Letters of 
 
 Thomas E. Thomas 
 
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 THE LIBRARIES 
 
LLTTLR5 
 
 OF 
 
 TH0MA5 L. THOMAS 
 
 1913 
 

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 LLTTLR5 OF THOMA5 L. THOMA5, 
 TO H15 CHILDREN AND OTHLR5, 
 MAINLY ABOUT THEIR EDUCATION. 
 AL50 LETTERS RECEIVED BY HIM 
 
 ' 'ClktiNNATI 
 THE EBBERT & RICHARDSON CO. 
 1913 
 

 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 THE Rev. Dr. Thomas E. Thomas, was born at Chelmsford, 
 England, in 1812; and died while Professor of New Testa- 
 ment Exegesis in Lane Seminary, at Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, 
 Ohio, in 1875. 
 
 Meanwhile, he was graduated at Miami University ; had 
 taught school at Rising Sun, Indiana, and at Franklin, Warren 
 County, Ohio; had studied for the ministry and served his first 
 pastorate at Harrison, Bw^er County, Ohio; had been about ten 
 years pastor of the First Presbyterian Church at Hamilton ; had 
 been for five years President of Hanover College in Indiana, and 
 then for about four years Professor in the Theological Seminary 
 at New Albany, which, removing to Chicago, became the Mc- 
 Cormick Seminary. 
 
 In 1858 he removed to Dayton, Ohio, where for about thirteen 
 years he was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, and until 
 his removal to Walnut Hills. 
 
 In 1840, Dr. Thomas married Lydia, daughter of Nathaniel 
 Fisher, of Northboro, Massachusetts. Their children were Mary 
 May, married to Col. Edwin A. Parrott at Dayton ; Elizabeth R., 
 married to Theo. Kemper, at Walnut Hills ; Alfred A., married 
 to Jennie L. Head ; John H., married to Linda R. Rogers ; Leila 
 Ada ; Nathaniel F., married to Anna Rhodes; and Ebbie and 
 Willie, who died in childhood. 
 
 The mind and promise of Willie, who died perhaps from over- 
 study, or too early return to school after scarlet fever, seemed 
 most like his father. 
 
 Little record is left of him except this programme of the day 
 which in the boy's handwriting is now in his oldest brother's 
 scrap book. It was written when Willie was nine years old. 
 
 Pro-gramme of the day. June 29th 
 
 Get up at 6 oclock. do anything till breakfast at 7. bring wood, 
 and feed the chickens till 9. Weed the garden from 9 to half past 
 9. Learn lessons From half past 9 to 10. Read from 10 to half 
 past 10. From half past 10 to 12 play horse. From 12 to half 
 
4 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 past 1, eat dinner bring wood and feed chickens. Play soldier from 
 half past 1 to 3. Read from 3 to half past 3. From half past 3 to 
 4 play ball. From 4 to 5 learn lessons. Feed Chickens, eat supper 
 and bring wood from 5 to 7. Look at pictures from 7 to a quarter 
 past eight, at a quarter past 8 go to bed. 
 
 Will Thomas 
 June 39th 
 1868 
 
 Ebbie died over fifty years ago. In Woodland Cemetery at 
 Dayton, the bodies of these boys rest beside their father; and 
 upon his tombstone is their joint epitaph: 
 
 "Why did they die so early? 
 
 Because morning cannot last till noon 
 
 nor spring through summer." 
 
I 
 
 FROM HIS FATHER 
 
 Venice, (Butler Co. O.), Aug. 8th, 1829. 
 My dear Son, 
 
 On Monday, July 27th, I commenced my journey to meet Mr. 
 Thomson.* The creeks were very full, and the roads very muddy. 
 Mr. Thomson and myself met at Mr. Hughes and stayed all night. 
 
 Tuesday, the 28th. We rode to Elizabethtown, four miles 
 from Mr. Hughes, and left an appointment to preach as we re- 
 turned. We rode seven miles farther to a Mr. Carmichaels, three 
 miles west of Lawrenceburg ; here we left an appointment to 
 preach as we returned. Thence we proceeded west 16 miles, ex- 
 pecting to preach that evening; but the people had not received 
 Mr. Thomson's letter, and, of course, no appointment was made. 
 
 The next day, Wednesday the 29th, I preached at 11 o'clock; 
 and Mr. T. preached at four in the afternoon. This is quite a 
 country place, called the Ridge, between Hogan Creek and Lochry 
 Creek. The people attended well and appeared to receive the 
 Word with gladness. We proceeded the same evening eight miles, 
 in a direction nearly south, to preach at a country place called 
 Murray's settlement. That was the most vmeven and difficult 
 road that I ever traveled : the night was on ; we lost our way ; 
 we fully expected to remain in the woods all night ; but after long 
 groping through woods and hollows, we found a house, called the 
 people up, and the man ofifered to conduct us two miles for 50 
 cents ; but we gave him 50 to let us stop in his house until morn- 
 ing. I preached at Murray's at 10 o'clock the next day. 
 
 *The Rev. John Thomson, for many years, and until 1832, pastor of the 
 Springfield, now Springdale, church. For some account of this surely 
 remarkable man, whose sons were of the little group who had the distin- 
 guished honor of founding Wabash College, see (1) note, page 30, of "Cor- 
 respondence of Thos. E. Thomas, Mainly Relating to the Anti-Slavery 
 Conflict in Ohio, Especially in the Presbyterian Church." Published by 
 his sons, 1909. (2) "The Story of a Country Church," by Chas. W. 
 Hoffman, Western Tract Society, Cincinnati, 1902. 
 
Thomas Robinson of London 
 
 Father of Elizabeth, (Mrs. Thomas Thomas) ; of Sarah, (Mrs. Edward 
 Stallybrass) ; and of Mary, (Mrs. Thomas Spencer). 
 
From His Father 7 
 
 Thursday, the 30th. We proceeded 12 miles farther south 
 and Mr. Thomson preached at a farm house about three miles 
 from Vevay. 
 
 On Friday, the 31st, we arrived at Vevay. I preached on 
 Friday at two o'clock, and again in the evening. Mr. Thomson 
 preached in a country place six miles from Vevay ; on Saturday 
 morning I preached. Mr. T. preached in the afternoon ; and I 
 preached among the Swiss. 
 
 On Sabbath, Aug. 2nd, we had prayer-meeting at eight in the 
 morning. I preached at 11; then we administered the Lord's 
 Supper, and took in thirteen new members. I went four miles 
 out of town and preached at night ; and Mr. T. preached at Vevay. 
 We had another meeting at sunrise on Monday morning, and then 
 took our leave. Our meetings were very solemn and profitable. 
 
 Give my kind love to your room-mates. I shall be glad to 
 receive a letter from you, as soon as convenient. 
 
 That you may enjoy health of body and peace of mind, rise to 
 
 great honor, as a learned, holy, useful man in this world, and 
 
 eternal glory in the world to come, is the earnest prayer of 
 
 Your affectionate father, 
 
 ^ ^u T7 ^u Thos. Thomas. 
 
 io Ihos. h. ihomas, 
 
 Miami University. 
 
 NOTE — Rev. Thomas Thomas, father of Rev. Dr. Thos. E. Thomas, of 
 Welsh parentage, and born in 1776, at Wem, in Shropshire, England, was 
 while young, a shepherd lad, and afterward worked as a coal miner. He 
 became converted, and a member of that denomination known as the Inde- 
 pendent Church. When about twenty six years old, his piety and eagerness 
 to learn attracted the notice of Thomas Wilson, Esq., whom my father 
 mentions as a well known philanthropist of London, who sent him to Hox- 
 ton Academy in London to pursue a course preparatory to the Gospel 
 ministry. Thomas Thomas then, in his diary, recorded that, "he had such 
 a sight of his own ignorance as made him afraid to go out of the house ; 
 he could scarcely write, and his own name was all he could spell with 
 certainty." 
 
 According to the custom of the Independents, he soon began preaching 
 daily, sometimes in churches, more often at taverns and in public high- 
 ways ; and to this practice he owed that vigor and fluency in extempore 
 speech for which the Independents as a body were distinguished. His 
 diary records he "spent much time in singing," and my father adds, "My 
 father had a sweet and powerful voice; was a master of vocal and instru- 
 mental music; and spared no pains then and in later life, to cultivate 
 sacred song among the young people of his charge." 
 
 In 1806, he became assistant pastor of the Independent church at 
 Chelmsford, in Essex, where he preached for the next ten years. Mean- 
 while he had married, in 1808, Elizabeth Robinson in London; and at 
 
8' Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 Chelmsford were born to them, Mary, afterwards Mrs. Nelson Gilpin of 
 Hanover, Ind., Thomas Ebenezer, whose correspondence is here published; 
 and Elizabeth, afterwards Mrs. Chas. Burrowes of Franklin, O. 
 
 I quote from my father's abstract of his father's diary: 
 
 "1814. — Toward the close of March, my father preached his farewell 
 sermon to the church of Chelmsford, before a thousand people, who were 
 affected beyond description." He says : 
 
 "I told them that it had been my desire and determination, if I should 
 ever leave them, to preach from Acts, 20 — "I am clear from the blood of 
 all men," but it was not in my power to do so. I should therefore, preach 
 on Eph. 6, 10, to the end, — "Finally, brethren, be strong in the Lord," etc. 
 I spoke with great solemnity, with many tears, and left the place of worship 
 where I had preached for ten years, never to enter it more." 
 
 Before leaving, he records: 
 
 "All the church and congregation, with many others, came to see me 
 in my own house. A prayer meeting was held there every night for about 
 two weeks, at which different persons attended in rotation, because there 
 was not room enough for all at once. The prayers and tears I shall^ never 
 forget; and I believe that many of the kind interpositions of Providence, 
 which I have since experienced, have been in answer to these fervent sup- 
 plications." 
 
 After living in Knottingley, Yorkshire, where were born Alfred, after- 
 wards married to Mary Eliza Fisher, and now living in Washington,!). C. ; 
 also Sarah Robinson, now living at Franklin, O., and after organizing a 
 Lancastrian school, he records : "While the dark clouds of political 
 troubles rolled thickly over our heads, my mind hankered after America; 
 and my wife, who was long averse to so long and difficult a journey, con- 
 senting to leave our native land we, (self, wife and five children), sailed 
 from Liverpool Sept. 9, 1818." The family landed at Baltimore, where 
 Thomas E. Thomas records, "One of the first sights my father saw in Bal- 
 timore, was the public whipping of a negro slave, which quickened his 
 natural, deep abhorrence of slavery." 
 
 He hired a wagon to take his family over the mountains ; built an ark 
 at Pittsburgh, and floating down the Ohio, after many dangers and hard- 
 ships, reached Cincinnati Feby. 9, 1819. At Cincinnati, he lived about a 
 year: he refused to join the Presbytery, and organized a Union Missionary 
 Society, based on the plan of support from all the different denominations. 
 To service under the support, or rather in the support of this organization, 
 he gave the remaining years of his life ; much of the time itinerating on 
 horseback, and organizing little flocks, and preaching in southwestern Ohio. 
 He started schools and churches among the Africans, as he always called 
 them, whom he found ignorant, abused and neglected. 
 
 At Cincinnati, a daughter, Ann, was born, since Mrs. David Linton of 
 Wilmington, O., now living in Kansas ; and afterwards a son, John, mar- 
 ried to Huldah Little, now living in Chicago. 
 
 In 1820, Thomas Thomas removed his family to the Welsh settlement 
 at Paddy's Run, Butler Co., O., where a congregation of Independents had 
 gathered, with doctrines "evangelical but not sectarian," and over which he 
 became pastor. Here he and his wife established a school where the higher 
 branches were taught, till 1828, when he became pastor of the Presbyterian 
 church at Venice in the same county. He died Oct. 31, 1831. 
 
 (A. A. T., written in 1893.) 
 
II 
 
 FROM REV. EDWARD STALLYBRASS 
 
 Missionary in Siberia 
 
 Siberia, River Khodon, Oct. 11, 1833. 
 My dear Nephew : 
 
 Your letter has at length come to hand ; but not till one of 
 those to whom it was directed was numbered with the dead. You 
 will most probably have heard from England of the removal of 
 your dear aunt from this state of trial to one, I trust, of eternal 
 enjoyment. 
 
 I was happy to learn, both from your uncle Thomas, and also 
 from your own letter, the nature of your studies and prospects. 
 I trust it is your desire and purpose to devote them all to the 
 promotion of the glory of God in the work of the gospel ; and 
 that He will be graciously pleased to employ them for this end. 
 I was also gratified to hear of the advantages which you enjoy, 
 and especially of the disinterested kindness of your professor and 
 of other friends. May the Lord reward them ten-fold for their 
 kindness; and may you be enabled to prove to them that it was 
 not, so far as it related to yourself, ill bestowed ! 
 
 I was pleased with the account you gave me of your studies. 
 And in return I will tell you what your cousins are doing. But 
 you must make all the allowance for them which their having 
 three, so to speak, vernacular languages to learn, and having 
 had no other teacher than myself and your dear aunt, requires. 
 The three languages are Russian, Mongolian and English. The 
 foremost of these they learned first ; in the second they are most 
 at home ; and the third has been most difficult of acquisition. 
 Some of them have also added to these a partial knowledge of 
 Thibetan, the sacred language of Lamaism. * * * Their loss in 
 the removal of their dearly beloved mother is great indeed. * * * 
 What pleasure did it afiford us to learn by your dear mother's 
 letter that four of you accompanied your dear father and mother 
 
Sarah Robinson Stallybrass 
 Thomas Spencer and Wife 
 
 Rev. Edward Stallybrass 
 Elizabeth Robinson Thomas 
 
From Rev. Edward Stallybrass 11 
 
 to the Lord's table on the last Sabbath of his ministrations upon 
 earth ! 
 
 * * * 
 
 We have obtained the sanction of the government for the 
 printing of the Old Testament, and I have forwarded my version 
 of the Pentateuch to St. Petersburg for censorship, (without which 
 no work may be printed in this country). I am now revising the 
 Psalms and the books of Solomon, after which I hope to revise 
 Daniel and the Minor Prophets, which will complete my share of 
 the work. The New Testament was translated by other hands, 
 and parts of it are in circulation among the people. I have now 
 been preaching in the Mongol ( ?) language more than ten years. 
 * * * I have also composed a few hymns which are sung by my 
 pupils, of whom I have at present ten. 
 
 Earnestly desiring the divine blessing to rest upon you, to fit 
 you for labor and to bless your efforts, with best love to your dear 
 mother and brothers and sisters, I remain 
 
 Sincerely and affectionately yours, 
 
 Edward Stallybrass. 
 
 NOTE — Rev. Edward Stallybrass married Sarah Robinson, who was a 
 sister of Dr. Thomas' mother Mr. and Mrs. S., immediately on their 
 marriage, went, at the instance of the London Missionary Society, to 
 Siberia. Four children, born in Siberia, grew up: Sarah married Adolph 
 Sonnenschein, a teacher and author in London; and three sons, Edward, 
 William and John, are now ministers of the gospel in England. Mrs. 
 Stallybrass died in 1833, at the mission on the Khoden, leaving the memory 
 of a beautiful Hfe. She was buried in that distant land: her biography, 
 made up mainly from her letters, was published in London. 
 
 When in St. Petersburg on their journey out, the Czar gave them_ a 
 private interview ; expressed high appreciation of their devotion, and with 
 evident feeling, promised them his prayers and his aid. But in 1840, the 
 mission was closed by the Czar's order, at the instigation of the Most Holy 
 Synod of the Greek Church. This was in reply to an application for per- 
 mission to print the Old Testament in the Mongolian tongue. The New 
 Testament had been printed and parts of it, at least, circulated. Rev. Mr. 
 Stallybrass translated the Psalms, the books of Moses, Solomon, Daniel 
 and the Minor Prophets. 
 
 Another missionary of the London Society was a classmate of Thomas 
 Thomas in Hoxton College, Robert Morrison, sent out in 1807, as the first 
 protestant missionary to China. He and my grandfather kept up a cor- 
 respondence during life. (J. H. T.) 
 
Ill 
 
 FROM HIS MOTHER 
 
 Wilmington, O., July 22, 1845. 
 My dear Son and Daughter : 
 
 I embrace the opportunity of writing by Judge Vance, to con- 
 gratulate you upon the birth of your son ; indeed I rejoice with 
 you, and pray that with the boon you may have renewed grace 
 given you that you may be enabled to train him up for God ; if it 
 please Him to make it so, — an able minister of Jesus Christ. 
 Take care though ; these little treasures steal away our thoughts, 
 and leave but half for God. Remember they are but lent treas- 
 ures, to be recalled anon : we should hold them as all other com- 
 forts, — loosely. It seems as if the Great Jehovah was reminding 
 us of this, for the same letter that announced the birth of your 
 dear little son, brought the account of Mary's trial. She is a 
 Christian, and, I hope, will be enabled to make a wise improvement 
 of the stroke. * * * 
 
 I wish something could be done for this place ; the Presby- 
 terian interest appears very low, and will sink altogether, unless 
 some devoted preacher comes in a right spirit to do good. 
 
 With much love, I am, my dear children, 
 
 Yr. affnt. Mother, 
 
 E. R. Thomas. 
 
IV 
 FROM ADAMS JEWETT, M. D. 
 
 I3ear Sir: Dayton, O., Sept. 2, 1845. 
 
 We have seen in the Philanthropist that the Xenia meeting 
 at which you expect to be present, is to be held Wednesday and 
 Thursday of next week; and we have thought that it would suit 
 best if you could make your visit to us on your way there. If 
 you could be here on the Sabbath, we should be pleased to have 
 one or more discourses on that day, hut the doors of the church 
 of your own denomination would he closed against you. We could 
 obtain, however, the use of the Christian Church, or some other 
 place. I say the doors of the Presbyterian Church would be 
 closed, on the authority of Dr. Haines, who, I believe, is an elder. 
 But if you consent to come, application shall be made to the trus- 
 tees; and it may he that the use of the church will be granted. 
 If possible, I hope you will be here that day. 
 
 If not convenient for you to be with us on Sabbath, you might 
 come on Monday, and give an address that evening, and one on 
 Tuesday evening; also, if you judge proper, Tuesday afternoon. 
 It would be desirable to put into our notices some one or more of 
 the principal points on which you would purpose to speak. 
 
 I have suggested the first of next week as the most convenient 
 time, because the Baptist Association commences its sessions on 
 Wednesday of next week; and there will be numerous meetings 
 every day at which the Baptists will wish to be present ; and they 
 will also be anxious to hear you. There are more abolitionists 
 in their Society than in any other in town. 
 
 I am not informed what family you have, but I can assure 
 you your lady and children (if you have them), will be cordially 
 welcome. A little journeying is very good for the health. You 
 and yours will be most heartily welcome at my house on Jefferson 
 St. between 2nd and 3rd Sts. 
 
 Yrs. truly, Adams Jewett. 
 
V 
 TO ADAMS JEWETT, M. D. 
 
 Dayton, O. 
 
 Rossville, 4 Sept., 1845. 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 I am greatly obliged to you for your kind invitation to visit 
 Dayton, and make your house my home, for a few days. Were 
 not my arrangements already made for next Sabbath, and appoint- 
 ments published which cannot be recalled, (nor can I procure a 
 substitute), I should avail myself of the opportunity offered. As 
 it is, I am compelled to defer my anticipated visit, for the present. 
 I visited Ripley and Red Oak, last week, and delivered three ad- 
 dresses in that region. I did wish and endeavor so to arrange 
 my appointments there and at Xenia, that I might take Dayton 
 in my route home, and spend two or three days with you. But 
 the notice had already been given for the Greene Co. Anniversary ; 
 so that plan failed. 
 
 Next Tuesday and Wednesday I shall be at Xenia. They 
 expect me on Tuesday. The week following, (Tuesday, etc.,) I 
 expect to attend Presbytery, in session at Dunlapsville, Indiana. 
 The week after, I shall be at Pleasant Hill, where I am engaged 
 to deliver an address to the Literary Societies of Gary's Academy. 
 About the first of October I shall have leisure to spend a Sabbath 
 at your place, of which I will send you due notice. I should be 
 glad to occupy the pulpit of the Old School Presbyterian Church 
 there; and you may assure the Trustees that they will not be 
 dissatisfied with my remarks, nor think them unsuitable for a 
 place of worship. 
 
 Accept my repeated thanks for your kind offer of reception, 
 of which I shall probably avail myself, and believe me, 
 
 Your fellow laborer in the cause of humanity, 
 ' Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
VI 
 TO HIS WIFE 
 
 The Assembly of 1846 
 
 Philadelphia, 22 May, 1846. 
 
 My dear Wife : 
 
 It seems a long time since I saw you, though you left me but 
 yesterday morning. I hope that before this time you are safely 
 stowed away, with your precious little charge, in Stone Cottage, 
 at home. And yet I believe you scarcely feel at home after all. 
 During the past five years your affections have centered in another 
 home ; and however much you may, and, I trust, will be gratified 
 by a visit to your "father's house," I think you will agree with me 
 in saying that there is no place like your own home. But you are 
 now to spend four or five months in New England; and must 
 therefore endeavor to trouble yourself as little as possible with 
 reflections of this sort. And according to your request, as it was 
 not our privilege to write each other "love letters" previous to 
 marriage, I shall endeavor now in sixth year of our married life, 
 to find you some employment in answering my amatory effusions. 
 You wished me to give you a series of letters in the form of jour- 
 nals, relating to the various events and employments of each suc- 
 cessive day. I begin then with. 
 
 May 21. Returned from the wharf, where I kissed my wife 
 and precious babes for the last time, and from which I saw the 
 boat take its departure for the Jersey shore. Solitary and alone 
 I wandered, as the dove from Noah's ark that found no rest for 
 the sole of her foot, and found that although my body was in 
 Philadelphia, my heart was on the way to New York. 
 
 Eleven o'clock — the Assembly convened in the tenth Presby- 
 terian church (Boardman's). 
 
 In the afternoon of this day. Dr. Charles Hodge of Princeton 
 Theological Seminary was elected Moderator of the Assembly. 
 Dr. Young of Danville, Ky. ; McFarland of Va. ; Tallmadge of 
 
Thomas E. Thomas 
 Lydia Fisher (Mrs. Thomas E. Thomas) Leii^a Ada Thomas 
 
To His Wife 17 
 
 Oglethrope University were the opposing candidates. A large 
 number of well known and distinguished men are members of this 
 Assembly; among others, besides those mentioned, Drs. R. J. 
 Breckenridge and Wm. C. Breckenridge, (the former President 
 of Jefferson College, Pa. ; the latter his brother, a pastor in Louis- 
 ville, Ky.) ; Dr. Jno. McDowell of this city, Dr. McKinley, Dr. 
 Krebs of N. Y. City, Dr. Lindsley, President of Nashville Uni- 
 versity, Dr. Scott of New Orleans, etc., etc. Brother Scovel and 
 his wife are here, from New Albany, Indiana. 
 
 May 22. This morning the Assembly received and read letters 
 from bodies in correspondence with us : the General Assembly of 
 Ireland ; the Synod of Canada ; the General Association of Massa- 
 chusetts, etc. All these letters referred in strong terms to the 
 subject of American Slavery, and such was the effect produced 
 upon several of our more sensitive members, that during the read- 
 ing of the paper from the Synod of Canada, a motion was made 
 to suspend the reading, and lay it upon the table. On this motion 
 your venerable spouse made his maiden speech in the Assembly. 
 The motion was lost, and the Synod heard. Then followed a 
 motion to refuse all further communications with that body. This 
 was lost also. So far the South has been disappointed; and I 
 shall be greatly disappointed myself, if there be not some decided 
 expression of hostility to slavery before we adjourn. Dr. John C. 
 Young, President of Danville College, Ky., is chairman of the 
 committee, into whose hands fall the memorials on slavery. He is 
 a decided enemy to slavery. Brother Fullerton and I are invited 
 to meet him in consultation upon this matter tomorrow morning. 
 
 After adjournment this morning, went to the New School 
 Assembly, which meets in Albert Barnes' church, Washington 
 Square. Dr. L. H. Cox of Brooklyn, N. Y., is Moderator. Pie 
 appears to be a very pleasant, kind-hearted man ; but, as I should 
 judge from what I saw and heard, has not sufficient gravity and 
 dignity for the chairman of such a body. He is remarkable for 
 an eccentric style. He prayed that God would bless this nation, 
 and preserve our great "e pluribus unum". Bro. Dunham, of that 
 Assembly, tells me that the whole afternoon has been occupied 
 with the reading of anti-slavery memorials, the number and char- 
 acter of which has already produced a powerful impression. 
 
18 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 This evening I attended at Albert Barnes' church to hear Rev. 
 Dr. Cheever preach the annual sermon of the Foreign Evangelical 
 Society. He failed to arrive and his place was filled by Dr. Leon- 
 ard Bacon of New Haven, who preached, or rather read his famous 
 sermon on Christian Liberty, from 2. Thess. Ill, 1, a sermon which 
 had no more to do with the text than with the first verse of the 
 Koran. The discourse was written prettily enough, and was well 
 delivered, as anything can be which is read, but it had evidently 
 no power over the audience, some of whom slept, and some retired 
 before the conclusion of the discourse. Surely this mode of 
 addressing the public is destructive to pulpit power. 
 
 May 24. This morning heard Dr. Charles Hodge, Professor 
 of Biblical Instruction in Princeton, who preached. He read his 
 sermon closely, and of course much of the efifect was lost. His 
 text was Matt. XXVIII, 19, 20. Go ye out, etc., teach, (or make 
 disciples of) all nations, etc. He insisted that the great duty of 
 the church was to teach the gospel, and that in all suitable methods. 
 This he argued from, 1. the fact that the Gospel was so extensive 
 and wonderful a system of truth that it could not be learned by a 
 few hortatory harangues. There must be line upon line, precept 
 upon precept; and the science of Christianity must be learned in 
 some degree as all other truth is learned. 2. He showed that the 
 church from the beginning and under the Mosaic dispensation, has 
 been and was an Institute for Christian instruction. 3. He argued 
 that whenever and wherever the church had been most faithful in 
 the work of instructing, not only from the pulpit, but in the family 
 circle and in the school, there and then had she been most success- 
 ful in promoting the Kingdom of Christ. 
 
 On the whole, I was much pleased. It was the best discourse 
 I have heard east of the mountains. Dr. H. has a very noble 
 countenance, and one of the most amiable expressions I ever saw. 
 As a Moderator, he is calm, dignified, and decisive, as well as bland 
 and courteous. In the afternoon heard Dr. Duffield of Detroit 
 on Heb. IV : 14, 16, and was very much disappointed. His sermon 
 was read closely, and, though prettily written in some respects, 
 was pointless and powerless. In the evening, heard Dr. Phillips 
 of New York City, preach the annual sermon before the Board 
 of Foreign Missions. His theme was the conversion of the Jews; 
 
To His Wife 19 
 
 his text somewhere in eleventh of Hebrews. The discourse was 
 written as usual, and was tedious, heavy and totally uninteresting. 
 I would not make such criticisms were I not writing for the eye 
 of my own dear wife, and for hers only. I do not like to indulge 
 the disposition to carp at sermons ; but a young preacher coming 
 from the West, and hearing the great men of the East preach such 
 sermons as almost all that I have heard, cannot easily avoid ex- 
 pressing his dissatisfaction with the system of reading instead 
 of preaching, which is so rapidly destroying the eloquence and 
 power of the pulpit. (I speak of pulpit power humano more.) 
 
 Thomas E. Thomas. 
 
vn 
 
 FROM HIS MOTHER 
 
 Hartford, Conn., June 3, 1846. 
 
 My dear Son : 
 
 I am sorry to have caused you uneasiness, but have been kept 
 in suspense myself from want of knowing where to direct to you : 
 I have told my sister here I would direct "To my Son at the Gen- 
 eral Assembly" ; even yet I must leave your address to the mercy 
 of the postmaster. 
 
 Till yesterday no paper reached me telling the doings of the 
 Assembly, and that contained only a short speech by Mr. Fuller- 
 ton. From the account I read, I was afraid you were dumb dogs 
 as Mr. Gilliland had said, or that they would not let you bark ! 
 
 My sister gave me a most cordial welcome. We have had 
 enough to do to talk over the history of thirty-five years since we 
 parted. I write in a little, retired room surrounded with portraits 
 of dear friends now in Glory : here is dear father at the head, with 
 children and grand-children and mementos in abundance of their 
 worth. Sister wishes much vol. 6 of your Magazine ; she has had 
 only the first five numbers. 
 
 Your affectionate mother, 
 
 E. R. Thomas. 
 
VIII 
 TO HIS WIFE 
 
 Rossville, (Butler Co. Ohio) 26 June, 1846. 
 
 Dearest : 
 
 While anxiously waiting for your letter No. 3, I will commence 
 another, which I will not conclude until I hear from you again. 
 
 * * * 
 
 * * * 
 
 You will wish to know how I employ myself in your absence. 
 Well, my time is divided between study, reading, visiting and letter 
 writing. I mean my working hours on week days. Yesterday 
 week, I preached from 1. Thess. 5, 17. — Pray without ceasing; — 
 that is, as I endeavored to show, Pray habitually; not occasionally, 
 casually, at hap-hazard ; but improve all the proper seasons, stat- 
 edly, for the performance of this essential act of divine worship. 
 I then pointed out the proper seasons, according to Scripture com- 
 mand and example: viz, the Sabbath; morning and evening; 
 before meals, and such other times as are distinguished for the 
 duties, trials, temptations, joys or difficulties which they bring 
 with them. 
 
 The house was full, and all seemed attentive and solemn. In 
 the afternoon, at 5 o'clock, I preached from 2 Chron. 32:24, 26. 
 Mr. Earhart, who had also been present in the morning, seemed to 
 hear with deep interest. Yesterday, I preached from 1 Pet. 
 3, 7, last clause — That your prayers be not hindered. After 
 referring to the fact that many, and sometimes even Christians, 
 seemed discouraged in regard to prayer, by the fact that it ap- 
 peared to do them little or no good, I pointed out some of the things 
 that hindered our prayers ; as living in known sin ; want of faith 
 in God and Christ as our Mediator; want of sincerity; of fer- 
 vency; of perseverance, etc. The house was, as usual, entirely 
 full ; and the people heard with much attention. I cannot but 
 hope that good is done, though no immediate results may be dis- 
 
22 Letters of Thomas E, Thomas 
 
 coverable. * * Mr. Symmes, who was at Graham's mills yes- 
 terday with his wife, requested me to preach in the grove each 
 Sabbath afternoon. To this I agreed, — so that I shall, during the 
 summer, preach three times a day as formerly, in addition to su- 
 perintending the Hamilton Sabbath-School. You see therefore 
 that our people do not intend to let me grow rusty by inactivity. 
 On Thursday evening, weekly, the teachers of Hamilton and Ross- 
 ville schools meet at my house to prepare the lesson for Sabbath. 
 These public duties; with the Wednesday prayer-meeting; and 
 the proper preparation of them; and weekly pastoral visitation, 
 and eight or ten hours a day of study, and two hours of miscellane- 
 ous reading daily ; and a correspondence with a score of persons, 
 to one of whom I write three closely filled sheets a week ; and the 
 superintendence of affairs and repairs at home ; and last, not least, 
 the duties of personal religion, may employ my time pretty fully 
 even during these long summer days. Still my mind is not so full 
 but that frequent interstices are found which, for want of other 
 materials, I fill up with thoughts of my sweet wife and precious 
 little ones, — far, far away. Now and then in the midst of my 
 labors, — will my wife forgive me, — I cannot but wish she were 
 once more at my side, under our own roof, to cheer my heart with 
 her loving smiles ; especially on Sunday evenings when I come 
 home wearied and exhausted, but to find no children watching for 
 me at the door, or running to meet me ; and no wife to spread me 
 a pillow on the settee, and read to me from the Missionary Herald ; 
 especially then do I feel that it is not good for man to be alone ; 
 and learn how unduly I prized the domestic blessings which a 
 kind Providence has bestowed ! And what do you suppose I do 
 on such sad occasions ? Sit down and cry ? — Not a tear ! I 
 simply stretch myself along the sofa, solitary and alone, and say 
 to myself, — Won't I be glad when Lydia and the babies come home. 
 
