Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-09-13
As 1t Appeals to Rose Hawthorne
Lathrop at New London, Conn.
THE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATIONS.
Picturesque Drives and Enchanting Views
of the Blue Surface.
THE ANNUAL UNIVERSITY BOAT RACE
CORRESPONDENCE OF THE DISPATCH ]

with its memory Of courage; the other New
London's Fort Trumbull, with its still beat
ing pulses, fairy bugle call and the flag.
1t is exhilarating to live in historic
region; it is delicious to forget the exact
facts (there are bloodshed and agony about
exact historic facts) recorded in the town
chronicle and to know that they can take
care of themselves and will thrive for all
time, while we jog about in the atmosphere
of brave deeds for our little hour. In New
London and Groton Benedict Arnold burned
the houses of his friends and, commanding
the British, overcame by deputy garrison
of his countrymen where now the Groton
Fort Griswold, its teeth and claws drawn,
sinks close to earth like a worn-out lion.
MONUMENT TO ARNoLD's VICTIMS.
We point to the monument (beside Fort
Griswold) which marks the martyrdom of
Arnold's victims, and tersely tell how its
towering shaft measures his folly as it
measures their pathetic renown. His dep
uty, supposed to have been a Major Brom-
field or Bloomfield, seemed to have become
maddened BY the unboly and deceptive
spirit which possessed Arnold himself; for
when Colonel Ledyard of the fort surren-
dered his sword Bromfeld seized it and
plunged it up to the hilt in the officers
bosom.
Over the foot or two of ground where 50
much unmilitary cruelty was perpetrated
by the Englishman upon the American, is
a slab of stone with the inscription stating
the bald truth Somehow, as the words are
read, one almost believes that ghost trem-
bles past, leading train of still more shad-
owy forms. A wholesale massacre of the
beseiged ensued, and few of the fright
fully wounded men were thrown into
wagon and rolled down a steep and rocky
hill until stopped by tree which inter-
vened upon the road. The shock of this
collision sent forth shrek from the suf-
ferers that was heard across the broad river
in New London, in spite of the din there of
sacking and burning.
WHERE NATHANIEL HALE TAUGHT.
And in New London one of the staunch
est men who ever threw off life here for
verity in heaven-Nathan Hale-taught
school. The little old house he taught In,
raised on stone and winking its wide-hung
roof at YOU with old-fashioned good-nature,
exists at a stones throw from the busiest
point of the informal city; it is the quaint
visible evidence of a story as sublime as 1t
is simple, as heartrending In Its ungar-
nished conciseness as many other tales OF
American courage, which 1T would nave
puzzled Homer to sing in bejeweled lines,
for want of the gods: those allies VINO SO
ornamented ancient verse.
But if it is exhilarating to live in New
London because of its early Importance, 1T
is doubN so for its cool summer breezes
won Humbold pronounced its healthful-
ness superlative);' its radient, though
roguishly frowning weather, and its pageant
of shipping Shooting back and forth upon
the azure harbor 60 the yachts; some lovely
with their sails and angelic motion; others
under the ban of steam, and, however smart
and slim, doomed to an ugly materlallty OF
common-sense. Farther off are the half de-
fined ships-beautiful, beautiful, and SEEM
ingly unconcerned with the interests of the
world but sailing slowly away into the
future, the future beyond the line, for
which they are bound.
ITS BUGLEs AND ITS GUNS.
The naval station is farther up the river,
which is fittingly called the Thames, And
there is touch of unique value in the spot
which dispenses to its inhabitants the morn
ing and evening bugle notes of its fort, its
sunrise and sunset gun, and the great boom
of the salute of cannon at dusky 9 O. the
clock evenings. Moreover, we always have
the 9 o'clock ringing of the First Church
bells, because New London remembers its
honored age and its age-long customs, as
Salem does also.
But of the earliest days there is but one
wooden house of consequence standing,
spared by Arnold's fire; it is the home of
the Hempsteads, of which family Stephen
Hampstead was a member, he who shared
arduously in the defense of Fort Griswold,
and afterward wrote an account of the en-
gagement- The house yet keeps itself visi-
Bile (tall and high-shouldered) invisibly
among the gaudy paint of some modern
town dwellings which elbow up to it. Its
wood is gray and silver; its unshading ave-
nue. of sparse trees silver and broken; its
path bordered by hoary shells which have
known storms as we'll as itself. Hush! did
some one shiver by its doorstep-or was it
only an aspen tree mournfully bending in
the wind? Such questions spring to the
lips before dwelling which is so vision
like and so unforgetting.
ATTRACTIONS OF THE SEA.
There are moods in which the great blue
and white of the dangerous waters give us
the zest we want, as we sniff the salty frag-
rance of them, and again there are moods in
which we are worshipers of mother earth,
turning inland to the hills; such as Mon
adnoc changing colora artistically and
gracefully moving through shadows, and up
heaving curve and precipice with Herculean
ease To me the mountain, nevertheless,.is
peace and the valley inaction as compared
with the bluster and glow of the seaside.
Here human beings can awake to such a
pitch of energy that they are expected to
sail even when they are seasick and to swim
even if they cannot; here the sunlight and
the ocean are in league to dazzle finite eyes
| into submission, and the roar of the waves
| on days of autumnal storm says to us tran
| sient creatures, who find the winds ringing
with the sound, that we are strangely small
OF two admirations the sea has COM
PEELED my chief homage, and gratefully
| live beside it. Poetic as are the heights the
sea is more poetic. The captain of sloop
is more poetic than a farmer; the gull than
! the robin; the shell than the rapidly
bloomed flower; the lighthouse than the
railroad tower of signals.
And, by the way, New London Light
| house rises white as Dominican nun be-
| fore the wild nature of the sea, looking
toward danger grandly;ready while the world
| is swamped in gayety; ready while the sky
is fair for the peril which rules her human
span.
WHITE BEACH IN THE SUN.
Off shore, poetic, runs upon the vision
| from nowhere the pearl-sailed catboat, un-
intellectually susceptible to any suggestion
of the wind; incapable of angry furries as
it bends earnestly to any quarter; pretty
always, suddenly gone. However, there is
a time when White Beach Gas yet patron
| lied chiefly by New Londoners alone) is
| deserted, or at any rate is only visited by
the enthusiastic, and the boy or two who
bathe all day long. Scorching under the
piazza of one of the many lighthouses, ones
eyes shut automatically to a line and ones