Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 June 1869 — Anecdote of Edward Everett. [ARTICLE]

Anecdote of Edward Everett.

Robert C. Winthrop, in a recently published introductory lectnre to a course on the early history of Massachusetts, compares in a very interesting manner the soil and climate of his native State with those of region* deemed to be more favored by nature. In the course of the comparison, occurs the following passage, in which he introduces an anecdote of the late Edward Everett: * “ And, next, I bethought me of that soil., What a soil it was, here in New England, what a soil it is still, compared with that then beneath my feet 1 And I remembered but to vividly the dreary and desolate look of a Massachusetts landscape for six or seven months of the year, not only without fruit or flowers, like those which are on all sides around me,

but without a spire of grass or a leaf on the treea But I remembered, too, a little dialogue which I had once heard from the lips of Edward Everett. Would that those lips had language still and could repeat it, m their own inimitable way, once more 1 He was accompanying Henry Clay during the month of April, I think it was in the year 1833, through the county of Middlesex, which Mr. Everett then represented in Congers*, on a visit to Lowell, •Everett,’ exclaimed Mr. Clay, ‘ln -Heaven’s name, what do your constituents live on? I see nothing hereabouts capable of supporting human life, or animal life of anysort.’ * Why, Mr. Clay,’ replied Everett, 'don’tyou see that tree in themiddle of yonder field there ?’ 1 Yes, I do,’ said Mr. Clay; * and a very small and specimen of a tree it is; there is not adeaf nor a bud on it; it looks dead already, and hardly fit for firewood.’ ‘Ahl’ said Mr.. Everett (in playful resentment of an old impertinence to a neighboring New England State), * it make* capital wobden nut mega!' Yek, my the barrenness of our ground has made our brains fertile ; and even the invention which built up Lowell has owed not a little of its stimulus to the sterility of the surrounding acres.* The willing and luxuriant harvests of Other-latitudes are, indeed, unknown to us; but who shall complain of the soil which has so enforced industry; which has so quickened and sharpened the wits; which has so nourished independency and freedom; which has presented no tenipta tion to make woman a yoke fellow with the brutes, exhibiting her, like those I saw around me, subject to the hardest labors of the field; and which above all—far, far, above all—has so repelled and repudiated from its culture every form of human servitude ! Boast as we will, and as we wall may, of the influence of free schools and free governments in molding and training the character and careers of New England men—and my friend, Mr. Etner? •on, will tell you all about that when his turn to lecture comes—we must not forget.' that there ar? influences underlying all these—the influences of lhe earth beneath us and of the sky alcove us.