 Last week I went to Cincinnati to see whether I could procure 
 some volumes from the Tract Society, for circulation in this neigh- 
 borhood. You know that you suggested that I should perform a 
 sort of voluntary colportage here during your absence. I re- 
 gretted to find, however, that the agents who only could authorize 
 me to take the books, (unless I paid for thein in advance, which I 
 could not do), were absent from the city. I bought in the city, 
 
To His Wife 23 
 
 a Hebrew Chrestomathy by Dr. Nordheimer ; intended for use in 
 the study of the Hebrew Bible, especially in the Pentateuch, in 
 connection with his grammar, which you know I value highly. J 
 also purchased (forgive me, I could not resist the temptation), a 
 copy of Dr. Robinson's Greek Harmony of the Gospels. It pre- 
 sents the Life of Christ chronologically arranged, and taken from 
 the Evangelists. I may, perhaps, send you from time to time, such 
 new thoughts as occur to me during the perusal of this Harmony. 
 Very often the discourses of the Saviour appear in a new and 
 striking light, when viewed in immediate connection with the cir- 
 cumstances which suggested or accompanied them. 
 * * * 
 
 By the way, I believe I have never mentioned the very kind and 
 cordial manner in which I was welcomed home by all classes of 
 persons, just as if I had been absent a year; and wherever I go 
 and whoever I meet, the kindest enquiries are made about you. 
 How is her health; and the children's? When will she return, 
 etc., etc. Truly we may say as one of old. We dzvell among our 
 own people! * * 
 
 You ask me to say when I will leave Ohio for the East ; and 
 how long the people will consent to my remaining absent. I need 
 not ask them in regard to this latter point ; for I know that while 
 they would, of course, wish me to return as soon as possible, they 
 would also allow me to take whatever time I thought proper. I 
 have not been absent from them for two Sabbaths together for 
 nearly six years ; and they do not consider my attendance on the 
 Assembly as a vacation from duty. * * I should be glad to see 
 Washington, N. H., and to fan your cheeks with the mountain air 
 of that elevated region. I feel exceedingly anxious that you should 
 recover your strength and youthful bloom once more. * * Take 
 all the outdoor exercise possible, and don't neglect improving to 
 the utmost the bracing air of your Yankee hills. H spared to meet 
 again in the fall, let me see blooming cheeks, sparkling eyes and 
 cheerful smiles ; the natural and beautiful indications of a light 
 heart. Do not feel any hesitation, dearest, in asking as many 
 questions as you please. It will not be tedious to answer them, I 
 assure you. As a Yankee, you know, this is your birthright ; and 
 
34 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 as a wife, — certainly an easy privilege to be conceded by a hus- 
 band. 
 
 Do I "remember what a wakeful, fidgetty, little thing Lizzie 
 used to be"? I hope so. I should have a very short memory 
 otherwise. 
 
 Lizzie : Your father never forgets you. You must obey mother 
 and help her all you can. Ask her to teach you about Jesus, who 
 once took little children like you and Ally in his arms, laid his hands 
 upon them, and blessed them. One of these little children, it is 
 said, was called Ignatius ; and he afterwards lived to be a very 
 good and useful man. Love Mary and little brother. Do not 
 trouble poor mother when she is busy. Play prettily in the open 
 air, under the shady trees. Do not go near the horse, nor let the 
 dog bite you. Do not hunt the little chickens, nor take Ally into 
 any danger. Be a dear, good girl and remember that if God pleases 
 you shall soon see me again, 
 
 Your own dear Father. 
 
 And now goodbye, sweet wife, goodbye, which really means, 
 and so I mean it, God he zvith ye. 
 
 Adieu, I commend you to God. And remember that I am and 
 shall be while our lives last, 
 
 Your affectionate Husband, 
 
 Thos. E. Thomas. 
 
IX 
 
 TO MR. NATHANIEL FISHER 
 
 His Father-in-La\s^ 
 
 Dear Sir: Rossville, (Hamilton) O., 15 Aug. 1849. 
 
 When I wrote you I was in good health ; but in a day or two, 
 I was attacked with cholera, and brought, in a very few hours, to 
 the borders of eternity. At first, I had no idea that I should die ; 
 but in the course of a day I was almost persuaded that my race 
 was run, and that the Master had sent me word to enter into rest. 
 Through the grace of God I had no fears of death, but rather felt 
 desirous to be absent from the body and to be present with Christ. 
 I could most quietly have closed my eyes on time, resting in the 
 arms of a precious Savior. But the Lord had ordered otherwise; 
 the crisis passed and I recovered as it seemed with great rapidity. 
 * * I have much reason for gratitude that all the sickness sent 
 upon my family fell upon myself. My dear wife has enjoyed good 
 health, although worn down by constant anxiety and toil. 
 
 * * 
 
 Dear Sir • ^^^ September, 1849. 
 
 Since I last wrote you I have received from the Trustees of 
 Hanover College a notification of my election to the Presidency of 
 that Institution ; and after mature reflection and consultation with 
 my friends, I have concluded to accept the appointment. Both 
 Lydia and I are clearly of the opinion that it is my duty. We 
 have, indeed, many inducements to remain here. * * On the other 
 hand, I have never expected to spend my days in Hamilton, and 
 therefore have never been installed. I have always taken great 
 pleasure and have had a good degree of success in teaching. Those 
 who know me best seem to judge me adapted to some such station 
 as that to which I am now called. My most impartial and judi- 
 cious friends, including Dr. Bishop, the first President; Dr. Mac- 
 Master, the last President of Miami University; Dr. Brecken- 
 
26 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 ridge of Louisville, Ky., and others, who are intimately acquainted 
 with Hanover College, have advised me to accept this call. Many 
 of the Trustees of Hanover are personal friends of long standing ; 
 some of them old classmates in college at Oxford. The members 
 of the Faculty with whom I am to be associated are also personal 
 friends whom I have known for years. The College itself is under 
 the care of two Synods in the Presbyterian Church, and being 
 the only college so controlled in the free States in the West, is 
 likely to secure a large support and patronage, especially from 
 Presbyterian families which are by no means the worst in the 
 world. It has been in existence since 1827, when the Salem Pres- 
 bytery established it as a Grammar School; and now, after various 
 reverses, it is placed upon a safe footing; having collected during 
 the past two years, a new endowment of $30,000 ; having an annual 
 income of nearly $4,000 ; and having had in the last year, 180 stu- 
 dents. The Village of Hanover is located on the Indiana side of 
 the Ohio River, 100 miles below Cincinnati ; six miles below Mad- 
 ison, the largest city in the State, and fifty miles above Louisville 
 and New Albany. This situation renders the College easily ac- 
 cessible from the South and West. The village stands upon a 
 bluff some 500 or 600 feet above the Ohio, and one mile back from 
 the river, of which the new College buildings will command a view 
 for fifteen miles. It contains 300 inhabitants, a very quiet, orderly, 
 religious people. It is also remarkable for healthiness, and is in 
 the midst of the most romantic scenery to be found in the West. 
 The only building belonging to the Institution is very shabby ; 
 being the shattered remains of one that was almost destroyed by a 
 tornado some years since ; but arrangements are already moving 
 to erect a large and handsome edifice in the coming Spring. The 
 opportunity of usefulness afforded in the instruction of one or 
 two hundred young men, a considerable number of whom are to 
 be the future ministers of our church, is much greater than that 
 of any ordinary pastoral charge ; and although much responsibility 
 belongs to such a position as that which I am to occupy, yet I hope 
 that I shall find it a source of real satisfaction. The village is. 
 indeed, a very plain, primitive, back-woods affair ; and some 
 inconvenience must be expected at least for a few years. I remem- 
 ber very well, however, when there was but one paved street in 
 
To Mr. Nathaniel Fisher 37 
 
 Cincinnati. With respect to the means of support, I am informed 
 that the College is free from debt, and during the past year has 
 been able to punctually meet all its engagements. When I con- 
 sented to go to Hanover in July, the salary of the President was 
 but $800 ; after my election the Trustees advanced it to $1,000 
 per annum. Considering that other members of the Faculty have 
 lived there comfortably for $600, I think I may be satisfied in this 
 respect. 
 
 Love from all to all. 
 
 Your affec . Son, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
X 
 TO MISS SOPHRONIA S. FISHER 
 
 Hanover College, Ind., 24 Feby., 1851. 
 
 My dear Sister Sophronia: 
 
 If I have never before written to you, which is the fact I be- 
 lieve, it is not because I have forgotten the little ten year old 
 beauty, who looked so strangely upon me when I came to carry 
 off her sister. That little beauty, I know, has grown up to tall 
 womanhood ; the mind has developed with the body ; and perhaps 
 could you and I see the twofold effects of the past ten years, we 
 should hardly know each other. And yet, through our mutual 
 friend, my good wife, we have kept pretty well acquainted with 
 the changes of each other's life. I often wish I could look into 
 that beautiful Yankee nursery where you have been immured so 
 many years ; but from which, I believe, the most of you emerge to 
 take the veil, not of sanctity, but of matrimony : well your turn 
 will come some day; and then, perhaps, you will wend your way 
 westward, like the star of Empire, to shine upon the darkness of 
 us outside barbarians. Wife tells me you are to spend the winter 
 with us, after graduating. I hope so ; but I should wish to pre- 
 pare your mind, that you may not be shocked by a too sudden view 
 of western institutions. ( 
 
 Imagine, then, a river as unlike your beautiful Connecticut as 
 possible ; whose waters surpass it in length, width, and depth, as 
 far as the lovely banks of the former surpass the forest-covered 
 hills, and corn-covered banks of the latter. Imagine yourself put 
 off from a yawl upon a muddy beach, where you sink eighteen or 
 twenty inches into the soil ; after extricating yourself from which, 
 you walk a mile and a half "up a high hill", like that over which 
 an ancient tried to heave "a huge round stone". Ascending the 
 hill, you are struck with a certain wildness of scenery in the singu- 
 lar gorge through which winds the rough road, a wildness which 
 you would term romantic, had you not become familiar with 
 
To Miss Sophronia S. Fisher 29 
 
 Mt. Tom, Mt. Holyoke, Wachusett and fifty other prominencies 
 whose cleft sides have vast gorges and precipices, where our Httle 
 western gully would be ashamed to be seen. The water does 
 indeed trickle most sweetly, especially in a moonlight summer 
 night, over the numerous surrounding cascades ; and the broken 
 masses of rock, scattered like castles ruined, over the steep hill- 
 sides, remind one of the Rhine banks, the Appenine passes, etc. : 
 but then, you have heard water trickle before ; your feet are mud- 
 dy; the road is dirty; and probably the rain is trickling down 
 from the points of your umbrella ; and on the whole, the scenery 
 is not so wonderful as some imaginative persons might suppose. 
 Well, plodding along, and wishing that some Yankee would teach 
 us Great- Westerners how to make wharf-boats, omnibuses and 
 good roads, you begin to emerge toward the top of the hill ; and 
 passing Young's tan yard with a small shoemaker's shop adjoin- 
 ing, you perceive for the first time, the spire of the university 
 building. There that edifice stands confessed ; — a long, dingy, 
 two-storied, whitish, brick afifair, with a front of tmly Hanoverian 
 Architecture. Satisfied with one glance at the College, you look 
 around for the village. * * 
 
 Our domestic residences, are, as the poet says, "like angels 
 visits, few and far between". And the worst of the matter is, that 
 on close inspection, one is sorely tempted to wish for the honor of 
 the town, that they were fewer and farther apart. 
 
 And now after a little conversation, the truth breaks in upon 
 your mind, for the first time, that the glory of Hanover lies in its 
 one hundred and fifty young men, equal in native strength of mind, 
 in purity of character, in intellectual acquisitions and wealth of 
 affection, to any like number who can be picked out of any part 
 of Christendom ; young men, some of whom are to be Legislators, 
 Senators, Judges, or better yet. Philosophers, Ministers, Mission- 
 aries, ranking with the very first men of their day in respectability, 
 influence and usefulness; and last, not least, exceedingly suitable 
 as husbands for the graduates of some Yankee Female Seminary. 
 
XI 
 TO HON. JOHN M. MILLIKIN 
 
 Hamilton, O. 
 
 Hanover College, 26 Feby., 1851. 
 My dear Sir: 
 
 You have already heard from Minor that God has been pleased 
 graciously to pour out His Spirit upon us ; and that a considerable 
 number of young persons are indulging a hope of having passed 
 from death unto life. Of about 80 students who are connected 
 with our regular college classes, now on the ground, only four 
 remain without apparent conversion. Every member of Minor's 
 class, the Freshmen ; every member of the Senior class ; more 
 than half the Juniors are hopefully Christians. Minor has told 
 you, I doubt not, his own experience of this matter; and I may 
 add that he gives very delightful evidence of a true conversion. 
 This work has been, I trust, truly of God, and not of man. No 
 unusual means by way of preparation were employed by the church 
 here. The revival came upon us like a clap of thunder from a 
 clear sky ; though, unlike that, it was noiseless and quiet. But 
 one sermon has been preached in addition to our usual religious 
 exercises. We held evening prayer meetings for the most of one 
 week; and inquirers were invited to remain. No attempt was 
 made to produce excitement ; nor has there been any. I have seen 
 several revivals of religion ; but not one where the divine power 
 was more conspicuous. These facts lead us to hope that the 
 results will show the work to have been genuine ; though among 
 so many, (some seventy), mostly young men (all single, for not 
 a married person has been awakened), it would be quite unusual 
 if some were not deceived by mere sympathy. I should add that 
 our regular college duties have been performed, as if no such work 
 was in progress. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
To Hon. John M. Millikin 31 
 
 NOTE — Few pupils of my father ever won and kept a place so near 
 his heart, or were so lamented in their death, as Minor Millikin. More 
 than most others, he took up and wore with pride in daily life, all that Dr. 
 Thomas taught and valued most. He was the grandson of Dr. Daniel Milli- 
 kin and Joseph Hough, two of the prominent pioneers of Southern Ohio; 
 and was the son of Maj. Jno. M. Millikin, of Hamilton. After attending 
 College at Hanover, he was graduated at Miami University, in 1854 ; at- 
 tended the law school of Harvard University ; studied law with Gov. 
 Thomas Corwin ; married, at Oxford, O., Miss Mary Mollyneaux, and 
 made a European tour, and after returning, was engaged in literary work, 
 when roused by the tap of the drum in 1861. He soon became Colonel of 
 the First Ohio Cavalry. Minor Millikin was always a trained athlete; an 
 accomplished swordsman, and fond of horsemanship. I think in uniform 
 he was the most soldierly figure I ever saw ; and he always seemed to me 
 a knight of chivalry, dropped down on times, when, in things pertaining 
 to war or peace, "the age of chivalry had gone." One time in Dayton, he, 
 in uniform, and accompanied by Dr. Cyrus Falconer, an old-time elder of 
 the Hamilton Church, called at our house, and I led them to Dr. Thomas' 
 church study, where they found him surrounded and almost covered with 
 books, engaged in writing his lectures on the prophecies of Daniel. The 
 sight gave them much merriment and him no less pleasure ; for he leaped 
 over the books, clasped each by the hand, exclaiming, "What ! to kill and 
 to cure ! to kill and to cure !" 
 
 Col. Millikin was one of the few soldiers of his rank, that Ohio sent 
 to the war, who died in a hand to hand contest with an enemy. At the 
 battle of Murfreesboro, his brigade of cavalry saved the ammunition train 
 of Gen. Rosencrans' army, fighting for hours, against fearful odds part of 
 Wheeler's Confederate horsemen, who had been sent around our army 
 for its capture. A remarkable letter of his father, Maj. Jno. M. Millikin, 
 to my father, is lost ; in which he described his son's death with great 
 detail of place and circumstance; how w^hen surrounded, he refused to 
 surrender, but swung his sabre so no one dare approach him, till some one 
 from behind, shot him with a shot-gun, in the neck fatally. I only remember 
 of this letter one burst of grief and pride, ending with these words, "He 
 died as I had a right to expect him to die, in a cavalry charge, at the head 
 of his regiment, sword in hand and far in among the enemy." 
 
 In a letter not now in our possession, Dr. Thomas thus spoke of him : 
 "No loss of life in this sad war has so deeply afflicted me. I loved 
 Minor, as I have loved but few friends. The recollection of his cheerful, 
 intelligent countenance; of his manly form, his pleasant voice; of his 
 clear, active, cultivated mind; his gentlemanly bearing; his warm, affec- 
 tionate heart; above all, of his sincere piety, and the purity of his life, 
 will remain with me while memory fulfills its office." (A. A. T.) 
 
XII 
 FROM THOS. J. COGLEY, M. D. 
 
 Madison, Ind., May 28, 1853, 
 My dear Sir: 
 
 Your very kind letter of the 25th is received, in which you say, 
 "I disHke to introduce scientific illustrations into sermons, (thoug-h 
 convinced that a more frequent use of them is both rational and 
 scriptural), because I know that a daily familiarity with scientific 
 or professional studies is necessary, if one would avoid blunders 
 in extempore discourse". 
 
 I would not have troubled you with this note only that I feel 
 a strong desire to urge you to introduce such illustrations, and if 
 possible, introduce them more frequently; and be assured you 
 can do so without the least risk of blundering. 
 
 It is assuredly one of the great charms of your discourses, that 
 you generally illustrate your positions, by fundamental principles 
 in philosophy and science, which in themselves are perfectly charm- 
 ing, and serve to rivet the attention, in a manner which nothing 
 else can equal. 
 
 Transfusion is practised in this way. The blood is drawn from 
 the usual place in the arm of a healthy, stout man ; is caught in 
 a vessel; and, while warm, is drawn into a syringe, and injected 
 into the corresponding vein of the patient. It is of the utmost 
 importance to avoid injecting air into the veins, in this operation; 
 it causes death the moment it reaches the heart. 
 
 But your point was as well, indeed it was better, illustrated by 
 supposing the use of arterial blood. No Sir, do not think of 
 abandoning one of the greatest charms of your preaching; you 
 may well trust that memory of yours in that as in all other respects ; 
 it is incomparably better than any I have ever known. If I had 
 your memory with my own industry and perseverance, ambition 
 and desire for knowledge, I could attain the highest position in 
 medicine. My memory is good, but yours is superlatively good. 
 
XIII 
 TO PROFESSOR JARED M. STONE 
 
 New Albany, 17 Feb., 1855. 
 My dear Brother Stone : 
 
 I thank you for the very kind and fraternal letter which' I 
 received a week or two since. An interchange of compliments, 
 not to say flatteries, would be useless and contemptible ; but the 
 respect, confidence and afifection of those with whom I have been 
 long associated, and who therefore know me best, is one of the 
 richest recompenses of life. 
 
 There is no remark in your letter, so far as I remember, which 
 calls for any particular reply. I wrote a part of my last letter 
 under the impression that you had probably determined to seek a 
 pasitorate. That impression being removed by the explanation 
 you have given, I need only add that yoii understand my position 
 in respect to the presidency of Hanover. I agree with you that 
 your proper field of labor is a college. Not that you would not 
 find a pastoral charge hereafter, as heretofore, pleasant and use- 
 ful. But your tastes and habits are, in my judgment, more 
 adapted to college duties; and surely no station in life is more 
 honorable, or responsible. Our church colleges, especially, where 
 so many Christian youth are assembled, and where so many are 
 prepared for the Gospel ministry, are worthy of our most zealous 
 labors and fervent prayers. How little of the talent of the rising 
 generation is consecrated to Christ ! How much needs to be done 
 to bring educated young men under the influence of the Gospel ! 
 Of scarcely less importance is it to secure a real and thorough 
 education to those who are themselves to be the Christian teachers 
 of thousands. The Presbyterian Church, far from raising the 
 ministerial standard too high, stands in great need of a truly 
 learned as well as pious ministry. I say she needs them. How 
 little real scholarship is to be found among our ministers ! Not- 
 withstanding our colleges, universities, and theological seminaries, 
 
34 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 how many men have we who are capable of reading inteUigently, 
 and expounding properly, that Holy Word, which in its original 
 tongues, is the ultimate standard of faith and practice. Leigh, 
 in his Critica Sacra, commends the British Parliament of his day, 
 because in their zeal for a competent ministry, they had required 
 an examination of candidates as to their ability to open the Hebrew 
 and Greek Scriptures and render their contents into Latin ! How 
 many of our candidates, — I do not say ministers, — could stand 
 the application of such a test? Yet this was in the seventeenth 
 century. We want far more care and drilling in the elements, 
 especially of the languages ; a far more critical examination of 
 authors in the advanced classes ; a better understanding of idio- 
 matic expressions ; in short, a real knowledge, instead of that mere 
 nominal, superficial smattering, with which so many even of our 
 graduates are content. 
 
 To accomplish such a work is an end deserving all our toils 
 and sacrifices. We may receive a wretched pecuniary recompense 
 here ; but there is a certain and satisfying reward hereafter. Cer- 
 tainly learning without piety is worthless ; but piety without learn- 
 ing will never qualify men for a service in which one must be "apt 
 to teach". And sham learning is rather worse than no learning; 
 for it prevents its unhappy possessor from becoming conscious of 
 his deficiencies. 
 
 I need not multiply words on such a subject to you ; but I feel 
 more and more impressed, by years of experience and observation, 
 with the fact that our common standard of scholarship is miser- 
 ably low, so far as the ministry is concerned. How shall it be ele- 
 vated ? 
 
XIV 
 TO REV. JACOB COOPER 
 
 New Albany, Ind., 11th May, 1855. 
 My dear Friend : 
 
 Your first letter reached me during the sickness of our young- 
 est son, a boy of almost three years last winter. He died on the 
 18th of April. Your second was written on the 25th April, and 
 reached me after my return from Indianapolis. The death of 
 Ebbie, (he died of scarlet fever), was followed by less severe 
 attacks of disease upon two others of our children. All are well 
 now. These circumstances must account for any apparent delay 
 in replying to your favors. As to the latter, I will write this after- 
 noon to Dr. Young of Danville, and forward the recommendation 
 you desire, which I do with great pleasure, and hope you will suc- 
 ceed in your application. Should you fail there, I shall take pains 
 to secure you a similar situation elsewhere. 
 
 As to the subject of your first letter, in the midst of the intense 
 anxieties which overwhelmed me when I received it, I could not 
 give it due attention ; and my repeated and protracted absence 
 from home since Ebbie's death has interfered with that full con- 
 sideration which its importance demands. To be successful, the 
 proposed work must be the labor of a whole life, most diligently 
 employed. One ought to be well assured, as to duty, before he 
 devotes his entire life to any single object. Now, that critical 
 labor upon the text of the Old and New Testament has heretofore 
 rendered invaluable and indispensable service to the cause of 
 Christ, is unquestionable. But whether, after all the toil that 
 has been expended upon that department, from the days of Eras- 
 mus, Beza, the Stephens, etc., down to Griesbach, Scholz, etc.. any- 
 thing remains to be done, demanding the energies of a life, is 
 worthy of inquiry. Again, is the way clear for such a work ; is 
 there a demand for a critical edition of the New Testament, such 
 as to enable one to secure the necessary pecuniary support ? It is 
 
36 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 not long since Bagster first introduced the edition of Scholz to the 
 British public. Within three years Dr. Tregelles of Oxford, Eng- 
 land (I believe) issued proposals for a new critical Testament, to 
 be printed in quarto form, etc. He was said to have spent many 
 years in preparation, and to be admirably qualified for the task. I 
 saw proof sheets and subscribed for a copy, which the agent said 
 would be forthcoming in a twelvemonth ; but I have heard nothing 
 more of the work. Has it ever been issued? Or did it fail for 
 want of subscribers ? 
 
 A third inquiry^ must be, have you the means adequate to the 
 completion of such an enterprise? Have you access to any new 
 MSS. ? Or can you give MSS. formerly examined a more search- 
 ing examination? Of course I know not what information you 
 may have on this point ; what new sources of critical evidence you 
 may have discovered ; what more than Californian and Australian 
 mine you may have opened. To tread the old track of former 
 critics, and glean their leavings, would hardly repay the labor ; — ■ 
 at least I should suppose so, without pretending to any special 
 acquaintance with the field, as I suppose you have. 
 
 I merely suggest these considerations, for the present, hoping 
 to have further opportunity for remark, when I shall have learned 
 more fully the resources upon which you rely. 
 
XV 
 FROM MR. JAMES R. GARRISON 
 
 Hamilton, O., Sept. 5th, 1855. 
 D. D. Thomas, 
 
 Much loved Friend : 
 
 I write you but a line this morning in haste, stating the almost 
 certain removal of Rev. Mr. Christian from Hamilton : a word to 
 the wise is sufficient. I think there are men enough that cannot 
 preach, to teach. God is opening the way for you to come home ; 
 you have been long enough away, I think. 
 
 Brother T. E. I thought of writing to you often : nothing has 
 deterred me but my poor scholarship : this is voluntary of myself. 
 Your friends are well. There is nothing more than common-place 
 news. My family is well, through the mercy of God: thanks to 
 Him. Our Synod meets at Chillicothe on the 27th, as you are 
 aware. God willing, I may be. there. 
 
Katherine Parrott (Mrs. Walter S. Gorringe) Thomas M. Parrott 
 
 Mary May Thomas (Mrs. Edwin A. Parrott) 
 Elizabeth Kemper Parrott Ethel Parrott (Mrs. Edwin Farmer) 
 
XVI 
 TO HIS DAUGHTER AT SCHOOL 
 
 New Albany Theo. Sem., 30 Sept., 1856. 
 
 My dear Daughter Mary: 
 
 We have received your first letter, and are glad to hear that 
 you are pleased v^ith your situation and employment. That you 
 would be pleased with such advantages as you there enjoy, of 
 study, of select companions, and of agreeable and qualified in- 
 structors, I had no doubt. You are your father's daughter as 
 well as your mother's ; and both of them were ever fond of study. 
 I remember well when I first heard that I should enjoy the privi- 
 lege of attending a college. I had gone with my father to a com- 
 munion at Mr. Gilliland's church in Bethel, where Dr. Bishop was 
 also present. On Saturday night I had retired to bed early. Dr. 
 B. and father came up an hour later; and supposing me to be 
 asleep, (for I was in the same room), they entered into conversa- 
 tion about my education. At length Dr. B. said to father, — "Well, 
 send Ebenezer to college next term ; and I will provide the means 
 of paying his board." He had no sooner uttered the words than 
 my head swam like a top. The thought that I should go to college 
 made me dizzy with joy. And surely there was reason for it. 
 The opportunity of cultivating the mind at an early period of life 
 is an inestimable privilege. Our soul is our noble part. Bodily, 
 we are of the same dust with the beasts of the earth, and the fowls 
 of heaven, (Gen. 2:19) of nobler form and aspect, indeed as Ovid 
 says, 
 
 Pronaque cum spectant animalia caetera terram ; 
 Os homini sublime dedit: coelumque tueri 
 Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus, 
 
 (you read Latin now; and may take this as the first extra lesson 
 set by your father : he hopes to give you many more hereafter, as 
 well as some in Greek and Hebrew), or to use the more familiar 
 language of Milton, respecting our first parents. 
 
40 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 "Two of far nobler shape erect and tall 
 Godlike erect ! * * 
 His large, fair front and eye sublime," etc. 
 
 See the whole passage, Par. Lost, Book 4, line 228. Bodily "all 
 go to one place : all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." "But 
 who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit 
 of the beast that goeth downward to the earth ?" (Eccl. 3 :20, 21) . 
 It is our spirit that allies us to the higher order of beings, "thrones 
 and dominions and principalities and powers", (Col. 1:16), that 
 allies us even to God himself, for "God is a spirit" (Jno. 4:24) ; 
 not a mere spiritual nature, however, for in that we are like devils, 
 as well as angels ; but a cultivated and sanctified spirituality is 
 that which makes us "partakers of a divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4). 
 It is the "new man" which after God, i. e., (id est you know, or 
 that is) after the image of God is created in righteousness and 
 true holiness (Eph. 4:24), which is renewed in knowledge after 
 the image of Him that created us" (Col. 3 :18). 
 
 Our spirit, therefore, in itself considered, in its nature and 
 capabilities is that which makes a resemblance to our Maker attain- 
 able to us. The cultivation of that spirit, not mere human cul- 
 ture, indeed, but its renezval in knozvledge, righteousness and holi- 
 ness is that which makes us children of a Heavenly Father, 
 Human culture is valuable chiefly as fitting us for a higher degree 
 of spiritual improvement and enjoyment. We must not Hmit the 
 power of the Holy Spirit, whose office it is to enlighten and sanctify 
 the soul ; but ordinarily, a high degree of sanctification is not 
 found associated with a low degree of mental cultivation. Of 
 course, I do not mean that the most intelligent are usually the most 
 pious ; you see proof to the contrary daily : on the other hand, 
 however, you do not expect the very highest style of Christian 
 spirituality among really converted Sandwich Islanders or South 
 Africans. As the existence of a nature such as that of our spirit, 
 in distinction from that of lower animals, is the essential basis for 
 the work of the Holy Spirit in sanctification ; so a good degree of 
 merely human mental cultivation, the discipline and development 
 of the faculties themselves, seem necessary to a high degree of 
 sanctification. For the Spirit of God renews us first in knowledge, 
 then in righteousness and holiness. I speak, observe, of the work 
 
To His Daughter at School 41 
 
 of sanctiUcation, not of regeneration. The latter is an act, not a 
 work ; instantaneous, not gradual ; complete, not progressive. In 
 the former, God operates tiipon the heart and will through the 
 understanding. But the understanding of a creature is necessarily 
 limited by nature. Its power to comprehend truth, any truth, 
 divine or human, is further limited by the extent of its develop- 
 ment and exercise. An infant Napoleon would not understand 
 Euclid. The understanding of a full grown but untaught bar- 
 barian could not grasp the higher truths of science. And while, 
 as I say again, we must not limit the Holy One of Israel, we have 
 reason to believe that when God designs to bestow the highest 
 degree of spiritual illumination, there he will previously afford the 
 opportunity for mental improvement of a merely human sort. 
 
 If this be true then, as I said before, such an opportunity is to 
 be prized chiefly because it capacitates us for receiving in larger 
 measure the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit. And yet how 
 seldom is education regarded, much less valued in this its highest 
 relation ! Perhaps the very idea of such a relation has never 
 occurred to the mind even of Christian parents. Evidently it 
 should lie at the foundation of all our plans and labors with refer- 
 ence to our own education or that of our children. By this fact, 
 all our systems of training should be tested and directed. Edu- 
 cation should be the handmaid to religion. All the maxims that 
 should regulate the system, the teacher, or the pupil, may be de- 
 duced from this relation. I will not now attempt the deduction, 
 but will content myself with one of prime importance to you, and 
 which I mean to make the main idea of my first letter to my first 
 child at school abroad. 
 
 If education is valuable chiefly because it may prepare for 
 growth in grace, then growth in grace must never be subordinated 
 to the attainment of an education. Plainly, the closest, daily 
 devotional reading of the Bible, meditation, the private and per- 
 sonal duties of piety, must never be neglected or hurried over, 
 in order to prepare a school lesson. We must find time for our 
 directly religious deities. Growth in grace is the end : the Divine- 
 ly constituted means of grace stand nearest in their relation to 
 that end : when school work trenches upon the proper use of those 
 
42 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 means, it ceases to be a means to the end for which it was designed. 
 The end is forgotten : the means, one of the means, become an 
 end. The true relations are reversed : evil must follow. 
 
 I hope to write you once a week; but if I should not find time 
 for this, do not suppose that anything serious has happened. We 
 are all well. Lizzie seems pleased with her High School, but she 
 will give her own account of it. The boys are at Miss Paxton's 
 and seem to be at work. I was much pleased with your penman- 
 ship, especially in your letter to Miss Emma Bicknell. Take pains 
 to write neatly. It is a recommendation in a lady. I hope to see 
 you next Tuesday week, on my way to Cincinnati Synod. I will 
 call if I can. My respects to your teachers. All unite in love, 
 especially dear Ma and your afifectionate father. 
 
XVII 
 TO HIS DAUGHTER 
 
 New Albany, 15 Nov., 1856. 
 My dear Daughter Mary: 
 
 I send you a copy of Virgil, Bullion's Greek Reader, etc. I 
 supposed you had bought these books with the money I sent you 
 from Urbana, which was 20 francs in gold. A franc, you know, 
 is a French coin, five of which equal 95 cents ; so that your piece 
 was $3.80. 
 
