The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1900-02-21

railway binding the two oceans togetner
with bands of steel. Electricity was only
an amusement for the laboratory, or prac-
tically a thing to fbe avoided by the more
or less discredited means of lightning
rods. Street cars, lighting by gas, photo
granny daily newspapers-indeed. almost
every convenience in life that is now con-
sidered a public necessity was either UNI
known or so imDerfectly developed as to
be of no general utility. All these things
were to be discovered, adapted, developed,
improved, and brought to general use by
the boundless energy of the generation 10
which Mr.. Hobart belonged and in which
he played such a prominent and important
part. He was, in his unresting activity
in the energy and foresight with Whlch
he pressed forward along lines OF progress
and Improvement in material enterprises,
a type of the spirit of the age. 1t is suen
qualities as distinguished him as prac-
tical man of action that have made this
the great transformation period in the
worlds economic history.
s~rhe stock from which he sprang was,
upon his fathers side, the same vigorous,
self-reliant strain that gave to England
its Hampden and Cromwell-men IN wnom
the predominant moral quality supplied
tone and strength to every enterprise IN
which they engaged; the same stock tnat
colonized New England, and later sent
tide of God-fearing, liberty-loving
pioneers flowing westward across the
Alleghenies, over the prairies, down the
valleys of the great rivers, carrying with
them those conceptions of law and JUS
tice, of self-government and of personal
Righteousness, that centuries of hereditary
development had made as natural and as
necessary to them as the pure air they
breathee OF this class was Captain
Ebenezer Webster, of New Hampshire,
ra aager and frontiersman, who gave to the
county the ilIustrious defender ana ex-
psui Ger of the constitution. 1t was from
such ancestors tha. Abraham Lincoln dad
James A. Garfield derived their qualities
aud 5Lat character which made them in
time. despite che humbleness of their
carly lives and the scantiness of opPor-
1unity. as the world understands OPP
r,rtrn " as the wtrld understands op-
opiects of universal veneration to their
ccun;-ymen.
'fMr. Hobart's father was New Hamp-
shire man, who, leaving the rugged hills
of that State, carried with him to New
Jersey all the admirable traditional char
acteristics of his ancestry. He settled IN
Monmouth county, and there took as ms
wife a typical representative of that other
strain which has equally contributed to
the enrichment and invigoration OF the
American race-the Huguenots. In SOPHIA
vanderveer was mingled the blood OF both
Dutch and French Huguenot ancestry,
some of whom had endured the peTils OF
persecution for conscience sake, some the
horrors of frontier exposure and savage
captivity and torture, and one of whom,
in Revolutionary times, combined with
great distinction the qualities of preach
er of righteousness in the Dutch Ian
guage to the older ones and in English to
the growing generation, and of valiant
defender of his country with sword and
rnusket against the British invaders of
Monmouth.
Upon that historic. soil, in neighbor-
hood where great and glorious events in
the struggle for independence had oc-
Cured, where the very air was charged
with the Inspiration that comes from as
sociation with the martial deeds of Wash-
ington and his patriot army, among
people many of whom had heard their
fathers tell how they had in person, on
that memorable June day, watched the
British troops as they withdrew from the
conflict through the heat and dust, along
the road to Middletown on their way BACK
to the more prudent shelter of New York,
the boyhood of young Hobart was spent
'sThe circumstances of his parents were
not affluent, neither were they the re-
verse. They had a respectable position
among the solid, reliable, and most re-
snected citizens of that most worthy
community, differing very little, If at all,
In material circumstances, from the
average of their neighbors, and, Indeed,
resembling in character, circumstances,
and mode of living the generality of the
farming and mercantile communities
throughout New England and the Middle
States at that period.
'aThe conditions of his early life called
for the exercise of the homely. old fash
ioned virtues of prudence, thrift, econ
omy and self denial, but they did not in
volve unusual hardship or privation, and
were not inconsistent with the mainte-
nance of standing in the community
which accorded to his parents and him-
self the very highest repute for personal
and social qualities.
His parents recognized and he very early
appreciated the fact that a good educa-
ton was one of the important things that
he must acquire if he expected to fulfill to
the utmost the hope and ambition which
he cherished To this, therefore, the ef-
forts of his father were self-sacrifcingly
bent. and the youth courageously con-