
THE OLD ELM.
Il Moarner Morali=ing on its Decay an
Fail.

Fail.
| Not long ago the cold elm," tn
glory of the Boston Common, fell to tn
ground with a mighty crash. The ageo
giant had for many years shown signs o
decay and ruin, and nothing but the con
slant care of the guardians of the ground
had kept it alive. 1t had been proppet
UP, hooped with iron, fenced in from
relic hunting mutilators, and all it.
ancient scars and wounds swathed and
bandaged with the tenderest solicitude
But at last the disaster came. The
object of New England's pride and love,
rich with antique colonial traditions, and
peOpled with its grim, shadowy witches,
lay shattered on the ground, and the
relic hunters held high carnival around
the ruins.
The fall of this old tree has a sort of
poetic and prophetic interest. The old
Boston that loved it is in many respects
typified in its overthrow, for the intel
lectual and moral grandeur of the old
Boston is decrepit also. 1t is only
propped up, bandaged and poulticed, and
is tottering, ready to fall. Where are
the young men of New England who are
to take the places of the generation that
is partly gone and rapidly going? Where
are the young poets to take the places of
Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier? Where
are the thinkers to take the places of
Emerson and Theodore Parker? Where
are the jurists to take the places of Story,
Parsons, Shaw, Rufus Choate? Where
are the statesmen like Webster, or, to
come lower, like Sumner, Fessenden and
Wilson? Where are the men of letters
to fill the places of Lowell and Haw-
thorne? Where are their great men,
their orators, statesmen, poets, preachers,
critics, judges, lawyers, novelists, their
leaders of thought all gone, or else,
like the old elm, bandaged up and
propped up, ready to fall. There was
time when New England was theatre
of a splendid intellectual energy, when
there was something there which men
believed in and were ready to think for,
work for, starve for, and, if need be, to
fight for; when it was nursery of great |
IDEAS that commanded respect, if not |
and admiration; when these
IDEAS bred strong men, of a provincial
cast probably and strongly favored with
Zach other, but still genuine and original
md earnest; time when New England
lid the thinking for the country, and
when her ideas outweighed the wealth
# the middle states and the oratory of
he southern. But that time is as dead
IS the Boston elm, and New England to-
lay is more freely typifed in its "frog-
'ond." 1t is the day of dead level mo-
lotomy of ideas and money acquisition
is moral ideas are on low-water line.
t has no longer demand for great men.
The picturesque villages that were the
lome of thrift and varied industries, and
wonderful invention, are becoming facto-
les of Operative" servitude; the inven-
i've brain is silenced in the plunge of
'ater power, the thump of great machi-
cries, and benumbed by the dead weight
f vast corporations. The rural life is
cling swallowed up in big manufacture
lg towns. The rich grow richer and
honey logged, the poor grow poorer and {
the old breed is dying out, and {
lew England, that ought to-day to be in
he bloom of her youth, suffers from all s
he diseases of the old centres of Euro
can civilization.
The old elm saw all this, but being a ,
uiet and brooding tree, not given to
Iendell Phillips TRADES or Edward {
verett eulogies, kept it all to himself. t
ut sometimes when night breeze came
ON the snowy mountains, or the pure, 4
sea, he used to whisper a e
tile of this to the ears of the thoughtful f
d men that lay awake in Boston, and /
ley would toss about on their beds, and {
onder what would be the end OF it all r
hen they saw Sumner die exiled from t
S state by vote of censure upon the s
,blest act OF his career, and Cakes S
mes received with an "ovation" when
} came home stepped in disgrace; when e
ey saw the civilization of Boston Il
eeding such poisoned weeds as Jesse t
omeroy, the bell-tower murderer, Rev. a
'inslow and the countless crimes born r.
an ever-increasing pauperage when tt
e glories of the Websters, the Longfel- t.
VS., the Storeys, the Hawthornes, the "
noates, the Emersons, the Summers, p
passing away, and the representatives l,
New England tapered down into cold il
IN Butler" and now to "little Jimmy a
these wakeful old men t,
W all this they sorrowed over the old W
ew England so swiftly passing away Il
he old elm sorrowed over it too. His il
rk was thick, but he had his feelings. a
hen he had the old New England b
eed around him he could stand proud p
up in the bleakest winter storm, W
ough sheeted with sleet, loaded with tt
ow and rocking in the blast. But W
cry year he grew more and more h
and at last, like old Lear Il
the tempest, shorn of his children, his v
eat heart broke. He tossed up his 81
thered arms, gave a rendering, SILVER S
: shiek, and cast himself down and bat b.
ed out his last fiutter of life on the tt
or of Boston Common. cl
CAUSES FOR DIVORCE IN FRANCE.- al
IN. DOuay, of the French army, who e
me will be remembered as prominent d
long the generals of France in the war "
1870, lately obtained divorce from al
wife, whom he married in 1869 The F
)of in court at Paris was that Madame ii
'uay, when returning late from balls sy
d finding the door of the house locked, to
uld not wait till it was opened, but W
1ke through window and entered by W