 I am quite satisfied with your report ; considering the number 
 of your studies ; that is, if you had been perfect in so many things, 
 I should have found that you had been too closely engaged. In- 
 deed, I do not need any report to assure me that Mary May will 
 be diligent in study, and will fully improve her opportunities. 
 My only fear is that you will neglect the care of your health in 
 endeavoring too much. The truth is, you ought not to have under- 
 taken Geometry in connection with Algebra. The latter properly 
 precedes the former in a regular course of study ; and one mathe- 
 matical study is sufficient. If your teacher would consent, I would 
 prefer that you would drop Geometry until you have completed 
 Algebra. It is not right to ride a free horse to death. The mindj 
 you know, is like the body in this, that it may be overworked. 
 Too much food taken at once hinders digestion, and impairs the 
 tone of the stomach. So too many subjects, brought in rapid 
 succession before the mind, impair its power of analysis and com- 
 prehension. The wild Indians who were taken through the city 
 of London, to look at the lions, returned home at night pressing 
 their hands to their foreheads, and exclaiming in broken English, 
 "Too much house, too (much people." The mind becomes bewil- 
 dered and confused ; and not only retains a vague and feeble im- 
 pression of what is presented ; but what is far worse, if the under- 
 taking be continuous, a careless and superficial habit is formed, 
 which incapacitates it for real scholarship. We cannot, on the 
 other hand, study any one subject continuously; a change is neces- 
 
44 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 sary : and the mind, jaded with intense investigation of any one 
 thing, turns to another, perhaps equally difficult, but of a different 
 character, as if it were a relaxation. This may be repeated until 
 mental exhaustion demands an entire suspension of close thought. 
 
 True mental cultivation must be guided by a knowledge of the 
 mind. These require 1° (the ° stands for the termination of primo, 
 firstly; as 2'> for secundo, 3° for tertio, etc., — this is the neatest 
 mode of marking divisions). These require, I say, 1° a sufficient 
 variety of studies to relieve the monotony of thought. 2° a selec- 
 tion of alternating studies adapted to the development of different 
 faculties; as Languages, Mathematics and History; or Lan- 
 guages, Mathematics and Belles Lettres or Natural Science. 3° 
 That not more than from four to six hours a day should be em- 
 ployed in close study ; in which time I would not include the hours 
 of recitation, as recitation is commonly conducted. 4° The ex- 
 clusive direction of the entire mind to one subject at one time: 
 so that while you spend your two hours on Virgil, for example, 
 you should speak and think of nothing, absolutely nothing, during 
 those two hours, but your Latin. Toties in illis, is the Horatian 
 precept ; or as St. Paul says to the minister in his vocation Tavra 
 fjieXkra ev tovtol^ kjOl (you read Greek now, "meditate on these 
 things ; give yourself wholly to them, that thy profiting may 
 appear unto all.") (1 Tim. 4:15). 
 
 To master anything, one must analyze it to its elements ; must 
 consider each separate elementary idea long and carefully enough 
 to obtain a clear and distinct idea of it, first in itself, and, 
 secondly, in its relations to other ideas. After this, the several 
 ideas, thus perfectly apprehended apart, must be combined, one 
 by one, until the mind distinctly embraces the complex whole in 
 the mastery of its parts and their relations. To study thus re- 
 quires time and patience. The mind must be conscious that it 
 may take its leisure. It cannot be hurried on with the thought 
 of a near approaching recitation hour. To cram is not to study. 
 To cram is to fill the memory hurriedly with a confused mass of 
 names and notions, with the hope that a sufficient number of them 
 will adhere to the memory^ long enough to answer the present 
 
To His Daughter 45 
 
 emergency. To study is to master a thought, a fact. An idea 
 once clearly understood in its real relations to other relations ; — 
 a fact once fairly understood, — is never lost to its owner. The 
 memory may not recall it; but it belongs to the mind itself. It is 
 OUR OWN : a permanent part of our mental furniture. We may 
 not remember it, but we know it, and can make it for ourselves 
 when we need it. 
 
XVIII 
 TO HIS DAUGHTER 
 
 New Albany, Ind., 14 Jany., 1857. 
 My dear Mary : 
 
 I should have preferred your continuance in Virgil, as you 
 have read so little in that author, and are hardly prepared for 
 Horace. Still I prefer your reading Horace to your giving up 
 Latin altogether. The only ill result I fear from your rapid prog- 
 ress to hard authors is, that you may not master elementary prin- 
 ciples, and content yourself with a mere translation of the author. 
 An ability to guess fairly at the general sense of a writer is mis- 
 taken for scholarship ; whereas the whole beauty, the exact 
 thought, the nice shades of thought, and in fact all certainty as 
 to the real meaning, are wanting. All true scholarship must be 
 built upon a laborious study of details and elements. You must 
 have grammatical forms, rules, exceptions, principles, at YOUR 
 TONGUE'S END; to which add a familiarity with the several 
 senses of words, and the idioms of a language, and you are able 
 to appreciate an author. Our schools and colleges, so far as I 
 know them, are almost wholly destitute of this exact training. I 
 hope yours is an exception, and that you will come home not a 
 smatterer, but a real scholar. One great reason, perhaps the chief 
 reason, why so few prosecute classical studies after they leave 
 college is that they never enjoyed for an hour the solid satisfaction 
 of sifting a thing thoroughly, so as to feel assured that they under- 
 stood what they were reading. The mind cannot enjoy a cloudy, 
 dreamy, uncertain guess at truth of any sort. H nothing else is 
 obtainable in a particular study, the mind instinctively revolts 
 against such a study. 
 
 I write in the confusion of our sitting-room; baby bawling; 
 Allie trying to still her ; mother sorting things, etc. 
 
XIX 
 TO HIS DAUGHTER, ELIZABETH 
 
 Davenport, Iowa, May 4th, 1857. 
 My dear Daughter Lizzie : 
 
 I thank you very sincerely for your kind and interesting and 
 neatly written letter. I am 515 miles from home, and to be as- 
 sured of your welfare is very cheering. You will learn from my 
 letters to your mother the general course and results of my jour- 
 ney. From Chicago we traveled about 180 miles over a country 
 of prairies. In June and July these are covered with tall, rich 
 grass, filled with a thousand varied and beautiful flowers. Now 
 not a blade of grass, an opening bud ; nor a single green thing is to 
 be found. All is dry, brown, bare g^round; even the stubble 
 having been burnt off in the fall and winter. Still, there is some- 
 thing of a charm in these immense plains, where not a single stick 
 of timber appears, as far as eye can see. On Tuesday afternoon, 
 about four o'clock, we came upon the Father of Waters, a few 
 miles north of Rock Island. As I had long desired to see the old 
 gentleman, of whom I had heard from my childhood, you may be 
 sure that when I made his acquaintance, I took off my hat and paid 
 him my obeisance. This is the same old gentleman, you know, 
 of whom it is said that he has a bad cold in his head this season, 
 because he has kept his mouth open eleven months in the year. 
 
 One sees here, in every direction, the evidences of a rapidly 
 growing and prosperous country ; but at the same time, of a newly 
 peopled region. Individuals, in most of the chief towns, may be 
 found with their quarter or half a million dollars; tasteful and 
 substantial houses, churches, etc., are numerous ; yet Iowa City, 
 Davenport, Rock Island, etc., etc., are unpaved and without side- 
 walks, except occasionally a few square feet of brick or flagstone, 
 or a long walk of boards. Everything cannot be done at once. 
 Rome was not built in a day. Ten or twelve years hence, by the 
 time you come to settle in some of these western fields of mission- 
 ary labor, there will be a wonderful change. This whole north- 
 
Elizabeth R. Thomas (Mrs. Theo. Kemper) 
 
 Mary Sering Kemper 
 
To His Daughter, Elizabeth 49 
 
 west has the basis of an immense population; a wealthy, pros- 
 perous, and intelligent assembly of commonwealths. I only fear 
 that in such cities as Chicago there are too much of wealth and 
 the luxuries and elegancies which wealth procures. What do you 
 think of hundreds of dollars bestowed upon a young lady at her 
 marriage, as bridal presents ? A member of the South Church was 
 married the week we arrived at Chicago, whose bridal dress (the 
 gown only) cost $300. Her parents were wealthy, but her mother, 
 who was a member of the church, wished it to be understood that 
 the dress was a present from an aunt. She thought it extravagant. 
 This is all wrong, very wrong, God never gave riches to be wasted 
 in such idle display. 
 
XX 
 TO HIS DAUGHTER AT SCHOOL 
 
 Dayton, Ohio, 13 Nov., 1858. 
 My dear Daughter Mary : 
 
 * * * I hke the studies you have entered on. By the way, 
 when you have learned Greek, you will spell Cholagauge with the 
 English representative of X, not Colagauge, as in your letter. The 
 word is derived from x^^Vy ^^^^, ^I'^d dyw, to drive out; because 
 the medicine expels the bile from the system. The Greek X is 
 Englished by Ch; so you see that Greek is of some use even to 
 young ladies ! 
 
 ^ 5^ ^JC 
 
 Take care to read your Bible carefully, thoughtfully and prayer- 
 fully every morning and evening. Your character is now forming, 
 and in all probability, will continue through life substantially what 
 it is at school. Remember that the chief end of life is to serve 
 God in your generation ; and ask Him to prepare you for a wide 
 field of usefulness. If you aim chiefly to please yourself and enjoy 
 life, as it is called, He will sadly disappoint you. Be sure of this. 
 
 Be careful to write legibly. I could not read any proper name 
 in your letter to Lizzie. Let me suggest to you an improvement 
 in your mode of writing letters. You begin half way down the 
 first sheet, instead of near the top, and are then obliged to finish 
 by writing crosswise on the blank place. It is a foolish practice 
 of some people ; partly, I suppose, to show that they do not value 
 paper. You have imitated others. You should rather set an 
 example, guided by your own good sense in small as well as in 
 great matters. 
 
 We are all rejoiced to hear of your health and happiness. Your 
 progress in Greek delights me ; but remember that the chief value 
 of learning the dead languages is lost by nearly all who study them ; 
 from the fact that they have never learned to read accurately, and 
 do not carry on the study sufficiently to relish the beauties of Latin 
 
To His Daughter at School 51 
 
 and Greek writers. You must spend some years to secure this 
 end. Take time, therefore ; and do not study too closely at pres- 
 ent. Without health you can do nothing and enjoy nothing 
 earthly. Do not study Greek on the Lord's day. Let your mind 
 be employed then only upon divine truth. When you can read the 
 Greek Testament with some facility, there will be no objection. 
 You will make more rapid intellectual as well as moral progress, 
 by remembering the Sabbath day to keep it holy ; that is, separated 
 from all ordinary employments, and consecrated to communion 
 with God. 
 
 Nettie Thruston has returned : she gained 16 lbs. in weight 
 during her Michigan trip. I had a long talk with her last Tuesday 
 on religious subjects. She is a very sweet and beautiful girl. 
 
XXI 
 TO HIS DAUGHTER AT SCHOOL 
 
 Dayton, O., 2 Feb., 1859. 
 My dear Daughter Mary : 
 
 Yours of Jany 31st was received this inorning. We are glad 
 to hear of your health and happiness. 
 
 * * * 
 
 By the way, you make a breach of grammar in saying, "I will 
 be examined", etc., when you should say, "I shall." If you wish 
 to express something dependent on your own volition, or some 
 determination of yours, you say I zi'ill; but when the event depends 
 on the arrangements of your superiors, teachers, etc., you say "T 
 shall", that is, it is so ordered: I am to be, etc. Remember this. 
 The Scotch habitually violate the rule, as did the Frenchman who 
 fell into the Thames, — "I will be drowned and nobody shall help 
 me." I received by the mail that brought your last, a letter from 
 Prof. Wm. Bishop, of Lawrence, Kansas, (at present), containing 
 two or three similar solecisms. 
 
 As for your studies for the new term, I am decided that you 
 should not have more than three regular studies at once. I tried 
 the plan of four among our Hanover students and found it un- 
 profitable. If you read Greek and Latin, with Trigonometry, say 
 twice a week for the regular recitations ; some branch of natural 
 science for an alternate, with Latin or Trigonometry say twice a 
 week, your time will be spent as profitably, I think, as in any other 
 way. 
 
 Having begun Greek and Latin, you ought to make yourself 
 a complete mistress of those languages. The great error in the 
 teaching or study of these things, is that ninety-nine out of every 
 hundred fail to attain such an acquaintance with them as to make 
 them of practical value. Either they should be thoroughly learned, 
 or let alone. Many say, therefore, let them alone; substitute 
 modern tongues, French, German, Italian. But for my part, if I 
 
To His Daughter at School 53 
 
 could talk French or Greek, at my option, (and to read those lan- 
 guages familiarly, to us who can reach only authors in them, is the 
 same as to speak them), I would prefer the Greek; for all that is 
 valuable in Philosophy, Science, art, etc. The modern style of 
 thought, and range of subject we have already at command in our 
 mother tongue. The ability to read Greek authors brings one into 
 communication with a class of minds the most acute and polished, 
 who are so far removed from our modern style and topics of 
 thought as to make a new world of literature, far more refreshing 
 and suggestive from the fact of its dissimilarity to our own. 
 
 Of course, in addition to the studies I have named, you will 
 have music ; as a relaxation rather than a study, however, for you 
 should never pursue it to weariness. 
 
 You did well in giving your mite to ; though I do 
 
 not think he did well in seeking or receiving aid from such a 
 quarter. A minister in his circumstances, such as you represent 
 them, should apply for help to the church at large, through his 
 brethren in the ministry. 
 
 Farewell — May our Heavenly Father and our gracious Sav- 
 iour preserve you and bless you, and render you very useful and 
 very happy, is the fervent prayer of 
 
 Your affectionate Father. 
 
XXII 
 TO PROF. JNO. W. SCOTT 
 
 Dayton, O., 17 March, 1859. 
 My Dear and Honored Friend : 
 
 I am ashamed to find that your favor of 14 Feb. is yet unan- 
 swered. When you wrote, the only man in our church who would 
 be at all likely to aid with such a sum as you need, H. Stoddard, 
 Esq., Sr., was absent in St. Louis. He scarcely returned home 
 before he left again for New York and Washington ; and return- 
 ing again for a day or two, he went a second time to New York. 
 He is just now not in a position to be induced to a large liberality. 
 
 I believe I told you before that this church is by no means in 
 its former pecuniary condition. The two colonies, the 3rd Church 
 and that of Miami City, have materially reduced both its means 
 and membership : many of our best men have been greatly em- 
 barrassed for a year or two past ; and are yet struggling for dear 
 life, some of them. Our outside pillars, such men as P. P. Lowe, 
 Jno. G. Lowe, H. G. Phillips, T. A. Phillips, etc., are not interested 
 on general Christian principles ; though some of them are liberal 
 in all our Jwine church matters; and some are not. I do not 
 suppose that one man can be found, willing to invest $1,000, or 
 even $500, in the support of such an enterprise as yours. In fact, 
 very few have the money. Mrs. Jno. G. Lowe told me soon after 
 I came that she did not suppose there were a dozen families in 
 Dayton able to meet their engagements without embarrassments. 
 The business world here has been stagnant, comparatively, for the 
 last three or four years; and the improvement is very gradual. 
 A fezv, a very few, are in the enjoyment of pecuniary ease; but 
 unfortunately, they are not of those who regard themselves, in any 
 proper sense, as stewards of the Lord. 
 
 If I had $5.00 at command, or obtainable, this morning, I 
 should have allowed myself the pleasure of a visit to Oxford to- 
 day ; if only that I might have presented, personally, the assurance 
 
To Prof. Jno. W. Scott 55 
 
 of my sympathy — but I had not — and "to beg I am ashamed." 
 My family is at, perhaps, its most expensive point ; my children 
 growing up, at school, and earning nothing. But they are healthy 
 and promising ; and I would be grateful. 
 
XXIII 
 TO HIS DAUGHTER AT SCHOOL 
 
 Davton, O., 19 April, 1859. 
 
 My dear Daughter Mary : 
 
 We have received several letters from you lately which have 
 given us much pleasure. You seem to be in good health and 
 spirits, and the style of your correspondence indicates improve- 
 ment. I have reason to rejoice that you have so good opportuni- 
 ties for cultivation, and do not grudge the expense, though it is 
 not inconsiderable. I doubt not, that if Providence spare your 
 life, you will, with the divine blessing, abundantly repay any care 
 and cost that your parents have expended upon you. But my 
 dear daughter, you must "not be high minded but fear." How 
 much reason there is in the divine injunction, "pass the time of 
 your sojourning here in fear," you will not know for many years 
 to come. A modest, humble, self-distrust is an invaluable grace. 
 "Blessed are the poor in spirit," said He who knew what was in 
 man. 
 
 Be on your guard against too much influence by those around 
 you. There is but one Perfect Guide and Counsellor, the indwell- 
 ing Spirit. Do not form too strong attachments to your friends. 
 Your passions are ardent, and youth is impulsive. Do not expect 
 too much from others. Do not yield to a passionate admiration 
 When wiser, you will moderate your estimation even of some 
 choice companions. A proper self-respect is as necessary as a 
 proper self-distrust. An undue esteem of others argues a want 
 of personal character and independence. We may be inferior to 
 others ; but let us remember that we have an individuality and 
 character of our own. We may be superior to others ; but let us 
 cultivate our own powers rather than seek admirers. Remember 
 that all are imperfect ; that we are imperfect. This is not an 
 anti-climax. We may believe the former when we hardly believe 
 the latter ; paradoxical as it may appear. 
 
To His Daughter at School 57 
 
 Perhaps all this is Sanscrit to you. Well, I will explain my- 
 self more fully some day. Just now, I only mean to say that you 
 are in a critical period of life; a forming, a nascent period. (I 
 believe you have studied chemistry.) Your heart and mind are 
 artless, confiding, ready to receive almost any impression. Like 
 your father, you are naturally frank, rather more honest than most 
 people, and ready to think every one as sincere as yourself; as 
 unselfish. Do not think that my apprehensions relate to gentle- 
 men, now : I have too much confidence in your good sense to sup- 
 pose that at your age and circumstances, with an unfinished educa- 
 tion, you would admit any foolish thoughts of that sort ; however 
 common it may be with some no older than yourself. I trust that 
 you have purposes in life too elevated (at least that a gracious 
 God has purposes for you) to allow you to divert your mind from 
 the high duties of your preparatory state. No — I mean nothing 
 of that sort yet ; not at all. Your present dangers are from your 
 daily companions and dearest friends. Think about it, and re- 
 member that your father is 28 years older than you, and has been 
 young and in college. 
 
 Your loving father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
XXIV 
 FROM COL. MINOR MILLIKIN 
 
 The Oaks, near Hamilton, Nov. 19, 1860. 
 My dear Doctor : 
 
 I am requested by the officers of the Oxford Reading Room to 
 use whatever influence I have, in persuading you to give them a 
 lecture some time during this winter. I have not yet seen their 
 list; but from the character of their audiences I know it will be a 
 respectable one. To be sure, the fact that I am to begin the course 
 next Thursday eve., by a lecture on the Neglect of the Body by 
 Conscientious Laborers, somewhat militates against this supposi- 
 tion ; but I trust you will not allow this to influence you, seeing 
 that I shall be there rather as a protege than a prodigy. Indeed 
 it was hoped that you might follow me, and I was told to ask you 
 to do so. 
 
 Will you not spare me a line on the subject? I want to see 
 your autograph again, sir, on my own account, since it will always 
 be to me both a souvenir and an earnest of an afifection shown to 
 me, for which I can never be too grateful. Remember me espe- 
 cially to your wife and family, and 
 
 Believe me yours, by many bonds, 
 
 Minor Millikin. 
 
XXV 
 FROM HIS DAUGHTER 
 
 War's Alarms 
 
 New Albany, Sept. 23, 1861. 
 My dear Father : 
 
 To-day, for the first time, Louisville seems in real and great 
 danger. Bragg is marching on the city, with Buel one day's march 
 at his heels. Nelson is ahead in Louisville, and declares he will 
 burn the city before he leaves it. Consequently he has ordered 
 all the women and children out of Louisville, and they are flocking 
 over here and to Jeffersonville. There they are rapidly construct- 
 ing a bridge for transportation. Government wagons are coming 
 over. You will probably have learned all this from the papers 
 before you get this, but I repeat it that you may see I knew the 
 state of afifairs when I wrote. All is absolutely quiet here, waiting 
 for further steps. There is every prospect of a terrible battle in 
 front of Louisville, but even then New Albany will not probably 
 be in danger. I write that you may put your mind perfectly at 
 rest about me. There will probably not be any panic here in the 
 worst case. In prospect of serious danger, the women and chil- 
 dren will probably be ordered out of New Albany, as they have 
 been out of Louisville, and then I will go with Mrs. Bicknell. I 
 shall not be willing to come home until New Albany is taken. 
 But if our generals and soldiers do their duty, Louisville is safe. 
 Buell is very near, and ought to have a fine army. At the least 
 computation there are 50,000 troops in Louisville. 
 
 Tomorrow, we expect to be greeted by the sound of cannon 
 and perhaps the rattle of musketry. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 Mary May. 
 
Alfred A. Thomas 
 Thomas H. Thomas 
 
 Gertrude Thomas (Mrs. Henry S. Mead) 
 Felix Thomas 
 Gertrude Mrs. Alfred A. Thomas Thomas H. 
 
XXVI 
 FROM HIS SON 
 
 Life in a Cavalry Regiment 
 
 Camp at Pilot Mountain, Ky. 
 
 ^ ^ , Dec. 9th, 1863. 
 
 Dear Father: 
 
 I write once more to let you know of my whereabouts and 
 good health. Our battalion left Cumberland Gap about the 25th 
 of last month, and reached this place, which is 15 miles north of 
 Richmond, in eight days. We stopped three days at Cumberland 
 Ford, where the Battalion received 350 fresh horses ; and then 
 came straight through. Our men, having few tents, camped in 
 the wet and mud of Winter, and are in bad way from exposure. 
 I have plenty to eat and good shelter now, being in charge of the 
 sick in our hospital, which is a large log hut and very comfortable. 
 The road on which we are encamped is the one on which the great 
 supply trains for Burnside's army pass. All the forces in or about 
 Knoxville or East Tennessee, are supplied by trains which run 
 from Camp Nelson or Lexington to Knoxville. It has been ex- 
 tremely difficult to supply the army this Winter over such long 
 communications. The road clear from Cumberland Gap to Camp 
 Nelson is lined with wagons and dead mules. One train has been 
 passing here all day. 
 
 We have heard of the late victories in Tennessee : they are 
 glorious. But scarcely a letter or paper reaches me from home 
 that does not name some of my acquaintances killed in the army. 
 Augustus George, Will Spinning, I. Protzman, Major Birch, Cols. 
 King, Strong and many others have been killed since my leaving 
 home. I have now enough of warm, woolen clothing; the gov- 
 ernment is liberal in this respect ; but I have now no stockings, 
 mine were worn out from the heels and I could not darn them, 
 but I think can draw a pair in a few days. At the Gap my boots 
 gave entirely out. so I got a pair from the sutler for $12 — just one 
 month's wages for a pair of boots. 
 
62 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 Can't you send me some bandages? Many poor fellows come 
 every day to my hospital to get wounds dressed, and there is not 
 a rag to dress them with, and they can't be had. We have to do 
 them up again in the old and dirty rags. Send linen bandages 
 four to six inches wide, rolled up tightly. Lizzie knows how to 
 make them. 
 
 My duties as Hospital Steward are quite different from the 
 life in the ranks. I had been dissatisfied, feeling I was getting 
 barbarized and unfit for my old company at home. Still some 
 points are gains. I am stronger, can stand more exposure, have 
 more energy; have seen hard cavalry service and become a fair 
 horseman. Have had a good insight into army life and the people 
 and country in Ky., East Tenn., and Va. So it has not been all 
 loss after all. But above all things, I think I have done my duty 
 to the country ; and although we have seen hard times, I have the 
 satisfaction of knowing that when our land stood in peril and 
 need of men, I was not found wanting. 
 
 I am still your son. 
 
 Alfred A. Thomas. 
 
XXVII 
 TO HIS SON AT YALE 
 
 Dayton, O., 17 Oct., 1864. 
 My beloved Son : 
 
 We all thank you for your very regular and pleasing corre- 
 spondence. Your fair hand, and the neatness of your letters, 
 free from blots, etc., recommend them. Be careful to write well 
 always. Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well. 
 
 Your health is of the very highest importance. Without a 
 good constitution, and sound, vigorous health, your education, 
 when attained, will be of very little value to you, or anyone else. 
 God has blessed you, I think, with a healthy organization : but 
 that will not take care of itself, any more than your mind will. 
 If you spend hours of patient study to cultivate the latter, how 
 unreasonable to neglect, much more to abuse, the former. The 
 body, in its wonderful organization, is like a steam engine. It 
 needs the constant care of the engineer. Its joints must be oiled. 
 It must not be driven too far at once. Even the iron horse needs 
 rest. Too much steam will burst the boiler, or drive a head from 
 the cylinder, or split a steam pipe, and remember that the train 
 stops, the engineer is helpless, when the locomotive refuses to 
 work. 
 
 The idlest of all pretenses is the common one — I haven't 
 time to take exercise ! — as if the engineer, or conductor, should 
 say, I haven't time to stop at the station for wood and water ! 
 The ass ! Does he not know that if the wood and water are want- 
 ing, all will come to a dead halt? The brain, free from the op- 
 pression of over feeding, and of stimulating drinks; and reen- 
 forced by an ample supply from that fountain of life, the heart, 
 (see Lev. 17:11, and Prov. 4:23.); will perform double the 
 work which it can do under other conditions. With two or three 
 hours of active exercise daily, you can study more in the re- 
 maining hours than in all together without exercise. 
 
Elizabeth R. Thomas (Mrs. Harrington Davis) John H. Thomas 
 
 Isabel C. Thomas Mary May Thomas 
 
 (Mrs. Allen P. Lovejoy) (Mrs. Horace P. Phillips) 
 
To His Son at Yale 65 
 
 You ask, how much time you should employ in exercise. 
 The rule of Cambridge, England, (see Bristead's Five Years in 
 an English University), is to spend three hours daily in what 
 they call their "constitutionals :" i. e., I should think you ought 
 to take as much. Rowing is a favorite sport at Cambridge, as 
 at New Haven, I believe; but walking is the almost universal 
 recreation. Ten or twelve miles before dinner, (they dine at 
 three or four), is very common; and fifteen miles in three hours 
 is frequently performed. By this manly and vigorous discipline 
 they preserve, as Bristead says, (I believe he spells his name 
 without an a, however, but I have not his book at hand), the 
 finest physique in Europe. 
 
 You have a gymnasium, of which you have said nothing in 
 your letters. Have you visited that? What kind of exercises? 
 Ten-pins is a capital game ; brings most of the muscles into play, 
 and is amusing and interesting, as many mere exercises are not. 
 Do not fear the expense. I would much rather pay that myself 
 than you should fail to have the benefit. But this magnificent 
 fall weather, {ive are in the glory of our Indian Summer, our 
 most charming season), you can find both amusement and exer- 
 tion in rambling about New Haven and its environs. Have you 
 seen the Regicide's Cave yet? It is not far distant. And the red- 
 sand-stone clififs, and the trap rock, which abound near New 
 Haven, would repay many a visit. Take one or two choice chums 
 and set off on a five or six mile tramp, to begin with. Cultivate 
 your powers of observation. Examine nature and art. Talk 
 with farmers, mechanics and seamen. You can pick up informa- 
 tion enough to compensate you for the trouble. 
 
 My favorite game at College was shinney, and football was 
 common. Are there none at Yale who play cricket ball ? or base- 
 ball ? All these are manly sports ; but walking has this advan- 
 tage, that exercise is not likely to be overdone, carried too far ; 
 as is often the case where a contest for victory stimulates one. 
 
 If your Greek costs you three hours, your Latin two, your 
 mathematics one, you need but six hours a day for your regular 
 work. Two more are enough for reading, and miscellaneous 
 extras. This leaves fourteen hours ; of which you need six to 
 
66 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 seven for sleep. Never take less than six, and more if you find 
 it needful ; say seven, and then you have seven left for meals 
 and exercise, etc. 
 
 To-day, we bury your friend, Perlee Spinning. Lizzie sends 
 a paper containing all we know of his death. He became sick 
 at Nashville, set off for home, and died on the way. A sad blow 
 to the bereaved family. 
 
XXVIII 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Dayton, O., 14 Nov., 1864. 
 My dear John : 
 
 We are gratified by the punctuaHty of your correspondence ; 
 cannot rest on Saturday tiU we hear from you. You never speak 
 of your health; but we infer from the sparkhng air of your 
 letters that you are well. 
 
 I am glad that the authorities have interfered to stop the 
 barbarous and disgraceful custom of "hazing." I see that Bow- 
 doin (Me.) has no Sophomore class now; having suspended 
 eleven and rusticated the whole remainder, on account of hazing. 
 It is a remnant of the old English college and school usages, 
 "more honored in the breach than in the observance," which no 
 American should imitate. Boys may and should have their 
 sport ; but both Christianity and civilization forbid that it should 
 infringe on the rights of others. 
 
 I have not heard from you in reply to my inquiries and sug- 
 gestions about exercise. Have you joined the Gymnasium? I 
 saw a joke lately, about the ten-pin alley at Yale, to the credit 
 of Prof. T. (Thatcher, I suppose), who requested an old alum- 
 nus to visit the alley, and take a game with him. The alumnus 
 replied, with a look of wonder. Why ! I was expelled from Yale 
 20 years ago for playing ten-pins ! 
 
 Alfred seems to be applying himself diligently at Oxford ; 
 but I cannot persuade him to exercise of any sort: it is unpop- 
 ular there ; and I fear the result to his health. He looked much 
 paler when last at home than when in the army ; though he said 
 he was perfectly well. I wrote to him to preserve all your letters 
 in the original envelope. You do the same. They will be pleas- 
 ing to review some day. I would advise you to cat your enve- 
 lopes at the top; not tear them open: replace the letters, (all 
 you receive that are at all worth re-reading) , in the envelope ; 
 
68 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 and label them on the outside, as you have seen me do. Wrap 
 them in bundles for future reference. 
 
 Nothing of consequence occurs here. The election passed 
 off very quietly. I regard the result as more honorable to the 
 American people than any act in their history. In the midst of 
 so costly and bloody a civil war, to have sustained, in calm and 
 quiet dignity, the strain of a Presidential election, without the 
 occurrence of a single outbreak ; and to have vindicated, by so 
 splendid a majority, the great principles of justice and humanity, 
 affords an argument for republican government, such as all the 
 despots and aristocrats of the old world, (the Times and Black- 
 wood included), can never answer. (By the way, A^at. calls the 
 latter, Blackhood, supposing it was named from the cap on the 
 man's head in the vignette ! Not so bad for a three year old ! 
 is it?) , 
 
 I owe you a letter on a course of reading; would write it now, 
 but my study (the west room) is invaded by your mother, sister, 
 a sewing woman. Will, and Nat. The sewing machine rattles, 
 and the ladies clatter, and the babies chatter, so that I can hardly 
 compose my thoughts for a hasty scrawl. 
 
 Your letters are always interesting. Do not think I com- 
 plain of them when I say that I would like to hear a little more 
 of college matters. I want to see the inside of college life at 
 Yale. How often do you recite? At what hours? How long 
 are the recitations? How do you like the Professors, Tutors, 
 etc.? What of the chapel, Societies, Clubs, Prayer Meetings, 
 Sermons, Religious Associations, etc.? 
 
 * * * 
 
 Yr. affect. Father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
XXIX 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Dayton, O., 18th Nov., 1864. 
 My dear John : 
 
 * * I read yesterday a pamphlet that I would send you if I 
 owned, or could procure a copy ; Dr. Tayler Lewis' State Rights, 
 a Photograph from the Ruins of Ancient Greece. It is capitally 
 written; draws the parallel between the autonomy (avrovofxla) 
 of old Greece, and the modern Calhoun doctrine. He shows that 
 Greece was ruined by the opposition to a national government, 
 which would have controlled domestic faction. Sparta was the 
 South Carolina of Greece, and Attica her Massachusetts. Writ- 
 ten before the election, it has a sadder tone than Lewis would 
 have given it since. He throws light on that oration of Demos- 
 thenes, for the Crown, which you will read at Yale, I hope ; 
 especially on the famous passage — "I szvear by the dead at Mar- 
 athon," etc. If you can find the pamphlet, read it. 
 
 I am glad to learn that you handed in your certificate to the 
 College Church, but remember it was not a dismission, and that 
 your name remains on our church roll. Your connection there 
 is only temporary, and really associates you with no particular 
 denomination of Christians. It is intended only for the beneifit 
 of students while in College ; and leaves, as it should do, your 
 proper church standing unaltered. I shall be glad to hear how 
 your religious exercises, in chapel and prayer-meetings, are con- 
 ducted ; and how you like them. Do you take part in prayer ? 
 I hope so ; you can never begin under so favorable circumstances. 
 
 How do you like Homer in his travels? I regret that I have 
 not been able to review the Odyssey with you. But what with 
 endless work about the house, visiting my people, and preparing 
 sermons, I have so far had my hands full without Ulysses. 
 
