Gloucester County Democrat. (Woodbury, N.J.) 1878-1932, 1908-01-09

Whatever / have seen or known
In boyhood or when elder grown
sesyYhatever have heard from lips long sealed,
OF peaceful life or battlefield,
BE mine the pleasant task to tell,
How Jared the people i'll or WE'LL
What manners, usages and ways
They had in those primeval days.
Now that am rounding out the eighty
third year Of my life with memory and
understanding still unimpaired, there rise
up very viyidly before my vision many
facts and circumstances connected with the
worlds onward progress in every depart
ment of knowledge and industry, which I
think may interest such of your readers as
haye not yet gotten SO far along in the jour-
ney of life. And perhaps also, there may
be some Of your readers, here and there,
still tarrying like myself after their gener-
ations, waiting their turn to pass beyond
the boundary, who will not be reluctant TO
follow me'in nay narrations and be led back
to mingle again in the scenes Of their long
past years.
know there are those who care but lit
tie for "reminiscences, who have no inclina-
tions in common with the antiquarian
spirit which loves to visit old homesteads
and their peculiar surroundings; no sympa-
thy with the kindly instinct which tempts
to trayerce the long-neglected gardens and
fields, the ways which were trodden by the
busy generations of toilers long since dust
no reverential impulses which lure from
the beaten paths Of labor and traffic to the
burial places where generations sleep in
obscurity and Loneliness after the end OF
life's fitfnl feyer. Old ways manners and
customs have no hold on their affections.
To them they are back numbers in the
book Of life aad afford for them only day
reading. There are nolinks in their ma
lures which bind them to the years and
scenes of she circumstances of their grand
fathers and erandmothers. By such my eff
forts in the patient, tedious work of search
ing out and gathering up into imperishable
shape from rare old times of print, or a
musty ledger or journal of fading script IN
hooks and corners, or from torn and erumbl-
ing letter and the recitals of Lying witnesses
the widely scattered facts Of by gone days,
will hardly be appreciated To them stor-
les of the faded past are as nought. They
have little of the reyerential feeling for the
times when sire and grand sire were strugel-
ing 80 establish their homes aud neighbor-
hoods.
There are Others, however, for whom these
old time memorials have an-interest, fas-
cination strong and abiding as life itself, who
love to visit the plain, antiquated mansions
yet left as landmarks here and there at
wide intervals over the land d-who delight
to loiter in the lanes and paths and by the
melancholy hcarthstones, and to stay
among the briar grown graves and decipher
the dim Inscriptions of their mossy stone
who will gather with reverential hand
bud or blossom or a leaf as they pass, and
in SO doing find sweet, recompensing solace
and satisfaction for their care. It is in the
appreciation and reverence Of such accordant
spirits that our announcement must be.
For them am going to write
The girls and boys now grown OF growing
mp to womanhood and manhood, who played
SO often in the dear old garrets and indus
triousIy ransacked every nook and corner of
their piled up spaces, who read with won
der and delight the marvellous story Of
Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver and Munchausen
and the Arabian Knights and the accumu-
lated Almanaces they found in the rubbish
barrels, or who had hours of fun and froIic
masquerading in the quaint dilapidated COS
TUNES Of other days and fashions which
they laughingly resurected from trunks and
boxes, will am sure appreciate my object
and give willing attention to my description
/ have to confess myself to a fondness for
a / lore which deals with the actualities and
peculiarities Of the generations by-gone
We who are now actors on the stage of life
are their successors and are profting by
their successes or failures. We take up their
unfinished work
/ have very pleasant memories Of the in
tsrcourse used to have with the aged per-
sons around me, ] sat at their feet and
listened to them with awe as if they had
been oracles diyinely appointed to amuse
and instruct me from their stores of know
ledge revered and had very kindly
feelings for them because of their age and
experience. They handed down the tra.
ditions Of the families and neighborhoods
Particularly did the stories Of the old Con-
tinentaI soldiers, gray and wrinkled,
hobbling with orutches and SCARED with
the tokens Of war, hold me spell bound.
Here and there in almost every neighbor-
hood d Old Gloucester there we're still
Lying one or two d these worthy heroes.
-.