CHAPTER XXV.
A PRACTICAL SOCIALIST AND COLONIZER.
We found in this town of W——, a moribund Unitarian Church, with scarcely a handful of attendants, listening once a week to a lifeless minister and an asthmatic harmonium accompanied by a few feeble, inharmonious voices.
Our sympathies were aroused for this expiring infant, and we resolved to rescue it if possible from its open grave. My wife and I, accompanied by the "Triplets," on the front seat of our carriage as drivers, canvassed the entire town, asking all we met to lay up treasures in heaven by "rescuing the perishing," and we soon secured money to buy a fine toned organ and to hire a wideawake pastor. Ada played the new organ; May formed a quartette with herself as soprano, Ida often accompanying with her violin; my wife teaching in the Sunday-school, myself serving as chairman of the Parish Committee, and soon our church was filled with attentive and much edified listeners and helpers. I organized the Channing Club, which soon included in its membership all the leading musical and dramatic talent of the town. We met weekly in the church vestry which was soon decorated by handsome pictures, scenery and bric-a-brac, the gifts of our members, making a very spacious and attractive resort.
This club over which I presided, developed to a remarkable degree the latent talents of many who had never before thought themselves capable of entertaining and instructing the public. We had an orchestra of stringed and brass instruments, in which May played the flute, Ada the piano and organ, Ida second violin, while all our four girls sang solos, duets, trios, and quartettes. Many elderly people paid generous fees for honorary membership, while the large, active membership, responded regularly when called upon with musical, literary, or dramatic renditions individually or in combination as they might prefer. It was a delightful and instructive symposium which ought to be found in every town.
The Channing Club soon became famous, and gave first-class entertainments to very large audiences at high admission fees in our own and surrounding towns as well as in Boston, thus replenishing the church treasury and greatly promoting sociability and friendship by regular dances and suppers which made hundreds seem like one large family, bound together by many friendly ties, each one readily responding to the call of the president to render his or her full share of entertainment and good cheer for the good of all.
It was an ideal socialistic order, and we truly "sat together in heavenly places." All gladly contributed to the needs of the poor or the sick; we chartered steamers and went on picnic excursions to attractive island resorts in our beautiful harbor; class distinctions were banished, envy and jealousy disappeared like snow before the sun, and good fellowship reigned supreme. Our rich and poor met together as brothers and sisters.
Such an organization in churches would soon banish class hatreds, and do much to make this world a paradise like to that above.
The winter of 1892 was a red-letter season in the history of us all. We rented our house in W——, to a friend, and lived in Florida, our four girls attending Rollins College at Winter Park, where they enjoyed life immensely in the incomparable climate which, with their studies in this excellent school, was of great benefit to them, physically and mentally. I was favored with free passes all over the state, and devoted my time to a careful examination of large tracts of land in various counties, but found none to my liking until on our return trip, we spent several weeks at Lawtey, in the county of Bradford.
Florida, within its vast area, contains a great variety of land and climates, and the person who has traversed only the beaten track of the tourist knows nothing of the fertile tracts and delightful temperatures of these green-grassed and Piny-woods Highlands. Here, as nowhere else in the world, nature has provided all the essentials to agricultural success; there was but one mortgaged homestead in the entire township; it is the greatest strawberry mart in the world; the abundance of nutritious wild grasses render cattle and sheep raising throughout the year a source of great revenue, and the maximum of crop returns is secured with a minimum of labor.
At last, after years of search throughout the state, we found our ideal location for a colony, and I bonded over 6,000 acres of fertile, well-wooded lands, returned home, formed a syndicate, and paid for our tract, to which we gave the appropriate suggestive name of "Woodlawn." I successfully pursued my avocation of advertising and selling our lands, having an office in Boston and cooperating agents in several states.
On June 11th, 1894, my brother Joshua, the last of my father's family except myself, was suddenly called to join our many loved ones in the spirit world. All our lives we had been as David and Jonathan, and not a cloud had swept across the azure of our sky of mutual affection, until the advent of his second wife. He was one of the best men that ever lived, and nearly everyone in his town had been benefited by his well-known generosity and self-sacrifice, and he found awaiting him, many treasures in the grand bank of heaven.
"I cannot say, and I will not say
That he is dead—he is just away,
With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,
He has wandered into an unknown land,
And left us dreaming how very fair
It needs must be, since he lingers there;
We think of him faring on, as dear
In the love of there as the love of here,
Think of him still as the same, I say,
He is not dead—he is just away."
Soon after the departure of my brother to the better land, our spirit-band informed us very plainly through "Ouija," that it was our duty to remove to Boston in order that our children might have better educational facilities, and be admitted to the "musical swim" of the "Hub of the Universe." We obeyed their mandate, and the predictions of our angel friends were fully verified. In our new home the older girls met those to whom they were married in Heaven, and to whom they gave their hands and hearts. I now look back over a half century of existence on this earth, and my muse inspires me to record that:
I have ships that went to sea
More than fifty years ago.
None have yet come back to me,
But keep sailing to and fro,
Plunging through the shoreless deep,
With tattered sails and battered hulls
While around them scream the gulls.
I have wondered why they stayed
From me, sailing round the world
And I've said, "I'm half afraid
That their sails will ne'er be furled."
Great the treasures that they hold,
Silks, and plumes, and bars of gold,
While the spices which they bear
Fill with fragrance all the air.
I have waited on the piers
Gazing for them down the bay,
Days and nights, for many years,
Till I turned heart-sick away.
But the pilots, when they land,
Kindly take me by the hand,
Saying, "Surely they will come to thee,
Thy proud vessels from the sea."
So I never quite despair,
Nor let hope or courage fail,
And some day, when skies are fair,
Up the bay my ships will sail.