Early Years—Senator Henry B. Anthony.
When I was in the Providence Post Office, Henry B. Anthony was a student of Brown University, whose noble father resided in Coventry, and the pale and delicate Henry would descend College Hill at evening shades, and present his sweet little face at the Post Office window, and inquire in solicitous and music tones: “Good Stephen, did my dear father or mother write me to-day?” And if I said yes, his tiny face reflected the innocent hilarity of childhood. But if I said no, he would depart in silence, with tears careering on his brilliant and intellectual eyes. One summer evening, while in the doorway of the Post Office, we had a long political disputation. Henry was a Whig and I a Democrat. He was a Hamiltonian, and I a Jeffersonian. Samuel and Joseph Bridgham, Wm. Henry Manton, Giles Eaton, David Perkins, Halsey Creighton, Edward Hazard, Nathan F. Dixon, George Rivers, and other students of Brown University, were there, and most of them were Whigs, and opposed to Gen. Jackson, who was then President. We had a very exciting discussion, and the students applauded as we warmed and glowed and rounded our periods; but Henry received the most applause, and I the most hisses. I endured all this with composure; but when Henry corrected my pronunciation of the military word “corps,” (kore,) which I pronounced like corpse, (korps,) a dead body,—he brought blushes to my cheeks, and copious blood to my brain, and the conquest was his, and I retired into the Post Office, and studied dictionary for some time, and resolved to acquire the principles of the English language. And from that memorable evening, I have been a laborious student. When this same Henry B. Anthony became Governor of Rhode Island, my father was the Senator from Providence County, which is the second honor of the State Administration, and the duties more arduous than those of the Governor himself. And father has told me that Henry often consulted him during his Gubernatorial Administration. When poor father died, I called on Henry at the Providence Journal office, who received me with the cordiality of a brother, and said: “Stephen: My father has recently died, and I profoundly sympathize with you, as I know what it is to lose a good father like mine. As to your father, Rhode Island never had a wiser nor a better citizen, nor a purer patriot,—and years will roll ere she will rear a man of his integrity and penetration. Our whole State is in tears, and will ever cherish him with warm affection.” Henry was elected an American Senator last week from Rhode Island, and here am I, with a dagger and revolver in my hand, exposing the robbers and parricides of my country, and with not one truly reliable friend in all the world; and even the few dollars that I recently received from the Corporation for public services, are in ceaseless danger through the stealth of heartless and greedy wretches, whose avarice will never be satiated until they have wrested the very last farthing from trembling hands that are in constant peril of paralysis. And now, dear Henry, receive my most affectionate congratulation on mounting the ladder of your highest ambition. But if you join the plunderers and traitors of the Senate, and be recreant to truth and justice—to Greene and Perry—to the Rhode Island Line, so fondly cherished by Washington—and to our dear native soil, and to the loved stars of our glorious canopy, and of the long, dark, cold, dreary, and sleepless nights of the Revolution,—if you be recreant to these sacred lights of our early years, I will paralyze you with execrations,—and if I survive you, I will trample and blight the verdure that blushes over your odious and accursed mausoleum.
