Bristol’s long streets, bordered from end to end with wide-spreading, aged trees, and lined with great dwellings of the colonial era, savor of a delightful antiquity which has not had time to grow musty, but has been well cared for by successive generations and has a sufficiently close relation to modern life to kindle a real affection in us of recent growth, not unlike that felt by the toddling urchin for his white-haired and gold-spectacled grandmother. These big, old houses suggest comfortable bank accounts, stored up by ancestors who built ships or who sailed away in them to the Indies—East or West—and returned with rich freights that profited much.
They built well, those ancestors, and their handsome dwellings seem as sound to-day as the everlasting hill which is known in history as Mount Hope. What eight-foot clocks and brass-handled bureaus, and bulky, shining chests, capable of hiding away mountains of housewifely linen; what high-backed chairs with fantastically carved legs; what large four-posters; what cavernous fireplaces; what wainscotings and curling balustrades; what mantel shelves with under ornaments of sturdy filigree; what yawning closets, as big as bedrooms of this year of grace; what sets of unimpeachable china, brought home by those same nautical ancestors; what attic stores of spinning-wheels and old books, and revolutionary papers, breathing vengeance against his majesty, King George; what thousand and one treasures of the keepsake order do not these old mansions possess within their generously proportioned walls, to say nothing of quaint porches and curious doors and pseudo-classical piazza pillars outside of them! That Bristol of the old, prosperous, gable-ended, ship-building, ship-sailing, cargo-discharging and cargo-embarking days has gone; but this Bristol lives on the memories and the proceeds of those happier, wooden-walled, shiver-my-timbers times, draws on her bank accounts, and takes it easy.
Amid scenes like these, one expects to find men and women of culture and general ability, but does not look for world-renowned specialists. No one is surprised at a display of enterprise in a “booming” western town, where everybody is “hustling”; but in a place which has once ranked as the third seaport in America, but has seen its maritime glory decline, a man who can establish a marine industry on a higher plane than was ever before known, and attract to his work such world-wide attention as to restore the vanished fame of his town, is no ordinary person. Moreover, if such a man has laid his plans and done his work in the disheartening eclipse of total blindness, he must possess some qualities of the highest order, whatever faults he may have, and is thus eminently fitted to instruct the rising generation.
Pursuant to this idea, I called at the office of the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, at Bristol. The building, formerly belonging to the Burnside Rifle Company, is substantial, but unpretentious, and is entered by a short stairway on one side. The furniture throughout is also plain, but has been selected with excellent taste, and is suggestive of the most effective adaptation of means to ends in every detail. On the mantel and on the walls are numerous pictures, most of them of vessels, but very few relating directly to any of the great races for the “America’s” cup. The first picture to arrest one’s attention, indeed, is an excellent portrait of the late General Ambrose E. Burnside, who lived in Bristol, and was an intimate friend of John B. Herreshoff.
Previous inquiry had elicited the information that the members of the firm were very busy with various large orders, in addition to the rush of work on the “Columbia” and the “Defender”; so it was a very agreeable surprise when I was invited into the tasteful private office, where the blind president sat, having just concluded a short conversation with an attorney.
“Well, sir,” said he, rising and grasping my hand cordially, “what do you wish?”
“I realize how very busy you must be, Mr. Herreshoff,” I replied, “and will try to be as brief as possible; but I venture to ask a few minutes of your valuable time, with a view to obtaining suggestions and advice from you to young men and women at the threshold of their careers.”
“But why select me, in particular, as an adviser?”
This was “a poser,” at first, especially when he added, noting my hesitation: