The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1886-12-03
PERSONAL AND PECULIAR.

The Vermont legislature has appropriated
money for monument to the Grave General
Stannard.
Henry George is to begin next January the
publication of a weekly newspaper in New
York city.
There are employed ON the Boston daily
newspapers 40 college graduates, of whom II
are from Harvard. OF colleges in Maine
Colby furnishes and Bowdoin /.
Ex-Governor Person Colby Cheney, of
Manchester. who has been appointed United
States Senator by the governor of New
Hampshire, received part of his education in
Parsonsfield, Me. He Is paper manufac-
turer.
In Des Moines, Iowa, last week Mrs. Ida
G. Hulten was ordained pastor of the Unita-
rian church. Rev. Mary A. Stafford, of Sioux
City, gave the right hand of fellowship, and
the ordination prayer was made by Rev.
Marion Murdoch.
OF New York's former governors five are
still living, three in retirement and two in
active life. Governor Fish held the execu-
tive office more than forty years ago, and is
the survivor of all the men prominent in New
York politics in the anti-slavery agitation
era.
An effort is being m ade by Kentucky poll
ticians to depose Mrs. Helm, postmistress at
Elizabsthtown, Ky. She was appointed by
President Arthur. She is sister of Mrs.
Abraham Lincoln. Her husband was the
Confederate Gen. Ben Hardin Helm. who
was killed at Shiloh
At least dozen magnificent residences are
to be built in New York within the next
year by men who have made fortunes in the
West and Southwest, and have followed the
now established custom of going TO New
York to display their wealth.
The presidential widows are much more te-
nacious of life than the Presidents or Vice
Presidents. The country is paying yearly
annuities of $1,000 each to the widow of
President Tyler the widow of President
Polk, the widow of President Grant and the
widow of President Garfield, and only few
years ago ceased paying like annuity to the
widow of Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Tyler was
married when her husband was President,
and has survived the Tyler reign full forty
five years, and Mrs Polk has survived the
Polk administration full forty-one years.
DR.. Magoon, the eminent Baptist minister
whose death has been announced, was in
his youth brick layer. In later years the
first brick ever laid by him was hunted up,
taken from the wall, followed out, richly
set in bronze and used as an inkstand. He
presented valuable collections of books and
works Of art to half dozen colleges, be
sides the array of water colors in the Metro
politan Museum in New York. He was a man
of notably broad and Independent views,
and though an earnest Baptist, was close
friend of Cardinal McCioskey, invited Swe
denborgian ministers to preach from his pull
pit, and himself preached in Jewish syna-
gogues.
The Boston Transcript relates this charac-
teristic story of the late DR.. Magoon, ex-
planning how he came to leave his first MN
isterial charge, which was Richmond, Va,
church, st was before the war, about 1916,
when abolition sentiment was growing. Mr..
Magoon, who was born in New Hampshire,
shared the Northern sentiment respecting
slavery. One Easter Sunday morning, as he
assembled his pulpit, he was struck by the
contrast presented by the slaves, crowded in
the gallery, and their masters and mistresses
gathered in the body of the church. The la
dies were out in their new spring toilets, ra-
dlant with flowers and bright-colored rib
b0ns. The preacher surveyed the scene for
a moment $50 the story goes and then, adj
dressing the congregation, said-'Ladies. you
look very beautiful in your flowers and feath-
ers, but If you would spend half the money
wasted on finery to educate those poor col
ored people up yonder 1t would be better for
your soulsp' At that time it was an offence
against the law in Virginia to teach col
ored person to read, and it can easily be inn
agined that such speech put an end to Mr..
Magoon's ministry there. He removed to
Cincinnati and afterwards to Philadelphia.