When the city saw fit to improve Lincoln avenue it did so by cutting down all its shade trees and transforming it into a dreary desolation. Mr. Phillips had in front of his house a row of cherry trees which were his pride and admiration and were also, alas, a source of considerable friction between himself and the neighborhood small boy, for the boys found it comparatively easy to adapt themselves to the Phillips cherries. I believe that their owner finally discovered that a generous coat of fresh tar on the tree trunks was as good a small boy preventive as it is in the case of certain insects. There is a tale of an expressman who took one of these tarred tree trunks to his bosom before he discovered the error of his ways, and the manner in which he blessed his tarry top-lights—so to speak—is one of the traditions of the neighborhood.
These cherry trees went with the rest, and when the destruction had been so complete that there was no further job for the contractor-friend of the politicians that functionary went elsewhere. Then Mr. Phillips called on his neighbors in an effort to enlist them in a plan to rehabilitate their street by the planting of trees but, finding most of them indifferent, he planted trees on both sides of the way, from the cemetery to Phillips Park, a double row one-half mile long, and it is these trees which to-day shelter the avenue from the summer’s sun. The trees were procured from a nursery on his own property located about where Delavan ends in Summer avenue.
MR. DAVID MACLURE.
“The memory of him is sweet and pleasant”, more than one of his former scholars testifies. Mr. Maclure is a round peg in a round hole, although he happened into his present line of work in rather an accidental manner.
He was the first clerk that the Prudential Insurance Company ever employed, but earning his bread and butter by such uncongenial drudgery soon wearied him, and he gave up the position with the idea of turning to art or to the ministry for his life work; but while in this somewhat uncertain state of mind the fates decided otherwise.
At this time he was living at the home of his parents on Lincoln avenue, and, when it was learned that the school at Montgomery was closed for lack of a teacher, a friend fairly pushed him into the opportunity thus opened. He shortly became popular with old and young, and fitted so snugly into the position that vaulting ambition has never since troubled him.
From the Montgomery school he came to the Elliott Street School in Woodside, was next transferred to the Eighth Ward School, and from there to the Chestnut Street School, where he has been principal for many years. Mr. Maclure has a way of making study attractive to children and stimulating them to strive the more to reach that promised land which he pictures so pleasantly—that those who have once been his scholars remember the days spent under his care with unmixed pleasure. “Beyond the Alps lies Italy”, is the way he sometimes put it to them.
The following verse is not offered as an evidence of Mr. Maclure’s literary skill, but rather to show the personal interest which he takes in the children, and as one of the many ways in which he attaches them to him:—
“To Annie E. Bennett, March 27, 1883.
“‘Dear Anna, on your natal day,