The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1889-08-23
A NEW SCULPTOR.

A NEW SCULPTOR.
Once TO my Fancy's hall stranger came
or men unwonted.
And It's pale shapes Of glory without shame
Or fear confronted
Fair was my hall-a gallery of the gods
Smoothly appointed
With nymphs and satyrs from the dewy sods
Freshly anointed
Great Jove sat throned in state with Hermes near.
And fiery Bacchus;
Pallas and Pluto and those powers Of fear
| Whose visions rack US
Artemis wore her crescent free of stares,
The hunt just scented;
Glad Aphrodte met the warrior Mars.
The myriad tented
Rude was my visitahl. 80 sturdy form.
Draped In such ciotling
As the worlds great, whom luxury makes warm.
Look on with loathing.
And yet me thought his service badge OF soil
With honor wearing,
And In his dexter hand. embossed with toll.
hammer bearing
| But while waited till his eye should sink.
O'ercome with beauty,
With heart impotence trimming to the brink
or courteous duty.
He smote my marbles many a murderous blow
His weapon poisoning;
| l. In my wrath and wonderment of woe
No comment voicing.
"Come sweep this rubbish from the workman's
way,
Wreck of past ages!
Afford me here a lump of harmless clay.
Ye grooms and pagesr'
Then from the voidness of our mother earth
frame he builded,
| OF a new feature, with the power OF birth
Fashioned and welded.
1t had might mine eyes had never seen
men, a stature,
AS If the centuries that rolled between
Had greatened Nature.
1t breathed, it moved; above Jove's classic sway
place was won it;
The rustic sculptor motioned; then To-day"
He wrote upon it.
"what man are thou9" cried. "and what this
wrong
That thou hast wrought mes
My marbles lived on symmetry and song;
Why hast thou brought me
"a form of all necessities, that asks
Nurture and feeding?
Not this the burthen of my maidhoods tasks,
Nor my high breeding"
Behold" he said, "I4lfes great impersonate.
Nourished by labori
Thy gods are gone with old time faith and fate;
Here is my neighbour"
overhauling History.
The old story books made us believe
that on April 20, 1775, Israel Putnam
was blowing in his field, when O mes
senger arrived in hot haste with news
of the battle of Lexington, and that
the hero farmer unyoked his oxen and
left them to their fate, mounted horse
and was off to the north without so
much as saying "good-by" to those of
his house.
And were we not brought up in the
belief that this line
They left the plowshare in the mold.
was inspired especially by his case3
And have not we, all of us, ever
since our childhood been familiar with
pictures representing him blowing,
clad in frock as long as anightgown,
which no farmer could wear at any
kind of work without imminent and
unacceptable peril of being tripped up
at every step he took-to say nothing
of turning furrow, when he would
be indeed fortunate if he did not find
himself under the plowshare2
And to know that after many
years that there was no plow in the
case-to find out that that, too, is a
myth
1t was, indeed, the day after the
fight at Lexington, in the morning,
and Israel Putnam was at work on his
farm in Pomfret, Conn. But he was
building stone wall, with his hired
men; and he had on a leather frock
and apron-the frock must have been
a short one; fancy one of that ma
terial coming to his heelsl He took
off the apron, but did not wait to
change the check shirt he had worn
in the field, and was off without de-
lay. He rode the same horse 100 miles
in eighteen hours and reached Cam
bridge at sunrise the next morning.
Wide Awake.