 You know that Dr. McDermont carried my horse to Louis- 
 ville. I have since had the oflfer of Mr. Henry and John Stod- 
 
70 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 dard's horses, whenever I like to ride. I have used the former 
 frequently. She gallops very well. Yesterday, Mr. Dick Phil- 
 lips very kindly offered me the use of Horry's fine white horse, 
 so famous for his racking. I begin this afternoon. So I am 
 handsomely furnished in the horse line, despite loosing both my 
 boys, and Jessie ! 
 
 Farewell, my dear boy ! Nothing prevents me from being 
 heart-sick at the thought of your absence, but the joyful remem- 
 brance that you are enjoying the best opportunities America 
 affords for obtaining a thorough education. 
 
XXX 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Dayton, O., 28 Nov., 1864. 
 My dear John: 
 
 Your long and pleasant letter of the 23rd reached us this 
 evening. I read it at the supper table ; and it would have amused 
 you to hear the questions put on every side. Nat., who is a 
 shrewd observer and listener, and who often stops me at wor- 
 ship, as I read the Scriptures, to ask what some strange word 
 means, "altar," "tabernacle," etc., inquired what you meant by 
 "skins," "ponies," etc. Will had his difficulties too; and all had 
 some remark to make. I assure you that your letters create 
 quite a sensation in our domestic circle, and are voted, unani- 
 mously, capital good things. 
 
 I am quite satisfied as to your separation from But 
 
 it was well that you found a place for the sole of your foot, till 
 you could secure a more congenial companion. I advise you to 
 be very careful in the selection of your next room-mate. A 
 few dollars are of little consequence compared with the conse- 
 quences of an injudicious choice. I suppose the matter rests 
 with you. Indeed, in many respects, it is preferable to room 
 alone ; as it gives you the opportunity of retirement, at pleasure. 
 Your chum ought to be a Christian, at all events ; that your Sab- 
 baths may be profitable, and that you may have morning and 
 evening worship together. Do not forget this. A member of 
 your own class is better than a member of another class ; a good 
 scholar, close student, one with whom you could study profitably. 
 He should not be much older, or younger than yourself. Of 
 course, you would not select one who is not gentlemanly, and 
 neat, in his personal habits and deportment. Let me hear from 
 you on this subject before you decide it; and tell me whom you 
 are thinking of. 
 
 I have no anxiety about the "pony" on Horace. You will 
 not ride him until you have walked over the course yourself. 
 
72 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 When you have done your best to prepare a lesson, and then run 
 over a good literal translation to fortify, or correct, your own 
 reading, no evil, or perhaps, some good will result. Yet the 
 habit of forming an independent judgment, on the grotmd of 
 grammatical facts, is invaluable : do not let your use of ponies 
 interfere with this. I earnestly desire you to be a thorough and 
 finished classical scholar. Our age demands scholarship of the 
 highest order. Mediocrity will be neither pleasing nor profit- 
 able, even to yourself. A man can never speak confidently on a 
 subject which he has not sounded to the bottom. If it be un- 
 fathomable, he will wish to know it by experiment. "A little 
 learning" may not always be, as Pope calls it "a dangerous thing" ; 
 but certainly it is always very unsatisfactory. 
 
 Lay your foundations deep, in a complete mastery of the 
 grammar of any language you learn. There can be no success 
 without this. Analize, as you go, every word, form, mode of 
 construction, etc. Fix the principles of syntax in your mind, 
 not as a mere formula, committed to memory; but by ascertain- 
 ing the reason for every fact. The Greeks, or Latins, governed 
 the genitive, for example, by such a noun, or verb, not at ran- 
 dom, but because some rational process of thought suggested, or 
 required it. In other words, no rules, or modes of speech, are 
 arbitrary ; however singular they may seem to us ; but have some 
 ground in the forms of thought. Find them out ; make them 
 your own : you are the master of the rule. The best grammars 
 will point out these processes of thought. Sciolists content them- 
 selves with an ipse dixit: Sum, taken for habeo, to have, gov- 
 erns the — no matter what ; — governs the boy in his translations. 
 
 I am very glad that your tutor has put you upon the study of 
 cognate roots. The easiest way to remember a new word is to 
 associate it with some thing already known by a philological con- 
 nection. I taught you a smattering of this in Homer. There is 
 a close relationship between Sanscrit, for instance, and the occi- 
 dental tongues. The family of Japhet settled originally in Per- 
 sia; and when they removed to Europe they left the original 
 stock in Asia. Hence the term, Indo-European to designate the 
 Japhetian family of languages. See this connection briefly traced 
 in the introduction to Webster's quarto Dictionary: Sanscrit, 
 
To His Son 73 
 
 Persian, Celtic, Teutonic; Welsh, Armonic, Danish, Swedish, 
 German, Greek, Latin, and the modern tongues descending from 
 Latin. There is to me an indescribable pleasure in tracing out 
 these facts of comparative philology; though I have never en- 
 joyed the leisure, or means, necessary to pursue such inquiries 
 extensively. But, so far as you can trace out such relationships, 
 they give one of the best aids to the recollection of what, without 
 such associations, are arbitrary sounds. When you come to study 
 Hebrew, Gesenius, in his Lexicon, will illustrate the connection 
 between the Oriental and Occidental languages. 
 
 Your description of your tutors and professors is both graphic 
 and amusing. Never forget, however, that whatever defects, or 
 infirmities, you may fancy them to discover, you owe them re- 
 spect and obedience, not only for wrath's sake, (marks), but for 
 conscience' sake. Boys will always nickname their teachers, 
 I suppose ; and old-Iimpy-'ad is both witty and classical ; but it 
 is neither respectful nor gentlemanly, as an every day name 
 for a worthy Professor. While you may, without impropriety, 
 explain the soubriquet to us, or others, you should not allow 
 yourself to employ it there. The principle of the Old Testament 
 precept, "Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the rulers of 
 thy people," applies in this case. People who are always speak- 
 ing of their President as old Abe, or old Buck, are not likely to 
 regard him as "God's minister," ordained to this work of gov- 
 ernment, (Rom. Xni). So, too, young gentlemen who habitu- 
 ally designate their Professors as old Had, etc., etc., will likely 
 lose not only respect for their teachers, but self-respect also. I 
 trust you do not need the advice I give you, in this matter. 
 
 You say, 'T have made quite a change lately," etc. This is 
 a breach of grammar. The lately removes the transaction into 
 the past: but the perfect tense includes the present. 'T made 
 quite a change lately" would be correct. Let me add that this 
 is the only error I have seen in your letters from Yale. Yet I 
 may suggest a little more care in punctuation. You often employ 
 a comma, where a semi-colon is needed; and sometimes a semi- 
 colon, where you should put a period. Do not neglect these little 
 things. I want my son to be a finished scholar. 
 
74 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 Your Q. E. D. is excellent. One letter a week to some one 
 in the family is enough ; unless you have leisure and disposition 
 to write more. We do not expect an answer to every letter of 
 ours. 
 
 * * * 
 
 I have been quite busy for a week or two. Last Friday even- 
 ing week we had a meeting at the Court House to discuss the 
 question of providing relief for the families of soldiers. I at- 
 tended, and opposed the project of holding another Bazaar, such 
 as we had last Winter. I objected to the immorality of the raf- 
 fling, which characterized the affair ; and to imposing so heavy a 
 burden upon the ladies, several of whom were sick for weeks in 
 consequence of their toil and exposure. Several of our leading 
 citizens concurred with me in opinion, — S. Gebhart, Mr. Odlin, 
 etc. Strange to say, Mr. R. W. Steele and Col. J. G. Lowe were 
 my chief opponents ; and they carried a modified resolution in 
 favor of a fair. Subsequently, reflection has strengthened my 
 position in the public mind ; and strenuous efforts are now mak- 
 ing to secure a subscription which will obviate the necessity for a 
 Bazaar. 
 
 On the morning of that Friday, Mr. Steele called on me to 
 address a meeting at Huston Hall, to consider the propriety of 
 erecting a public monument in Dayton, in honor of the heroes 
 of Montgomery County who have fallen in the war. Of course, 
 I had no time for preparation : in fact, I attempted none, except 
 to run over the subject in my mind, while indulging in a horse- 
 back ride of three hours, just before meeting time. The subject, 
 (monuments), was generally supposed to be dry and hard; but 
 the house was well filled by a select audience. My talk of an 
 hour seemed to carry away the hearers, who applauded to the 
 echo. Col. Chas. Anderson followed me. 
 
 On Thanksgiving day, our house was well-filled by a congre- 
 gation of which fully three fourths were gentlemen. I preached 
 from Prov. 22, 28. Remove not the ancient landmarks which 
 thy father set up. A brief outline was afterwards furnished for 
 the Journal, at the editor's request. The girls will send it. But 
 the outline compares with the discourse, as the skeleton remains 
 of a Thanksgiving turkey with the uncarved bird. You will 
 
To His Son 75 
 
 excuse these references to myself. I should mention them to 
 no one but my own children : but I thought you would be inter- 
 ested in them. 
 
 On Sabbath morning, I preached upon 2 Cor. II :14, 16. The 
 passage is a striking one ; an allusion to a Roman triumph. 
 Leverett, under Triumpho, briefly states the facts of the pageant. 
 The victor, met by the Senate at the gates of Rome, was borne 
 in a splendid car, drawn by white horses, to the Capitol. He was 
 dressed in the Toga picta and Tunica palmata: around his head 
 was a laurel wreath; and in his hand an ivory sceptre. Before 
 him, went the long array of captives, — Kings, nobles, soldiers, 
 wopien ; together with the spoils of gold, silver, etc., and the 
 images of conquered cities. Behind him marched his faithful 
 legions, who uttered their joy in every kind of song. (Old 
 Brown's spirit went marching along!) Around him rode on 
 horses his chief officers, Legati, the companions of his triumph. 
 On their route, flowers and sweet odors were widely scattered ; 
 the victor's car was filled with flowers. 
 
 Plutarch, in his Acmilius (see your class. Diet.) speaks of the 
 streets as dvixia.jxa.To% irk-qpeis Arrived at the Capitol, some of 
 the captives were doomed to death ; others were set free. x\s 
 the painted cap in the Spanish Auto da Fe, indicated his fate to 
 the heretic, so the odors in the triumph reminded the captives 
 of their approaching fate. To some it was the token of a dread- 
 ful death ; to others, of speedy release. 
 
 So Paul saw by the eye of faith the triumphal progress of the 
 Captain of our salvation, in the diffusion of a preached gospel. 
 As one of Christ's Legati, he shared in the triumph ; in fact, 
 was "made himself to triumph." The knowledge of the Gospel 
 spread abroad a divine odor along the pathway of that procession. 
 It foretells the eternal destiny of all who hear the word. As 
 some creatures, endowed with a morbid sensibility, are said to 
 "Die of a rose in aromatic pain," so even the sweet perfume 
 of the name of Jesus is of deadly influence to his enemies. 
 
 The Gospel, as preached by the apostles, excited only con- 
 tempt among the great ones of the world. Tacitus speaks of it 
 as "superstitio exsecrahilis," (I have not the passage at hand — 
 perhaps that is not the adjective he uses;) and Suetonius says 
 
76 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 that the Jews were instigated in their seditions by "one Chrestus!" 
 Little thought they that this despised Gospel was undermining 
 the foundations of their false religions, philosophies, and govern- 
 ments ; that in three centuries Christianity should be seated on 
 the throne of the Caesars. As the Gospel is diffused among 
 men, as we hear it preached from day to day, silently and imper- 
 ceptibly as the falling of dew or snow, our souls are moulded by 
 its influence for weal or woe. How solemn the thought ! melted 
 or hardened by every sermon, chapter, prayer ! 
 
 Judge Storer and Mr. Chamberlain, of Cincinnati, were at our 
 church yesterday morning; and at night addressed a full house 
 in the Baptist Church ; a union service. $700 were contributed 
 to the Christian commission which they represented. 
 
 Mother, Lizzie, Will, Nat. and I spend the day at Mr. Chas. 
 Spinning's, — going now. Farewell ! God guide you, my dear 
 boy. 
 
 Yr. aff. Father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
XXXI 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Dayton, O., 1 March, 1865. 
 
 My dear John : 
 
 We received your letter, together with a copy of the New 
 Haven Courier, giving an account of the Sophomore and Fresh- 
 man "rush," etc. * * 
 
 Beginning to feel my nervous system unstrung, your mother 
 and I thought best to accept Maj. Millikin's kind invitation to 
 rest for a week at Maplewood; so on Saturday last, we went 
 there. Tuesday we spent the night at Dr. Falconer's, — Maj. 
 Millikin and wife meeting us there. Wednesday, we went to 
 Oxford, to attend the celebration of the 22nd (Washington's 
 birthday), by a college exhibition, in which Alfred was to take 
 part. There were nine speeches, — Alfred's as long as any ; and, 
 if I am a fair judge, by far the best delivered. He spoke some- 
 what too rhetorically, as was to be expected in a first effort. His 
 theme was "Abraham Lincoln." Be sure it was loyally and 
 patriotically handled. Indeed, every speech but one, (the subject 
 of which was "Literature",) was of the most decidedly loyal type. 
 
 On Thursday, the day of prayer for colleges, I spoke at a 
 union meeting where nearly all the Faculty of the University 
 were present; and at 1:30 P. M., I preached before 150 young 
 ladies at the Western Female Seminary, at the special request of 
 Miss Peabody, the principal, on the observance of the day of 
 prayer. By the way, was the day observed in New Haven? I 
 saw lately a report of the religious condition of several colleges, 
 prepared at Andover, Mass., and was sorry to see the "low estate" 
 at Yale, spiritually. In the relative number of Christians among 
 the students, as well as of candidates for the ministry, Amherst 
 was far before Yale. Oh for a revival of pure and undefiled 
 religion among the 600 pupils of the first literary institution in 
 America ! How powerful an influence for good would it exert 
 
78 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 over the coming generation ! Had John C. Calhoun, a Yalensian 
 of the class of 1804, I believe, been a devoted Christian minister, 
 instead of an ambitious demagogue, how different would have 
 been the history of our beloved country ! 
 
 Yr. affectionate Father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
XXXII 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Dayton, O., 6 Mar., 1865. 
 My dear John : 
 
 We received to-day your letter to May. Glad to see that 
 you are in such fine spirits, from which we infer that your health 
 is good. You must not be surprised, however, to learn that we 
 do not altogether sympathize with you about rushes. Your moth- 
 er and I feel some anxiety about the effect of such scenes and 
 associations upon your character. The snatches of song you 
 sent were amusing; except that I regretted to see one word 
 written, for which "gayest" would have been a happier expres- 
 sion. The other is simply a cowardly way of swearing. No 
 doubt that even a more explicit term was in the original ; and 
 you did not feel yourself responsible for the song. But remem- 
 ber that the spirit of the precept which forbid the Hebrews "to 
 take up the names of idols in their mouth" applies also to Chris- 
 tians. Many a word familiar to the world would defile a Chris- 
 tian mouth. 
 
 Rushes, no doubt, are as well conducted rows as one can 
 reasonably expect. Still, they are remnants of ruffianism, utterly 
 unbecoming the young men of America; however natural to the 
 unpolished ages of brute force from which they have descended. 
 It was once the fashion for London gentlemen to go about at 
 night breaking the heads of policemen with cudgels. George the 
 Fourth, when Prince of Wales, was not exempt from that infirm- 
 ity. The modern gentleman who should fancy the recreation 
 would soon find himself in the watch-house. Your young gentle- 
 men at Yale merely mock the officers of the law in low ballads. 
 The one is as much out of character as the other. 
 
 You need have no concern about my health. During January 
 and February, I omitted much of my usual horseback exercise. 
 Since then I have been riding daily. I am now as well as I have 
 ever been for the two years past ; and as well as I expect ever 
 
80 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 to be : though not so capable of close study as in former years. 
 I once thought nothing of sixteen hours a day hard reading. 
 That day is over, and likely will not return. But I am thankful 
 to God for the measure of strength and health allowed me. 
 
 You know that Col. Jno. G. Lowe, and R. P. Brown with 
 others, united with the church last December. Col. Lowe now 
 has charge of the young men's class in the Sabbath School, and 
 makes a capital teacher, the bo)^s say. Judge Ralph Lowe of 
 Iowa, was at church yesterday, with his wife. The three brothers, 
 P. P., J. G. and the Judge, sat down at the Lord's table together 
 for the first time. It was a pleasant meeting. 
 
 Have you any understanding with your grandfather that you 
 are to spend the April vacation at Northboro? He is very fond 
 of you : wrote very kindly about your last visit there ; but sug- 
 gested that your very social and agreeable disposition might 
 expose you to some snares in college : a suggestion that you will 
 appreciate more highly hereafter, perhaps, than at present. 
 
 You will notice on your return that Dayton has much improved. 
 * * * Familiarized, as you are, to the elegant establishments 
 about New Haven, perhaps these new affairs at home may seem 
 less interesting. But I think Dayton a far more pleasant place, 
 — intellectual attractions apart, — than the Elm city. Our chief 
 want, as a city, is intellectual cultivation. Our gentlemen are de- 
 voted to business ; our ladies to their families, and their pleasures. 
 We have almost no literary, or scientific atmosphere. We have 
 not a few college graduates; but not one, so far as I know, that 
 cultivates literature, science, or philosophy, for any other than 
 business or professional purposes. The delights of which I^.Iilton 
 speaks, 
 
 "How charming is divine philosophy ! 
 Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose : 
 'Tis a perpetual feast of nectared sweets, 
 W'here no crude surfeit reigns : — " 
 are unknown to our Daytonians. 
 
 All unite in love. Remember me kindly to Fowler Stoddard, 
 and Horace Phillips, and to Dr. Dutton. 
 
 Your affectionate Father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
XXXIII 
 TO HIS SON, JOHN 
 
 Dayton, O., 27 March, 1865. 
 My dear John : 
 
 Your last, to your Mother, post-marked the 15th, did not reach 
 us till the 2r)th ; ten days on the way. We must "make long 
 patience" with the mails, as the Welsh woman said to the bride. 
 
 Perhaps, as you suggest, your mother and I may underrate 
 the religious influences at Yale ; as we are not very well acquaint- 
 ed with the facts and persons to be known in order to a correct 
 judgment. I highly appreciate the intellectual advantages of the 
 college ; and I cannot but wish that her spiritual privileges may 
 be of equal excellence. Your occasional allusions to the sermons 
 you hear, have not, I confess, impressed me favorably. Yet I 
 may underestimate them too. I am glad that you attend, value 
 and enjoy the social religious services. Well conducted, they 
 are of unspeakable importance. 
 
 * * I am pleased with your quotations from Livy. Though 
 brief, they are expressive and admirable, conveying a favorable 
 idea of the good sense and magnanimity of Fabius. In these, as 
 in other respects, he resembled our own Washington. I shall be 
 glad of an occasional extract from Herodotus. The practice of 
 writing Greek is easily acquired, and is beneficial. Take pains to 
 form an elegant Greek letter. The Porson type is most easily 
 imitated. 
 
 As to your proposed debate, it is an excellent theme. If 
 allowed to choose your side, you will be wise to urge the danger 
 from intestine factions. The United States can never be de- 
 stroyed by foreign arms until factions within have ruined her. 
 
 AH love you. 
 
 Aff. Yr. Father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
XXXIV 
 TO HIS SON AT DARTMOUTH 
 
 Dayton, O., 18 Sept., 1865. 
 My dear Alfred : 
 
 We received your very welcome letter, containing the intelli- 
 gence of your safe arrival at Hanover, and your admission to 
 the Junior class in the college. And now I hope and expect that 
 your diligent application to study, and fidelity in all duties, will 
 justify the assurances which your friends have given in your 
 behalf. Remember, my dear boy, that one-half of your under- 
 graduate course has been completed. How soon the other moiety 
 will pass, you may judge from the past. What you want is not 
 a diploma, but scholarship. Dependent, under God, upon your 
 own resources for the future, you can scarcely appreciate the 
 value of your present opportunities. In college, as in the great 
 world, everything is to be gained, (to use the homely, but ex- 
 pressive phrase of the good Lincoln), by "pegging azvay." Aspir- 
 ing young men are apt to look for progress by leaps ; waiting for 
 the opportunity of making some grand coup: (This is French, as 
 A. Ward would say). Whereas it is the "continual dropping" 
 which "weareth away the stone." Steady application to your 
 daily tasks will secure scholarship; and nothing else zuill. Con- 
 sider that each lesson, be it philosophy, Latin, or even Greek, is 
 a stone in the building you are erecting; and if it be poorly 
 dressed, or badly laid, or cemented with "untempered mortar," 
 the ultimate appearance, if not the value and durability of the 
 structure will be damaged. 
 
 Give particular attention now to the formation of acquaint- 
 ances. You are among strangers ; but you go with some little 
 experience of the world. As Polonius says to Laertes, 
 "And these few precepts in thy memory 
 
 See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, 
 
 Nor any unproportioned thought his act. 
 
 Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar." 
 
To His Son at Dartmouth 83 
 
 (That is don't make yourself too common; hail fellow with 
 every Tom, Dick and Harry). 
 
 "The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried. 
 Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel : 
 But do not dull thy palm with entertainment 
 Of each new-hatched, unfledg'd comrade." 
 
 You keep late hours, I fear. Students are strongly tempted 
 to read and study at night; sometimes to make up for hours of 
 daylight wasted in "bumming about ;" sometimes through exces- 
 sively studious habits. One great lesson to be learned at college 
 is self-control: to do a given amount of work, or reasonable task, 
 at the proper hours ; and not to overwork oneself, on the one 
 hand, nor to waste time, on the other. A firm and steady appli- 
 cation, despite all allurements ; and a wise regulation even of 
 love of study constitutes the happy man. * * 
 
 You see how I fall to moralizing at every turn ; and perhaps 
 may smile at my anxiety on all these points. But your residence 
 there recalls my own college days and companions with all the 
 freshness of yesterday's events. And oh how many young asso- 
 ciates of mine have long since finished their career! Not half 
 my own class (1834), twenty-two in number, are now alive. 
 Many of them died early in life ; and of those then in other classes, 
 what a multitude have passed away, leaving their whole course 
 a warning to survivors ! Intemperance or licentiousness buried 
 in an untimely grave fully one-half of those who perished early. 
 The deadliest foes of youth, they beset many a promising young 
 collegian ; and scarcely one who yielded to their seductions now 
 survives. 
 
 Never, till your oldest son goes to college, and, reviewing the 
 letter of his grandfather and your own course of life, you ad- 
 dress advice and caution to my grandson, can you appreciate my 
 feelings. You smile at such language. I too, should have smiled 
 at so preposterous a train of thought. Your tomorrow will come 
 sooner than you imagine; and you will look back and wonder 
 whither the years have fled that once opened before you an almost 
 interminable prospect. I would have your retrospect a pleasant 
 
84 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 one; more charming, indeed, than the prospect of coming years 
 is now. It may be so ; and now is the time to secure the bless- 
 ing. * * 
 
 Affectionately, 
 
 Yr. Father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
XXXV 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Post Office, Dayton, O., Nov., 1865. 
 My dear Alfred : 
 
 ^ ^ '^ 
 
 I am very glad that you are to teach school : the experience 
 will be worth something, and the money too. You know I am 
 an old schoolmaster. I graduated at Oxford on Thursday even- 
 ing; and left to teach school at Rising Sun, Ind., at four the 
 next morning. But I paid my tuition all through college by 
 teaching extra classes in college. And I had taught my father's 
 school a year before I entered college. The faculty of teaching 
 belongs to the Thomas family, inherited from both grandparents. 
 Let me give you this piece of advice ; and, as Burns says, 
 " — may you better reck the reed (mind the lesson) 
 Than ever did the adviser." 
 The art of governing a school, (the chief difficulty in school- 
 keeping), lies in two words,— GOVERN YOURSELF. If you 
 can perfectly control your own temper, keep perfectly cool, you 
 can always manage others. The acquisition will be worth all it 
 costs, both now, and in future life. Self-possession, coolness and 
 self-mastery, under circumstances of extreme provocation, give 
 one an advantage not to be estimated. If you inherit your fath- 
 er's qualities, as I think you do to a high degree, you will find 
 the management of your temper the hardest task you ever under- 
 took. And yet so far as school teaching is concerned, I do not 
 remember that I ever lost my temper more than once or twice. 
 
 Farewell ! Yr. letters, indicating a rapid progress, give me 
 great satisfaction. * * 
 
 Your affectionate Father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
XXXVI 
 TO HIS SON AT DARTMOUTH COLLEGE 
 
 Dayton, O., 8 Nov., 1865. 
 
 My dear Son Alfred: 
 
 * * I am glad to learn that discipline is not dead in Dart- 
 mouth. Your narrative of the Freshmen and Sophomore rush, 
 quelled by the Juniors and Seniors in accordance with Presi- 
 dent Smith's order, amused us very much. But be careful not 
 to indulge in such police duties too often. 
 
 I am gratified with your Greek quotation from Demosthenes. 
 That oration has been a favorite with all the great orators of 
 modern times. Pitt and Fox read it frequently. Brougham has 
 translated it, I believe ; but don't ride his pony, even if you can 
 catch it. Master the splendid chef d'oeuvre of the old Athenian 
 mob-king. Review it and make it a study hereafter. It will 
 repay you. By the way, do you remember that when Demos- 
 thenes stood on the B^/^a in the amphitheatre at the foot of the 
 Acropolis, pronouncing this oration, he could see the mound 
 raised at Marathon, over the noble dead whom he apostrophizes ; 
 it was only ten miles to the east of Athens ; — so insignificant 
 was the extent of Attica which has made so much noise in the 
 world ! Scarce larger than Montgomery Co., Ohio. Words- 
 worth mentions this fact from personal observation ; for the 
 B^/Att still stands — a simple stone platform in the 'ayopd, I be- 
 lieve. Have you my Wordsworth's Greece? a splendid work, 
 both in regard to text and style of publication. Perhaps you 
 took it : I have not seen it lately ; if not, I will send it by express. 
 It cost $10, and may be out of print. It would deeply interest 
 you now that you are reading the higher Greelv authors. 
 
 As to Oxford, I only know that the Board vacated all the 
 chairs after July 1st, 186G ; and that the Trustees intend to ofifer 
 their resignation. The aim is to secure for Miami University 
 the $600,000 granted by the General Government for an Agri- 
 
To His Son at Dartmouth College 87 
 
 cultural College, by offering the State Institution unembarrassed 
 by any incumbrances. If the plan goes, very likely some dis- 
 tinguished scientific savant, (pronounced sah vong), — a learned 
 layman will be placed at its head. 
 
 You have learned from your brother or sisters of the wedding 
 mania prevailing in Dayton. I married David A. Bradford to 
 Miss Lehman ; Robt. W. Steele to Miss Clara Steele ; Jno. R. 
 More to Millie Darrow I should have married the same week, 
 but for the failure of a telegram; Chas. Clegg to Hattie Pease, 
 two weeks ago; William Wallace to Etta Gregg last week; and 
 a dozen more, some say twenty-five, occur before Christmas ; 
 Jno. Hatfield, Minnie Edgar, Fanny Lowe among others. This 
 is the blessed result of peace, and a restored Union ! Good for 
 me too ; for I find hard work to make both ends meet, and so 
 many wedding fees are acceptable. 
 
 Let your school teaching lead you to a careful review of 
 English Grammar and Spelling. You may not have so favorable 
 an opportunity again ; and an accurate knowledge of your mother 
 tongue, written and spoken, will be of immense service to you. 
 Read a good Grammar of the best character, carefully ; examine 
 the principles and philosophy of language. You will find it a 
 charming study, now that you have more acquaintance with the 
 structure of other languages. Pay attention to the niceties of 
 prosody ; a part of Grammar usually overlooked by boys and 
 girls at school. The little things are of no little value in com- 
 position. 
 
 All send love. Last Saturday was our silver wedding day, 
 celebrated by Nattie assuming the Toga Virilis — his first pants. 
 
XXXVII 
 
 I 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 John: 
 
 I forgot to speak of your debate. Take which side best suits 
 your own views. I sent Dr. Lewis' Photograph from the Ruins 
 of Ancient Greece, by mail, last week. Read the Pope's encyc- 
 lical letter. You will find it in Littell's Living Age, for Mar. or 
 Feb. I like your programme ; and you will find it easier to 
 debate that side : the other requiring more knowledge of political 
 history, and of human nature. You take foreign iiwasion in a 
 wider sense than I supposed. I referred it simply to military 
 invasion. You include all foreign influences, which is permis- 
 sible, I suppose. At the beginning of this government, the Cath- 
 olic population was to the Protestant as one to 87 : now it is as 
 one to seven. So it is said. 
 
 Do not spend your vacation in study. Yet I am glad you 
 have entered the debate. I want you to cultivate the art of ex- 
 tempore speaking — which includes most careful preparation ; 
 often even verbal preparation ; and does not forbid writing ; but 
 neither reads nor memorizes the manuscript. Hamilton, we are 
 told, the foremost orator of his time, wrote out all his forensic 
 arguments, — and then burned the MSS. 
 
 In the sense you fix on for invasion, no other age or country 
 supplies an analogy to ours. For never was so glorious a land 
 so laid upon, and made attractive to the adventurous of all nations. 
 What the Roman Empire sufifered from the northern nations in 
 arms ; and France from the Northmen of Sweden and Denmark ; 
 ours may sufifer from a peaceable invasion like that of the locusts 
 and flies on Egypt. 
 
 But I have exhausted my ideas ; having written six letters 
 this morning, after preaching twice, and attending a third service 
 yesterday, and being awake half the night from the noise about 
 Lee's surrender. 
 
 May God guide and bless you, my dear boy ! 
 
 Yr. afif. Father, Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
XXXVIII 
 FROM HIS UNCLE, THOMAS SPENCER 
 
 Bransby, Lincoln, 29/3, 1866. 
 My dear Nephew : 
 
 I sit down to offer thee congratulations of thy Aunt and my- 
 self on the marriage of thy daughter. May God grant that the 
 event may prove a source of comfort to parents of the parties 
 on either side ! 
 
 I have not had the grace to answer thy letter announcing the 
 death of thy mother. It was a letter of great family interest 
 and I took the liberty of sending it to several of thy relations 
 in England ; and in the transfer it got lost or mislaid. Always 
 expecting that it would turn up some day, I kept putting off my 
 reply — it was a capital excuse for a dilatory correspondent, and 
 I adopted it. When Mary May's cards arrived, I felt that I 
 was remembered beyond my deserts; my conscience burnt like 
 a furnace. I beseech thee to forgive me. 
 
 It is too late to condole with thee, and it would be unseemly 
 in me to attempt to revive feeling which time has mellowed down. 
 I always entertained a profound respect for thy mother, and can- 
 not help regretting that we were not permitted to meet in this 
 life. My intercourse with thy father and mother was not fre- 
 quent, or at any time of long continuance, but always of the most 
 affectionate and friendly character. My recollections of thy 
 ■mother are the most perfect of her as she appeared before she 
 was married. From some fancy or passion, about 1808, she had 
 a beautiful head of hair cropped off, and her first appearance 
 without it was so novel that it made a deep mark in my memory. 
 It is as a young woman that she lives in my recollection, and I 
 do not want to alter the picture. 
 
 In the year 1816 you were — parents and family — my guests 
 at Clerkenwell Green near Smithfield, London, for a short time. 
 It was at this period that thy father and I conceived the idea of 
 
♦ 90 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 emigrating to America. Long and frequent were our conversa- 
 tions on the subject. We were Radical Republicans of that day. 
 It was during thy father's stay at Clerkenwell that the first Na- 
 poleon was overthrown and banished to Elba. On the arrival 
 of the news, London was frantic with delight, and illumination 
 was ordered and thy father and I went out to see the sights. It 
 is needless to say they were splendid. We took up a position 
 behind a coach, with or without leave of the owner, I cannot now 
 say. It was the best possible position for our purpose, for as 
 the coach passed slowly along we saw most perfectly all that was 
 to be seen. Our coach made one of the line that passed through 
 one of the most interesting parts of the city. The coach that 
 immediately followed us was driven by an illnatured fellow, who 
 repeatedly endeavored to sweep us from our perch with his pole 
 — the pole of his coach. At last he made a successful lunge and 
 wounded me in the leg and made my trousers a scandal. Thy 
 father's blood was up in an instant, and jumping down he bearded 
 our assailant on his box and gave him a sound thrashing with a 
 walking-stick. Very like he did more for his friend and brother 
 than he would have done for himself. And clearly — I, in whose 
 cause the onset was made, have every reason to remember it 
 gratefully. 
 
