a pistol, and turned its great resources to the production, in large numbers, of "The Majestic" bicycle.

This off-hand sketch, which is far from complete, of some of the varied industries of Norwich, gives an idea of the sources of the wealth of the town, which is larger in proportion to its population than that of any other town in the state. This fact conspired with other circumstances to give the little city almost a hegemony among Connecticut towns at the beginning of the Civil War. The Governor of the State, William A. Buckingham, of Norwich, united a fervid patriotism and a trained executive ability with noble personal qualities such as enforce popular respect and admiration. The senior Senator of Connecticut, La Fayette S. Foster, preeminently wise and influential in counsel, was President of the Senate, and upon the death of Lincoln became Acting Vice-President of the United States. Few towns in the country can have surpassed this in its gifts of life and treasure for the maintenance of the government.

The most widely distinguished of the living citizens of Norwich, David A. Wells, in his most interesting and valuable work on "Recent Economic Changes," illustrates on the grand scale some principles which are of late years affecting the prosperity and growth of the city of Norwich. That eminent manufacturer whom I have before quoted, Mr. John F. Slater, in forecasting the future of Norwich, remarked that the growth of the great suburban factories, which many years ago had given such a notable set-forward to the wealth and business of the city, could no longer be relied on for a like result. earlier days Norwich was an entrepôt of supplies for the mills along both the streams which unite at this point.

In the

*Some of the smaller pistol factories were not so timely in changing the direction of their activity. There was a touching significance in an advertisement which a few months ago was kept standing in the Norwich Bulletin. It offered for sale the tools and material of a pistol shop, with a quantity of unfinished pistols; "also, eighteen small gravestones."

Now every considerable factory purchases directly from the prime sources of supply, not only for itself, but to a large extent for its employees; and it neither derives much from its neighbor market town, nor contributes much to it. Consequently the development of Norwich in future has got to come along some other line; and it was Mr. Slater's conviction that it would be as an educational centre that the Norwich of the future was to prosper. The history of the Norwich Free Academy, even up to that date of fifteen years ago, might well have settled this conviction in his mind.

This noble institution Owes its foundation, not to the zeal for education of the town or city of Norwich in its corporate capacity, but rather to the scandalously degraded condition of the public schools of the town about 1850, and to the dogged opposition to any improvement which was for a long time successfully maintained by some of the town demagogues in behalf of the dear people. The fight in behalf of civilization was led, with a tact and a masterly eloquence in debate the memory of which has not yet passed away, by the young pastor of the Broadway Church, the Rev. John P. Gulliver; and at last the building of a fine and costly school-house on Broadway, in 1855, "marked the successful termination of one of the most protracted and severe educational struggles ever witnessed in our state." The result at the present day is to be seen in an altogether excellent graded school system. But the lesson which Mr. Gulliver learned from the conflict was that, if the friends of education in Norwich wanted any further advance, their easiest and best way was to make it themselves, rather than by protracted and toilsome controversy to drag the people up to undertaking it by public action. The Academy as it stands to-day, the foremost institution of secondary education in the state, and one of the first in the country, justifies his conclusion. The

circular announcing the project and appealing for aid was responded to by three citizens with subscriptions of $10,000 each, and the sum of $100,000 was promptly made up by forty subscribers. The Academy is felt by all to be the glory of the town. Its funds and other property have from time to time been largely increased. Its standard of scholarship, under the late Principal Hutchison, stood equal to that of any like school in America; and under the present Principal, the learned Dr. Robert Porter Keep, it has been still further advanced. The late Professor Thacher declared to me several years ago that there was only one other school (Phillips Academy, Andover) from which students came so well prepared for the Yale examinations as from the Norwich Free Academy.

It is impossible to speak fitly of the recent splendid advances and expansions of the Academy without referring to its most munificent benefactor, Mr. William A. Slater; and it is difficult for the friends of Mr. Slater, who know what he has done and what he is, to speak of him without some warmth of expression which would be uncongenial to his modesty. His first considerable benefaction to the Academy was the erection of the "Slater Memorial Hall," a great and sumptuous building in commemoration of his father, John Fox Slater. The first floor of this structure is chiefly occupied by a spacious hall for lectures, concerts and other public occasions of the institution. On the second floor the Peck Library is beautifully installed; but the space is mainly filled with the museum of casts of sculpture representing the Greek, the Roman and the Renaissance periods in the history of the art, all arranged with admirable taste and judgment for comparison and study. Elsewhere in the building are other collections of interest and value. Withal, in rooms that have proved not always adequate to the prosperity of the department, the classes of the Art

School have been quartered, pursuing, under instructors always competent and in some cases eminent, the various arts of design, drawing, painting, modeling and especially the arts of decorative design in their practical applications. This department of the Academy, also, is due to the generosity of Mr. Slater; and the department of Pedagogics (what we are accustomed, by a curious freak of language, to call a "Normal School"), which for seven years had been sustained from the same generous purse and heart, accomplishing results of inestimable value, of a sort and quality unattainable, in some respects, in the official institutions of the state, would by this time have been established on a permanent endowment in its own building, but for the failure of coöperation from the "fierce democracie" of the School District. This defeat of a noble purpose is one out of many lessons additional to that which was so well learned in the struggle of 1843-1855, that those who contemplate important enterprises of public utility in Norwich. will do wisely to refrain to the utmost possible extent from inviting the local demagogue to take a hand in them.

