BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER. There is a belt extending irregularly across the State of New Hampshire, and varying in width, from which have gone forth men who have won a national reputation. From this section went Daniel Webster, Lewis Cass, Levi Woodbury, Zachariah Chandler, Horace Greeley, Henry Wilson, William Pitt Fessenden, Salmon P. Chase, John Wentworth, Nathan Clifford, and Benjamin F. Butler.... more...

JAMES GILLESPIE BLAINE. In the long list of illustrious men who have held the high office of President of the United States, a few names stand out with such prominence as to be constantly before the American people. While Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, Jackson, Grant, and others, did the country service that never will be forgotten, it is indisputable that Washington, Lincoln, and Garfield gained a firmer... more...

GROVER CLEVELAND.By HENRY H. METCALF.Save only that of Ulysses S. Grant, no name in America has come from comparative obscurity into national eminence in so short a time as that of GROVER CLEVELAND. The fame of Grant was wrought out through the exigencies of a great civil war, in which the unity of the Republic was the issue involved. The distinction which Cleveland has achieved comes of valiant... more...

DANIEL LOTHROP.By JOHN N. MCCLINTOCK, A.M.The fame, character and prosperity of a city have often depended upon its merchants,—burghers they were once called to distinguish them from haughty princes and nobles. Through the enterprise of the common citizens, Venice, Genoa, Antwerp, and London have become famous, and have controlled the destinies of nations. New England, originally settled by sturdy... more...

GEORGE DEXTER ROBINSON. BY FRED. W. WEBBER, A.M. [Assistant Editor of the Boston Journal.] His Excellency George D. Robinson, at present the foremost citizen of Massachusetts, by reason of his incumbency of the highest office in the Commonwealth, is the thirtieth in the line of succession of the men who have held the office of Governor under the Constitution. In character, in ability, in education, and... more...

WILLIAM GASTON. By ARTHUR P. DODGE. Victor Hugo has written: "The historian of morals and ideas has a mission no less austere than that of the historian of events. The latter has the surface of civilization, the struggles of the crowns, the births of princes, the marriages of Kings, the battles, the assemblies, the great public men, the revolutions in the sunlight, all exterior; the other historian... more...

Lee And Shepard. By George L. Austin, M.D. For a quarter of a century the firm-name of Lee and Shepard has been familiar to the public. During this interval of time it has been printed upon millions of volumes, which have gone forth on their two-fold mission of instruction and entertainment. Few publishing houses in America have achieved a more honorable record, or have more indelibly left 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...

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...