 One of thy father's peculiarities was his firm belief in 
 Satanic influence. Indeed, in early life, he believed that we were 
 always surrounded by spiritual influences — good or evil. We 
 were walking together one day through some street in London, 
 deeply engaged in an interesting conversation of a religious char- 
 acter, when some wicked or mischievous people threw some- 
 thing at us from an upper window. For a moment we were dis- 
 concerted, and lost the clew of our conversation. "There !" ex- 
 claimed thy father, "a man must be a devil himself who does not 
 believe in the perpetual working of the evil one. The great 
 enemy knew that we were pursuing a subject closely connected 
 with our souls' salvation, and he devised this diversion to drive 
 us from the path that leads to life." He related to me, that on 
 one occasion, being sent on an errand when a lad, his path led 
 by the bank of a river — when lo ! suddenly he saw the faint 
 shadow of someone following him, a shadow but no substance. 
 
From His Uncle, Thomas Spencer 91 
 
 He was by no means disconcerted, but took it for the good angel 
 that always had him in charge. 
 
 It was when he was a shepherd lad that the passion for letters 
 first possessed him. Having obtained a spelling-book, he carried 
 it in his bosom and conned some self-imposed task at every inter- 
 val of leisure. One day he heard his master complain to a neigh- 
 bor that his lad was found at every touch and turn with a book 
 in his hand. "Well," said the neighbor, "I should not like him 
 the worse for that. Depend upon it that boy is more than he 
 seems to be ; he is not going to tend sheep or hold plow all his 
 days." This was large encouragement, and he applied himself 
 with greater diligence than ever to his task. 
 
 It will perhaps surprise thee to learn that thy father very 
 considerably contributed to make me a Quaker. In one of his 
 interesting conversations, he gave me such a description of 
 Quakerism that I inwardly said in my heart, "This should be my 
 religion," and in due time executed the resolution. 
 
 I wish thou had come to England, as we once hoped that thou 
 would; these little reminiscences would have told well enough 
 by the fireside, when they cut but a poor figure on paper. 
 
 Of England news I have little to communicate. In the Stally- 
 brass family thou would find men of thy own mold and mind, and 
 attainments, and particularly in Adolph Sonnenschein — thy 
 Uncle Edward's son-in-law. I need hardly state to thee that 
 as long as thy Aunt and I are alive and occupy Bransby thou 
 hast a home here, should thou at any time visit Europe. 
 
 The cattle plague that is afflicting this country is a cause of 
 serious apprehension to ourselves personally. I have a large 
 stock of cattle for the size of my farm, and I close my eyes in 
 fear and open them in apprehension, — there is no cure but the 
 poleaxe or the halter. It is all around us, but still we stand. 
 Blessed be God for all his mercjes ! 
 
 In Ireland the Fenian conspiracy is giving trouble. Here in 
 England the people barely notice it. John Bull is a very im- 
 passive sort of a fellow — it takes a great deal to rouse him. 
 He is just now busy about a new Reform Bill that is to make 
 the sufifrage almost universal. The old constitution of England 
 
93 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 placed political power in the hands of the property and intelli- 
 gence of the country. We need no Reform Bill — the silent but 
 certain alteration that is taking place in the value of money is 
 lowering franchise quite as fast as education and good morals 
 are preparing the people for its possession. 
 
 A ten pound rental in borough, and a forty shilling freehold 
 in the counties give a man a vote for a member of Parliament, 
 and these qualifications are within the reach of any decent man. 
 Formerly forty shillings represented the annual value of fifty 
 acres of land ; now, it does not fairly represent the value of a 
 single acre. 
 
 The United States give the franchise to foreigners by far too 
 easy — a twenty-year probation for the least intelligent among 
 them, would be none too much. It is time to close. I am get- 
 ting on perilous ground. Farewell my dear Nephew ; with much 
 love to all thy family, 
 
 Thy ever afifectionate Uncle, 
 
 Thomas Spencer. 
 
XXXIX 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Dayton, O., 16 Mar., 1866. 
 
 My dear Alfred: 
 
 Your letter of the 10th just came to hand. I was glad to 
 receive it ; and Willie warmly welcomed his, which came by the 
 same mail. 
 
 I am pleased to receive your account of your grade. It is 
 the first news of the kind I have received since you entered Dart- 
 mouth. I was thinking this morning that I ought to have some 
 report soon. I do not exactly understand the 1.73. Ordinarily, 
 such an arithmetic expression would indicate one phis 72; as 
 $1.72 is so much over one dollar. But as 1 is your maximum, 
 the .72 must be a deduction, I suppose ; or that you are .28 
 above 2. Is this so? Even at that figure the grade is fair; but 
 I shall be glad to see it bettered, as you suggest. Do not hesitate 
 about an "exclusive" devotion to text-books. I know the fond- 
 ness of active-minded young men for side-reading. I did no 
 little of it myself at college. In fact, I did a great deal of his- 
 torical, biographic, and literary reading. Yet if I had my course 
 to repeat, (as, alas! we never can have; and hence the neces- 
 sity of doing aright what can never be mended), I should un- 
 hesitatingly give my text-books the preference. When you have 
 mastered your regular lessons, and find spare time on your hands, 
 then read a little. Ever after graduating you may read at pleas- 
 ure ; but your classical and mathematical, if not your scientific 
 studies, zmll close, in all probability, when you leave college. It 
 should not be so ; but in nineteen cases out of twenty, if not a 
 far higher proportion, so it is. Besides, you are seeking mental 
 discipline, which is far more valuable than any information you 
 can gather. 
 
 "In the hey-day of youthful greediness and ambition, when 
 the mind, dazzled by the vastness and variety of the universe, 
 
94 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 must needs know everything, or rather know about everything, 
 at once and on the spot, too many are apt, as I have been in past 
 years" — (he should say — as I was in past years), "to complain 
 of Cambridge studies as too dry and narrow : but as time teaches 
 the student, year by year, what is really required for an under- 
 standing of the objects with which he meets, he begins to find 
 that his University, in as far as he has received her teaching into 
 himself, has given him, in her criticism, her mathematics, above 
 all, in Plato, something which all her popular knowledge, the 
 lectures and institutions of the day, and even good books them- 
 selves cannot give, a boon more precious than learning; namely, 
 THE ART OF LEARNING. That instead of casting into his 
 lazy lap treasures which he would not have known how to use, 
 she has taught him to mine them for himself ; and has by her wise 
 refusal to justify his intellectual greediness, excited his hunger, 
 only that he may be the stronger to hunt and till for his own sub- 
 sistence ; and thus, the deeper he drinks, in after years, at foun- 
 tains wisely forbidden to him while he was a Cambridge student, 
 and sees his own companions growing up into sound-headed and 
 sound-hearted, practical men, liberal and expansive, and yet with 
 a firm standing ground for thought and action, he learns to com- 
 plain less and less of Cambridge studies, and more and more of 
 that conceit and haste of his own, which kept him from reaping 
 the full advantage of her training." 
 
 The quotation, from a learned, living writer, (though un- 
 happily a theologically unsound one), the Prof, of Modern His- 
 tory in the University of Cambridge, England, is well worthy a 
 repeated and thoughtful perusal. It expresses the common judg- 
 ment of all thoroughly and liberally educated men. 
 
 I would wish you to give careful attention to Hopkins' Evi- 
 dences. The work is not familiar to me; though the subject is. 
 I should be pleased to have any suggestions it awakens in your 
 own mind, and to aid you in analyzing its argument. Let me 
 also particularly recommend a thorough mastery of Plato. The 
 longer I live the more I admire the sense and genius of that 
 noblest of the Greeks, and noblest of the pagan world. T read 
 lately a very interesting and instructive article on the writings 
 of Plato as compared with the Scriptures. It was in Littell's 
 Living Age, about three months ago. I read it to your mother 
 and Lizzie. If I can lay my hand on it, I will mail it to you. 
 There is also a little treatise of Dr. Pond of Bangor, on Plato 
 and his writings, which would aid you. It will repay you to 
 
To His Son 95 
 
 connect such reading with your daily studies. You should also 
 read up a little on Greek history, enough to locate Plato and his 
 times, and among his contemporaries. Plato is exercising no 
 slight influence on modern thinkers ; as Prof. Kingsley's works 
 show. If duly tempered by a knowledge of inspired truth, his 
 ideas are invaluable. We learn what, (and how little), the grand- 
 est unassisted reason can teach about those sublime topics which 
 must interest every thinking man — the Godhead, the nature of 
 the soul, a future Hfe, etc., etc. 
 
 Do not content yourself with reaching a vague and general 
 apprehension of Plato's ideas, either. You want the discipline 
 which is gained by an actual mastery of the very shade of thought 
 represented by the Greek verb and participle, (the hypothetic 
 uses of the indicative, subjunctive, etc., with a'v, etc., on which 
 study the various Grammars, and read especially Winer's — 
 pronounced, Vener's — Grammar of the New Testament dialect : 
 some of the Professors will lend it you, and a few pages will 
 explain the whole). The use and signif. of the prepositions, too, 
 is admirably explained by Winer. The other particles, fx-^^ ovv, 
 Sc, 'arra, etc., and their compounds, and relations to each other, 
 are indispensable studies to one who would read Plato with 
 profit and delight. 
 
 All this, no doubt, will cost time and study ; but be assured 
 it will amply repay you. Most Greek students are like California 
 travellers who should run over the mining lands, content if they 
 pick up here and there a stray nugget to show admiring friends. 
 The true scholar blasts the quarries, and drills out solid and ex- 
 haustless wealth from treasures hidden to the careless traveler. 
 
 Enough. It is 11 P. M., and mother has retired already. * * 
 All well here. Mary May and her husband are here this week. 
 Judge Matthews, — Col. Parrott's brother-in-law, — was buried 
 last Sabbath. They remain here Tuesday, and then return to 
 Columbus. Col. P. has bought Col. Harrison's old place on the 
 hill south of Dayton, and will live there. With much love, 
 
 Yr. aff. Father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
XL 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Dayton, O., 14 Nov. 1866. 
 My dear Alfred : 
 
 I had stars on the brain last night, and did not sleep soundly. 
 You know the shooting stars were looked for Xov. 13. I saw 
 them 33 years ago, Nov. 13, 1833. I was then, as you are in the 
 first term of the Senior year; at Oxford, but was at home, In 
 Venice, Butler Co., that particular night. I remember that a 
 neighbor waked me at midnight, terribly alarmed, as he supposed, 
 in his ignorance, that the stars were really falling. From mid- 
 night, till the dawn of day rendered the meteors invisible, there 
 was an incessant display of the most celestial fire-works that 
 mortals ever gazed upon. You may suppose that I was anxious 
 to witness the last repetition of the grandest exhibition ever to be 
 seen in my day; and happily, the sky, that had been cloudy all 
 day, cleared up after dark, and the regular stars shone splendidly. 
 Toward midnight I retired to rest ; for not a single meteor had 
 appeared. It was understood that the fire-bells would ring if the 
 shooting stars occurred. At intervals during the night I woke ; 
 but toward morning, (4 o'clock), the heavens were overcast, and 
 no chance remained to witness the phenomenon. I fell asleep and 
 dreamed. I thought I was awake and sitting on the lounge by 
 our bed-side. I saw John, as I supposed, come into our room, 
 dressed, and with an overcoat on his arm. He came near and 
 threw his arm around me. As soon as he spoke I found that it 
 was Alfred, and not John. I kissed you several times, and in- 
 quired what had brought you home before graduating. You 
 made some vague reply; and I asked if you were well; for you 
 looked pale. I asked if you had been sent home ; and you quietly 
 replied that you had been privately expelled! The thought darted 
 across my mind, how shall I bear this calamity; and the sneers 
 of my neighbors, who will say, well, the minister's sons are no 
 better than other people's ! This waked me. 
 
To His Son 97 
 
 Now, as I know of no other reason why you should be ex- 
 pelled than that you have not paid your college bills, I enclose 
 a check for $145.00, the sum you said would be needed for that 
 purpose. I had associated the falling stars with my Senior year 
 at college in 1833, and having neglected since Monday to send 
 this money, the thought of your dismissal grew out of it, I sup- 
 pose. Then I had some conversation last week relative to your 
 being at Dartmouth, with a gentleman here, who told me that 
 some of my friends thought I ought not to send my sons to col- 
 lege with the inadequate salary I am receiving. I replied that 
 other people laid up money for their children ; while I could give 
 them nothing but an education. My father had given me the 
 best education in his power ; — struggling to do this with less 
 means than I had ; — and I felt that he had done me the highest 
 kindness ; which I was resolved to return to my children. 
 
 I need not say that I was stung with the unkind suggestion ; 
 but I shall be amply repaid if you improve your opportunities. 
 
XLI 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Dayton, O., 23 July, 1866. 
 
 My dear Alfred: 
 
 Your two letters were received last week, and the last con- 
 tained very agreeable intelligence. We are all highly gratified 
 that you received the first prize for declamation, I sent you a 
 copy of the Cincinnati Commercial containing the announcement 
 of the fact. How the Commercial came by the information I 
 do not know ; but I thought it might please you to see that our 
 Central newspapers do not neglect the rising young men of our 
 section of the country. You do not tell us what the prize was : 
 though I suppose the honor is the principal thing. We think our 
 family doing well, when the eldest son carries off the first prize 
 at Dartmouth ; and the second, the second prize at Yale ! * * 
 
 Your statement with reference to the declamation of my St. 
 Louis speech at Amherst was naturally agreeable. Yet I could 
 wish, if it were to be again repeated, that a better report had been 
 published. For a newspaper report it was unusually accurate ; 
 but of course there were many errors, some omissions, and other 
 inaccuracies, which a verbatim report would not have contained. 
 I once thought of writing out a fair report myself ; but it was so 
 ephemeral in character, and had been so widely reprinted while 
 the Assembly was in session, that I abandoned the thought. 
 
 We suppose you are to be at your grandfather's during hay- 
 ing season. A letter from Mr. Jabez Fisher to your Alother 
 speaks of his hearing this from his brother. Mr. J. F. writes 
 that his son George has invited you to visit Washington, N. H. 
 You will find the region around there the Switzerland of Amer- 
 ica. I climbed Mt. Lovell, in sight of Mr. Jabez Fisher's home, 
 with him, on his 75th birthday, I believe. It rises some 3,000 ft. 
 From the summit you have a magnificent prospect. Three miles 
 north, on the main road passing Mr. Fisher's door, you come to 
 
To His Son 99 
 
 heights overlooking the Connecticut valley. A fine lake near his 
 house affords excellent fishing, though I never tried it. You 
 would enjoy a few days there, if convenient to them and to you. 
 
 Just beyond Mr. J. F.'s — north — the adjoining town, I think, 
 is famous for minerals. Some of the finest specimens, and the 
 largest variety, are found there. On the height I spoke of, three 
 or four miles north of Washington, to the left of the road, and 
 half a mile from it, on a crowning summit rising like a ruined 
 tower, I found beautiful specimens of malachite. The rocks 
 there, too, are striated, or grooved; the effect, it is supposed, of 
 glacial action. I do not know whether you have given much at- 
 tention yet to geology and mineralogy. Near the village, on a 
 high hill, I remember that I found graphite, or plumbago. A 
 mine had once been opened there. 
 
 It would repay you, after hay-harvest, if you could take a 
 horse and ride to Mt. Wachusett, 30 miles from your grand- 
 father's. He went once with Mary May, John and me to Wa- 
 chusett, and climbed it too. I suppose he would hardly care now 
 to repeat the experiment. The view from W. is one of the finest 
 in N. England. It will be a charming vision never to be for- 
 gotten. Youth is the season to gather such memories as we shall 
 love to cherish. When the body is too old to travel, imagination, 
 (memory rather), can recall every delightful scene once visited. 
 It was Niebuhr, the great traveller and historian, I believe, who, 
 becoming blind in his old age, used to say that he could sit in 
 imagination among the oriental scenes which he had visited, under 
 the glorious sky of the East, and revel on the visions which had 
 transported his earlier days. How wonderfully and benevolently 
 has our Maker provided for our happiness ! "He giveth us all 
 things richly for our enjoyment," (1 Tim. 6-17). And how 
 rational, that youth be so spent that we may recall its enjoyments 
 with pleasure ! 
 
 All moves on here in the old jog-trot way. I saw John Pat- 
 terson yesterday : he had received a late letter from you and 
 talks of going to Dartmouth. I advised him to return to Oxford. 
 Now that the Faculty is reorganized, with Dr. Stanton for Presi- 
 dent, Prof. Butler in the Greek chair, I almost wish you too were 
 back at Oxford. The expense would be but half what it is ; and 
 
100 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 we could see you so often. We are almost sick with the thought 
 that we shall not see you for another year. All unite in love to 
 your Grandfather, Grandmother, and Uncle. Remember the age 
 and infirmities of Mrs. F., and conform quietly to all their do- 
 mestic habits. A true gentleman will adapt himself to the wishes 
 and tastes of others, where no principle is involved. 
 Farewell — God bless you, my dear boy ! 
 
 Yr. afif. Father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
XLII 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 C 
 
 Dayton, O., 31 Oct., 1866. 
 My dear Alfred: 
 
 * * I am pleased with the topic assigned you for an essay, 
 or oration. John Milton is one of the noblest characters in Eng- 
 lish literature, and history; a good specimen of the genuine 
 English Puritan with a leaning rather to politics than ecclesiasti- 
 cism. By the way, Johnson the lexicographer, (how the name is^ 
 degraded for us by association with Andy!) once employed a 
 literary drudge to compile an index to one of his publications. 
 The man had completed his work as far as "Milton, John"— so 
 he wrote it, referring to the page, etc. Johnson's eye fell upon 
 the unfortunate words, when he summoned the index maker, 
 and dismissed him from his employ ; telling him that there was 
 but one Milton, and the fellow who should attempt to designate 
 him as "John" was unfit for his service. ■>--— ^ 
 
 I have been refreshing myself this Summer with historic 
 reading. During the Prusso-Austrian war I perused Schiller's 
 Thirty Years War; to compare the state of Europe in the middle 
 of the 17th century with its condition in the middle of the 19th 
 century. Then I took up Sharon Turner's Anglo Saxons ; and 
 this led me to Milton's History of the Britons and Saxons. You 
 find it toward the end of his prose works in the American 8 vo. 
 edition. John bought a good copy for 75 cents. I suppose you 
 have it. If not, we will express it to you, if not too late. 
 
 Milton's prose is peculiar; the sentences very long and intri- 
 cate ; the use of the Latin participial instead of the verb predom- 
 inating ; which makes his sentences comprehensive, but cumbrous. 
 You should read his History of England, as it embodies the old 
 traditions : of little use except as connected with English poetry. 
 Shakespeare's King Lear, and many of Chaucer's characters, are 
 drawn from these traditions ; as well as King Arthur and his 
 
102 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 hundred Knights. He gives the history of the subjugation of old 
 British Christianity by the Papal emissaries pretty fully. 
 
 The period of English history including the rise, prevalence, 
 and fall of Puritanism, is well worthy of careful study. But be 
 careful of your authorities. Hume admits that England owes 
 her freedom to the Puritans ; yet he misrepresents and maligns 
 them. He was a Tory and a Jacobite. 
 
 Milton, like Cromwell, was a genuine republican ; as were 
 many other Puritans, as well as of the Scotch Covenanters. Led 
 by a sense of religion, by the force of conscience, to demand and 
 exercise liberty in matters of religion ; and met everywhere by 
 the stern opposition of Monarchs, who claimed a right to control 
 the Conscience no less than the bodies of their subjects, such men 
 were forced to investigate the foundations of the royal preroga- 
 tive, and found no basis in reason or Scripture for the boasted 
 "divine right of Kings." 
 
 Can you find Rutherford's "Lex Rex" in any of your libraries? 
 It was burned at the gallows in Edinburgh by the common hang- 
 man, in obedience to the order of Charles 2d ; who dreaded the 
 republican idea that Law is King. But Cromwell found an 
 England incapable of republicanism ; and his position compelled 
 him to rule. Milton and his compeers were far in advance of 
 their times. A bitter passage in his History of England, where 
 he steps aside to draw a parallel between the early Britons at the 
 time of the Saxon invasion, and his own age, (the passage was 
 penned in his later life), describes the selfishness and corruption 
 which produced the downfall of the Cromwellian Commonwealth. 
 
 You should also read Milton's Poems. His Samson Ago- 
 nistes was intended to show the English Giant, Republicanism, 
 bound in the prison-house of Royalty after the accession of 
 Charles 2d ; and bound for its oivn fault. 
 
 But I must stop my rambling letter. Of course you have 
 read Macaulay's essay on Milton. But Macaulay is not always 
 to be trusted. Though a eulogist of the Puritans, he had not 
 religious principle and spirit enough to enable him to appreciate 
 them arig-ht. 
 
XLIII 
 FROM HIS UNCLE, THOMAS SPENCER 
 
 Bransby, Lincoln, (England). 
 
 21/3/1867. 
 
 My dear Nephew: 
 
 Thy very kind and interesting letter reached me in due course 
 some time last year. I thank thee most sincerely for the treat 
 it gave me. It seemed as I read its pages as if I was shaking 
 hands with every member of thy father's family. It was a rare 
 privilege, for which I hope that I am duly thankful to the Giver 
 of all Good. The letter was of such family interest that I took 
 the liberty of sending it to London after it had been to Facit and 
 Sturton. Thy cousins, the Stallybrass family, were all of them 
 in town just then, and the opportunity was not to be lost. Poor 
 Sarah and poor Adolph Sonnenschein ! They have lately lost 
 their second son, — a gifted boy of thirteen, who was rarely en- 
 dowed by nature, and his parents reveled in the prospect of the 
 intellectual victories that he would one day win. I could not 
 measure his scholastic attainments, for they are beyond my ken ; 
 but of his general knowledge I could form some estimate, and 
 assuredly it was surprising for his years, — he was all nervous 
 energy — all soul — the jewel was large and the casket frail. 
 His parents were fully aware of the peculiarities of his constitu- 
 tion, and they sent him for two Summers to rusticate at Bransby, 
 but it was of no use, — I could not keep him from books. I hope 
 thou will one day make the acquaintance of thy cousins, the 
 Stallybrass family, — they are talented men, and all engaged in 
 intellectual pursuits. 
 
 On my side of the house, a hearty welcome awaits thee. I 
 could tell thee, as I have told several of my American friends 
 who have called to see me at Bransby — "Remember, if thou 
 should fall sick in the course of thy travels, there is a home and 
 a capital nurse in Lincolnshire." One gentleman told me it was 
 
104 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 a real comfort to him during long travel on the continent, to know 
 that he had something like a home in Europe. 
 
 I very much fear that I cracked up my English home far 
 above its deserts. My partiality for my humble dwelling and 
 its surroundings very likely led me astray. I only intended to 
 describe a quiet and quaint abode, standing in the rustic and rural 
 of old England, — a fitting place in which an aged couple might 
 spend their last days in humble hope and patient preparation. 
 I know full well how quickly the refinements of civilization fol- 
 low the foot-steps of the backwoodsman in the Far West. The 
 ring of the axe has scarcely died away when the silken sounds 
 of the piano set in. I can fully believe that there are farm 
 houses in the neighborhood of Dayton far surpassing my own 
 in all the appliances of modern civilization. Had I been at thy 
 elbow when thou was penning thy racy vindication of Dayton 
 life and manners, I should have taken all the wind out of thy sail?, 
 by whispering in thy ear, — "truly, the gleanings of the Grapes of 
 Ephraim are better than the vintage of Abiezer."( ?) I have one 
 short and simple way of putting the question of comparison be- 
 tween England and the United States. I always say to my 
 countrymen, — "Whatever England may have been in her great- 
 ness, she has only shown forth in miniature what the States are 
 destined to show forth in magnitude." 
 
 Thy description of the magnificent width of the streets of 
 Dayton, and the manner in which the town is laid out seems to 
 me to imply a large Empire in prospect. The instincts of the 
 Anglo-Normans of the States have adopted a large scale for all 
 their cities as best suited to the large development that is in the 
 future; just as the Anglo-Saxons of England built for an endur- 
 ing Empire. Our old churches, castles and Cathedrals were built 
 by a people who evidently contemplated posterity. I was at 
 Austerfield some time ago, a village in Yorkshire, the birth-place 
 and English home of Gov. Bradford of Massachusetts, and there 
 stood the little, old church, barely capable of holding above fifty 
 to a hundred people, and yet its walls of stone were three feet 
 thick. There it had stood for centuries, I know not how many. 
 The veritable curfew bell was still in its tiny tower, — the very 
 same that tolled out the harsh terms of the Norman conquest, at 
 
From His Uncle, Thomas Spencer 105 
 
 least so said the old sexton. As I stood and looked at the old 
 church, sturdy and staunch in its grey old age, I queried with 
 myself after this fashion. "What in nature is to shake down this 
 old structure for centuries to come, — nothing short of an earth- 
 quake, — verily, the old folks that built you, built for posterity 
 and an enduring Empire." Thy description of the comfortable 
 dwelling of the working classes of Dayton, — most all freeholds 
 of their own, — interested me deeply. The want of freeholds in 
 England is a sad bar to its material prosperity, and a sadder bar 
 to the morals of its people. For want of this powerful incentive 
 to good conduct, — the possession of a freehold, — the laboring 
 classes in England are low in their aspirations and too often 
 spend good wages recklessly, instead of devoting a surplus to a 
 good and grand object. Here, the lingering effects of an effete 
 feudalism meet us at every step, — in town or country it is all 
 the same. The soil of the country is in the hands of the few. 
 Many of our large towns lie in the hollow of one man's hand ; 
 and they are kept so by our custom of settlement and our laws 
 of primogeniture and entail. Around the neighboring town of 
 Gainsboro there are beautiful sites, admirably suited for sub- 
 urban dwellings — bluffs and hill-sides, where, if we cannot look 
 upon mysterious fortifications we may overlook Danish Encamp- 
 ments. The world is everywhere the same, strewn all over with 
 the remains of people that have long since passed away. Lin- 
 coln Minster crosses a 'bluff' that overlooks the vale of Trent, 
 and recent discovery has shown us that this 'bluff' was once the 
 site of a Roman Encampment, from whence a conquering people 
 might watch a subject race in the lands below. The great fea- 
 tures of nature remain with all their varied outlines, and they 
 tell us of the motives and passions of a long forgotten race. 
 
 But to return to the 'bluffs' of Gainsboro, they are now in the 
 market for sale, — the owner, always of the same family from 
 generation to generation, keeps them to let for cow pastures. 
 Huddersfield, a large manufacturing town of Yorkshire, of 40,000 
 inhabitants, and full of a go-a-headism, is all, but one small free- 
 hold, the property. of one man. Sir John Ramsden. He lets his 
 building lots on lease of 99 years, for a handsome ground rent. 
 At the expiration of the 99 years, the buildings, many of stone, — 
 
106 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas ^ 
 
 massive and handsome — will fall into the hands of his family. 
 The one small freehold is the property of a Friend. The family 
 of the principal proprietor have repeatedly tried to buy this prop- 
 erty. On the last occasion, the present Sir John offered to pave 
 the whole plat with sovereigns in gold, and to give the paving as 
 the purchase money. To this proposal, the Friend replied, — 
 "Very well, I will agree with thee, but on this condition, — thou 
 must plant the sovereigns edgeways !" This was rather too much 
 of a good thing for Sir John, and he backed out. "Very well", 
 rejoined the old Quaker, — "then Huddersfield belongs the one 
 part to Sir John Ramsden and the other part to Thomas Firth." 
 Large estates cover the surface of the British Isles every- 
 where. With thirty million of people, we have only from 3 to 
 500,000 landholders, — a condition of things that I deplore most 
 bitterly. I cannot say that it has its cast in the Norman conquest. 
 It is rather the result of economic laws. Somehing like* it grew 
 up in the Southern States. Certainly it is our peculiar laws of 
 succession that hold these vast estates together. English instincts 
 are decidedly aristocratic. When men make fortunes by com- 
 merce or in the profession, they buy land and try to found a 
 family. Even in humble life, fathers will cast off their daugh- 
 ters with a 5£ note that they may leave 3 or 4 thousands in land 
 to an eldest son ; not that the law obliges them to do so, but 
 simply from choice. By making a will such people may divide 
 as much as they like. Primogeniture is the rule in cases of 
 intestacy, — it is the law, and as such it dictates the morality of 
 the people. 
 
 I must, however, say this of the English Aristocracy, — a more 
 generous race of men never lived. If they do hold the land, they 
 let it at a very moderate rent, rarely exceeding 23/. per cent per 
 annum on its selling value. Boswell, in his life of Johnson, says 
 that they give another 2 5^ in homage, but I don't believe him. 
 No, the present moment, under Free-trade, the landlord and the 
 farmer are not sharing more than 6 per cent per annum, on their 
 united capital, — the value of the land and the value of the stock 
 upon it which is generally about 10£ per acre. No class of the 
 English people would oppose the breaking up of our large estates 
 so stoutly as the English tenant farmers. For myself, I long 
 
From His Uncle, Thomas Spencer 107 
 
 for the freedom of the soil in England, and its accessibility to 
 our patient and laborious peasants. I look upon many a manly 
 face of this class, and think to myself, — 'what a man you would 
 become — what a master you might be, if you were only in the 
 States.' There is nothing of an earthly character that seems to 
 affect the very nature of a man so powerfully as the tenure of 
 the soil on which he dwells. When a man feels his feet upon his 
 own free soil, he feels the dignity of a king, and all the inde- 
 pendence of manhood. I once heard the late Edward Everett 
 say, — "Tell me the tenure of the soil, and I'll tell the condition 
 of the people." To tell the truth, I think more of the freedom 
 of the soil in America and its great abundance, as a source of hap- 
 piness and posterity to the people, than I do of its democratic 
 institutions. Pardon me, I am covering a deal of paper with a 
 very dry subject, and perhaps saying some things to which thou 
 will not very easily subscribe. 
 
 During the last Autumn, I gathered in my 30th Harvest m 
 England, and it was the worst to get I ever knew. The crops 
 were fair, but the weather for securing them the worst I ever 
 knew. For 70 days it rained at some time within the 24 hours 
 of each day. Fanny Kemble's Frenchman might have gone home 
 to France and said that there was no ripe fruit in England, save 
 roasted apples, and not have been very far from the truth. Our 
 pears, some times very fine, had neither juice nor flavor, — they 
 were good for nothing. We had no sunshine to ripen them. 
 How the wheat and the oats and the barley found their way to 
 maturity is a puzzle to me. I should revel in a jolly good roast 
 in the States, — thermometer up to 90 in the shade. One 4th of 
 July, whether it was the last or not I cannot say, but it was the 
 4th of July, thy Aunt was sitting on one side of the fire at her 
 interminable knitting, and I at the other with a book in my hand. 
 An odd thought just struck me, — "Mary," said I, "look around 
 and see if you can find a fly in the room," and we both of us 
 looked, but not a fly could we find. "Now," said I, "think of 
 Independence-day at Salem, Mass., and tell me if the beautiful 
 creatures were really such a nuisance as we took them to be." 
 I would give a crown to see the table v/ell covered with them, 
 and another crown to hear the music of their buzz. Harvest is 
 
108 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 generally a good time with us. The laborers get good wages, 
 and they work with a will, and the farmers are cheerful at the 
 prospect of well-filled stock-yards. Much of the simplicity of 
 Harvest still lingers in these low-lands of Lincolnshire. We hear 
 the shout of the Harvest Home, and we see the gleaners in the 
 field. When the last load of grain enters our stock-yard, it is 
 covered all over the top with as many shouting children as it can 
 carry, and thy Aunt, and her maid, stand at the gate and give a 
 little plum-cake to all comers. The shout I must give thee, 
 though I am almost ashamed to do so. 
 
 "Master is a good man, he gets 
 
 His Harvest as fast as he can, 
 
 Never thrown over — never stuck fast. 
 
 The Harvest Home has come at last." 
 
 Then there is the Harvest supper when master and mistress 
 and all who have shared the labors of the Harvest take a cheerful 
 meal together. I love to see the binding of the sheaves, — mod- 
 ern art has not yet contrived an abridgement of this operation. 
 It is just as primitive as when Joseph and his brethren gathered 
 in the Harvest of their father Jacob. When the gleaners are in 
 the field, I cannot but think of Ruth and Naomi and the barley 
 fields of Bethlehem, and the sketch we get of the rural life and 
 manners among the Llebrews of that day. Boaz was the very 
 type of the Hebrew gentleman, — his salutation to the reapers 
 when he entered his fields, — "The Lord be with thee", — and the 
 kindly response of the reapers, — "The Lord bless thee", — are 
 touching characteristics of that early day. I wish that we had 
 something like this pious courtesy in our own times. I do not 
 know that we can find in all the compass of the English language, 
 a better picture of a golden age, than we find in the second chap- 
 ter of Ruth. It is full of piety, embellished with touching inci- 
 dents of poetry and romance. 
 