The latest addition to the resources of the Academy has just been quietly accomplished through private subscription, in accordance with this principle, by the erection and equipment with tools, machinery and power, of a Manual Training Department which has already proved its value and usefulness.

There is not room here to detail the various enterprises of public utility in which the liberality of others has been reënforced and stimulated by the coöperation of one citizen of large means and larger heart. I merely name the public free library, the building, now in progress, of the Young Men's Christian Association, and the Park Church. Of more remote benefactions I say nothing. But Norwich has lately been enriched

by one institution so fine and noble, and carried into execution in a way so characteristic of our benefactor, that it demands to be described. About half a dozen years ago it came to be understood that an aged and childless citizen, long distinguished for his not giving to things, had decided to bestow $75,000 on the building of a hospital. This was the opportunity for a man who likes to do a good thing in accordance with the noble maxim of Edward Everett Hale: "Never mind who gets the credit." He sought out the old man, and by the offer at once to double the intended gift and more, changed the intention into a fact, thus procuring for the aged associate, the hitherto unknown delight of giving away a lump of money for a charitable object, and the innocent gratification of writing up his name in large letters as a philanthropist, and furthermore, assuring to the hospital a considerable endowment. The locating, planning and directing of the construction of the noble pile of buildings and

the copious expenditure month after month which was to make the new hospital, in structure and equipment, the equal of any in the world, were the work of the young man, not the old. I have no doubt there must be some among my readers who will be able to appreciate the added enjoyment there was in doing this good work for thousands of future unknown beneficiaries without putting his own. name into it at all, but letting it stand inscribed before the world as "The William W. Backus Hospital."

But

I confess my misgivings, as I write, lest my friend, reading what I have written in his remote absence beyond the sea, should feel annoyance at this publication of facts which in their nature cannot be private, and should "blush to find it fame." it is simply impossible to describe the Norwich of to-day without speaking of the man who has done so much to make it what it is. The love and gratitude toward him here expressed by one of his fellow-citizens are the common sentiment of all.

TH

ENRY and Ellen Hammond had been married nearly a year when their first serious disagreement occurred. He left the house in a passion, and all the way to his office felt a burning desire to sacrifice himself that she might suffer. The opportunity was at hand. President Lincoln had called for seventy-five thousand men, and as Henry reached the Court House he was caught by the excitement which attended the formation of a company. Yielding to the impulse, he signed the register.

Three months later, on the day he fought so bravely and then retreated with blind terror from Bull Run, his son and heir, and the subject of this sketch, was born into the world. Henry returned home to be forgiven by his wife and to look with proud pleasure upon his boy; then he went back to the war, this time in answer to duty, and with a three years' enlistment staring him in the face.

They had decided upon Edgar Henry as a name for the child. But Ellen called him Henry because of her absent husband and lover. After the battle of Antietam a letter from home informed him that "little Henry points

his chubby finger at all the soldier pictures and calls them 'papa, papa.' When he came home after Appomattox the boy, now nearly four, looked upon him with sober awe. Edgar was not afraid of the stranger, but he very soon ran away, preferring to play with Susy Kendall, the little girl across the way.

A change in the affairs of the little girl's people at this time took them away from Olumbia. The night after they had moved Ellen stepped to Edgar's bedside; he slept alone now, in a room adjoining theirs. Edgar was not awake, still he was hardly asleep, but was crying softly with an occasional childish sob.

"What is the matter, dear?" Ellen asked, stooping quickly, putting her head close to his.

"I did love Susy Kendall," said the broken, childish voice. "She is just the bestest girl in all the world!"

Edgar did not forget Susy Kendall at once, but she called no more tears to his eyes. At six he was sent to the public school. From the first day the little girl with the blue dress and short blonde hair, sitting at the desk in the farther corner of the room, became the "bestest girl in all the world." He did not tell his mother now, but kept it sacredly to himself. He did not know her name, nor where she lived, but before the week was out he had discovered both. He loved to sit, his eyes, just missing the top of his book, fastened upon her every movement. It was a delicious moment in his life when he stood by her side in the spelling class. But even that moment had its pain; for she missed the word, and his native honesty not permitting him to miss also, he must needs go above her. He flushed painfully in changing positions. He felt that she did not care for him; for that matter, he could not see anything in boys why girls should care for them anyway. Now he knew that she never would care for him. Still he went on worshiping her from afar.

