To this growth of the University must be added the most happy inception and growth of Radcliffe College, marking as it does the maturing of a new era in the education of women. We may well wish for Radcliffe a career as noble and as useful as that of Harvard, and I doubt not that such is in store for it. A word must be said of the Episcopal Theological School, based upon ideas as sound and broad as Christianity; and of the New-Church Theological School, more recently founded. We must hail such indications of the tendency toward making our Cambridge the centre for the untrammelled study of the most vital problems that can occupy the human mind.
But the day we are celebrating is a civic, not a university occasion, and I must dwell no longer upon academic themes. We are signalizing the anniversary of the change which we once made from government by town meeting to city government. Have we a good reason for celebrating that change? Has our career as a civic community been worthy of approval? In answering this question, I shall not undertake to sum up the story of our public schools and library; our hospital and charity organizations; the excellent and harmonious work of our churches, Protestant and Catholic; our Prospect Union, warmly to be commended; our arrangements for water supply and sewage; and our admirable park system (in which we may express a hope that Elmwood will be included). This interesting and suggestive story may be read in the semi-centennial volume, "The Cambridge of Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Six," just issued from the Riverside Press. It is an enlivening story of progress, but like every story it has a moral, and I am going to pass over details and make straight for that moral. Americans are a bragging race because they have enjoyed immense opportunities, and are apt to forget that the true merit lies, not in the opportunity, but in the use we make of it. Much gratifying progress can be achieved in spite of the worst sort of blundering and sinning on the part of governments. The greater part, indeed, of human progress within historic times has been thus achieved. A good deal of the progress of which Americans are wont to boast has been thus achieved. Now the moral of our story is closely concerned with the fact that in the city of Cambridge such has not been the case. Our city government has from the outset been upright, intelligent, and helpful. We are satisfied with it. We do not wish to change it. In this respect the experience of Cambridge is very different from that of many other American cities. The government of our cities is acknowledged to be a problem of rare difficulty, so that it has begun to seem a natural line of promotion for a successful mayor to elect him governor, and then to send him to the White House! In some cities one finds people inclined to give up the problem as insoluble. I was lately assured by a gentleman in a city which I will not name, but more than a thousand miles from here, that the only cure for the accumulated wrongs of that community would be an occasional coup d'état, with the massacre of all the city officers. So the last word of our boasted progress, when it comes to municipal government, is declared to be the Oriental idea of "despotism tempered by assassination"! Now to what cause or causes are we to ascribe the contrast between Cambridge and the cities that are so wretchedly governed? The answer is, that in Cambridge we keep city government clear of politics, we do not mix up municipal questions with national questions. If I may repeat what I have said elsewhere, "since the object of a municipal election is simply to secure an upright and efficient municipal government, to elect a city magistrate because he is a Republican or a Democrat is about as sensible as to elect him because he believes in homœopathy or has a taste for chrysanthemums." Upon this plain and obvious principle of common sense our city has acted, on the whole with remarkable success, during its half century of municipal existence. The results we see all about us, and the example may be commended as an object lesson to all who are interested in the most vital work that can occupy the mind of an American,—the work of elevating the moral tone of public life. For it is neither wealth, nor power, nor cunning, nor craft that exalts a nation, but righteousness and the fear of the Lord.
May, 1896.
XI
A HARVEST OF IRISH FOLK-LORE
Since the days when Castrèn made his arduous journeys of linguistic exploration in Siberia, or when the brothers Grimm collected their rich treasures of folk-lore from the lips of German peasants, an active quest of vocables and myths has been conducted with much zeal and energy in nearly all parts of the world. We have tales, proverbs, fragments of verse, superstitious beliefs and usages, from Greenland, from the southern Pacific, from the mountaineers of Thibet and the freedmen upon Georgia plantations. We follow astute Reynard to the land of the Hottentots, and find the ubiquitous Jack planting his beanstalk among the Dog-Rib Indians. At the same time, the nooks and corners of Europe have been ransacked with bountiful results; so that whereas our grandfathers, in speculating about the opinions and mental habits of people in low stages of culture, were dealing with a subject about which they knew almost nothing, on the other hand, our chief difficulty to-day is in shaping and managing the enormous mass of data which keen and patient inquirers have collected. It is well that this work has been carried so far in our time, for modern habits of thought are fast exterminating the Old World fancies. Railroad, newspaper, and telegraphic bulletin of prices are carrying everything before them. The peasant's quaint dialect and his fascinating myth tales are disappearing along with his picturesque dress; and savages, such of them as do not succumb to fire-water, are fast taking on the airs and manners of civilized folk. It is high time to be gathering in all the primitive lore we can find, before the men and women in whose minds it is still a living reality have all passed from the scene.
The collection of Irish myth stories lately published by Mr. Jeremiah Curtin[30] is the result of a myth-hunting visit which the author made in Ireland in 1887, and is one of the most interesting and valuable contributions to the study of folk-lore that have been made for many years. "All the tales in my collection," says Mr. Curtin, "of which those printed in this volume form but a part, were taken down from the mouths of men who, with one or two exceptions, spoke only Gaelic, or but little English, and that imperfectly. These men belong to a group of persons all of whom are well advanced in years, and some very old; with them will pass away the majority of the story-tellers of Ireland, unless new interest in the ancient language and lore of the country is roused.
"For years previous to my visit of 1887 I was not without hope of finding some myth tales in a good state of preservation. I was led to entertain this hope by indications in the few Irish stories already published, and by certain tales and beliefs that I had taken down myself from old Irish persons in the United States. Still, during the earlier part of my visit in Ireland, I was greatly afraid that the best myth materials had perished. Inquiries as to who might be in possession of these old stories seemed fruitless for a considerable time. The persons whom I met that were capable of reading the Gaelic language had never collected stories, and could refer only in a general way to the districts in which the ancient language was still living. All that was left was to seek out the old people for whom Gaelic is the every-day speech, and trust to fortune to find the story-tellers."