Petersham Town

Petersham Town

Waiting unmoved the ages yet to come, Thou dwellest under broad and tranquil skies, A green oasis with unfailing springs, The undisturbed home of restful things.

From the embrace of slumber and of night, Sweet comes the bonny bluebird's joyous greeting, While strutting Chanticleer, with tuneful throat, Heralds the day in shrill, exultant note.

Bright El Dorado, or Arcadia, where Glad fairies revel when the sun hath set, And songs of birds forever fill the air ? Where nymph or dryad, with soft eyes of jet, Lures the late wanderer to his final rest, And charms his life out on her faithless breast ?

I love thee for that thou art still as when In happy hours - unclouded then my lot - I lay within thy fern-enshrouded glen And felt thy loving presence. Not again With prayers or tears may vanished hours be bought. So be it, then, and here on thy green breast, When life is done, grant me a spot to rest.

Poem By Francis Z. Stone

THE lips are dumb that should have sung to-day, And where he lies the lights and shadows play, Wreathing about the stone which bears his verse The golden semblance of a crown of bay.

We are not here, I think, to celebrate The landscape that we love, but the estate They left in trust to us who founded it As on a rock to stand inviolate.

Not that they fought, the miracle, but why! These were no men whose passions, burning high, Burst rocket-like in flame, nor were impelled By martial pride to don War's panoply.

Long as their sepulchre remains a shrine, What need have we, or they, to seek a sign ? But when we turn away, apostate, then Give back their outworn seed-fields to the pine.

Ah, friends, these innovations which we boast Were old when the Red Sea drowned Pharaoh's host, And tricked in garments modernized and strange Our progress is arrested by a ghost!

This is your birthright still; no claimant bars Your full possession, or your title mars; Turn from the multitude's futilities That transient are as gnats beneath the stars!

Address By Mr. Abiathar Blanchard, A Native Of Petersham

YOU will permit me to express my pleasure in being present on this occasion, commemorative of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of my native town. I am glad to be here, and, in saying so, I surely voice the feeling of the inhabitants of Petersham, as well as of others who, either once identified with the town or tracing their ancestry here, have returned to join in this celebration.

We have always heard a good deal about patriotism. Sometimes we may have heard too much, especially when that quality has been exalted above the moral law, though I would be the last to decry a cardinal civic virtue. But there is a sentiment, of the very essence of patriotism, of which there is little danger that we shall have too much. Rather is the tendency in these days the other way. The object of this sentiment is not the nation, or the state, but the town in which we live. Here is our home, with its family ties. Here are our neighbors and immediate circle of friends. Here are the local institutions, municipal, educational, and religious, that come close to our every-day and even our inmost life. Thus one town takes precedence of all others. It appeals directly and continually to our public spirit. Its well-being we cherish. To its honor and reputation we are almost as sensitive as to our own. The law allows to each citizen one domicile, but there are many of us who owe a sort of divided allegiance. There is the town of our nativity and the town of our adoption. There is the home where we were born and nurtured and the home that we established for ourselves in later life. However much the latter may command our duty and engross our thought, there is that in the former which will never suffer it to be forgotten. Of the strength of that primal allegiance the gathering to-day is a witness.

Old Petersham, enthroned on her picturesque hills in the heart of our beloved Commonwealth of Massachusetts! " Here where the peace of the Creator lies"! Beautiful in her natural aspect, with a "charm of landscape and of sky" of which even the stranger owns the spell! What, then, does it mean to us who first opened our eyes upon these scenes, passing here the impressionable years of childhood and growing up to manhood and womanhood ? What fairer setting could we wish for the annals and traditions of our ancestors ? It was a profound truth uttered by the old classic, Humani nihil alienum (nothing is foreign to me). It is humanity that interests us, and it is the human element that to us invests these familar scenes with an especial attraction and significance.

The real Petersham is to be found in people we have known here, those whom we are glad to greet on this occasion, others absent in body but present in spirit, and the " cloud of witnesses" whom memory summons from the past. They are the ones who have consecrated this soil and made it the lodestone that brings to it to-day our willing feet.

I have made an allusion to patriotism. It was here fifty years ago that I received my first impression of the American flag. In anticipation of the one-hundredth anniversary of the incorporation of the town, a "liberty-pole" had been erected on Petersham Common. On this the banner of the republic was raised and its streaming folds flung to the free air of heaven. An impressive sight under any conditions! To my child's vision that flag was " like a meteor in the sky," and the impression made by that first flag-raising stands out unique from all others, vivid and undimmed by the years.