 I continue to live on excellent terms with my friend the par- 
 son, — I do not use the term parson derisively. Thou will per- 
 haps say, "why not live on good terms?" — I will tell thee. When 
 my good friend wants a church rate, I go and oppose him, and 
 am always sure to beat him — appeals to the selfishness of man- 
 
From His Uncle, Thomas Spencer 109 
 
 kind are sure to succeed. However, I endeavor to carry on our 
 vestry warfare with as much courtesy as I can command, and 
 the parson on his side says, — "I intend to live you down, to love 
 you down, and to pray you down — and if I cannot beat you 
 Dissenters on that line, I'll give up." And to tell the truth, he 
 sticks to his principles. He mostly takes tea with us when he 
 shepherds his little flock at Bransby, and often gives us two hours 
 when his service is over. The last time he was here, we had a 
 long sitting, and my good friend got on his favorite hobby — 
 philology — of which I understand just about as much as he is 
 lucky enough to make plain to me, and some times not so much 
 at that. He is a great stickler for an improved translation of the 
 Scriptures, and the less I am disposed to encourage that enter- 
 prise so perilous — the more he wants to show the necessity. 
 When I grow weary in listening to long lectures on language, on 
 which I have precious little to say, he will wake me up by a flash 
 of remorse, and when I have opened my eyes and buttoned back 
 my ears, he will return again to the old subject, — an improved 
 translation. The other evening he woke me up by telling me 
 how Bishops are made in England, and as the illustration touches 
 the Cloth, and involves a choice bit of Episcopal scandal, I must 
 tell the tale as it was told to me. 
 
 Some time about the year 1826, a young Marquis of Coyning- 
 ham fell head over ears in love with a Swiss governess, to the 
 sore affliction of the Marchioness, his mother ; and how to prevent 
 the catastrophe almost drove the Lady to her wits end. At last 
 she hit upon a scheme, — she sent for a young clergyman who 
 had been private tutor to. her sons, and made him acquainted 
 with the awful state of afifairs and her own way of getting out 
 of what appeared to her Ladyship a very bad scrape. With a 
 delicate and deliberate coolness, she proposed that the young 
 clergyman should himself marry the Swiss girl and take her clear 
 out of the road — promising at the same time to — make it 
 worth his while to do so. The girl was young, beautiful and 
 brilliant in accomplishments — polished oflf intellectually to the 
 finest point, and more than all, she was as good as she was grace- 
 ful. She was worthy of a Prince for that matter, and would 
 make any man, gentle or simple, a capital wife. A good wife 
 
110 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 and a covert promise, pretty well understood by the parties, were 
 large temptations for a poor clergyman, and to be short — he 
 married the Swiss girl. The honeymoon had scarcely set, when 
 the See of Winchester fell vacant. The Marchioness, true to her 
 pledge, whispered in the ear of George the Fourth, with whom 
 scandal says she was by far too intimate, and the Bishopric of 
 Winchester became the Swiss girl's dowry. From that day to 
 this, said my informant, the revenues of the See have never been 
 lower than 15,000£ sterling per annum, and for some years has 
 risen as high as 29,000, with a proportionate amount of patron- 
 age, which our lucky hero — the born child of Nepotism, uses 
 largely for the benefit of his kith and kin ; and if a gentle re- 
 proach ever reaches him, he quietly replies, by quoting a certain 
 text in the Epistle, which thou will remember better than I can 
 just now, that says something about a man being worse than an 
 infidel that provideth not for his own. 
 
 Some time ago, our friend the parson, was fast for a place 
 of meeting in the neighboring hamlet of Sturton, and applied to 
 my son James for the use of our Quaker meeting-house ; and 
 James coming over to me to know what he was to do ; not seeing 
 my way clear, I took down the Book of Quaker Discipline, and 
 happily found that lending of meeting-houses was left to the wise 
 discretion of those in charge. "Oh !" said I to James, "it is 
 discretional, if we do get wrong, let us be wrong on the liberal 
 side — let him have it." A few days afterwards I was at the 
 Rectory of the next parish, and on telling the Rector that our 
 parson had held a service in our Quaker meeting-house, he held 
 up his hands in perfect astonishment — he was a high church- 
 man. "Oh !" said I, "don't be so wonderfully surprised — I can 
 tell thee something far more strange. The real wonderment is 
 that the Quakers let a church parson have their meeting-house." 
 Shortly after this afifair, one of our best preachers happened 
 along, and we called a public meeting, and among the invited 
 turned up the parson. "I am come" said he, "to hear what sort 
 of doctrine you Quakers teach to my parishioners." "Very 
 good" said I, — and I walked him into the gallery and set him 
 close beside the Quaker preacher. After the meeting was over, 
 the two good men — the Quaker preacher and the parson — had 
 
From His Uncle, Thomas Spencer 111 
 
 a very pleasant conversation — a long evening together at my 
 son's, and parted the very best of friends. Who shall say the 
 Millennium is a long way off! 
 
 Well, my dear Nephew, I think I have inflicted upon you a 
 tolerable amount of twaddle, but how can I help it ? Here I am, 
 cooped up in a nook of the world, and almost as much of a vege- 
 table as the cabbages I grow for my sheep. Thy letter to me 
 was largely of the stuff of which history is made. I cannot 
 return it in kind. Nothing short of a violently contested elec- 
 tion ever disturbs my equilibrium, and that, I am thankful to 
 say, does not occur but once in ten years. Something of the 
 kind is just now looming in the distance, but failing health and 
 accumulating years must excuse me from hard service. We are 
 in for manhood suffrage, and in the flood-tide of our liberality, 
 we shall eventually rise as high as woman suffrage. Thank 
 heaven we have no negroes, or our professional agitators, with 
 all their blundering notions of abstract right, would have another 
 string to play upon. 
 
 I see by the newspapers that the battle between Free-trade 
 and protection has commenced in the States. It is a pity that 
 you Americans should follow in the wake of old Mother England 
 so colonially as you do. As crows the old bird, so crows the young 
 one. You profess to have left the old country far in the rear, 
 when you are simply trotting after her, without at all measuring 
 the difference in circumstances of the two countries. That 
 which may be potent for good in one country, may be potent for 
 evil in the other. One is a new country, — and the other is an 
 old one. My experience of Free-trade carried out in this country 
 as a principle and adopted in all cases without discrimination, 
 has not left a favorable impression of its benefits to the produc- 
 ing classes; nor can I think it fair. If the native producer has 
 large taxes to pay, it is but fair that the foreign producer of the 
 same article should pay in like manner as near as human wisdom 
 can approach fairness. This would be honest to the consumer 
 and producer alike. When a foreigner takes his goods or his 
 wares into any country, he has a right to pay for the privilege he 
 enjoys, and the protection of the laws under which he is making 
 his profits. The United States are perhaps the best market in 
 
112 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 the world for the productions of Europe; but only think for a 
 moment what it has cost the United States to become so. Think 
 of the amount of taxes paid in the States — think of the innum- 
 erable institutions they support, all of which go to build up a 
 structure of society that makes them the prime market of the 
 world. My argument is this, if foreigners come in to take ad- 
 vantage, — to sell their produce or their wares in a market built 
 up at such a cost to the nation, they have a right to pay towards 
 its support. Take my own case and it is the case of English 
 farmers generally. The people of England say to me, — "Thomas 
 Spencer, thou shalt pay a heavy land tax for the privilege of 
 working the soil, — thou shalt pay handsomely towards the sup- 
 port of the poor, and the maintenance of the needy, — and to 
 support the Church — thou shalt pay a tenth of thy whole pro- 
 duce, or what was the absolute tenth in 1836 ; — and besides all 
 this, thou shalt pay Income tax and all other taxes direct and 
 indirect in common with other people. Now we know that all 
 these imposts will make thy produce dear; therefore, we shall 
 open the ports and buy of foreigners who did not have to pay 
 such heavy rates and can afford to sell cheaper ! — And, the thing 
 is done. In destroying what was thought to be a domestic mo- 
 nopoly, they have built up one that is foreign. But no injustice 
 can be perpetuated without bringing its own appropriate punish- 
 ment. Our English Agriculture is declining : 3 millions of agri- 
 cultural people have left the shores of Ireland and carried a 
 bitterness in their hearts that has burst out in the form of Fenian- 
 ism. Our own agricultural laborers decline at the rate of 9,000 
 a year, — at least they did between '51 and '61. We are now 
 depending upon foreigners for nearly half our food; a very per- 
 ilous position. In spite of the peans that we sing in praise of 
 Free-trade, it is leading England into an amount of financial 
 difficulty that threatens to overthrow her long standing and most 
 cherished institutions. Her ports are open. She is the sinkhole 
 for the surplus produce of all nations, and in it comes without 
 let or hindrance. During 1865, this country bought a million 
 pounds sterling a week more than she sold. The balance of her 
 foreign trade was everywhere against her, and hence the money 
 troubles of last May. During the past year, 1866, so far as I 
 
From His Uncle, Thomas Spencer 113 
 
 can come at the statistics, we exported at the rate of half a mil- 
 Hon pounds sterHng a day, — but we imported, or rather foreign- 
 ers poured into our open ports, at the rate of three quarters of a 
 milHon per day, — hence the gloom and apprehension that pre- 
 vails in our commercial and manufacturing communities ; it is 
 felt that a large balance is piling up against us that will one day 
 have to be paid in gold. 
 
 I would have replied before this time to thy very kind and 
 affectionate letter, but during last Summer I suffered much from 
 illness. For a long time I was burned up with a slow fever, 
 which at last culminated in a violent inflamation of the eyes. I 
 had to sit in darkness, which was only relieved by thy Aunt read- 
 ing to me. Finally I came out of the affliction with the loss of 
 the use of one eye — it is dark, and the other that remains is in 
 a very precarious state. Ever and anon thy Aunt wants to know 
 whether I have not almost done writing to thee, and says that 
 short letters are better for both the writer and the reader, and I 
 believe that she is about right, certainly in my case. Though no 
 scholar, I have ever been a reading man, and for an unlettered 
 person I have accumulated many books. Now-a-days, when I 
 go into my little sanctum, there are my books, but I do not take 
 down one of them to read and study as I have done. The Lord's 
 vv'ill be done. It is an affliction. May I have patience to bear it ! 
 Thy excellent cousin, Sarah Sonnenschein, bids me think of 
 Milton, and fall back on my own resources. Alas ! for me — I 
 
 have none. There is no within me. When I try to 
 
 enter the chamber of my own memory it appears a sheer lumber- 
 room, strewn all over with fragments of broken furniture, cov- 
 ered with dust and dangling with cobwebs. I regret now that I 
 did not pay attention to music when I was young — it would be 
 a real solace now that my reading is so much abridged. xA.ll 
 young people should have something of music put into them. 
 Now excuse me if I give thee a word of advice. When my eyes 
 showed symptoms of inflamation, I went up to London to con- 
 sult a first-class oculist, and he told me he feared I had been in 
 the habit of using my eyes when the body was fatigued and the 
 whole system wanting repose. Never, I beseech thee, pretend 
 to read when the book keeps dropping on the knee, — lay it down. 
 
114 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 — fling thyself on the sofa, — take a gentle nap — and then up 
 and at it like a giant refreshed. I thank thee for sending me 
 "The Theatre" ; it reached me safely, and is now in London 
 among thy learned cousins, who, by the way, are not the cleverest 
 persons in the world about returning such things ; but I think I 
 must add they are fully as good as I am. I rejoice sincerely that 
 thou are placed by Divine providence in a position for doing 
 good. Thou art just where thy Father would have placed thee 
 had he lived and been permitted to have the thing he most de- 
 sired; and I think I may say as much of thy grandfather Robin- 
 son. That thou may live long in the enjoyment of doing good, — 
 that many souls may be added as seals to thy ministry, — that the 
 approbation of the Divine Master, — the Minister of Ministers 
 may be always palpably before thee is my sincere prayer. 
 
 Please to give my love to every member of thy family, down 
 to the little one who had such a preference for angels' wings, to 
 the gallant Col. and also Mary May I desire to be particularly 
 remembered ; they remembered the old folks at Bransby on a 
 notable occasion, and we don't forget it. To every member of 
 thy Father's family please to present my love, as occasion may 
 ofifer ; and in all this thy good Aunt unites most cordially. 
 
 Believe me, thy ever Affectionate LTncle, 
 
 Thomas Spencer. 
 
 NOTE. — In transmitting to me a copy of portions of this letter, my 
 father wrote : 
 
 "Such are uncle's remarks on subject of Free Trade. They are the 
 sound, common-sense \Te\vs of an English, practical farmer. Considering 
 that he is a self-educated man, eighty odd years of age, and blind of one 
 eye, you will agree with me that he sees some things very clearly. 
 
 Uncle Spencer and my Father were intimately acquainted in England ; 
 not far apart in age ; and, in earlier life, thorough Republicans, radicals, 
 as they call them in England. In 1815-16, and before, their Hves were 
 scarcely safe, in the high political contests of the country. Do you re- 
 member that Southey, Coleridge & Co. were fiery radicals in their young 
 days? They died ultra-conservatives! "And sich is life," as A. Ward 
 •would say. The young dash of? in new experiments ; grow cool by ex- 
 perience ; — and become fearful of novelties in old age." (A. A. T.) 
 
XLIV 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Dayton, O., 4-23-1867. 
 My dear Alfred: 
 
 Yesterday I wrote you rather a discouraging letter about our 
 church affairs. Last night we had a meeting of the Trustees 
 and Building Committee, to decide the fate of our proposed edi- 
 fice. The new Trustees are Jno. Stoddard, Henry L. Brown, 
 Leonard Moore, Henry Stoddard, George Phillips; Thos. O. 
 Lowe, Treasurer; David Stewart, Clerk. Of the B. Com., be- 
 side the above were present, T. A. Phillips, Jno. G. Lowe, Col. 
 E. A. Parrott, Isaac Haas, and myself. We met and talked from 
 7 :30 to 10 P. M. Young America was pitted against the old 
 Guard : Col. Parrott and Jno. Stoddard insisting on commencing 
 a new building at once, by taking immediate steps for the removal 
 of the old structure, and deciding on a plan : T. A. Phillips, Col. 
 Lowe and H. L. Brown very warmly urging that the $50,000 
 already secured would not justify us in beginning a work that 
 would cost at least $70,000. The discussion grew quite warm, 
 but I urged we all agreed on the main points, and could harmon- 
 ize on details by a little mutual forbearance. L. Moore quietly 
 supported the old side ; Haas in like tone, the young one. T. O. 
 Lowe behaved handsomely, insisting, as Treasurer, having an 
 exact knowledge of the sittings, that there was a manifest and 
 growing demand for pews which could not be met without a 
 new house. H. Stoddard said but little, yet as he has subscribed 
 $8,000, — $1,500 more than any one else, — his few words in 
 favor of immediate action carried weight. David Stewart, of 
 course, sided with the younger men. Finally a resolution to 
 begin and build, carried by every vote but one : a second resolu- 
 tion to appoint a sub-committee to secure estimates, and clear 
 the ground for a new structure at once, carried almost unani- 
 mously : and Jno. Stoddard, Haas, Stewart, and myself as chair- 
 man, were named as the sub-committee. 
 
116 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 Thus we are fully committed to the work : the Rubicon is 
 passed; and we have 18 months hard work before us. We shall 
 begin at once to take down our old house. 
 
 Hereafter I hope to write more frequently; being in better 
 spirits. I began in earnest to secure a new church last Septem- 
 ber, preaching three sermons on the subject at proper intervals. 
 The flood checked us, as it checked all business for a month. 
 On Jany. 4, I began a subscription for enlargement ; in Feby. a 
 new subscription for a new house. For the last three weeks, as 
 I approached $50,000, I was daily reminded of Pope's line on the 
 labors of Sisyphus, 
 
 "With many a weary step, and many a groan, 
 Up a high hill he heaved a huge round stone." 
 
 and feared I might realize the rest o.f the couplet; 
 
 "The huge round stone, recoiling, with a bound. 
 Thundered impetuous down, and smoked along the ground." 
 
 I quote from memory, and may mistake a word or two ; but you 
 see the sentiment. Now I feel that the summit has been reached 
 and passed ; and what remains, tho' toilsome, will be down-hill 
 work. Laus Deo ! 
 
XLV 
 TO HIS BROTHER, JOHN 
 
 Dayton, O., 24 June, 1867. 
 My dear Brother John : 
 
 * * * Last September, after repeated failures in former years, 
 I resolved to make a last attempt to secure a new church build- 
 ing here. We have been losing ground for ten years in our 
 church, for want of pews to rent, and other facilities for our 
 church work. I have had repeated calls to exchange Dayton for 
 other fields of labor. The chair at Chicago Seminary was at my 
 disposal, after Dr. MacMaster's death, if I had chosen to accept 
 it; and I had a pressing invitation from the First Church of 
 Cincinnati. But I preferred to remain here if I could have 
 room for growth. Well, I preached twice or three times on the 
 duty and necessity of rebuilding; when the flood of last Fall, 
 so memorable in this valley, washed away all my preparations. 
 After a little rest, I pressed the duty again. By the beginning 
 of the year I resolved to try once more ; and succeed or leave. 
 In the Session the task was considered hopeless. Mr. Brown 
 and others, (Elders, Trustees and Deacons), said they would 
 believe it possible to raise the necessary funds when they saw 
 the walls going up, and not till then ! Only one of them all vol- 
 unteered to help me, and he went but once or twice, — Dr. Mac- 
 Dermont, Surgeon General of Ohio — one of our Elders. H. 
 Stoddard, Jr., however, encouraged and helped me, also. 
 
 I began to circulate a subscription Jan. 1, 1867, for $40,000 
 to enlarge the old building. It was thought by some that an 
 enlargement might be practicable, while a new building was out 
 of the question. In six weeks I had so nearly completed the 
 subscription of $40,000, that success was certain. Then, as I 
 had anticipated and predicted, the subscribers began to think that 
 it was a pity to enlarge an old house at more than double its 
 original cost. So I threw away my subscription paper, and drew 
 up another for a new edifice. I had raised about $50,000 of the 
 
First Presbyterian Church, Dayton, Ohio 
 
To His Brother, John 119 
 
 $70,000 supposed to be needed, when I called a church meeting, 
 or two, and pressed an immediate decision. Some of our leading 
 subscribers attended, and opposed decisive action. Most of the 
 gentlemen of the congregation absented themselves, and took no 
 part. Still, at my urgent advice, a building committee was ap- 
 pointed, and the decision turned over to them. The committee 
 was twelve in number, — just twice too many; — and I was pur- 
 posely left ofif, that I might not seem to be too influential in the 
 matter! Well, the committee met, and privately invited me to 
 attend as an ex-ofUcio looker-on! As I had secured every dollar 
 of the $50,000 subscribed, by my repeated and pressing personal 
 application, I might justly have taken offense at this unkindness, 
 though it was not intended as unkindness : — but to meet the objec- 
 tion of some friend and his wife, who had said that it was not 
 necessary to appoint a building committee, for I would have 
 everything done as I wished at any rate! (Ha! ha! ha!). The 
 committee met, and found that my advice and co-operation were 
 indispensable ; for I knew all that was known about the funds 
 procured and to be procured ; and I only would devote the time 
 and labor needful to complete the undertaking. So I was unani- 
 mously added to the committee by its own action, at its first 
 meeting; and at the second meeting was made chairman, i. e., 
 factotum. 
 
 I next urged the immediate removal of our old house, and 
 presented a plan for a new one, ground plan, and elevation. The 
 plan was one of my own construction, after a careful study of 
 church architecture, and the capacities of our ground, a corner 
 lot, 100x200 feet. The demolition of the house was earnestly 
 resisted by T. A. Phillips, Col. Jno. G. Lowe and H. L. Brown, 
 who wished to worship there till the full sum needed to rebuild 
 was subscribed. But this, I knew, could never be done till a new 
 building became an imperative necessity ; and so long as the old 
 house stood, so long would some withhold their subscriptions, on 
 the plea that the old one satisfied them. Well, young America 
 carried the point, at my urgency, against the wheel-horses, who 
 held back so stoutly. H. Stoddard, Jr., Col. Parrott, D. Stewart, 
 (brother of Dr. Stewart), T. O. Lowe, L Haas, John Stoddard, 
 etc., against the former named; and John L., D. Stewart, and I 
 
120 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 were appointed the demolishing committee. We went to work 
 with a will. The old ladies wept, next Sabbath, when they saw 
 the sacred steeple taken down, and by the second Sabbath the 
 house was untenantable. We bade it goodbye on the first Sab- 
 bath of May, with a communion service and a baptismal service. 
 
 The plan I proposed met, from the first, the unanimous and 
 cordial approval of the committee, with one exception. It is on 
 the early English Gothic style ; of stone ; in the form of an L 
 (L), 14-i ft. by 100 ft., including the space below to represent 
 our lot. 
 
 This ground-floor stands three feet above the ground outside, 
 with a cellar of eight feet depth under the entire building. The 
 walls will be 27 ft. high, outside ; and the comb of the main roof 
 71 ft. — so that the roof is steep. The south gable will have a large 
 triplet Gothic window, and a lancet-window on each side of it. 
 The porch entrance will rise to the height of the wall with its 
 peaked front, say 24 ft. The inner finish of the roof, (which is of 
 slate), will be open timbered, arches of Norway pine springing 
 from the inner walls toward the apex. There will be no ceiling, 
 proper; only an inner casing of wood, corresponding (parallel) 
 to the slate roof. 
 
 Over the ground floor of the rear building is a second story, 
 in three rooms ; of which the east room over the lecture room, 
 but larger, is a social hall for social meetings of the congregation 
 as distinguished from its strictly worshipping assemblies. The 
 rear of the second story (west) is in two rooms, for the young 
 men, and the young women. 
 
 The house will seat 800 persons easily, and 1,000 if needful. 
 We have no gallery. The whole will cost about $75,000 to 
 $80,000. 
 
 I presented this plan, with its elevation rudely sketched, at 
 my direction, by Col. Anderson (son of Gov. Anderson), and he 
 heartily approved it; assuring me that it would be second to 
 none in the West. Blackburn of Cleveland, an Elder of Fred. T. 
 Brown's former church, is the architect. He has drawn out the 
 designs in full ; and I go tonight to give them a final revision and 
 approval, at Cleveland. 
 
To His Brother, John 1^1 
 
 The old house has disappeared, and we begin excavation and 
 building on my return from Cleveland. 
 
 I have written a long letter. Some things I have said in 
 confidence, not to be made public. A few gentlemen have warmly- 
 seconded my labors, — tho' some of them disapproved some steps. 
 Henry Stoddard, Jr., who subscribed $8,000, should be named 
 first. T. A. Phillips $6,500; A. P. Stoddard $5,000; Col. J. G. 
 Lowe $4,000; Jno. Stoddard and I. Haas $3,000 each; H. L. 
 Brown $2,000, etc., etc. 
 
 On the whole, I have reason to thank God and take courage. 
 The house will not be completed till next Fall ; but I may hope 
 to occupy it for some time and leave a valuable work for coming 
 generations. I forgot to say that the tower rises 100 ft., of 
 stone, 25 ft. square, and ends in a 75 ft. spire of slate-covered 
 timber. 
 
 Your afifc. Brother, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
XLVI 
 FROM HIS UNCLE, THOMAS SPENCER 
 
 Bransby, Saxilby Station, G. N. Railway. 
 Lincoln — 9/3 mo./'70. 
 
 My very dear Nephew : 
 
 I have long been thy debtor for thy welcome and valued letter 
 by Mr. Eugene Parrott. I took the liberty of sending it the 
 family round — to our Emma — to thy cousin Sarah Sonnen- 
 schein — and to thy Uncle Stallybrass, who sent it to his sons. 
 I thou't that I should have sent thee some sort of acknowledge- 
 ment long before this time, but I have been pluming myself upon 
 having prevailed upon thy cousin Sarah and thy Uncle Stally- 
 brass to open a correspondence with thee, and in the fullness of 
 my satisfaction, have fallen back upon my accustomed laziness. 
 
 I thank thee for introducing me to a gentleman so much after 
 my own heart as Mr. Eugene Parrott — he was everything that 
 thy letter indicated, and something more, and all on the sunny 
 side. I only regret that he should take the trouble to cross the 
 Island from Liverpool to Lincoln and get so little for his pains. 
 Thy Aunt and I were prepared to receive the whole party and 
 give them an English welcome, and so were the Smithsons and 
 the Sonnenscheins. I flattered myself that we could amongst us 
 have contributed in some small degree to their entertainment. 
 
 And now my dear nephew to the real business that has 
 spurred me to sit down with a fair sheet before me. I observed 
 in thy letter to Sarah S. that thou claimed affinity with the Pil- 
 grim Fathers. Good ! I am about as much connected with the 
 Brewsters of Nottinghamshire as thou art with the Bradfords of 
 Yorkshire. And here permit me to correct, with much diffidence, 
 thy history, or at least a slip of thy pen. Dorothy May was the 
 first wife of Gov. Bradford — not of elder Brewster as stated in 
 thy letter. Bransby is about 20 miles or a little more from the 
 English homes of Brewster and Bradford. I once told thee of 
 
From His Uncle, Thomas Spencer 123 
 
 a little old church remarkable for its age — some eight or nine 
 hundred years — and its capacity, — apparent capacity, — to stand 
 another term of the same length. That church was the parish 
 church of Austerfield, the birthplace of Gov. Bradford, and there, 
 to this day stands the altar and the same communion rails before 
 which his Grandfather and Grandmother were married — the 
 record of his birth is found in the parish books. The Governor 
 was married to Dorothy May in Holland, but of this I need not 
 to tell thee. 
 
 Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, distant about three miles from 
 Austerfield, was the dwelling place of the elder Brewster. To 
 this spot I have made three pilgrimages. The first nearly 20 
 years ago, and then I made what I thought an interesting discov- 
 ery. All the pilgrims both English and American declare that 
 not a vestige of Scrooby Manor, the abode of Brewster, is now 
 in existence, but I found out that a portion of the manor house is 
 incorporated and hidden in a modern farm house; and this 
 portion, a spot of great interest. In the farm house it has been 
 known as the manor chamber ; but I take it to have been a Chapel 
 in Roman Catholic times ; — such Chapels abounded in the old 
 religious houses. The Piscina is there and immediately before 
 it a larger recess in the opposite wall where I imagine a cross or 
 an im,age of the Virgin might have stood. Immediately before 
 this Chapel, which is an upper room, there is still standing and 
 alive an old mulberry tree, said to have been planted by Cardinal 
 Woolsey. I have seen the old oaks in Sherwood forest, and I 
 have paid some attention to the deviation of hedges, and I believe 
 the tradition. From this tree I yesterday took a number of slips 
 and wrapped up one for thee in a newspaper. I hope thee may 
 get it safe and make it grow. I believe that Brewster and Brad- 
 ford eat of the fruit of that tree and sat beneath its shade. Pas- 
 sionate and impulsive myself, I am apt to think all the world just 
 so; but if the mean little slip should have' in it no interest for 
 thee — please to put it on the fire and say no more about it. If 
 thou should ever come to England I must take thee to Scrooby 
 and Austerfield and show thee my special discovery. Peradventure 
 it is the cradle where the Infant Giant of the West drew its first 
 faint struggling breath. The chamber or Chapel which I claim 
 
124 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 as my discovery may have been the place where the first church 
 of the pilgrim fathers was formed. 
 
 But in writing to thee about some future visit from thee, I 
 am forgetting how old I am. I have been very unwell and very 
 feeble for nearly the year past — blind of one eye and seeing but 
 dimly with the other. I have written hastily, and thou must in 
 charity excuse me. God has been an ever present help to me 
 thro' a long life, and I trust in his mercy and goodness for all that 
 is to come. Thy Aunt is really hearty — she has gone a long 
 journey to one of our monthly meetings, apparently unconscious 
 how old she is. 
 
 Thy ever affectionate Uncle, 
 
 Thomas Spencer. 
 
 We have had as visitors in Bransby the Misses Alison, two 
 charming young ladies. They knew Dayton and the Parrott 
 family. 
 
XLVII 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Pigeon Cove, Mass., 12 July, 1871. 
 My dear Alfred: 
 
 I wrote Lizzie on our arrival at Northboro, that you might 
 be relieved of anxiety on our account. I now write that my own 
 anxiety may be relieved, for I am uneasy at the newspaper re- 
 ports of a tornado in Dayton last Sunday. They intimate the 
 destruction of a German Lutheran Church, accompanied by many 
 deaths ; and damage to the spires of several other churches. The 
 Boston Journal speaks of the "School of the United Brethren and 
 St. Mary's Church" being destroyed. This I take to be the 
 "Brothers" Catholic school south of the cemetery. It is said 
 "the bridge over the Miami was blown down". Which of the 
 four bridges can this be? What was the direction of the storm? 
 Mr. Parker and I tried, last night, to trace it, by the uncertain 
 allusion to the damage done, but found it difficult. * * 
 
 I found Mr. Parker and his son, Grafton, at my old home — 
 the Pigeon Cove House. Mr. P.'s name heads the list for the 
 season on the books of the House. Dr. Fullerton of Chillicothe, 
 O., with his wife and two daughters, (the Dr. a cousin of Tom 
 Fullerton's father), came to the Cove House on the same train 
 with me. The daughters met me here three years ago, and the 
 father recognized me. So I have some agreeable acquaintances, 
 which aids to fill up the hours one cannot spend in walking, bath- 
 ing, reading or writing. The Cove House has been wholly re- 
 built, and aflfords every accommodation one can desire. My 
 room looks out on the broad sea; with Rockport, with its low 
 point of land stretching like a giant finger toward the ocean. 
 Three light houses are in sight, where, when a dense fog renders 
 the lights invisible, as was the case last night, a deep-sounding 
 fog-trumpet, blown by hot air, serves to warn and guide vessels 
 at sea. I sat some hours yesterday afternoon, on the rocky coast 
 
126 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 overlooking the sea, watching the tide as it slowly covered the 
 stony beach. Byron saw in it the image of death : — 
 
 "A dark, unsullied wave, that oversweeps the world." 
 To me it is the symbol of life, in its everlasting roll and play ; 
 and in the ceaseless, restless activity of its evershifting billows. 
 After dreaming over the boundless prospect till my limbs required 
 a change, I imitated the example of Homer's old priest, Chry- 
 seis: — (I quote from 'memory, and may not be exact), 
 
 fir] 8 dxecuv wapa ^Lva iroXvtpXoLa /3olo 6aXacr<Tr]<i- 
 If your Greek is in the vocative, ask John if he can translate the 
 line. "The many-sounding sea" is intelligible enough ; but I 
 never could appreciate Homer's other epithet of the sea, when 
 he speaks of the "innumerable laughter" of its waves. It takes 
 a lively imagination, I think, to discover in the play of the billows 
 the zvrinkles of an innumerous laughter on the broad face of old 
 Ocean. Reaching the extreme point of Pigeon Cove, which is 
 itself the extreme point of Cape Ann, I plunged in for my first 
 bath at 5 P. M. Returning homeward, I met Mr. P. and son 
 with fifty fine perch they had caught since dinner. Capital fish 
 to eat, as I found at dinner to-day. 
 
 Last night, about 12, I was waked by the unusual sound of 
 the fog-trumpets ; voice answering to voice, at equal intervals, 
 as if some huge sea monsters were holding discourse. Unable 
 to sleep again at once, I set to work on the two sermons I must 
 preach next Sunday at Northboro, and my inaugural at Lane 
 Seminary ; and succeeded in shaping them all. Qi my inaugural, 
 I composed the exordium, carefully composing and retouching 
 every sentence ; and sketching the outline of the whole discourse, 
 with clusters of facts, allusions, and particular expressions ; which 
 I shall put on paper to-day. I am to preach in Worcester on the 
 23rd, and at Rockport on the 30th. So I shall not be idle you 
 see. Have read and re-read half De Senectute since I left home. 
 
XLVIII 
 TO HIS YOUNGEST DAUGHTER 
 
 Northboro, Mass., 18 July, 1871. 
 
