Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

He was quite unsparing in his attacks on anybody who offended him, or against whom he took a dislike; and he seemed to dislike everybody whom he did not know. It was said of him that, like the rain of Heaven, he "fell alike on the just and on the unjust." He attacked some of the most venerable and worthy citizens of the Commonwealth without any apparent reason. He used to call Chief Justice Chapman, one of the worthiest and kindest of men, Chief Justice Wheelgrease. He had a controversy in his paper of long standing with a man named Piper, a pompous and self-important little personage, who edited the Fitchburg Reveille. That was a Whig paper which circulated in the country towns where Robinson's paper was chiefly taken. He made poor Piper's life unhappy. One of the issues of his paper contained a life of Piper. It begun by saying that Piper began life as the driver of a fish-cart in Marblehead, and that he was discharged by his employer on account of the diffuseness of his style. He quoted with great effect on Otis P. Lord the toast given by the Court Jester of Archbishop Laud's time: "Great Laud be to God, and Little Lord to the Devil."

When he was clerk of the House of Representatives there was a story in the newspapers that he was preparing a treatise on Parliamentary law. He published a letter denying the statement. But he added, that if he did write such a treatise, he should sum it up in one sentence: "Never have an ass in the chair."

I was associated with him one day on the Committee on Resolutions of the Republican State Convention, held in Worcester. The Committee went over to my office to consult. While we were talking together Robinson broke out with his accustomed objurgations levelled at several very worthy and excellent men. I said: "William, it is fortunate that you did not live in the Revolutionary time. How you would have hated General Washington." He replied, with a smile that indicated the gratification he would have had if he could have got at him: "He was an old humbug, wasn't he?"

But Robinson was always on the righteous side of any question involving righteousness. He was kind, generous, absolutely disinterested, and a great and beneficent power in the Commonwealth.

CHAPTER VI FARM AND SCHOOL

I spent my life in Concord until I entered college except one year when I lived on a farm in Lincoln. There I had an opportunity to see at its best the character of the New England farmer, a character which has impressed itself so strongly and so beneficently on our history. Deacon James Farrar, for whom I worked, was, I believe, the fifth in descent from George Farrar, one of the founders of the town of Lincoln. All these generations dwelt on the same farm and under the same roof. An ancient forest came to a point not far from the house. That, with a large river meadow and some fertile upland fields, made up the farm. In every generation one or more of the family had gone to college and had become eminent in professional life, while one of them had stayed at home and carried on the farm. An uncle of the Deacon with whom I lived was Timothy Farrar of New Ipswich, an eminent judge who died considerably more than a hundred years old, and who was the oldest graduate of Harvard. Deacon James's own brother was Professor John Farrar of Harvard, a famous mathematician in his day, thought by his pupils to be the most eloquent man of his time, although Webster and Everett and Channing were his cotemporaries. It was a healthy and simple life of plain living and high thinking. But I think I got more good out of it in learning how the best intelligence of the State of Massachusetts was likely to judge of the questions of morals and duty than I got afterward from my four years in college. Two of the Deacon's sons succeeded him on the farm. One was his successor in his office in the church. Another son, George Farrar, graduated at Amherst where he was cotemporary with Dr. Storrs and Henry Ward Beecher. He died a few years after his admission to the Bar. But he had already given proof that he would, if he had lived, have taken rank among the foremost at the Bar in Massachusetts.

Before entering college I was for about six months a pupil of Mrs. Sarah Ripley of Waltham. She removed to Concord with her husband afterward. She was one of the most wonderful scholars of her time, or indeed of any time. President Everett said she could fill any professor's chair at Harvard. She was an admirable mathematician. She read the "Mecanique Celeste" of Laplace in the original without the aid of Dr. Bowditch's translation. She was a fine German and Italian scholar. She had a great fondness for Greek literature, especially for Plato and AEschylus. She was an accomplished naturalist. She was simple as a child, an admirable wife and mother, performing perfectly all the commonest duties of the household. The authorities of Harvard used to send boys to her who were rusticated for some offence. She would keep them along in all their studies, in most cases better instructed than they would have been if they had stayed in Cambridge. I remember her now with the strongest feeling of reverence, affection and gratitude. In that I say what every other pupil of hers would say. I do not think she ever knew how much her boys loved her.

In 1876 the Directors of the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia took steps to have the lives of three or four of the foremost women of the century that had just passed written as the best examples of American womanhood for our first century. Mrs. Schuyler was selected from New York, Mrs. Livermore from New Hampshire, and Mrs. Randolph from Virginia. Mrs. Ripley was chosen as the representative of Massachusetts. If anybody doubt the capacity of the intellect of woman to rival that of man in any calling requiring the highest intellectual capacity, without in the least forfeiting any quality of a delicate womanhood, let him read the "Life of Sarah Ripley."

After her death Mr. Emerson wrote the following notice of her. It is not found in his collected works.

"Died in Concord, Massachusetts, on the 26th of July, 1867, Mrs. Sarah Alden Ripley, aged seventy-four years. The death of this lady, widely known and beloved, will be sincerely deplored by many persons scattered in distant parts of the country, who have known her rare accomplishments and the singular loveliness of her character. A lineal descendant of the first governor of Plymouth Colony, she was happily born and bred. Her father, Gamaliel Bradford, was a sea-captain of marked ability, with heroic traits which old men will still remember, and though a man of action yet adding a taste for letters. Her brothers, younger than herself, were scholars, but her own taste for study was even more decided. At a time when perhaps no other young woman read Greek, she acquired the language with ease and read Plato,—adding soon the advantage of German commentators.