Norwich bulletin., 1915-09-03
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

days also for such enterprise. But the |
initiative was his. I more than sus-
pect.
kept Mr.. Burnham under observa-
ton for seven years, up to my own |
departure for the west; there will be
upon his face with too generous an
estimate of him or with too fertile
fancy. In that face l read a litany;
the beauty Of holiness; the joy Of sal
walton; the sweets Of fellowship: love
of the SHINING; sorrow for the needless
hurt Gas he deemed it, men inflicted
On themselves by SHINING; uncomplain-
ing sorrow at the slowness of the
world to throw off its needless burden,
and so on.
No one could be dissatisfied with the
worth his friends found in him, but in
the years since I have reflected upon
the conditions which diminished his
value to the whole community; chiefly
the segregation, the stratification of
the moral and religious forces in Nor
witch and all our communities.
In the first half of the decade which
closed with that year. 1880. I had been
member Of temperance society
which met on North Main street in
church basement about at the (then)
lock factory. In this place there were
men, humber in social position, whose
fragrance fingers, who are after these
years among memory's most precious
chairman of the board of directors (of
| that society, an engine wiper In the
| roundhouse Of the Norwich and Wor-
| cester railroad, near the old (and the
presently station. He never occupied a
position that did not with his occu-
| pancy become a position Of trust; an
| engineer pulling out for Worcester see
| ing this man waving at him from the
roundhouse door knew the engine was
! right as care could make 1t. There was
II 0lrax, - hn
Potter press works at Thamesville,
| Michael Carney, clean and sweet while
| he and his family were being swallow
ed up in a vortex of such tragedies as
fill the lives of workers; there was
| Peter Burns; there was John Downs,
financial secretary; there was a sweet
| tongued and pure hearted storekeeper
across the street from the place of
| meeting, Timothy Kelly; there was
Patrick Sarsfield o'Sullivan, a stone
not the lustre Of that (then) exalted
| calling. These too were segregated,
stratifled; they were not in the whole
city; only in part. To pass from
possible. for there was a splendid open
mindedness and charity in the city,
| but the passage of one from one to
another stratus seemed to do little to
| dissolve the walls of partition which
| shut into separate and non-communi-
eating cells the city's most needed in
telligences.
me unholy church Of the enemy Of
| all righteousness seemed to suffer no
such handicap; nothing seemed to
hinder the iuterfusion OF all the forces
Of evil; all it's waves and pillows roll
ed over the exposed. The worshipful
might have been careful whom they
worshipped with, but the sinful cared
little whom they sinned with. There
was wonderful catholicity. in the
sense of cosmopolitanisu in that
church and 1t had many entrances
which closed not night or day.
What is 1t that makes Waterman R.
Burnham Of less value than he ought
to have had for the men in that tenn
perance society and has robbed Mr..
Durham and his intimates Of the value
OF such lives as those others7 Who
is the TALLER who keeps for practical
purposes the cfty's apostles and evan
gelists locked in separate cells? Well,
the world changes pretty fast; we may
yet see the jailer Jailed. The financial
assets Of the nation have been legis-
lated into q pool large, fluid, respon-
slve TO the public need; we shall soon
no doubt pool in each city its moral
and religious assets 50 that We shall
| have no longer the waste Of lives like
these in fields too small. That any
body in Norwich could have heard Of
, the life and death of Waterman r.
: Burnham with indifference Is q pity. II
} indeed there were such; his years
! reckon. must have been IS; all of Nor
witch ought to have had something bet
ter than a hearsay or secoud-hand
see or ears to hear: much of the city's
goodness escaped me. But that makes
only worse the indifference to our moral
J and spiritual assets which 10 the Of
} Tense Of all communities: and the lack
o. moral sheltsr and protection Tor th1