But we have made history since that natal day. Seven years later there was another display of the flag on Petersham streets - not one flag, but many. I recall a Sabbath morning in May, 1861. Before each house and strung across the street were flags in every variety. The spectacle meant something, for in those early days of the War of the Rebellion the inquiry went around whether this man, that, or the other was loyal to the Union. To this inquiry the display of the flag was deemed a sufficient answer, and such it proved in the event. Through the four years of that terrible war Petersham, in common with her sister towns, stood staunch and loyal, and we to-day are proud of her record. Of what that conflict meant to this town the Memorial Building that fronts the village green will tell something to coming generations. The same service will be performed by memorial addresses and records of various kinds, but the personal note evoked at the time by the events themselves can never be entirely reproduced. The way to learn history is to live when it is being made. That is the task the real historian sets for himself. Those of us who were old enough to "take in" the events of the Civil War learned its history to some purpose. In that momentous era we could say, with deep feeling of its truth,

Lowell says in one of his addresses, " It was a benediction to have lived in the same age with Abraham Lincoln." So much may be said, and more. It was also a benediction and an inspiration to have known personally so many of the men who, sacrificing their business interests and personal comfort, and severing the dearest ties, risked their lives for their country. In a small town like Petersham it was not possible to raise whole companies, and so these men, enlisting at different times, were to be found in different commands and in all branches of the service. All honor to them, wherever they were ! Their names recur to me as I speak, as they will to many in this audience. They can never be forgotten. It is with no invidious distinction, then, that I mention partic- ularly the company of men who went from this town and Barre, enlisting in the summer of 1862. This was the darkest period of the war. McClellan had been baffled before Richmond, our armies had suffered defeat in the battles before the national capitol, and the rebels later crossed the Potomoc into Maryland. It was at this stage of the war that Company F of the Fifty-third Regiment was recruited. It was no holiday pastime for which these men enlisted, but the grim business of war. As I look upon the little band of survivors to-day I think of Webster's apostrophe to the surviving soldiers of the Revolution, for I see before me men equally worthy of honor. There is a pleasure mingled with sadness as I look into your faces. Other faces as familiar as yours come before me, the beloved comrades who marched and battled and some of whom fell by your side, and in the van your gallant commander, that irreproachable gentleman, our Bayard, that prince among men, Captain Mudge.

But what of the future ? However " secure the past" may be, time does not stop in his course. There is a future of some kind for our ancestral town. A contrary supposition would throw a pall over the present exercises. What shall that future bring ?

There are some things we would fain hope for in the Petersham that is to be. One is that she may take up into her municipal, social, and religious life much of the spirit of the past; that some scions of the old stock may continue to live here and influence her destinies. That great changes are going on in the lineage of the people who live here is not to be doubted. We are also painfully aware that in recent years there have been many signs of a decaying prosperity. From a certain point of vantage the other day I marked eight abandoned farms. Those hearthstones have grown cold, and the houses that in my easy recollection were centres of life are either falling to ruin or have entirely disappeared. I look for a turn in the tide, to a time when it will be profitable to farm here in the hill towns of New England, when these abandoned acres will be reclaimed and new and better houses rise in the place of the old. Economic changes are taking place in that direction, and people of a different ancestry from ours are finding it out. These people have in them the making of good citizens, and everything should be done to make them good citizens.

The spirit of old Petersham, the spirit of this occasion, should be projected into the future. What is the mission of your public library, with its treasures of literature and other means of ministration to the higher life of the community? What is the mission of the three churches that have stood here for so long ? May they still continue to " point their spires of faith to heaven ; ' ' for there is work enough for them and similar organizations to do, a work that cannot be left unperformed without peril to the town and to the State. Again, there is the school. Had I the time I would stop to eulogize the traditional and actual little red schoolhouse of my recollection, and the many superior teachers who have held sway in those humble institutions. How much we owe to them! But in my vision of the future, and in accord with the spirit of the age, I see not many little schoolhouses scattered over the landscape, but a large, thoroughly appointed central building with a trained corps of instructors putting into practice the most approved ideas in education. But the work should not stop with the ordinary English branches. There should be the fullest opportunity for high-school studies that fit for life, and also, for those who desire it, a preparation for the great colleges and universities of the country. I am sure that there are many here who can remember the larger vision and opportunity that came to them when Principles Sprague, Dudley, Peabody, and Leonard, with able assistants, conducted in successive years the Petersham Classical High School; others will recall with similar feelings an institution of larger scope, the Highland Institute, with its corps of accomplished teachers, which flourished here for several years. Let the young people, our successors here, have better advantages still; for the world moves on. It is for their good and the good of the town. The declared pol- icy of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is to give every child within its borders a chance for an education, including the higher education. This policy of the State should be met by the towns much more than half way, for upon its universal prevalence depend not only the highest welfare of the towns themselves, but also the stability of the commonwealth and the great republic.

Our friendly forecast, then, for the ancestral town whose anniversary we commemorate to-day would place her well within the scope and tendency of the highest civilization, within easy reach of the best things of life, to which, in the future as in the past, she should make no unworthy contribution.