DANIEL WEBSTER AND COL. T. H. PERKINS.
A SUMMER-DAY OUTING IN 1817.
BY JOHN K. ROGERS.
On the morning of Thursday, the fourteenth day of August, 1817, Col. Thomas H. Perkins, after an early breakfast, left his house on Pearl Street in Boston, and entered his travelling carriage, having in mind a pleasant day's excursion with his friend, Mr. Daniel Webster, for a purpose which will hereafter appear.
Though now given up to trade, Pearl Street was then the site of some of the finest dwellings in the city, and prominent among these was Col. Perkins's mansion, afterwards munificently bestowed, with other gifts, upon the Massachusetts Blind Asylum, which then became the Perkins Institution for the Blind, and occupied the building for its charitable purposes.
As his comfortable and substantial equipage passed down the gentle slope towards Milk Street, it met with a general recognition, for Boston was then a town of some thirty thousand people only, and Col. Perkins one of its best known citizens.
Born in 1764, at five years of age he saw from his father's house in King Street the Boston Massacre, and, after receiving a commercial education, was for more than fifty years a leading merchant in his native city. His military title was not one of courtesy only, but conferred upon him as commander of the Corps of Independent Cadets, a most respectable body of citizens, upon whom devolved the annual duty of escorting the Governor and Legislature to hear the time-honored Election Sermon, which marked the opening of the General Court in the month of January.
Passing up Milk Street, then also a street of dwellings,—among them the birthplace of Franklin,—the Old South Church, which at that time had received only its first "desecration," was soon reached, and the carriage turned into Washington Street, opposite the Province House—with its two large oak trees in front, and the grotesque gilt Indian on the roof with bended bow, just then pointing his arrow in obedience to a gentle breeze from the south-west; then up the narrow avenue of Bromfield Street, with the pretty view of the State House over the combined foliage of Paddock's elms and the Granary Burial Ground, and, turning into Tremont Street, our traveller was soon at Park-Street Corner.
The noble church edifice which graces this sightly spot, though sadly dealt with in its general symmetry, still lifts its lofty spire with undiminished beauty, and justifies the stirring lines of Dr. Holmes:—
"The Giant standing by the elm-clad green;
His white lance lifted o'er the silent scene;
Whirling in air his brazen goblet round,
Swings from its brim the swollen floods of sound."