Fifty years ago, this man used to sell vegetables and fruit from door to door in the streets of Rochester, N. Y. He had a small farm a few miles out of town, upon which he raised the produce which he thus disposed of. An anecdote is related of a fine lady who had recently come to Rochester as the wife of one of its most distinguished clergymen. She ran up into her husband's study one morning, and said to him:—
"Why, Doctor, I've just seen the only gentleman I have yet met with in Rochester, and he was at our basement door selling vegetables. How wonderful! Who is it? Who can it be?"
"It must be Myron Holley," said her husband.
Another of his lady customers used to say that he sold early peas and potatoes in the morning with as much grace as he lectured before the Lyceum in the evening. Nor was it the ladies alone who admired him. The principal newspaper of the city, in recording his death in 1841, spoke of him as "an eminent citizen, an accomplished scholar, and noble man, who carried with him to the grave the love of all who knew him."
In reflecting upon the character of this truly remarkable person, I am reminded of a Newfoundland dog that I once had the honor of knowing near the spot on the shore of Lake Ontario where Myron Holley hoed his cabbages and picked his strawberries. It was the largest and most beautiful dog I have ever seen, of a fine shade of yellow in color, and of proportions so extraordinary that few persons could pass him without stopping to admire. He had the strength and calm courage of a lion, with the playfulness of a kitten, and an intelligence that seemed sometimes quite human. One thing this dog lacked. He was so destitute of the evil spirit that he would not defend himself against the attacks of other dogs. He seemed to have forgotten how to bite. He has been known to let a smaller dog draw blood from him without making the least attempt to use his own teeth in retaliation. He appeared to have lost the instinct of self-assertion, and walked abroad protected solely, but sufficiently, by his vast size and imposing appearance.
Myron Holley, I say, reminds me of this superb and noble creature. He was a man of the finest proportions both of body and of mind, beautiful in face, majestic in stature, fearless, gifted with various talents, an orator, a natural leader of men. With all this, he was destitute of the personal ambition which lifts the strong man into publicity, and gives him commonplace success. If he had been only half as good as he was, he might have been ten times as famous.
He was born at Salisbury, Conn., in 1779, the son of a farmer who had several sons that became notable men. The father, too, illustrated some of the best traits of human nature, being one of the men who make the strength of a country without asking much from the country in return. He used to say to his sons that the height of human felicity was "to be able to converse with the wise, to instruct the ignorant, to pity and despise the intriguing villain, and to assist the unfortunate." His son Myron enjoyed this felicity all the days of his life.
After graduating at Williams, and studying law at New Haven, he set his face toward western New York, then more remote from New England than Oregon now is. He made an exquisite choice of a place of residence, the village of Canandaigua, then only a hamlet of log huts along the border of one of the lakes for which that part of the State is famous. The first step taken by the young lawyer after his arrival fixed his destiny. He was assigned by the court to defend a man charged with murder—a capital chance for winning distinction in a frontier town. Myron Holley, however, instead of confining himself to his brief and his precedents, began by visiting the jail and interviewing the prisoner. He became satisfied of his guilt. The next morning he came into court, resigned the case, and never after made any attempt to practice his profession.
He was, in fact, constitutionally disqualified for the practice of such a calling. Having a little property, he bought out a bookseller of the village, laid out a garden, married, was soon elected county clerk, and spent the rest of his life in doing the kind of public service which yields the maximum of good to the country with the minimum of gain to the individual doing it.
The war of 1812 filled all that region with distress and want. It was he who took the lead in organizing relief, and appealed to the city of New York for aid with great success. As soon as the war was over, the old scheme of connecting Lake Erie with the Hudson by a canal was revived. It was an immense undertaking for that day, and a great majority of the prudent farmers of the State opposed the enterprise as something beyond their strength. It was Myron Holley who went to the legislature year after year, and argued it through. His winning demeanor, his persuasive eloquence, his intimate knowledge of the facts involved, his entire conviction of the wisdom of the scheme, his tact, good temper, and, above all, his untiring persistence, prevailed at length, and the canal was begun.