The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-06-19

be Stratford's most distinguished son in her greatest period, but is now for-y gotten quite Some months later an- other son was born to them and chris tened James. James at twenty-four married Jerusha Nichols at twenty-one and built the house near here in which Mir. Beards1ey afterwards lived so long. Again the miracle was wrought and christened James, the sixth of family of nine. He at twenty-one married Mary Benjamin, aged seven- teen and lived at the old homestead.
 the vast and struck its being into hounds was born and christened Betsy, the sixth of a family of eight. Betsy waited in patient spinst until she was twenfy-nine, when Elisha H. >Beards1ey, aged forty-fve, a wid- over for only seven weeks, came down from Monroe with much insistency, as if the time was urgent and otherwise the century living purpose would be thwarted, and married her. Two years later she bore him an only child, the subject of this statue.
 And so whole century went by with it's reproductive miracle fourtimes repeated. And all the while this par ticular property continued in these successive generations of the Walker family until the very hill, where the concourse now is. came to be known the .countrys round as Walkers Hill-. But, few years before MT. Beards- ley's birth, it had passed into the hands of strangers.
 In his boyf1ood days he often visited his grandfather, and afterwards his Uncle Eli, at the old homestead. and listened to the story Of the length of time this property had continued in the family and of those who had owned it before it was sold, and thus picked up all the family traditions in regard to it. ss
 He often went swimming and fish, ing in the river and skated on the pond. Here he witnessed, with the i'm possibility of childhood and youth, the beauties of the revolving years tho yellow leaf falling from the tree. the fields sleeping under their fertilizing shroud of snow, the revival of Spring, the fulness of Summer, and the golden harvests of Autumn. Gradually through all these channels an intense love of the place and a passionate long ing to become its owner was insti1led in his mind. And so he put into if his hard earned dollars and acquired it. The longer he lived the more he admired it's beauties and the more he loved it, until it came to pass that he could not bear to think that it, the very apple of his eye, some day might be destroyed by being cut up into building lots or used for factory sites. And so the thought was prompted in him to give it to the city for park. This once entertained, was fostered in him by every kindly influence until IL became the master purpose or his life, and was carried out in deed. And so were secured for millions in after ages all the healthful and benignant results, which from the beginning had been planned.
 t'Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.'
 Hither He will will bring his children out of the dull, sordid and sensual sur- roundings of their fetid tenements and crowded workshops, and, from youth to age, lure them to higher things and to himself. The pulpit may lose it's power-the Church decay-The Book which was the mama on which our fathers fed here in the wilderness sink in popular esteem below the al- manac-the miracles which stirred their religious wonder be rejected aa fables-the very creed which led then across the stormy ocean, in which we were suckled, and which supported this good man through his life, become out worn, yet in this place He will still teach them the se1f-same truths from which the Litanies of nations sprung Here each will learn to say with Bryant:
 My heart is awed within me, wher or the great miracle that still goes on In silence, round me- ,--the perpetual
 work sssss o6 thy creation, finished, yet renewed Forever. Written on thy works T read Tho lesson of thy own eternity. .