At the end of the year he passed into the next room. The little girl with the blue dress-another blue dress now, for she had worn out the first-did not pass. Edgar had a moment in which he wished that he had not passed, followed by another filled with the wild thought of substituting his standing for hers. When school began again at the end of a long vacation, he was prepared to be consoled by another blonde girl. This time she sat directly across the aisle, and wore a white dress. She put up her nose at him the first time he looked her way, and on the playground kicked at him, using her legs as freely as a boy. Both of these actions he cherished a long time in his memory. Her name was Maud, and he wrote it on his slate and looked at it when no one could see him. He was more faithful to this last passion, for it possessed him with varying intensity for several years. Now and then some other pretty face displaced Maud's for a short time, but he always returned to her in the interims. She passed from room to room with him, little knowing the place she held in his dreams.

When Edgar was ten, his mother died. Two years later his father married again. At this time another girl came into the boy's life. She did not drive Maud out, but the two seemed to possess him jointly. In his dreams he did not always define even to himself which one it was he was waiting upon, saving from some impending danger, or giving up his life for. For an hour on Sundays, however, the new girl had complete sway, for she attended the Sunday school where Edgar was in the habit of going and Maud was not. During the week Maud had the advantage, for the other girl was a grade below them in the public school. It is true she came into their room for the morning exercises, and on one or two occasions sat with Maud. At these times Edgar was particularly pleased. The two occupying one seat helped to concen

trate his vision.

It would have overwhelmed him with shame to have had these passions known. In his speech of girls at this time he was always rough, but never coarse nor vulgar.

Olumbia had a wealthy, publicspirited citizen, and he had given the town a free library. Edgar became a patron of this institution at an early age. His first literary passion was for Oliver Optic, followed quickly by Mayne Reid. Later he read Abbott's biographies of Captain Kidd, Daniel Boone, Kit Carson and others. He professed a scorn for the line of fiction which he denominated "love stories.” In the stories he did read he occasionally came across passages dealing with the tender emotions, and these he pronounced "sickish." History was a favorite with him, particularly that of ancient and mediæval times. When he was fourteen, he made an exception in his reading in favor of "Barriers Burned Away.' The book made a great impression upon his mind. He felt a pang when he learned that there were not others by the same author. This led to his taking up Scott and Dickens, and in the next few years a great deal of fiction crept into his reading, much of it by authors not so favorably known; and these lesser writers had a distinctive influence in the formation of his character.

In the meantime his youthful heartaffections were in a chaotic condition. Maud and the Sunday-school girl had been obliged to admit others upon an equal footing. In fact there were at this time a half dozen pretty faces, the sight of any one of which would send the blood through his veins or hold. his eyes in boyish admiration, starting long trains of sweet, delicious dreams. This lasted with little change for four or five years. Near the close of this period a political landslide made a change in all the county officers, bringing into Olumbia a number of new families. John Andrews's was one of these; and Olive was the oldest daughter.

Edgar Hammond was now nineteen years old, handsome and bashful. Olive Andrews was seventeen, very pretty and not very bashful. The Hammonds and the Andrewses attended the same church. Edgar and Olive met at a social gathering. She was bright, talkative and charming; he was masculinely dull, a good listener, and-charmed. After the entertainment he walked home with her; the motion was more of her than of him, though he did ask her, haltingly, in so many words, for the privilege. They met again before the week was out, and her eyes and manner gave him a decided welcome. On Sunday evening he called and accompanied her to church; they sat in the Andrews' pew, and later sat in the Andrews' parlor, alone, until eleven. This became a regular Sunday occurrence. He talked a little of books and recommended Trollope; she read two or three of these and liked them, but preferred Mrs. Holmes. They talked a great deal more of themselves, and the friendship progressed rapidly.

When the first warm evening of spring came, they substituted the streets of Olumbia for the stuffy little parlor. Where the street lamps permitted it, they walked hand in hand in the darkness, or he slipped his arm. about her waist. He was more particular about the street lamps than she. If he kissed her three times of an evening, he thought it a great many. never occurred to him that she found as much pleasure in his society as he did in hers.

Edgar was as cautious as he was anything else. His movements were always slow. One evening Olive spoke with an apparent carelessness of her future as the life of "an old maid." At first his answer was a low laugh, expressive of the contentment of the moment; then, as she remained silent, he said: "Oh, you'll probably marry some red-headed man and be supremely happy." Now Edgar was very far from being a red-headed man.