The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-12-04
Thomas Hood Macdonald
In MemOriam
GAN APPRECIATION BY
 WALTER P. PHILLIPS.)

Aldrich, his life long friend, said III writing of his contemporary that he could not make it seem that he had passed onward. He finished his beau tiful tribute with the lines:
 But when the summer winds sweep over Cedarcroft
 He'll come again. cannot make him dead"
 l find myself sharing MT. Aldrich's
 emotions when attempt to has touched with his icy finger the strong, valiant, powerfully endowed man who was with us, but yesterday and whom we shall not know agail until we, meet him face to face in the far beyond. Indeed T cannot make him dead"
 Thomas Hood Macdonald was man l of whom it might honestly be said as Colonel Ingersoll said in Washing. , ton, in 1879, as he stood near the casket in which rested all that was mortal of his beloved brother Ebon: band, father, friend, died where manhoOd's morning almost touches noon and while the shadows still were falling toward the West. He , had not passed on life's highway tn. stone that marks the highest point lay down by the wayside and, using his burden for pillow, fell into that dreamless sleep that kisses down his eyelids still. While yet in love with life and raptured with the world he passed to silence and pathetic dust
 This brave and tender man. in every storm of life was oak and rock, but In the. sunshine he was vine and flow CT. He was the friend of all heroic souls He climbed the heights and left all superstitions far below while on his forehead fell the golden dawn incr of 14 i the beautiful and was with color form and music touched to tears. With l loyal heart and with the purest hands he faithfully discharged all public l trusts.''
 Although in most of the articles or i MT. Macdonald and his inventions | that constantly had been appearing | in newspapers and magazines during l the fourteen years that I knew him | his birthplace was given as Marys. vile. California, the fact is that he was ushered into the world, in 1859 | at the veriest little hamlet imagina
 ble not far from Marysville-Y ubs
 Dam. Bret Harte has l made the name of Tuba Dam familiar to the
 ears of English speaking people
 throughout the world, in his poem
 bearing that title ands in which the .inquiring and serious minded strang. 1 CT, when the boy answered with per. feet sincerity not once but severa
 times, when repeatedly asked thu
 name of the place-Yuba Dam-wa! dismayed by what he deemed thu tyouth's profanity
 | But however we'll known this little l place may have become, througl | MT. Harte's humorous story in tht | catchy sort of verse of which he wa! | a master, it is doubtful if any citizer
 of Bridgeport ever met man wht was born in Tuba Dam, until h.
 knew MT. Macdonald and very hkel!
 not then for, as he said: .1 let it gt | that I was born in Marysville wher'
 I attended school as a boy and il | which afterward became g teacher Whenever I answered truly, and sait | Tuba Dam, I had to listen to a dis
 sertation on Bret Harte's poem ant
 after a few hundred dissertation the theme was not as interesting a!
 '"The RecessionaP'-not only the fin est thing Rudyard Kipling has eve 1 produced but one of the greates | poems ever written by mortal man. | When MT. Macdonald was a bo.
 the great empty numbering wagon
 that were driven along the rougi | road that skirted the Yuba rive
 his home, and proceeded by way O
 a road on the other shore to the ricl
 mines situated deeper among tn | auriferous mountains. The pOin l where these wagons crossed, on tn
 upward trip, and again when the.
 made the return trip, heavily ladel
 with ore, was near a dam and from this came the name of the little set | tlement-Yuba Dam. Over beyond
 and across the country the waves O the Pacific dashed upon sandy sf1or'
 and the boy grew up with tn ] knowledge in his mind that not ia l away ships were sailing seas more O.
 less serene-not always peaceful b. any means-ships' bound for ia Cathay.
 He had inherited a receptive mint and as he watched the wagons goini and coming and beheld the glisteflinl Tuba its waters changing in the sun light and noted the shadows of tn clouds on the foothills he would fal
 to dreaming of other lands and a night he used to feed his insatiat
 mind with the tales. of Marryat
 Mayne Reid and the talented Harvar'
 student whom failing eyesight stimu | lated .him to sail around Cape Horl en route to California and who pen
 ned, upon his return, his vision full. recovered, Dana's Two Years Befor
 the Mast,'' that immortal book whicl l has lured as many to embrace thu
 calling of a sea farer as Irving's Al | hambra" has caused to visit Spain
 and climb the hard hills over rougi l and neglected road that leads Ill 1 from the city of Grenada that the. | might view what remains of the ex ] quisite palace built by the Moors wh' l ruled, f1ourished and passed ava, | hundreds of years ago.
 L. The effect of this environment Wa | that at the age of IT MT. Macdonald | quitted the excellent school in Whicl l he had already obtained an unusual! | good education and on a trip to Sal ! Francisco, after watching the ship l that came and went through tht | Golden Gate, he suddenly decided I upon making a voyage around tn
 world and straightway qualified as an able bodied seaman before tn, | mast The second mate of the shil i was a brute and was generally hated but one day when he was not visibl
 the young sailor was taking look a | the scene about him and was so en
 tranced that he forgot the existenc | of the second mate. The vessel hat II reached the Straits of Gibraltar ant
 was at anchor mile or so outside O | small seaport town, from which tn bum boat people row out in thel | small craft laden with everything a II far as Morocco can supply i
 that is good to eat and drink O II susceptible of being utilized il
 other ways and tender their food
 and wares to those on the visitinl ships They are wonderful mer
 chants and their devices for attract
 ing attention and their tuneful praise of their goods are most entertaining Tx ioIot n