Morning journal and courier., 1892-10-06

| OId-Tfme New England Hired Man.
| Edward Everett Hale in the Atlantic Monthly. /
The few New England children who
| still read the Rollo books will have pleas
ant remembrances of Jonas and Beech
nut, in whom Mr.. Jacob Abbott has pre-
| sented for posterity the hired boy of New
England country life. In life in a little
town like Boston this hired boy might
grow to be the hired man, and, as in
Fullum's exceptional case, might grow to
be one hundred years old, or nearly that,
without changing that condition. If that
| happened his presence in family became
factor of Importance to the growing
children. In the case of Fullum, IL, as
he supposed, he was born In 1890, he
was thirty-two years old when In 1922
he took me in his arms when / was an
hour old.
Fullum, then, had been a country boy,
who came down from Worcester county
to make his fortune. I do not know
| when, but it was before the time of the
| short war with England. He expected
to be, and was. the hired boy and hired
man in one and another Boston family.
Esrly in the business he was in William
Sulliyan's service. He was driving Mr.
Sullivan out of town one day, when they
found Roxbury street blocked up by the
| roof of the old meeting house, which had
been blown into the street by the gale of
1915. Afterwsrd he was in Daniel Web
ster's service, and here also he took care
of horses and carriages. He was a born
tyrant, and it was always intimated that
Mr.. Webster did not fancy his rule
Any way he came from the Websters to
us, I suppose when Mr.. Webster went to
congress, in the autumn of 1920; and, in
one fashion or another, he lived with
our family, as a most faithful vassal OF
tyrant, for sixty-six years from that
time. l say "vasssl or tyrant," for this
was pure piece of feudalism; and in
the feudal system the vassal is often ty-
rant, while the master is almost always a
slave So is it that the memories of my
boyhood are all mixed up with memories
of Fullum.
1 have spoken of him in connection with
Miss Whitney's school. Here was faith
full man Friday, who would have died for
any of us, so strong was his love for us,
yet who insisted on rendering his service
very much in his own way. If my father
designed q wooden horse for me, to be run
on four wheels, after the fashion OF what
were called velocipedes in those days, he
would make the drawings, but it would ba
Fullum's business to take them to the car
penter's and see the horse made. IL we
were to have heavy hoops from water
casks Fullum was the person who conduct
ed the negotiation for them. There was
no harm in the tutorship to which we were
thus entrusted. He never used a profane
or impure word while he was with us chill
drep; and he was to Us an authority in
all matters of gardening, of carpentry,
of driving and the care of horses, we came
to regard him as, in certain lines, omnis-
cient and omnipotent. If now the reader
will bear in mind that this omniscient and
omnipotent person, at once the Hercules
and the Apollo of our boyhood, could not
read, write or spell go well as any child
four years old who had been twelve months
at Miss Whitneys' school, that reader may
understand why a certain scorn of book
learning sometimes stains these pages,
otherwise SO pure. And If the same read
er should know that this same Fullum al
ways spoke in superlatives, and multiplied
every figure with which he had to do by
hundreds or by thousands, he may have a
key to a certain habit of exaggeration
which has been detected in the present
writer. "They was ten Thousand men try
in to git in. But old Reed. he wouldn't
let um." This would be his way of de-
scribing the effort of four or FIVE men to
enter some place from which Reed, the one
constable of Boston, meant to keep them
out.