 My dear Leila: 
 
 We received your brief but sensible letter, and John's enclos- 
 ure of Uncle S.'s, yesterday evening. Let me say, first, that your 
 penmanship is neat and creditable, but that you sometimes forget 
 the proper formation of a letter. Thus sick, is twice v^ritten 
 rich; the s and k being only half made ; so that but for the con- 
 text I could never have divined the sense. I knev^ that Alfred 
 might be sick, — and am very sorry to hear it, — but I was sure 
 he was not rich. It is a mortification to receive a letter in which 
 some words are illegible. This may be excused in an old man, 
 like Uncle S., whose statement of the P. O. address of Ad. Son- 
 nenschein is utterly useless, for I cannot read it; but a young 
 person should try to make every letter legible, 
 
 I wrote Lizzie from N. on our arrival ; and to Alfred from 
 Pigeon Cove. I left the Cape last Saturday morning for North- 
 boro; and preached here twice on Sabbath. Yesterday I took 
 the coach for Worcester, 10 miles ; a charming ride over hill and 
 vale, through a beautiful grass country. I never before saw the 
 natural barrenness of this region so fully ; and how much it owes 
 to the hard labor of the inhabitants for its attractions. The soil 
 is almost worthless, except for grass ; though capable, in spots, 
 of improvement by cultivation, so as to produce fair crops. Yet 
 the villages and farms are neat and beautiful ; the landscape, 
 undulating, with irregular hills, and tortuous valleys ; and some- 
 times grand with the presence of a lofty, massive mountain-ridge, 
 like Wachuset; reminds me of the line I used to read in the 
 "Introduction to the English Reader", when a boy — ("cum essem 
 adolescens", as Cicero says;) 
 
128 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 "Ever charming, ever new, 
 When will the landscape tire the view?" 
 
 Our Miami Valley is beautiful ; but it lacks the endless diversity 
 of this region. 
 
 At Worcester, I met Mr. G. Henry Whitcomb, and wife, his 
 father, and Mr. Holden; besides a Rev. Mr. Phillips of Colum- 
 bus, O., and a Rev. Mr. Miles of Boston, Secretary of the Amei. 
 Peace Society. Mr. Holden is visiting a married daughter here. 
 Mr. Whitcomb, Abby Estabrook's husband, had invited me to 
 supply the pulpit of Dr. Sweeter, whose church he attends. Per- 
 haps I may preach there next Sunday. Mr. W. lives in a very 
 beautiful home on the outskirts of the city. He had just bought 
 a pretty Albert buggy, and horse, very similar to ours. He drove 
 me from his office, through the best parts of the town, to his 
 house, where I dined. I examined his envelope factory; ven' 
 interesting, as I had never seen the manufacture before. Five 
 hundred sheets of proper paper are cut into fit shape, by a steel 
 frame of the shape desired. The glutinous matter is then put on 
 where I have dotted the outline. This is done all at once, on a 
 wheel ; by one revolution of which they are dried. Then the pack 
 is put into a machine no larger than a sewing machine, managed 
 by a twelve year old girl. Tlie machinery stamps adhesive matter 
 on four spots on the upper envelope ; lifts it and draws it under 
 an oblong press just the size of the face of the finished envelope. 
 This presses the sheet down on a metal plate ; where the sides and 
 ends, already glued, are turned over by fingers of steel, and pressed 
 together. The bottom plate drops with it; and is carried into a 
 box, where the girl receives it. The whole is done, making one 
 envelope, as fast as you can count. They are boxed up by the girl ; 
 250 in a box. These boxes are made in the same house, by ma- 
 chinery. Whitcomb & Co. made f,o million envelopes from Janu- 
 ary to July : 80 millions last year ; or tzvo for every man, woman 
 and child ; white, black and Indian ; in the United States. This 
 is the way the Yankees grow rich. This whole State is covered 
 with manufactories of one sort or another. I hope, another Sum- 
 mer, to show you N. England. You will find enough to repay all 
 your trouble. 
 
To His Youngest Daughter 129 
 
 Tell Alfred to be very careful of his diet. He cannot bolt 
 his food as he does, and be well always. Let Cicero ask him: 
 "Quid enim est aliud, gigantum modo bellare cum Diis, nisi 
 naturae repugnare?" 
 
 Love to all. 
 
 Yr. aff. Father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
XLIX 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 , , , J , Forest Hills, Mass., 2 August, 1871. 
 
 My dear John : > > a > 
 
 Nat and I leave here this morning for Hampton Beach. Your 
 mother remains at Uncle Vose's, which she prefers to the seaside. 
 
 I have spent a few hours in the Boston Bookstores. I find 
 them quite inferior to Clark's in Cincinnati. I inquired in a 
 dozen for a book lately published here by Dr. J. F. Clarke ; but 
 found it nowhere. Most of the trade had not heard of it. So 
 I found scarcely a copy of the Greek Testament ! I stepped into 
 one of t^^ best in Cornhill. The owner assured me he had not 
 a N. T. in his house. I looked around a little, and found in a 
 back corner half a dozen copies of Bagster's Greek and English 
 with Lexicon, like mine that the dog tore ; and one copy, not yet 
 taken out of the wrapping, of the Editio Stephanicus; printed in 
 Cambridge, England, 1870; (?) with the various readings of 
 Beza, Elzevir, Lachmann, Tischendorf , and Tregelles : a beauti- 
 ful type, only the Greek; and just the size of Bagster's referred 
 to above. It is a gem: cost me two dollars only; and is just 
 what I shall need in my Seminary recitations. 
 
 At Northboro, I found two or three old books which I have 
 read. "The Modern Antichrist" by Seth Paysen ; of which, I 
 think, I wrote you. This I have finished with deep interest. 
 The second is a work of Andros of Berkley, printed in Worces- 
 ter, Mass., 1802 : a refutation of Enimonism, a system once 
 popular in N. England, which made God the efficient agent in all 
 the sinful volitions and acts of man. The book is an admirable 
 specimen of scriptural reasoning. There has been a wonderful 
 change among N. England people since Andros' day. Such a 
 sermon as he preached would find few audiences now who would 
 care to listen to such a solid body of compact truth. 
 
 I have diversified my reading with Cicero's De Senectute and 
 De Amicitia, which I have just finished. They pleased me so 
 
To His Son 131 
 
 well that I inquired in classic Boston for his De Natnra Deorum: 
 and after asking in vain at a dozen bookstores, and being shown 
 his Orations instead of it, I dropped into a large "antique" book 
 store, and after some search, found it. I will finish the two vols. 
 before I leave the seaside. 
 
 Last night, I dipped into Alex. H. Stephens' defense of him- 
 self and "the lost cause" of State rights : a silly work, in two 
 large 8vo. vols. ; which he calls a "Colloquy", after the style of 
 Plato and Cicero ! But what a contrast between the clear, com- 
 pact, condensed sunlight of Cicero; and the drawling drivel of 
 Stephens ! Cicero is immortal in 60, i8mo. pages: Stephens 
 is stillborn in 1600 pages. Truly fieya fii/SXiov, fxeya kokov. As 
 Calvin says : I never could rid myself of my preference for 
 conciseness. And this reminds me of a story. Louis XIV. of 
 France loved the man of few words. In traveling, he met a 
 priest on horseback. "Hallo! friend," said he, "Where are you 
 from: Whither are you going? and what do you want?" The 
 priest, who knew the King's taste, replied: "From Bruges: to 
 Paris : a benefice." "You shall have one," said the Monarch ; 
 and he kept his word. 
 
 Speaking of conciseness reminds me that I have yet to hear 
 the iirst pleasing and profitable sermon in Massachusetts. I have 
 heard four or five; of which I will speak hereafter. If I judged 
 all by them, "ex pende Herculem" is the old rule, I 'should say 
 that the Ministry has degenerated. But one cannot, unless he is 
 a veritable o-xoAao-rt/cd?, judge a house by one brick. 
 
 I must close, as the cars are coming. Write me what is going 
 on at home. If May has returned, I shall be glad to hear from 
 her. Give my love to all friends ; and I have left many in Day- 
 ton, whom I shall never forget. Kiss Tom and Ethel for me. 
 Tell Leila to take exercise, and not read much. Let her paint 
 her cheeks this summer. Next summer I hope to take her to 
 the seaside. 
 
 "Exhort young men to be sober-minded." 
 
 Yr. aff. Father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
L 
 
 TO HIS WIFE 
 
 Lane Seminary, 12 Apr., 1873. 
 Carissima mea: 
 
 Lizzie has written you of her safe arrival last evening. I 
 found her at home about 6 P. M., on my return from Presbytery, 
 I walked into the city toward 10 A, M., and I remained holding 
 the pail, while others milked the he-goats, till 5 P. M. The sub- 
 ject of rotary eldership was debated all day. I received my 
 dismission from Dayton Presbytery, and was enrolled among the 
 members of Cincinnati Presbytery, afternoon. I had the mod- 
 esty, however, to hold my tongue. Lowry (our elder), Dr. 
 Skinner, Mt. Auburn Taylor, Furny, (elder of 3d Church) 
 against: Monfort, Hills, Dr. Holly, Wyoming, Wilson Brown 
 (elder of 5th Av.), Dr. Nelson, etc., pro rotation. Presbytery 
 decided to ask the Gen. Assembly's opinion by overture; and 
 laid on the table, by thirty-three to thirty-two, a resolution re- 
 questing the churches to elect no more rotators until the Assem- 
 bly shall decide the matter ! 
 
 ■ir- ^ nn 
 
 Affectionately, 
 
 Your Husband. 
 
LI 
 
 TO HIS WIFE 
 
 Oxford, O., 18 April, 1872. 
 My Dearest: 
 
 The Board met here at nine this morning. I left home yes- 
 terday after dinner: spent two hours with Mr. Taylor and wife. 
 Took the cars at five. Met Jndge McClung at the Hamilton 
 depot, and rode out with him to spend the night at Maj. Milli- 
 kin's ; but on the way we met the Major and Mrs. M. and Nannie 
 Kennedy going in to attend a wedding at Col. Campbell's. His 
 second daughter was married to the third son of Thomas Milli- 
 kin, Esq. Maj. Millikin's house was empty and locked up; so 
 Miss K. invited me to go to her father's, which I did. Found 
 Mr. and Mrs. K. at home. Mr. K. has been very sick with pneu- 
 monia, but is out again. They welcomed me, and we spent the 
 evening very charmingly, talking of old times, and of the trials 
 through which the Lord has led us. 
 
 * * * 
 
 After breakfast, I walked over toward Maj. M.'s ; but met 
 him on his way for me. We rode to H. and took our cars for 
 Oxford. Mr. Herron, Judge Gilmore, Judge McClung, etc., were 
 on the train. We have just adjourned after a very pleasant ses- 
 sion. We have adopted Prof. Hepburn's plan of the course of 
 study ; have elected him President ; have elected a Mr. Coleman 
 of Virginia, Professor of Greek, etc., etc. The President is to 
 be inaugurated at the Commencement, and I am to deliver the 
 charge of the Board. 
 
LII 
 TO PROFESSOR JARED M. STONE 
 
 Work at Lane Seminary 
 
 Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, O., 
 
 22 May, 1873. 
 My dear Brother: 
 
 Hov/ very stony your heart must be to decline the overtures 
 of ancient friendship ! I wrote you a year ago, and you answered 
 me. I repHed and received no answer. Are we to keep apart 
 forever ? Last month I met with the University Board at Oxford, 
 of which I am a member. The visit recalled the memory of our 
 early days. Our Alma Mater is in a sadly declining state ; only 
 some ninety students during the year. The Board, at the sug- 
 gestion of Pres. Hepburn, — we chose him President at that meet- 
 ing, — he is Dr. McGuffey's son-in-law, — adopted the Virginia 
 University plan of study ; hoping that the change may secure 
 additional attendance; but the prospects are far from cheering. 
 Bishop, in the Latin chair, and Lowes in the Grammar School, are 
 all that remain of our early friends. 
 
 Our Seminary has been prosperous during the past year. I 
 send you a catalogue. We had forty-two students. The clerk 
 sums up forty, while there are forty-one names printed, and one 
 name (P. B. West) was omitted altogether. As old Dr. Bishop 
 used to say, they were "the most promising set of young men" I 
 have met with. Of our sixteen graduates, three are going to 
 foreign fields. They sail for Persia in August. 
 
 I need not say that my labors here are very delightful. The 
 Seniors study Romans : the Middlers, Robinson's Harmony of 
 the Gospels; and the Juniors, John, Acts, and Romans, aiming 
 chiefly at a knowledge of New Testament Greek. Having ex- 
 pounded Romans four times, seriatim in the pulpit ; and taught 
 it once or twice over in New Albany Seminary ; I have felt the 
 more confidence in undertaking to unfold the meaning of it now. 
 
To Professor Jared M. Stone 135 
 
 But what could be more charming, — that is not the word, — 
 more sweetly attractive, than to follow with minute accuracy, 
 under the guidance of the four evangelists, every footstep of our 
 divine Lord ! To be sure we could do this but partially in one 
 term. Another year, I hope to be ready for a more carefully se- 
 lected course of study in the life of Christ. 
 
 In teaching both the upper classes, I have adopted the course 
 of thoroughly prepared, but unwritten lectures. I have some- 
 times made notes upon the more difficult passages, but rather for 
 future than for present use. This method gives more freedom 
 and life to my lectures ; and is more stimulating to the young 
 men, who have freely expressed their satisfaction with the method. 
 It might be liable to superficiality and dififuseness ; but that de- 
 pends on the exactness of one's preparation, and the power of 
 concise expression acquired by the professor. 
 
 We have a fair prospect for the coming year : yet our Senior 
 class for '73 will be almost one-half smaller than the last. It was 
 sadly interfered with, before I came, by the marriage of one-half 
 its members, which scattered them. If there are any young men 
 of your acquaintance whom you can direct hither, we shall be 
 obliged to you. Our scholarship funds were ample for the aid 
 of more than applied. 
 
 Let me hear from you before we go East ; which will be about 
 the 25th of June. Tell me how life goes with you. How I should 
 enjoy a day or two's intercourse with you ! Mrs. T. joins me in 
 love. 
 
LIII 
 TO HIS WIFE 
 
 Lane Seminary, Cinti., O., 
 
 25 May, 1872. 
 
 Dear Mother: 
 
 Alfred and I went directly from the depot to Dr. Mussey's 
 office. He examined A.'s hand quietly, and told him at once what 
 must be done. A. says the Doctor's quiet and decided and prompt 
 reply to every question he put, has given him a confidence in his 
 skill and knowledge of the case, that he has heretofore felt in no 
 surgeon who has examined his hand. 
 
 Dr. M. said an operation is the only cure. A. will be confined 
 to his bed to recover from the chloroform, and to avoid the fever 
 which usually accompanies a surgical operation. In three or four 
 weeks the hand will be entirely healed. The Doctor fixed on 
 Tuesday for the operation to be performed in our rooms on the 
 Hills : he probed the hand in two places, and at once decided where 
 the necrosis was situated. The whole visit has greatly relieved 
 Alfred, who awaits the operation with courage and cheerfulness. 
 
 Tuesday, 28 May. 
 
 * * Yesterday morning, we walked around to Dr. Monfort's 
 and chatted for an hour or more. The Dr. gave me two books to 
 read ; Dr. Stanley's Lectures on the Church of Scotland, and his 
 History of the Church in the East. The former I read through 
 yesterday. It is about 300 pp., 8vo. Dr. Stanley belongs to the 
 broad church of England. He aims to show that all the branches 
 of the Scotch Church are to be recognized as one body : that the 
 Evangelical party. Covenanters, Seceders, etc., were narrow and 
 bigoted in their alienation from the Moderates : that Walter Scott 
 was a great religious teacher; and that LIume and Burns were 
 very probably sincere Christians ! 
 
 * * * 
 
To His Wife 137 
 
 29th May. 
 Dearest : 
 
 I wrote you a letter yesterday before the Doctor came; and 
 after the operation was performed I telegraphed you of its com- 
 plete success ; that your mind might be freed from the anxiety, 
 which, from my own experience, I knew you would feel. 
 
 * * I am happy to say that I threw away what I invested in 
 bi-chromate of morphia; for A. has lain quiet and comfortable. 
 Not a symptom of fever has appeared ; and he says his hand has 
 not felt so comfortable for years. If, as I hope, the Doctor has 
 reached and removed the seat of the diseased joint, the whole 
 thing will prove a happy success ; and you may congratulate your- 
 self on the persistency with which you have urged him to consult 
 Dr. Mussey — a quality, by the way, for which you do not always 
 receive the credit you deserve ! 
 
 As to myself, my knee is entirely restored. Don't be dis- 
 tressed about me. There are bones in me yet. 
 
 31 May. 
 My dear Wife : 
 
 * * Nothing can be more soothing than the repose of the 
 Seminary square just now. The birds fill our trees with their 
 sweet music, and, with the sounds of the bus-driver's horn, soft- 
 ened by distance, add to the charm of our surroundings. "Every 
 prospect pleases", and the few gentlemen and ladies here cannot 
 be called "vile". Nothing is wanted but "the light of the home", 
 and the "cub". Al. and I have grand sleep o' nights ; though I rise 
 about 5 o'clock in the morning. We retire at 10 P. M., very much 
 to Alfred's amazement. I am in hope of getting him into good 
 habits before he returns to Dayton. 
 
 In these sweet surroundings, this cool weather, and this de- 
 lightful quiet, you may believe that I indulge my usual disposition 
 to read. I shall finish Stanley's Lectures on the Church of the 
 East. It is one of the most fascinating, instructive, and graphic 
 books I have read since perusing the pages of Lord Macaulay. It 
 traces, among other things, the origin and history of your favor- 
 ites, the Nestorians, or Chaldean Christians. His picture of the 
 Council of Nice (A. D. 325) is perfectly beautiful. * * 
 
138 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 This morning we visited the Seminary Library with Prof. 
 Evans, who unlocked for us the hidden treasures — the old Greek 
 and Hebrew and Latin MSS. ; of which there are several; some 
 of them exquisitely illuminated ; and the rare and costly books, 
 French and English. I shall be glad to show them to you on your 
 return. There are scfne fine old volumes of engravings accom- 
 panying the Explorations made in Egypt by the Savants who fol- 
 lowed the fortunes of "Napoleon le grande". 
 
 Aff. Yrs., 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
LIV 
 TO HIS CHILDREN 
 
 Northboro, Mass., 5 July, 1872. 
 My dear Children : 
 
 We left home (i :45 A. M., on Thursday last. The morning 
 was delightfully cool, and our ride charming. * * We reached 
 N. about 6 P. M. Friday; and found Grandpa waiting for us. 
 I found Mr. Wilcox just returned to his family, after three months 
 absence. He is a very cultivated, intelligent gentleman, and a 
 pleasant companion. All the family had visited the Colosseum — 
 Gilmore's Musical Peace Jubilee — except Nattie Wilcox. He 
 could not go without an escort : so he and Nat and I set off Satur- 
 day noon, and reached the scene at 2 :30 P. M. The vast hall 
 covers several acres. It is estimated to seat four and a half acres 
 of people ; to seat 40,000 ; and probably 50,000 were seated and 
 standing there when we reached it. Our first attempt to find a 
 seat brought us into a crowd and a jam out of which we could not 
 extricate ourselves for fifteen or twenty minutes. Nat became 
 quite alarmed ; women cried, gentlemen called for the police, who 
 were everywhere, and who soon opened a way of escape. We 
 went to the lower floor, and I held Nat on my shoulders for half 
 an hour while he gazed at the singers. Afterwards we found a 
 place on the main stairway, where we had a good view of the vast 
 crowd, as well as of the singers and musicians. N. and I re- 
 mained till the close of the exhibition, and then were glad to 
 escape the terrible heat. The thermometer was 98° ; some twenty 
 people, male and female, were carried out fainting from our part 
 of the house; and 108 fainted in the course of the afternoon, in 
 the building, who were carried to the police headquarters. This 
 may give you some idea of the pressure and heat. Yet, on the 
 whole, the crowd was one of the most orderly and quiet and polite 
 that I ever saw. There was not one example of rowdyism, or 
 ill-behavior. We heard the Prussian, French, and English bands 
 — the Irish appeared first on Monday — Mad. Leutner (pro- 
 
John C. Thomas 
 
 Nathaniel F. Thomas 
 Miranda May Thomas 
 
 Nathaniel F. Thomas 
 
To His Children 141 
 
 nounced Litener), etc., etc. As to enjoyable music, I have often 
 heard what was far more delightful. Mad. L.'s singing was what 
 Al. would call magnificent "squalking" : a splendid exhibition of 
 power, compass, and flexibility of voice ; the notes clear, soft, and 
 musical ; yet on the whole, the five minutes display exciting won- 
 der rather than delight. 
 
 Taken altogether, the Musical Jubilee was a monster-humbug ; 
 proving what can be done if people will submit to the inconveni- 
 ence and expense; and giving to hundreds of thousands some 
 idea of what highly cultivated music may be. The band-playing 
 was admirable; if one had been so situated as to enjoy it. For 
 myself, my linen dress was wet throughout, even my pantaloons 
 discolored as if water had been poured on them. My shirt-collar 
 wilted at the first onset, and for the last hour I covered my bald 
 head with my handkerchief often dipped in cold water, instead of 
 a hat, as did scores of others, to avoid congestion of the brain ! 
 It was amusing to see young ladies fanning themselves frantically, 
 stout old ladies and portly gentlemen, evidently accustomed to 
 comfortable quarters, looking desperately around for breathing 
 places, while the perspiration rolled off them in streams ! The 
 pursuit of music under difficulties ! 
 
 "When Music, heavenly maid, was young, 
 While yet in early Greece she sung." 
 
 it is to be hoped that she enjoyed a cooler retreat for ''her forceful 
 art" than the Colosseum at Boston. 
 
 We reached home on Saturday night, and I found that I was 
 expected to preach for the Baptist minister. Sabbath morning. 
 Happily, the morning was cool, though before noon the thermom- 
 eter reached 98 again ; and as I had purposely left my "notes" at 
 Walnut Hills, I was able, under the shadow of the trees around 
 the Stone Cottage, to gather up a train of thought on a text from 
 which I had never preached before, and which had, therefore, the 
 charm of freshness to myself. 
 
 Tuesday morning, July 2nd, we went by rail to Norton, and 
 stopped at the Mansion House, as it is called. We found Leila, 
 Ida and Mary well and happy. Leila had received my letter and 
 remittance. She had concluded, however, from the experience 
 
142 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 of other people, who had tried "the Jubilee", to give up the thought 
 of attending. We found the public examinations in progress. I 
 heard part of that on Astronomy. The girls called Uranus, 
 Uranus, and confounded Saturn with Mercury, with soft tones 
 and blushes that might have made Jupiter himself smile and par- 
 don the innocent beauties. 
 
 The procession of 100 young ladies, dressed in white, — the 
 Seniors in white, with sky-blue bodices and trimmings, — led by 
 the Band, and the Instructors, was the prettiest sight I ever saw 
 in muslin — except your Mother. But the church was locked 
 against all comers till the procession approached. Your Ma and 
 I walked down in the cool morning, but could get no admission. 
 Presently I saw the Lady preceptor who had charge of the seating 
 of the audience. I asked her what the arrangements were as to 
 admission, telling her that I was the father of Leila Thomas, and 
 that her mother who had come from Cincinnati to be present, 
 would be glad of a comfortable seat. She replied that as your Ma 
 v;as lame they would make an exception of her, and ordered the 
 Janitor to open the door. I assisted Ma up stairs to the door, 
 stepping back that she might enter first, when, presto ! the m.o- 
 ment your Mother entered the door was slapped to and locked 
 in my face. I explained to Cerberus that the lady was my wife, 
 and I should be glad if he would let me in, or let her out; but it 
 was no go — he was inexorable, he had his orders, and law was 
 law thereabouts. I sat down on the steps as disconsolate as Apol- 
 lo's priest in Homer, when "the King of men" had refused him 
 his daughter. Presently a group of young lads, evidently from 
 the neighborhood, with their lasses, approached the door, and 
 after a little parley were admitted without difficulty ; although 
 "the procession" had not yet put in an appearance. Presently the 
 Janitor came and told me I might enter. I told him that I had 
 concluded to keep out of that particular "meetin 'us" forez'er ; and 
 so I did; like "Mary's little lamb," 
 
 " waiting patiently about 
 
 Till wifie did appear". 
 
 The exercises closed, of which I heard as much as I cared for 
 outside, at the windows, the procession reformed, and the com- 
 pany, — furnished with tickets from Mrs. Metcalf's office, — gath- 
 
To His Children 143 
 
 ered in the dining-room for a collation. The afternoon was spent 
 under the fine shade trees of the Seminary, groups of friends chat- 
 ting together, while the Band discoursed eloquent music. 
 
 At night we returned to our Hotel, to rest till 4 A. M., when 
 we were to take the cars. But we were awaked toward 10 by a 
 set of rowdies such as I never saw in Ohio ; boys and young men, 
 making night hideous by serenades (Sic), firing guns, etc., till I 
 was ready to fire on them. Six or eight took rooms near us in the 
 Mansion House, where they smoked, drank, told stories, and 
 roared, till half past one in the morning. The landlord showed 
 no concern for the comfort of his guests, and at 4 A. M. we gladly 
 left "his precincts", as Miss Fenner would say, again, forever. 
 
 We met Mrs. Wait at Norton, Mr. and Mrs. Emerson, Lillie 
 Thomas, Mr. Kimball, etc. Ma, Leila, Nat, Lillie, Mary, and 
 I, with a bevy of beauties from the Seminary, took the home train 
 at Mansfield. We six are here, where Leila will spend a week 
 with her cousins. Three of us go tomorrow to Forrest Hills, 
 where Ma will stay till Nat and I find a seaside retreat. I will go 
 toward Providence, or Stonington, perhaps turn in at Rocky Point 
 if I find suitable quarters. Then, next week, I hope to gather the 
 group round me, and sit down to sea air and study. I have already 
 read not a little. A new book, "Homo vs. Darwin", the case 
 argued before Lord C, an English Judge appointed to arbitrate 
 the cause, has amused me much. Homo sues Darwin for libel, in 
 affirming that his ancestor was "a hairy quadruped resembling an 
 ape" ! I will send you the book by express when I can buy it. 
 This is Mr. Wilcox's. 
 
LV 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Dennis, Cape Cod, Mass., 
 
 15 July, 1873. 
 
 My dear Alfred : 
 
 On Monday we took the Old Colony cars for Yarmouth, and 
 reached it at 7 P. M. A carriage which I drove took us four, 
 while a baggage wagon was filled with our five trunks. We 
 reached Mrs. Howes', next door to Capt. Nathan Hull's, at 9 
 P. M. Mrs. H. having gone on a visit to a neighbor, however, 
 the neighbors gathered around us, hunted up the daughters, and 
 helped us in to the house. Mrs. Howes' husband and son are 
 fishing for mackerel off the Georgian banks, beyond Newfound- 
 land. She has two neat, quiet daughters, of 15 and 9 years. Her 
 house is small, but clean and neat. We are alone here, and that 
 is much pleasanter than to be part of the 16 who fill Capt. Hull's 
 house. U Dr. Nelson and Mr. A. T. FuUerton join us, we shall 
 have all we wish. 
 
 Leila, Nat and I, with a score of ladies and girls from other 
 houses, enjoyed our first Sea bath as a family. Leila had never 
 seen the sea till yesterday. 
 
 Wed. July 17. I wrote so far yesterday and was called off. 
 The nights are cool here, and our sleep is long and invigorating. 
 At 10 this morning we took our usual bath. Nothing can exceed 
 the convenience of the place for bathing. The water is clear as 
 purity itself ; the floor smooth and hard ; and the depth increases 
 so gradually that one fears no danger. The remainder of our 
 day, so far, is devoted to meals and books. Today I began 
 Jowett's translation of Plato's Dialogues. Have read Charmides, 
 and Lysis; Thate (?) on "Temperance", Soundmindedness, it 
 should rather be called : the Greek a-acl>poavvrj, the quality which 
 Paul urges upon young men, (Tit. 2, 6) "Young men likewise 
 exhort to be sober-minded" , (Tw(}>povuv. The Lysis treats of 
 
To His Son 145 
 
 Friendship. The pictures of Greek Hfe which these dialogues pre- 
 sent is curious. With all our "advanced thinking", and boasted 
 progress, where should we find elegant young gentlemen of wealth 
 and leisure who could find pleasure in such philosophic conversa- 
 tions as these? I hope to read most of the pieces in Jowett's four 
 volumes during my sojourn here ; but this is only relaxation. 
 My serious business is to read up the literature of the Life of 
 Christ, written since I graduated, in 1834. Strauss published his 
 first Lcben Jesii in 1835. His aim was to overthrow, by all the 
 arts and power of hostile criticism, the faith of the Gospel. He 
 brings up a prodigious array of learning, gathered from every 
 quarter ; yet the gist of his argument is simply a petitio principii, 
 or begging of the question. All that is supernatural is unscientific, 
 and impossible ; therefore the Sacred Records, which are full of 
 the Supernatural, are wholly incredible in their literal sense. They 
 must therefore be regarded as legendary, from which such sense 
 must be extracted as one may be able to gather. Dr. Sears' reply 
 to this part of Strauss is good ; assuming, somewhat, the doctrine 
 of Argyle's "Reign of Law". Yet Sears' book is deformed by his 
 attempt to make the teaching of the Bible conformable to modern 
 Science ; especially where he adopts St. George Mivart's theory of 
 "Derivate creation", a modification of Darwin's Natural selection. 
 
 I am astonished the more I read Strauss, at the * * spirit in 
 which he undertakes to "investigate" the case presented by the 
 Evangelists. "Philosophy", "modern thought", has satisfied him 
 that miracles and prophecy are impossible! How then can he, 
 with this fixed "presupposition", fairly inquire into the testimony 
 of a Volume which is nothing, if it be not supernatural ! 
 
 All that Theodore Parker and his school has uttered is but a 
 re-hash of Strauss ; and the Tubingen critics. * * 
 
 Let us hear from you frequently. Do not leave Walnut Hills 
 until you are entirely healed of your wound. Be patient. Read 
 and think. All send love. 
 
 Yr. aff. Father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
LVI 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Dennis, Cape Cod, Mass., 
 
 22 July, 1872. 
 My dear John: 
 
 Your kind letter of the 17th reached us after dinner today, 
 and was as refreshing as a shower in a warm day. 
 
 At 5 P. M. I attended the little church here ; and found a 
 small prayer meeting, which I took part in. After service I fell 
 in with an old gentleman who "seemed to be a pillar", and had 
 a long conversation with him on the religious state and history 
 of Dennis. He resembled all old gentlemen since Homer's time 
 in thinking that the former days were better than these. He 
 describes all the population of Dennis, 50 years ago, as "regular 
 meetiners" ; coming out to public worship on all occasions. Now, 
 however, "few come to the solemn feasts". The old Pastor, 
 Stearns, many years ago, became a Unitarian, and carried off 
 a part of his flock, who built a house of worship that is now left 
 to the moles and bats. Then a set of Theodore Parkerites, who 
 called themselves Evangelists, set up a sanctuary : the Universal- 
 ists established a service, but that has gone the way of all the 
 earth. The Wesleyan Methodists bought the house of the 
 "Evangelists" ; and last of all, a late Minister persuaded the 
 Methodists, Congregationalists, Unitarians, Universalists, Evan- 
 gelists, and Nothingarians, to form a Union Society; which 
 seems to result in pleasing nobody. 
 
 For myself, I am dipping daily into Strauss, Ebrard, Nean- 
 der, Lange, Ellicott and Stearns ; with relaxation in Plato's Dia- 
 logues. Socrates was a wonderful old chap. The Athenians 
 must have enjoyed the sharp encounter of men's wits, to listen to 
 such discussions as the Protagoras ; but the element of moral 
 earnestness was lacking. How wonderful, in their spirituality, 
 sincerity, earnestness, and suitableness to all capacities, are the 
 
To His Son 147 
 
 discourses of our Lord, when read side by side with these ad- 
 mired Platonic representations of the Socratic dialectics ! How 
 true of His reported conversations, what was said of his spoken 
 ones: He speaks ivith authority, and not as the scribes! 
 
 At intervals, to relieve the tedium of 'my companions, I read 
 Nat's book aloud, Two Years Before the Mast, by Dana. It 
 gives a good inside view of sailor life, and is not adapted to 
 encourage young Americans to hanker after sailor life. It pre- 
 sents, too, an interesting narrative of life on the California coast 
 before the country was annexed to the U. S. Romanism had 
 uncontrolled sway there; no Protestant being allowed to spend 
 more than a few weeks on the coast, unless he belonged to a 
 foreign vessel. (P. 90). This was the case at San Francisco, 
 San Diego, etc. Yet the condition of the people, Spanish and 
 Indian, was degraded and miserable : no education, no morality, 
 no religion, no comfort! Thank God, all that dog-in-the-manger 
 influence of Romanism is gone forever, not only in California, 
 but even in Mexico. 
 
