Deeply religious, he naturally reflected the spirit of the religious teachings of the times, which savored more of the terrors of the law than of mercy and forgiveness to evil-doers; that found more worship in denying self the indulgences of soft living than in the partaking of the harmless pleasures and sweets of life, giving a good God thanks for His good gifts. Through all the life and writings of Howard one constantly hears the minor chord of infinite sadness wrought into his life by his motherless infancy, his unloved boyhood, his years of invalidism, his ceaseless mourning for his wife Henrietta, the bitterness of death in the cup held to his lips by his unfortunate son, and over and above all, the constant atmosphere of crime, cruelty, sin, and suffering in which he spent the last sixteen years of his life. Life to him came to mean sin, suffering, and sorrow in the world about him, and for himself work, work, incessant work, in the effort to do what one man could to lift or lighten the burden under which the whole earth groaned. Death came to him where he would have most wished it might, and took him directly from labor to reward. And throughout the coming ages the world will be the better because in the last half of the eighteenth century there lived, labored, and died in the midst of his labors one John Howard, the Philanthropist.[Back to Contents]
ETHAN ALLEN[16]
By Gertrude Van Rensselaer Wickham
(1738-1789)
Was Ethan Allen a hero or a humbug? a patriot or a pretender? Ask Vermont and she cries "Nulli secundus!" Ask New York and the reply is "Ad referendum."
The differentiation antedates the American Revolution and the part Ethan Allen played in that historic drama. It is an inheritance of loving loyalty and gratitude that quivers in the answer of one State, the traditional antagonisms of prejudice that speak in the other.
But for Ethan Allen, Vermont would have had no separate existence. But for Ethan Allen, New York's northeastern boundary would have been the Connecticut River. Therefore, on one shore of Lake Champlain the disputed shield is unalloyed gold, reflecting all that is strong and brave, all that is courageous and magnanimous, all that is patriotic and generous, while from the other shore its appearance is as brass engraven by vanity and vulgarity, by self-sufficiency and infidelity.
Controversy over property rights engenders such diversities of opinion, and when, as in this case, one side gains all and the other loses much, the exultation of triumph or the bitterness of defeat will color the ink of all literature on the subject for a century to come.