The Caldwell tribune. [volume] (Caldwell, Idaho Territory [Idaho]) 1883-1928, 1919-09-12
THE OBSERVATORY


AGAIN he says he was born in Bos
ton in 1885," and later christened b,
his uncle, the minister of the FRS,
church after the tenets of Boston
Oniterianism; Had he beer
born in Jerusalam under the shadow
OF the Temple and circumcised bv hi,
uncle the high priest under the name
OF Israel Cohen, he would scarcel,
have been more distinctly branded
and not much more handicapped in
the races of the coming century: and
he declares his birthplace and family
inheritance, which in the eighteenth
century would have been a guarantee
OF success: were for the twentieth a
weight and hindrance.
Again he says, Town was winter
confinement. school, rule, discipline
Town was restraint, law,
unity Country, only seven miles
away, was liberty, diversity, outlawry,
the endless delight of mere impress
sions given by nature for nothing. and
breathed by boys without knowing
Unusual Environment.
He was born, bred, stepped in Bos-
ton Unitarianism, like Hindoo Brahim-
ism, which / also touched in my boy
hood through relatives, and I know It;
and he says, that the most intelligent
society, led by the most intelligent
clergy, in the most moral conditions
he ever knew, should have solved all
the problems of the universe so thor
oughly as to have quite ceased max
ing itself anxious about past or future
and should have persuaded itself that
all the problems which have convulsed
human thought from earliest time.
were not worth discussing, seemed to
him the most curious social problem
he had to account for in a long fife
lti.his fathers large farmily "The chill
dren reached manhood without know
ing religion, and with the certainty
that dogma, metaphysics, and alb
stract philosophy were not worth
knowing. So one-sided an education
could have been possible in no other
country or time" Which is a con-
clusion which many others who have
known Harvard College and Boston,
social, political and Unitarian reiig-l
ious life have felt.
His account of his college life at
Harvard is interesting, without being
very informing; so, after graduation,
his desire togo to Germany to study.
civil law; although" he says, neither
ne nor they (his parents) knew what
civil law was, or any reason for his
studying it," which is characteristic
ramark of his all the way along this
story. And another is the feeling of
his anxious mother, not worried, but
careful, as he writes, Every year
some young person alarmed the
parental heart even in Boston; -
he seemed well behaved, when any one
was looking at him; he observed con-
ventions when he could not escape
them; =" his morals were appar-
emily good"
Spent Year in Germany.
He had year in Germany and
never liked the Germans, visited Italy,
came home, was his fither's private
secretary, he then being a member of
congress, started to study law, when
his father was appointed minister to
England and took him for secretary
again. And so his life ran on, mixing
for fifty years with the influential,
and some great, of those years, in
Guiding professorship at Harvard
College, literary life, gentleman of
leisure and man of the world, the init
mate companion of three or four of
the best men of his day in our country,
statesmen, scholars, scientists.
Is Widely Read.
There is peculiar charm in his
English style as he tells his life-story
in the third person. Being of Colon
ial, Federal and Wing ancestry, as my
father was, with all the associations,
peculiarities and comedies of eastern
Massachusetts,, it might be supposed
| am partial to one of its bright sons
but the fact that in every quarter Of
our country, except the central south
ern states, this book is being more
read than any other, according to pub
lie library reports, and in those ex-
cepted states it stands third in cir
culation, shows that it is an uncommon
book.
Moon of Israel-A Tale of the Exodus
By H. Rider Haggard.
The sc Aha lat IL