The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-08-17
BRYANT,S ANNIVERSARY.

The Author of Thsnatopsis-Fine Ceiebra-
 tion In His Native Town.
 Cummington. Mass. Aug. 16-The tooth anniversity of the birth of Will" liam Cullen Bryant was fitly celehrat- ed in this. his na tive place. to-day in the presence of scores of invited guests and hundreds of visitors from sur- rounding towns. ,,t.
 The exercises took place in the grove just beyond the Bryant home. and it proved to be capital place for 6 gathering of this kind.
 After the invocation and the ad- dress of welcome by Lorenzo H. Tower, librarian of the Bryant library, on be- half of the townspeople, Parke Goodwin who was associated with MT. Bryant for many years and married his oldest daughter, was calted upall to preside.
 At the conclusion of the address, John Howard Bryant, the only sur- viving brother of the great poet, read "The Rivulet." then "A Monody," written by him in 1878, at the time of his brothers death, and "At ST. a poem appropriate to the occasion.
 Edwin R. Brown. of :Elmwood, H., was the orator of tl.e day.
 Among the after.dinner speakers were: John Bigelow. Julia Ward Howe. '. D. Warner, Prof. C. E. Nor ton. Rev. J. w. Chadwick, George W. Cable, President G. Stanley Hall, A. M. Howe and H. S. Gere.
 Charles Dudley Warner, who spoke in- formally, began by saying that he was born in the next town. Plainfield, and Dr. Bryant, the poets father, had been his fathers physician. and his maple orchard was in sight of the Bryant homestead, he had some right to pay a tribute to the man whose birth had conferred distinction upon all that reg ion. If Cummington had never done anything else than produce William Cullen Bryant, she would be immortal He went on to speak in a general way of what is the most valuable in the life of any town, state or nation. His tory does not much regard fertile soil, or material wealth, but the admir- able men and women state produces. They are the glory of state. But it was not merely a matter of reputa- tion. The influence of such man as Bryant. of such high character and such true poet, is great with his contemporaries. and permanent with | their descendants. Who can say what moral influence, what q refining and l elevating force. the poetry of, Bryant has been in this region alone? Speaking of 'Thanatopsis," Mir. War ner said: l knew it by heart when ! was a very small boy, and as I went about repeating it, it used to interpret for n,e Bryant's f. ,'ing for nature the nature that I saw--and the non'e pathos of life. It seemed to be se- cret which I shared with the poet l remember we'll how shamefaced was once when a cousin of mine exposed me. Unbeknown to me he had stood near me one evening when I was milk ing one of the cows, and heard me re- peat "Thanatopsis." It must have been sufficiently ludicrous,; the specta- cle of 8 barefooted scrap of boy-a boy not nine years younger than the other boy when he wrote the, poem seated on a milking stool, and deciainn- ing those immortal lines to the COW. do not know how he managed the stately rhythm of that blank verse to the intermittent sound ing streams in the pail. Very likely he did not, and that was one of the reasons .why.he was accused of drying up the cows he milked. wondered then, and I wonder now. where '"rhanatopsis'' came from. How did it come into the mind of a boy. in these remote htals. away from the suggestions of the great world Did the hills teach him, and the for ests, and the brooks. and the cloudss Was 1t industry and application that made this poem? ehinlx. my friends. that mysterious something. the possibly that we shall have, to fall beck on supernatural suggestion, that vie call genius. ... ......- agaf p. E.. Deans Rhellmatic. Pilla ss ahao1ately c,,re