This Society, the successor of the Boston Antiquarian Society, with a membership of between four and five hundred, is making itself felt in various ways in thus making practical the belief that a "visible relic of the past"—as Mr. Guild expressed it—-"tends to emphasize and strengthen an historic fact." He well illustrated this idea when he further said (and who that listened did not thrill with true patriotism?), "The walls that are about you are the self-same that existed at the time of the Boston Massacre; the windows the self-same openings—here, where the Declaration was read in 1776, and the Proclamation of Peace, in 1783; there, where Washington, in 1789, reviewed the procession in his honor. Within these very walls some of the greatest events of American history have occurred and the greatest and most notable men who figured in those events been gathered together."
Without doubt, this Old State House is the most genuine relic of the Revolution, now in existence. And the Society, in daily opening its rooms, with their historical possessions, free of charge, is offering to the public rare educational privileges which it should gratefully use and appreciate.
While the Bostonian Society is doing its special work of preserving historical objects and places from the hand of the ruthless destroyer, the Webster Historical Society, organized in 1878, is doing a parallel work in preserving for future generations the fame, work, and true spirit of America's foremost statesman and constitutional law-giver, Daniel Webster. Of course, such a work necessarily leads to a deep and practical interest in everything pertaining to America's political and national life to which the great man was so devoted. This Society, which has its headquarters in another old landmark of Boston, the Old South Meeting-House, has now a membership of twelve hundred, who are found in all parts of the country. The customary annual address, on the anniversary of Webster's birthday, January 18, is generally one of marked interest; notably so was the one of January, 1884; which, as afterwards published by the Society, was noticed by deep-thinkers, with perhaps more genuine interest than any other modern pamphlet of its size.[F] The address at the annual meeting of this year was given before a large and intelligent audience in the historic meeting-house by Rev. Thomas A. Hyde upon Daniel Webster as an orator. Mr. Hyde's special study of the physical, mental, and expressional qualities which go to make an orator gave weight to the address. The aims and purposes of the Webster Historical Society are such as to command the sympathetic help of all American citizens in whatever direction it may labor.
It is to the credit of American womanhood that the presiding mistress of the White House is one who, while she is making history, is so intelligently in sympathy with everything connected with it. Her sensible ideas of the subject as revealed in the chapter on History in her recently published book, "George Eliot's Poetry, and other Studies," indicate a mind capable of seizing the essential facts and seeing in them the divine spark. "We must take the event as a starting point, and travel from it to the man and men behind it." And again, "Let us realize that history is the shrine of humanity, humanity essential in its essence in past, present, future, wherein is stored the ego—the thou and the I."
She gives another thought worthy to be quoted and read by itself.
"Nowhere more than in the study of history is it needful to 'put yourself in his place'—i. e., to carry to the making of an image of the person whose form you seek to confront, those general and common ingredients which go to make up each man. When you have carried to him that much of yourself which is common to you both, you will, by this, be qualified to detect that in him which is himself strictly and not yourself; and so to a man you will add the individuality of the man and have what you seek.... Nowhere more than in history does it 'take a thief to catch a thief.'"
Miss Cleveland illustrates this in some essays which follow, where she carries herself back to "Old Rome and New France," to Charlemagne, to Joan of Arc, and other suggestive epochs.