THE WIFE'S STORY. I will tell you the story of my life, since you ask it; for, though the meaning of the life of any woman of my character would be the same, I believe, the facts of mine, being sharp and compressed, may make it, perhaps, more apparent. It will be enough for me to give you the history of one day,—that of our first coming to Newport; for it seems to me as if it held and spoke out... more...

ENGLISH OPINION ON THE AMERICAN WAR. The great events which took place in the United States between the first election of President Lincoln and the accession of President Johnson excited an amount of party-spirit in England greater than I recollect in connection with any other non-English occurrences, and fairly proportionate even to that supreme form of party-spirit which the same events produced in... more...

OUR FIRST GREAT PAINTER, AND HIS WORKS. On the 8th of July, 1843, Washington Allston died. Twenty-one years have since gone by; and already his name has a fine flavor of the past added to its own proper aroma. In twenty-one years Art has made large advances, but not in the direction of imagination. In that rare and precious quality the works of Allston remain preëminent as before. It is now so long... more...

A NIGHT IN THE WATER. That was a pleasant life on picquet, in the delicious early summer of the South, and among the endless flowery forests of that blossoming isle. In the retrospect, I seem to see myself adrift upon a horse's back amid a sea of roses. The various outposts were within a five-mile radius, and it was one long, delightful gallop, day and night. I have a faint impression that the... more...

HOW MY NEW ACQUAINTANCES SPIN. The strictly professional man may have overcome his natural aversion to some of the most interesting objects of his study, such as snakes, and toads, and spiders, and vermin of all kinds; but people in general have always required that any attempt to force such abominations upon their notice should be preceded by a more or less elaborate and humble acknowledgment of their... more...

CHARLES CARLETON COFFIN. Among the emigrants from England to the western world in the great Puritan exodus was Joanna Thember Coffin, widow, and her son Tristram, and her two daughters, Mary and Eunice. Their home was in Brixton, two miles from Plymouth, in Devonshire. Tristram was entering manhood's prime—thirty-three years of age. He had a family of five children. Quite likely the political... more...

Hon. ALEXANDER HAMILTON RICE, LL.D. By Daniel B. Hagar, Ph.D. [Principal of the State Normal School, Salem.] Massachusetts merchants have been among the most prominent men in the nation through all periods of its history. From the days of John Hancock down to the present time they have often been called by their fellow-citizens to discharge the duties of the highest public offices. Hancock was the... more...

SYLVESTER MARSH. [THE PROJECTOR OF THE MOUNT WASHINGTON RAILROAD.] By Charles Carleton Coffin. There were few settlers in the Pemigewasset Valley when John Marsh of East Haddam, Connecticut, at the close of the last century, with his wife, Mehitable Percival Marsh, travelling up the valley of the Merrimack, selected the town of Campton, New Hampshire, as their future home. It was a humble home. Around... more...

JOHN ALBION ANDREW. THE "WAR-GOVERNOR" OF MASSACHUSETTS. John Albion Andrew, the twenty-first Governor of Massachusetts, was born, May 31, 1818, at Windham, a small town near Portland, Maine. His father was Jonathan Andrew, who had established himself in Windham as a small trader; his mother was Nancy Green Pierce, of New Hampshire, who was a teacher in the celebrated academy at Fryeburg, where... more...

HENRY W. PAINE. By Prof. William Mathews, LL.D. Among the callings acknowledged to be not only useful, but indispensable to society, there is no one, except the medical, which has been oftener the butt of vulgar ridicule and abuse than the legal. "Lawyers and doctors," says a writer on Wit and Humor in the British Quarterly Review, "are the chief objects of ridicule in the jest-books of all... more...