BY JOHN W. FRANCIS, M.D., LL. D.
When the great defender of the Constitution delivered the oration at Bunker Hill, he pointed to the just completed monument and exclaimed, "There stands the Orator of the Day." In humble imitation of that significant act, I also, in attempting to illustrate the interests and the meaning of this occasion, would point you, gentlemen, to the fact of your presence here to-night—to the union at one banquet of printers, editors, publishers, authors, and professional men—as the best evidence of the importance and attractiveness of the occasion. The art of printing, among other inestimable blessings, has fused together the most productive elements of society; it has established a vital relation between intellect and mechanics, between labor and thought. I see before me in this assembly those who have achieved enduring literary fame, and those who are the present guides of public opinion. I see them side by side with the men who have just put their thoughts and sentiments into a bodily form and disseminated them on the wings of the press. The association is not only appropriate, but it is honorable to his memory who united in his life the humblest manual toil and the loftiest flights of genius; who both set up types and drew the lightning from heaven, and combined in his own person the practical printer and the scientific philosopher.
By your courtesy, gentlemen, I have been invited to say a few words appropriate to the New York-Typographical Society. It is with unfeigned reluctance that I assume the task. In this presence I behold so many better qualified for the undertaking than myself, that I am apprehensive I shall be able neither[pg 254] to do justice to my theme nor satisfy the expectations which you in your clemency have anticipated. True it is, that in my early life I was connected with your fraternity by more immediate ties than at present exist. Circumstances have modified my career, but I should prove recreant to the best feelings of my heart, turn ingrate to the pleasantest associations of memory, and forget the most efficient causes which have favored my journey thus far to mellow years, were I unmindful of the gratifications I enjoyed while a fellow laborer in your noble pursuits. The press is the representative of the intellectual man on earth; it is the expositor of his cogitative powers; the promulgator of his most recondite labors; the strong arm of his support in the defence and maintenance of his inherent rights as a member of the social compact; the vindicator of his claims to the exalted station of one stamped in the express image of God; it is the charter of freedom to ameliorated man in the glorious strife of social organization, in the pursuits of life, liberty, and happiness. Hence I have ever cherished the deepest regard for those who have appropriated their time and talents to this vast engine of civilization. I have ever looked upon the vocation as holding the integrity of our highest privileges on earth; freedom of inquiry, freedom of utterance, and the vast behests of civil communion, with the kindred of every nation, and the tongues of every speech.
When I was a boy of ten years of age, I became acquainted with the biography of Franklin. I had purchased at auction a Glasgow edition of his Life and Essays. I had read Robinson Crusoe, George Barnwell, The House That Jack Built, Æsop's Fables, the duodecimo edition of Morse's Geography, and other common publications of the times. No work that I have perused, from that juvenile period of my existence up to the present day, has ever yielded the peculiar gratification which Franklin's memoirs gave me, and my admiration and reverence for our illustrious sage have through all subsequent inquiry into his actions and services, increased in intensity, in proportion as I have contemplated his wondrous character and his unparalleled achievements. I think I owe something to my mother for this happy appreciation of our Franklin. She was by birth a Philadelphian, and for years, during her residence in Arch street, was favored with opportunities of again and again beholding Dr. Franklin pass her door, in company with Dr. Rush and Thomas Paine. "There," the children of the neighborhood would cry out, "goes Poor Richard, Common Sense, and the Doctor." It is recorded that Franklin furnished many thoughts in the famous pamphlet of Common Sense, while Paine wrote it, and Rush gave the title. There is something in the hereditary transmission of the moral and of the physical qualities; yet I have thought that the benevolent schemes of Rush, the intrepid patriotism of Paine, and the honest maxims of Franklin—the topics of daily converse in that day—had some influence in strengthening the principles which my mother inculcated in her children.
You have told me, gentlemen, that you would be gratified with some reminiscences touching New-York—social, literary, personal—of men and books—all having a bearing, more or less immediate, either on the progress of human development, or the character of our metropolitan city. I know not how to satisfy either you or myself. To do justice to the subject would require a different opportunity from the one here enjoyed, and leisure such as I cannot now command.
The locality upon which we are assembled to-night has its associations. We meet this evening on the memorable spot in our city's early topography denominated the Bayard Farm—a property once in the possession of the affluent Bayards, of him who was companion in his strife with Governor Leisler, and whose death for high treason was the issue of that protracted contest. That he fell a martyr to freedom, our friend Charles F. Hoffman has ably demonstrated. Within a few doors of this place, on Broadway, very many years after, but within my recollection, lived that arch negotiator in public counsels, Talleyrand, the famous ambassador of France to the United States. He published a small tractate on America, once much read, and it was he who affirmed that the greatest sight he had ever beheld in this country, was the illustrious Hamilton, with his pile of books under his arms, proceeding to the court-room in the old City Hall, in order to obtain a livelihood, by expounding the law, and vindicating the rights of his clients.
Here too is the spot where, some short while after, the antics of the Osage tribe of Indians were displayed for the admiration of the belles and beaux of New-York, and on that occasion my old colleague, Dr. Mitchill, gave translations into English of their songs and war-whoop sounds, for the increased gratification of the literary public of that day, when Indian literature stood not so high as in these times of Congressional appropriation, and of Henry Schoolcraft, the faithful and patriotic expositor of the red-man's excellences. I think I am safe in saying, also, that near these grounds occurred the execution of Young, a play-actor, convicted of murder—a remarkable event in New-York annals, owing to peculiar circumstances which marked his imprisonment in our old jail, now converted into the Hall of Records. There were, about the period to which I now refer, other occurrences of singular influence in those days.
Crowther and Levi Weeks were both confined in this debased prison because of high crimes, and many were incarcerated for debt. There was, nevertheless, an atmosphere of some intellect immolated within its cells; and[pg 255] for the first, and I believe the only time in this country, a newspaper was issued for some months' duration from its walls, entitled The Prisoner of Hope. The Wilberforce impulse of that crisis had much to do with the movement; and no abolition paper of even later dates plead more earnestly in behalf of enslaved humanity, by graphic illustrations and literary talent, than did The Prisoner of Hope. At that day, many newspapers had their specific motto, and that of The Prisoner of Hope was in these words:
Soft, smiling Hope—thou anchor of the mind;
The only comfort that the wretched find;