Of the favorite haunts of Mr. Reed, the place of all to study his social side is at his club, The Cumberland.
“You see,” said Mr. Reed, “a club of this kind is only possible in a conservative town like Portland, a staid, old place which grows slowly, at the rate of about five or six hundred a year, where the one hundred club members, while belonging to opposite political parties, unite to a man in celebrating the victory of any of their fellow-members. Most of them, friends from boyhood, have gone to school together, and are known to one another but by 377 their Christian names.” There the ex-Czar is always called “Tom,” or “Thomas, old boy,” and there reigns supreme a fine spirit of equality, or unpretentious “give and take” sort of intercourse, which is really the ideal object of a club.
“Indeed, there is no place like it,” said Reed. “It is the most home-like club one can imagine; too small to have coteries, and with lots of bright, sensible boys, quick at repartee. People talk of my wit, but, I tell you, it’s hard work to hold my own there; and then no one can try to pose among us, or attempt to make a fool of himself, but he is properly sat upon. Intercourse with your fellow-men in such a milieu is the best discipline I know of for a man—except that of political life,” he added, with his droll smile.
Of course Mr. Reed is interested in the welfare of Portland, and he cherishes the idea that some day the city of his birth will become one of the great cities of the continent. “Portland harbor is one of the finest on the Atlantic coast. It is at least two days nearer Europe than New York, and one day nearer Europe than Boston. The annexation of Canada to the United States, or the union of the two countries, one of which is bound to come in the course of time, will surely bring to Portland the great prosperity that should be hers by reason of her admirable harbor and her geographical position. And,” he added, “while I like the life in Washington, especially when the session is active and there is plenty of work to do, it has never yet been the case that I have left Portland without regret, or gone back to it without pleasure.”
MR. REED’S HOME IN PORTLAND.
The frame house in which he was born still stands, shaded by two elms of obvious age. Henry W. Longfellow was born just around the corner from it, in a dwelling that marks the spot where, in 1632, one George Cleeve built the first white man’s habitation ever erected in the territory now included in Portland’s boundaries. The settlement was called, in tender remembrance of an English field, “Stogumnor,” and its founder’s life was one of almost ceaseless conflict, now with the redskins and now with the white neighbors of other settlements, so that Cleeve left behind him the impress of a bold, vigorous fellow. His daughter married Michael Mitten, whose two daughters in turn married two brothers named Brackett. One of the Brackett 378 daughters married a fisherman named Reed, whose descendant, Thomas Brackett Reed, has exhibited, in a different way and under vastly different circumstances, much of the nerve and daring that animated his stern old fighting settler-ancestor, George Cleeve.
