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

SPRINGFIELD, 16S6-18S6. 603
one of the back seats at a public meeting in the old Town Hall on State street,
and audibly remarked, "If that Wells boy and those other fellows don't make
less noise and disturbance they will be put out,"— those other fellows being
William L. Wilcox and Albert Kirkham, now " grave and reverend seniors," and
the late Charles O. Chapin of honored memory. Recalling all this, I could have
little thought that the time would ever come when the successors in authority
upon whom the mantle of Elijah has fallen would ever wish that the "Wells
boy " would come back again. From which, I think, I have the right to infer
that if I have made any noise or disturbance since then it has not been, as
formerly, altogether of a disagreeable character.
I do not know that it has ever occurred to any one to make an analysis of the
motives that are influential in drawing one back to the home of his childhood.
At first thought it may seem that such tendencies are the outcome of an instinct,
born and inbred in every one ; something akin to love of country. A little
examination, however, will, I think, lead to opposite conclusions. And in sup-
port of tlus view, I would mention that a question recently put to a gentleman
who emigrated from this vicinity elicited the following reply: "I was born in
such a place," naming a town not forty miles distant from Springfield ;
•' and
it is the only thing in my life that I feel particularly ashamed of." I have never
visited that place ; but from M'hat I used to hear of it, I should think the native
referred to might have had some good and sufficient warrant for his opinion.
Again, I sat some years ago at dinner beside one of the merchant princes of New-
York, a man whose name is well known in commercial circles and in public
affairs. He informed me that he was born in a little town in New York, just
over the Berkshire or Massachusetts line ; that he had only been back to it since
he left to bury his father and mother, and that "he never meant," if he could
help it, to go back again. Further conversation disclosed the fact that his father
was a farmer, the owner and cultivator of one of those sterile side-hill farms of
that section of country ; a man mIiosc fundamental idea of life was work and
religion, as lie understood it, — to work unremittingly during all the hours uf
daylight; and to meet any demands of imman nature for diversity and recreation
by attending meetings, and the study of the Assembly's catechism or such
other literature as made up the scant libraries in those days of the supporters of
old-time New England Calvinism, — among which he remembered was a well-
thumbed sermon preached by the father of David Dudley and Cyrus Field, at a
public execution, in which the culjjrit Mas advised that although he had been
a very bad fellow, and was still impenitent, there was ample time for conversion
and a change of heart between leaving the church and reaching the gallows. It
was no wonder, then, that my friend, under the circumstances, bought his own