Springfield 1636-1886, History of Town and City, by Mason A. Green ...

SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886. 419
and up Main street, a stop was made at the round-house at the depot,
where a dinner was in waiting. The tables were arranged like the
spokes of a wheel. George Ashmun presided, and at the table were
Levi Lincoln, Edward Everett, Amasa Walker, Nathan Hale, Justice
Willard, and editors and public men from half-a-dozen towns. Let-
ters were read from John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Russell, Abbott
Lawrence, Stephen Fairbanks, Chief-Justice Ward, Julius Rockwell,
and others. Edward Everett made a very glowing speech, closing
with this passage :
—
On my last visit to Springfield, a year or two ago, my esteemed friend, just
named (Mr. Peabody), who has labored with so much diligence and success on
the ornithology of the State, informed me that one of these little sea-birds (stormy
petrel) had left his mark upon the mountain wave, his home upon the deep, and
had been found near the Chicopee river, within the limits of the town of Spring-
field, seventy miles, at least, in air line from tide-water, and hundreds of miles
from his accustomed range on the seas. What could be the object of this mys-
terious little visitant ? Who can tell ? On his native element the sailors regard
him with an unfriendly eye ; on shore, by the rule of contraries, he may come as
the harbinger of God. Perhaps, sir, he had heard of your railroad, and had
come to try the speed of his pinions with your locomotives. Whatever be his
object, I am disposed to regard his visit as a good omen. As the bird of the
land in the infancy of our race came back to the ark with an olive branch in her
mouth, as a sign that the waters were abated from off the earth, let us welcome
the little sea-bird who has come up to the hills as the herald to tell us that the
portals of the deep are thrown open, that the chariots of fire and iron are rolling
over its waters, and that henceforth, if never before —
Seas shall join the regions they divide.
Albany still lingered over its part of the great work, and in 1840
George Bliss, Charles Stearns, and a large delegation of Western
stockholders visited the capital of New York. They secured an
agreement with the city of Albany to subscribe $650,000 to the stock
of the Albany Railroad Company ;
the Albany company agreed to
intrust to the Western road the location and construction of the road
lying in New York, and further agreements were made with the