 We shall probably leave Dennis for Washington City after 
 two weeks from tomorrow ; where your Mother will visit her 
 sister, while I take Nat to visit Dr. MacDermont at Hampton. 
 I never saw Washington, nor Virginia on the Potomac. Per- 
 haps I may never have a more favorable opportunity. My own 
 wish would be bring Leila home, and send her to school nearer 
 us ; but she seems anxious to graduate at Norton. The thing is 
 not absolutely determined ; but this is the probable issue, when 
 tiuo ladies, a wife and daughter, are set upon one man! 
 
 As to politics, one would not imagine, from all that I have 
 heard, that a presidential election was impending. Nobody 
 speaks of it. Except the two men I met at Niantic, — one of 
 whom admitted that he "had suffered at Grant's hands", — I have 
 not seen a Greeley man since I left home ! That is the simple fact. 
 
LVII 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Washington City, D. C. 
 Treasury Department, Solicitor's Office, 
 13th August, 1873. 
 My dear John : 
 
 Your last reached us on the 11th. While I regret the loss of 
 your company to Hampton, and home, I cannot but approve your 
 reasons. I would hardly give $100 for three weeks enjoyment 
 of this sultry season, with the thermometer at 96° daily. But I 
 am in for it, and must go through. We arrived here on the 7th. 
 I have been doing the Capitol ; Saturday the Patent Office. 
 Monday, the Smithsonian, and Agricultural Hall. On Sabbath, 
 I preached to a large congregation in Dr. Sunderland's church, 
 the First Presbyterian. He and his family are away. Dr. Gur- 
 ley's son, a member of that church, called on us with his mother, 
 and a Mr. Knight, an elder. Many of the regular congregation 
 are absent : but the Metropolitan M. E. Church — President 
 Grant's — near by, having no minister that day, came over to 
 Dr. Sunderland's. I had a very attentive congregation, for an 
 hour and a half, though the thermometer stood at 95^°. I 
 found an old college friend. Rev. Dr. W. W. McLain, for thirty 
 years Secretary of the Amer. Colonization Society, on his sick 
 bed, dying of consumption. I last saw his wife on her bridal 
 tour, in an Ohio steamboat ! Now she is grayheaded, and almost 
 widowed ! How rapidly the important interval has passed ! I 
 called on Mrs. Gurley last evening. She has a pleasant house, a 
 present from her husband's friends and hers. She told me that 
 James M. Ray, of Indianapolis, brother-in-law of Dr. Monfort, 
 is a clerk in one of the Departments here, earning a bare liveli- 
 hood. I knew him well as Cashier of the Indiana State Bank 
 for years, a man of large means, the best financier of Indiana, an 
 elder in the 1st Church, and the head of one of the loveliest 
 Christian families I ever knew. How strange these views of 
 
To His Son 149 
 
 life which meet one after long acquaintance with it, and teach 
 a lesson, not to be learned otherwise, of its utter vanity ! Last 
 night, there called on us a Airs. Levy, a sister-in-law of Mrs. 
 Trotter of Xenia, O. Her grandfather was Col. Nicholas, the 
 associate of General Breckenridge, Robert J. Breckenridge's father. 
 Gen. B. and Col. N. were the fathers of the Kentucky Constitu- 
 tion of 1796. Her mother, Miss Nicholas, married a Trotter. 
 The Trotters were among the F. F. K.'s. Mrs. L. is a leading 
 woman in the 2d Church — Dr. Christie's. She was once the 
 next door neighbor and playmate of Henry Clay's children ; and 
 when married, was intimate with his family. They say that a 
 large proportion of those who write in the departments are people 
 who have sought refuge here from the shipwreck of better for- 
 tunes. 
 
 I was quite disappointed by my first view of Washington. 
 The road from Baltimore lies through a broken and barren coun- 
 try : the soil a sandy clay of mingled red and white; and show- 
 ing the traces everywhere of exhaustion by slave-labor. We 
 enter from the North where the streets are unfinished, and the 
 houses few and far between. The depot stands not two squares 
 from Alfred's house, and twice that distance from the capitol, 
 and over the park in front where the marine band was playing. 
 The whole pile seemed to me low and disproportioned ; and the 
 surroundings despicable. I wrote out my first impressions next 
 day in a letter to Lizzie ; but concluded afterwards not to send it. 
 
 But a more careful survey of the whole city has quite modi- 
 fied these first impressions. Washington lies in a valley unequal- 
 ly cut by the Potomac, and surrounded by hills of moderate 
 height. West of the river, and near by, rise the Arlington 
 Heights, crowned by the mansion once owned by General 
 Lee. The river is a mile wide here; and the ground, 
 which is level and low on this side, rises gradually eastward and 
 northward. The capitol stands on the summit of the rise, of the 
 second plateau one might say ; and forms the acropolis of the 
 city. From its several fronts, or ends, run, at right angles, the 
 central streets — East, West, North, and South Capitol Streets. 
 Those running parallel to the East and West Capitol Streets are 
 called A. St., B. St., C. St., etc. Those at right angles to these. 
 
150 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 are 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. The Avenues, as they are called, radiate 
 from the capitol in all directions ; while others run diagonally 
 across the whole city. This mode of street making leaves small 
 triangles at the intersections of streets and avenues ; which are 
 fenced into parkettes, and planted with trees ; thus establishing 
 breathing spaces in all quarters 
 
 The city lies all around the capitol. It was a mere marsh 
 to the southwest when first laid out ; and it was believed that 
 the high plateau to the east of the Capitol would be the populous 
 part; so the Capitol faces the east. But Pennsylvania Avenue, 
 "the Avenue", as they call it, stretches out a little north of east 
 from the Capitol to the President's House, a mile distant ; a 
 broad and inviting street, along which and to the north of which, 
 the main population settled, in the segment of a circle, included 
 between Maryland and New Jersey Avenues for radii, as marked 
 on the map in a good atlas. 
 
 The capitol is a vast and massive edifice : 75 by 325 ( ?) feet. 
 It stands exactly North and South for length, and facing E^st. 
 It is a composite of two eras. The old Capitol was built of sand- 
 stone, which is painted white, to correspond with the modern 
 addition of wings. These are of cream-colored marble, and are 
 really magnificent in themselves ; but the tout ensemble, as the 
 French say, is a failure. The wings are too large for the center, 
 and spoil the effect of the whole. It was no doubt contemplated, 
 in building the new wings, that the entire center, or old Capitol, 
 should be removed, and replaced by a larger structure, of m.arble, 
 proportioned in height to the new wings. The dome, that springs 
 from the centre building, is grand and beautiful. Around the 
 base of the upper member of the dome, are inscribed the words, 
 "E pluribus Unum". This was done under the direction of 
 Jeff. Davis, then Secretary of State ; little foreseeing, doubtless, 
 with how deadly a blow at his own ambitious schemes that UNUM 
 would be established forever ! As I look at the north end, from 
 Alfred's balcony, that Unum is the only word I see. 
 
 It would require pages to describe the interior of the Capitol. 
 
To His Son 151 
 
 The Rotunda is circled with large, historic paintings, none of 
 much merit, but many of them valuable for the historic portraits 
 of revolutionary heroes. De Soto's discovery of the Mississippi 
 fills one compartment. The painter has committed the singular 
 blunder of placing De Soto and his companions on the right bank 
 of the river, as indicated by a floating tree carried by the current 
 root foremost, of course. As De Soto set out from Florida, he 
 could never have reached the right bank of the Mississippi with- 
 out crossing it. The discovery, therefore, could not have taken 
 place from that side ! Perhaps the painter had not read the his- 
 tory of De Soto's expedition. 
 
 Well, my sheet shuts me off. We hope to leave for Ohio and 
 home tomorrow. All well and send love. 
 
LVIII 
 TO HIS CHILDREN 
 
 National Military Asylum, 
 
 Southern Branch. 
 
 ,, . r-1 -u Hampton, Va., 23 Aug., 1872. 
 
 My dear Children : f , , & , 
 
 I have already written you of our arrival here, and of our 
 pleasant trip down the Potomac. Dr. and Mrs. MacDermont 
 have been exceedingly kind to us. We have had drives over the 
 land, sailing — rowing rather — over the water, and every oppor- 
 tunity to see and enjoy the lions — and bears — of the vicinity. 
 The hot weather, however, has confined our explorations to the 
 mornings and evenings mainly. The country, the people, the 
 buildings, the culture, and to some extent the fauna and flora 
 of land and water, are new to me. First, the land lies low, only 
 a few feet above tide-water at the flood. It is almost one dead 
 level. Only the sandy soil prevents its becoming a morass ; but 
 this rapidly absorbs the rain. Not a rock or stone can be found ; 
 and in this respect it is wholly unlike Cape Cod, which is equally 
 sandy, but abounds in gravel and rocks. We are here, I believe, 
 in what geologists call the tertiary formation, which begins, I 
 think, in New Jersey, and covers the South Atlantic coast. This 
 low coast, as one might suppose, is penetrated everywhere by 
 arms of the sea — rivers, or creeks, they are called ; but are 
 simply the effect of the ocean tides, burrowing — to use Dr. Mus- 
 sey's medical term — into the land. It is a remarkable proof of 
 this power of the tides that they roll up the Potomac, from the 
 entrance of the Chesapeake Bay, two hundred and twenty miles. 
 So they roll up Delaware Bay, and river, as far as Trenton. It 
 is a striking thing, when one considers it ; this penetration of the 
 land to such a distance, twice in 24 hours, by the waters of the 
 ocean, along the whole coast of all the continents. 
 
 The waters here are quite shallow, compared with Cape Cod 
 bay. Last night, for example, in rowing over a sheet of water 
 
To His Children 153 
 
 lying immediately before the Asylum, and stretching away to 
 Craney Island, some miles distant, while yet quite far from land, 
 we ran aground twice with a very light boat. In these shallow 
 waters the oysters are planted and cultivated. The bottom is 
 soft and muddy ; the water not over six to ten feet deep ; and 
 the surface of the sea near the shore is dotted with sticks like 
 bean poles, which mark the locality of the oyster-beds. Sea 
 crabs abound here. One evening, driving along the beach, we 
 saw a score of colored fishermen, including the numerous lads 
 and boys, who were lying on the scorching sand, waiting the 
 filling of a huge net cast into the sea. At our request, they kindly 
 consented to anticipate the time, and draw the net to shore Its 
 contents, when emptied on the shore, were wonderful to behold : 
 a few fish — mackerel, trout, sprats, (a small fish something like 
 bass), flounders (or skates, as the Cape Codders call them) ; 
 with an innumerable multitude of crabs of all sizes. These crabs 
 have large claws like our cray fish. Their eyes are projected 
 from the head on a foot-stalk, which they withdraw at pleasure 
 — thus resembling a telescope sliding in or out of its case. As 
 I approached them they reared up on their tail, and flung out 
 their claws in fierce defiance. If I put my finger near them, they 
 struck at me with a force that made the claws snap like a steel 
 trap when I withdrew my finger. They have the spirit of the 
 game cock, and their fighting attitude is amazing, in such little 
 creatures ; for the largest are not over six inches long. Crabs 
 in season sell at a dollar a dozen in Washington or Baltimore. 
 Here, just now, they are fed to the hogs. The men use a four 
 or five pronged fork, like a dung fork, which they thrust into 
 the poor crabs, taking six or eight at once to fling into their carts. 
 
 There is a new species of crab here — new to me, at least — 
 not over an inch and a half long, and having but one claw, a large 
 one compared with their bodies, which they carry over the shoul- 
 der when they walk, as a vagrant violinist might carry his fiddle. 
 Hence they are called fiddlers. We saw hundreds of them run- 
 ning over the sand-beach, as if they were a jolly party going to 
 a dance. Small jelly fish abound here. Their circular, convex, 
 glassy-looking upper surface is marked with brown rays ; the 
 sign of radiates, proceeding from the center of that surface. 
 
154 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 Their pendant feelers, which hang from the under surface Uke 
 brown strings, are six to eight inches long. Mrs. Agassiz says 
 that in some of the gigantic species of jelly fish these pendant 
 arms measure three hundred feet. 
 
 Vegetation here is rich, arguing strength in the soil not ex- 
 hausted by bad cultivation. The trees are chiefly pine; the pine 
 forests exhaling a delicious perfume very invigorating to the 
 nervous system. Sycamores are common, and oaks, maple, etc. 
 The laurel is scarce. Sumach, of a more delicate species than 
 ours, abounds. Yesterday, I met a tree like an apple or cherry 
 tree for size, with leaves closely resembling laurel, but with a 
 burr like a miniature chestnut burr. The darky lady before 
 whose door it grew, called it "an acorn tree". I have not learned 
 its true name. 
 
 You know that we are here in the very cradle of English- 
 American colonization. At Jamestown, on the James River, the 
 mouth of which is before my window, and at Plymouth, Mass., 
 the earliest English settlements were made in the same year — 
 1620. The land here has been cultivated, therefore, for two cen- 
 turies and a half. Tobacco, which Sir Walter Raleigh, the foun- 
 der of Virginia, first made known to Europeans, has been the 
 staple and the bane of this region. The exhausting nature of 
 "the weed", with slave cultivation, and that means the draining 
 of a soil which is never enriched by manure, has almost ruined 
 the land. Corn is planted here in rows. The hills are as far 
 apart as ours ; but only one stalk grows in one hill, where we 
 have three or four ; so that the crop — for each stalk bears no 
 more ears than with us — is but one-third of ours per acre. And 
 this is all the land will bear, cultivated as it is. The potato stalks 
 grow "few and far between", and look as if very loosely sowed 
 over the land. Yet the product itself is good in quality. Sweet 
 potatoes are very abundant, and the growth covers the field. 
 
LIX 
 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 National Military Asylum, 
 
 Southern Branch 
 Hampton, Va., 34 August, 1872. 
 My dear John : 
 
 Our visit here has been delightful, despite the Autumn heat. 
 
 In the afternoon. Dr. MacDermont and I resolved to take the 
 starch out of our horse. He walked quietly, and carried us to Gen. 
 Butler's farm, as it is called, six miles distant. The road runs 
 over a level but beautiful country; once covered with fine plan- 
 tations. We passed two or three pretentious houses, adorned 
 with ample lawns, and grounds filled with trees ; cedar predom- 
 inating; but intermingled with elm, maple, sycamore, walnut, 
 and mulberry. These were formerly the abode of wealth and 
 splendor. Princely parties were held here; the grounds illum- 
 inated with lamps, and the groves resounding with festivities. 
 We drove around one, and saw the wretched "negro quarters", 
 still occupied, but far meaner habitations than you ever saw. 
 The darkies have a favorite song — learned in olden days, but 
 still remembered and repeated. It runs thus — 
 
 "Nobody knows the trouble I see, 
 ' Nobody knows but Jesus". 
 
 This is, in fact, the whole song, with a chorus interspersed with 
 variations. How often has that plaintive wail, springing from 
 hearts broken for years, ascended to the ears of the Lord of 
 Hosts! "God heard their groaning"; (Ex. 2, 24), and the day 
 of vengeance came. 
 
 Old Point Comfort, and its vicinity, for years before the war, 
 had been the southern Newport. Here were gathered, every 
 Summer, the crowds of pleasure-hunters ; and here the gold 
 wrung from the unpaid toil of thousands of slaves was lavished in 
 luxurious living. A particular bolt of divine vengeance fell here, 
 
156 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 therefore, in the day of wrath. Hampton was the seat of wealth 
 and comfort. It was burned by rebel hands on the approach of 
 Gen. Butler. Its two thousand inhabitants were homeless. Be- 
 fore our armies, marching to Big Bethel and Yorktown, all the 
 sympathizers with rebellion fled; and very few of them ever 
 returned. The negroes flocked from all quarters to the protec- 
 tion of our flag. They were driven away in crowds from Sewall's 
 Point by their old masters. Butler welcomed them. He allowed 
 them to cultivate the deserted farms. He built a large one-story 
 frame school house, capable of accommodating several hundred 
 pupils, and an industrial school of like size ; where he gathered 
 the children and young folks for education. The result is seen 
 from our porch in the large and beautiful Normal School for 
 colored people, which has divided with Gen. Lee's Washington 
 College at Lexington, the congressional grant of land for general 
 educational use : this school receiving $100,000. Around this 
 school, in different directions, colored people are purchasing land 
 and building homes ; neat, two-story frames, well-lighted, taste- 
 ful, comfortable ; and surrounded with trees, flowers, and gar- 
 dens. I have seen many negro farms where the dawn of a new 
 era in cultivation is most distinctly visible. 
 
 Yesterday, Dr. McD. and I visited the Butler farm, as I said. 
 The General bought two hundred acres of land from a resident 
 here, and settled on it the slave families expelled from Sewall's 
 Point. He has portioned it out in lots, to be paid for in time by 
 the colored purchasers. We passed two streets of huts, each a 
 single room, but tenanted by a whole family. We spoke to many 
 of them. All were wretchedly poor ; yet industrious, and happy. 
 We visited the patriarch, a white-headed, white-bearded man of 
 eighty years. He is infirm and almost helpless ; but clear-head- 
 ed, warm-hearted, near home, and he knows it. We had a long 
 conversation on the past. I never saw more sensibility, modesty, 
 and gratitude than he manifested. He is a Methodist; but when 
 I had read a chapter of Hebrews, he followed my Presbyterian 
 prayer with as fervent and earnest ejaculations of "Amen" and 
 "bress de Lord", as if I had been a Methodist. He parted from 
 
To His Son 157 
 
 us with a simple and affectionate expression of his behef that we 
 shall meet in heaven. I found that my noble friend, the Doctor, 
 is well known to all these people; upon whom he has bestowed 
 not a little gratuitous medical practice. 
 
 Well, my fourth sheet is full; but my head and heart are 
 fuller. 
 
LX 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Lane Seminary, 10 Oct., 1873. 
 
 My dear John : 
 
 Just before the opening of our term, I had a serious attack 
 of what I suppose to have been neuralgia affecting the stomach. 
 The severe pain abated in a week ; and after losing one Sunday, 
 I resumed my usual work. But the full Seminary labors — we 
 have over 50 students on the ground — added to my regular 
 summer labors in the church, coming upon me in my weak state, 
 I have been slow to recover the tone of my stomach : and when 
 the furnace burns low the locomotive runs sluggishly. 
 
 Of course I am overworked. I knew that I should be when 
 1 assumed the care of this church ; for I cannot do things by 
 halves ; cannot run on one wheel, as the rivermen say. And 
 until the church at large provides an endowment for my chair, 
 I must either do double work, to support myself in the Seminary, 
 or resign my professorship. 
 
 Tell Mr. Cummin we shall warmly welcome him again, and 
 share our Sabbath services with you both. I preach my fifth 
 sermon on the Life of our Lord, day after tomorrow, on the Bap- 
 tism of Jesus. 
 
 As to the rotary eldership, my judgment is decidedly against 
 it; as it is against a rotary ministry. I believe it will do more 
 harm than good. One of our best city pastors, whose church 
 some two or three years ago adopted the rotary system, said, 
 lately in our ministers' meeting, that the system, so far as he had 
 observed it, had worked nothing but mischief. I found this 
 church about equally divided on that subject: some wishing an 
 election of temporary elders, and some decidedly adverse to it. 
 I think the first step I took, which was to postpone any decision 
 
To His Son 159 
 
 of the matter until the assembly shall come to some definite con- 
 clusion on it, was a long step toward peace and prosperity. I 
 would advise your church to let well-enough alone. "Let us 
 have peace". If an elder wishes to retire, the way is clear. But 
 Mr. Haas ought not to think of withdrawing. And if the church 
 wish any elder laid on the shelf, the way is also clear. 
 
 God guide you. 
 
LXI 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 ^ . , Lane, 21 Oct., 1873. 
 
 Dear J ohn : 
 
 Yours of yesterday reached me this morning. Thanks. I 
 am glad that our church rejected rotary Eldership. Mr. Mulford 
 showed his good sense in arguing that although the rotary sys- 
 tem once prevailed in Scotland, it had been laid aside because it 
 worked badly. That is the simple fact. And the rotary system 
 never was in use in this country, in the Presbyterian body. I 
 am glad that Mr. Henry Brown pursued the moderate course. 
 No such decided novelty should be introduced, at any rate, unless 
 by common consent. 
 
 Mr. J. B., whom you name, will make a very good Elder. 
 Mr. G. B. I do not know. Jno. Stoddard, Jno. Edgar, Mr. Bar- 
 nett, Johnson Bradford, are four good names. The choice of 
 Elders more closely concerns the prosperity of a church than the 
 choice of a (modern) pastor; for the latter is sure to be rotated, 
 while the former are stationary. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Your mother and I go to the city today to dine with the 
 Pounsfords, old friends of ours at Hamilton. Mrs. P. is a 
 daughter of the late James Graham, who owned a paper mill 
 below Hamilton. His widow, now at St. Louis, called on us 
 this week. After all, there are no friends like old friends. As 
 Lamb says, in his Elia essay on Christ's Hospital, "Oh, it is 
 pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same arm linked in yours at 
 forty, which, at thirteen helped it to turn over the Cicero de 
 Amicitia". My school-boy chums are all gone: but I am thank- 
 ful that an arm linked in mine at 28 still clings to rne at 60. May 
 you enjoy the same felicity 33 years hence ! 
 
 My love to all we love. ,. n- -n .u 
 
 ^ Yi". aff. Father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
LXII 
 TO HIS SON 
 
 Parsonage, Walnut Hills, 
 
 Cinti., O., 23 Dec, 1873. 
 My dear John : 
 
 Your kind and welcome letter should have been answered 
 sooner ; but I seem to have no leisure. The church news which 
 it contained was agreeable. I should be sorry to see the Dayton 
 people running after self-sent "Evangelists". No doubt the Lord 
 sometimes sends rare agents, in a low state of religion, singularly 
 fitted to arouse a slumbering church, and to startle a world of 
 dying sinners; men such as Whitefield, the Wesleys, and others. 
 But these are "like angel's visits, few and far between." The 
 history of the church has shown that more harm than good is 
 done by that class of men who set themselves up as "revivalists". 
 They unsettle the minds of the people, and weaken their confi- 
 dence in the ordinary and stated means of grace. They tend to 
 make religion consist in exciting feeling, rather than in godly 
 living. They fill the church with "wood, hay and stubble"; 
 rather than "gold, silver, and precious stones". 
 
 Yet, a genuine revival of religion is of all things the most 
 needed now. The life of the church lies in that power of the 
 Spirit which creates a true revival, pouring new life into the souls 
 of men from the Fountain of life. Such marked accessions of 
 spiritual life have characterized her history, ever since the Pen- 
 tecost. Milner's church history is valuable in this respect, that 
 it traces the "Effusions of the Spirit" in the successive ages, 
 from Pentecost to the Reformation. Such revivals are deep- 
 seated, wide-spread, enduring. They affect the life of a genera- 
 tion, or of successive generations. Only such a refreshing from 
 on high can save the coming generation from indifference, infi- 
 delity, and atheism. The Lord send help speedily. 
 
 You know that I am sixty-one years old today. In a review 
 of that long period, — so I once thought it, but it has fled like a 
 
162 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 shadow, — I see much to bless God for ; an unbroken stream of 
 mercies ; goodness and mercy following me and mine like a river. 
 On my side, I see an unbroken stream of imperfections and 
 shortcomings ; "my goodness extendeth not unto Thee". On the 
 whole, a progress toward heaven, and a daily increasing desire 
 to enter that "better country, even the heavenly". Oh that I, 
 and all that are dear to me, may meet there, in unclouded light, 
 to survey together the paths of the divine life by which we have 
 been brought thither, and to praise the grace that redeemed us! 
 
 Still, there may remain, even for me, years of labor, or of 
 suffering. I am thankful that, — sixty years short of Moses' 
 time of life, to be sure, — "my eye" is "not dimmed", nor my 
 "natural force abated". I write and read without glasses; and 
 I am about to take my first rest for eighteen months ; not having 
 left these hills since last July a year ; and having preached every 
 Sabbath, morning and evening, save one, (when sick last August), 
 besides discharging my full duty as Professor. But sixty one 
 is not forty one; and I need rest. We leave tomorrow by the 
 C, H. & D. Shall we meet you at the depot? 
 
LXIII 
 FROM HIS DAUGHTER 
 
 On the Death of Her Son 
 
 Maysfield (near Dayton, O.), Apl. 26, 1874. 
 My dear Father and Mother : 
 
 We thank you very much for the kind letters of sympathy 
 that have reached us at different times. Father's coming last night. 
 I have thought every day of writing you ; but both Lizzie and 
 myself have been quite worn out this week ; and when able to 
 do anything, there has been so much to do in thoroughly cleaning 
 my room, bed-pillows, etc., to fit it for the little baby to go back 
 into. I undressed to go to bed but twice during the three weeks ; 
 and as I gave him all the medicine myself, and applied all the 
 remedies of every sort, I never slept more than, and seldom as 
 much as, two hours together. 
 
 But Lizzie was more worn out than I, and did not sleep for 
 several nights after the baby's death, except by snatches. She 
 has been in no condition, and I was not willing to have her go 
 home until she had recruited a little. 
 
 There is no need to tell you, as you have gone through with 
 it, what a terrible sickness it was. The verses that have struck 
 me most — We are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath 
 are we troubled, etc. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? 
 — express it. The power of the anger of God that consumed 
 that poor little body with a fiery poison; so that when it wns 
 ended no one could recognize a feature of the beautiful child 
 that had been the pride of the house ! But God is still merciful, 
 and it is real comfort to believe that in that awful hour, the living 
 soul was saved from more fearful ravages by the atonement of 
 Christ. 
 
 Although very ill from the first, he did not have the worst 
 form of the disease apparently, for his throat was never ulcer- 
 ated : but finally the glandular swelling outside (one had been 
 
Lindsay Marc Parrott Mary Virginia Farmer Katherine Gorringe 
 Lawrence Augustus d'Arcy Parrott Mary May Gorringe 
 
 (Reading from left to right) 
 Edith May Parrott, Elizabeth Rogers Thomas, Katherine Parrott, 
 Elizabeth K. Parrott, Mary Sering Kemfer, Mary May Thomas 
 
From His Daughter 165 
 
 severe and obstinate for ten days), met as with a band of iron 
 and closed his breath. The poor little brain that had looked out 
 so bright and clear from all the misery at last gave way, and for 
 a day and night was bewildered : but as he lay the last morning, 
 the eyes that had crossed, were again perfectly straight and clear- 
 ly intelligent. I thought he recognized us all ; and I continued 
 to say little things to him, for I felt sure he heard, and might 
 perhaps get a little comfort from earthly love as he passed 
 through a valley whose darkness he could not understand. 
 
 Up to the last two days I felt hopeful about him. His con- 
 stitution was so fine, and most of the time he drank his milk as 
 eagerly as when well. It seemed to me that he ought to pull 
 through; and I strained every nerve for three weeks to save his 
 life, by the best nursing I could give; and the most careful ap- 
 plications of the Doctor's remedies. But all in vain. He has 
 joined his baby sister in heaven. Her loss was, however, only 
 a feather to this. She was a beautiful little creature; but too 
 young to have engaged our afifections as he had : and then she 
 had not been missed from a home she never entered. Little Edwin 
 developed very fast after you saw him Christmas, said everything, 
 and sang like a bird. His bright intellect, and big, warm heart 
 seemed to give extraordinary promise for the future. But there 
 must be some special work for which such children are wanted, or 
 so many of them would not be taken. His last sentence to me 
 was, "I love mamma gut (good)", and the last line he sang on 
 earth — "Glory to God on high", every word distinctly sung, as he 
 joined in one of his favorite hymns. * * * 
 
 Please excuse this poor writing : my hand is unsteady. 
 
 With much love, your Daughter, 
 
 Mary M, Parrott. 
 
 NOTE — Mary May, infant daughter of Col. and Mrs. E. A. Parrott, 
 was born and died in Germany. 
 
Mrs. Henry S. Mead and Daughter Jane Head Mead 
 
 Linda Roger Davis, Kathleen Woolson Davis 
 Allen Perry Lovejoy, Jr. Elizabeth Ann Phillips 
 
LXIV 
 TO HIS DAUGHTER 
 
 Middlebiiry, Vermont, 
 
 July 34th, 1874. 
 My dear Lizzie : 
 
 We are indebted to you for a very faithful correspondence ; 
 and nothing is so cheering, among strangers, as good news from 
 home, and plenty of it. 
 
 Let me say, first, that Dr. Smith has not accepted the Presi- 
 dency of Middlebury College, as I wrote you. We met the state- 
 ment in the newspaper, at Albany, and were assured of its truth 
 when we arrived here. But Dr. Smith called on Monday, and 
 showed me his letter to the College Board, in which he declines 
 the appointment. I was glad to learn that he will probably con- 
 tinue with us at Lane Seminary while he can render service ; I 
 trust as long as I remain at Walnut Hills. 
 
 As to Mr. Bellamy, my Diary shows this record ; "Sat. Mar. 
 28. Pd. Bellamy in full $6.00". You remember I gave you 
 $30.00, and you paid Kay & Bellamy that day, being on your way 
 to Dayton, I believe. I asked you on your return, and you said 
 you had paid both bills. Still, if Bellamy cannot be satisfied with 
 this record, pay him again ; he is a poor man, and I would not have 
 him think I am his debtor. 
 
 Nat is improving his time both in work and play. His health 
 is better. He boats, and fishes and swims, etc., etc. He com- 
 mits a page of Webster's dictionary daily, and writes a spelling 
 lesson in a book; reads in Scott's poems; learns a chapter in 
 Mrs. Willard's Republic of America; and promises to begin 
 Geography. By the way. Airs. Emma Willard, so celebrated for 
 her Female Seminary at Troy, N. Y., began the school in Mid- 
 dlebury: afterwards removed it to Waterford, N. Y. She be- 
 gan what she called the germ of her Female Seminary ; — and 
 she claims to have originated the feminine application of the 
 
168 Letters of Thomas E. Thomas 
 
 word seminary — in Middlebury, in 1814. In 1819, she trans- 
 ferred to Waterford, and in 1831, to Troy, N. Y. In 1857 it 
 had three hundred and thirty pupils, from every State in the 
 Union, and from Canada. Her History of the Am. Republic, 
 and her Botany, are well known text books. She says that she 
 sent out two hundred teachers from Troy "before one was edu- 
 cated in any public normal school in the United States" ; and 
 that hers "is fairly entitled to the honor of being the first normal 
 school" in our country. Judge Swift's History of Middlebury, 
 Chapter XXIV, contains a good history of her Seminary. 
 Thompson's History of Vermont, (I have met with here), gives 
 a similar account. The College, and the Female School, in Mid- 
 dlebury, both began with the Century, in 1800. Mrs. Willard's 
 portrait in Judge Swift's book shows her a very beautiful and 
 intellectual lady. 
 
 By the way, I saw in a stone-cutter's shop here, yesterday, 
 an old, odd, folio volume, (one of five or six that made the set), 
 which a Vermont soldier picked up while in Richmond, Va., 
 during the war, and brought home in his Knapsack. It was 
 Peter Bayle's Biographical Dictionary, vol. 2nd. 
 
 A Dieu ! Au revoir. 
 Affectionately your father, 
 
 Tho. E. Thomas. 
 
^*AT THE LAST" 
 
 "The stream is calmest, when it nears the tide, 
 And flowers the sweetest, at the Eventide, 
 And birds most musical, at close of day, 
 And Saints divinest, when they pass away. 
 
 Morning is lovely, but a holier calm 
 Lies folded up in Evening's robe of balm : 
 And weary man must ever love her best, 
 For Morning calls to toil, but night to rest. 
 
 She comes from heaven, and on her wings doth bear 
 A holy fragrance, like the breath of prayer: 
 Foot-steps of angels follow in her trace. 
 To shut the weary eye of day in peace. 
 
 All things are hushed before her as she throws 
 O'er earth and sky her mantle of repose : 
 There is a calm, a beauty and a power. 
 That Morning knows not, in the Evening hour. 
 
 "Until the Evening" we must weep and toil, 
 Plow life's stern furrow, dig the weedy soil : 
 Tread with sad feet our rough and thorny way, 
 And bear the heat and burden of the day. 
 
 Oh ! when our sun is setting, may we glide. 
 Like Summer Evening, down the golden tide ; 
 And leave behind us as we pass away, 
 Sweet starry twilight round our sleeping clay". 
 
OBIIT J875 
 
 "We who till then in thy shade 
 Rested as under the boughs 
 Of a mighty oak, have endured 
 Sunshine and rain as we might, 
 Bare, unshaded, alone. 
 Lacking the shelter of thee." 
 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 Lines written in Rugby Chapel. 
 
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