While in the town they went to the Cove to see something of the extensive fish business carried on there. They walked on to the Point, to see the old fort which, in the time of the revolutionary war, contained enough plucky men to seize a barge with men and a cannon, which a passing British man of War sent to besiege them. The men were taken to Gloucester, but the cannon was left there where it remained until it found a better place in the town-hall yard. There, all renovated, it now stands as a precious relic of American pluck.
Mr. Gordon was interested to see where the breakwater was to be, for which government had been petitioned. This he considered a necessity sure to come.
From Rockport they went on to Pigeon Cove, passing on the way thrifty-looking houses, the Rockport Granite Company quarries, and also those of the Pigeon Cove Company.
After having done justice to the good dinner which the Pigeon Cove House afforded, they continued their ride around the Cape. Driving on to Phillips Avenue, they passed the Ocean View House, and later the summer home of Sara Jewett, the actress. Next to this was the house of the late Doctor Chapin, who was a pioneer in Pigeon Cove as a summer resident. After passing other cottages, and some boarding-houses, they came to Halibut Point, the extreme point of Cape Ann. Here they alighted, and went down on the rocks, and spent some time, on this perfect summer day, in enjoying the grand old ocean. They then retraced their steps, and were soon driving past more pretty cottages nestling among the pine trees, surrounded by wild roses and well-directed care, until they come out to the main road again. They then drove through Folly Cove, a fishing-place facing Ipswich Bay, and also Lanesville, where they saw work going on in the Lanesville Granite Company quarries. At Bay View they visited the Cape Ann quarries. Here they saw the model of the Flying Mercury, which, cut in granite, had just been sent on to the new post-office in Baltimore. They also saw some granite balusters being made for the same place. All this reminded Mrs. Gordon of her visit here some fourteen years before, when she had seen the workmen cutting the eagle for the Boston post-office. The polishing of the granite attracted their attention. They learned that it took three days of constant rubbing of sand and water over the granite by machine to obtain the polish required. They next visited the place of General B. F. Butler, near there, and also the one adjoining it of Colonel Jonas French. Thence they returned to Gloucester, through the pretty winding road by the Squam river, leaving the village of Annisquam, connected by a bridge, at the right. They arrived in Manchester in the early evening, delighted with their all-day trip. Mrs. Gordon had enjoyed the striking and many changes which the twenty years had brought; while Mr. Gordon was more than ever convinced of the value of this shore to those seeking the beauty and healing strength of woods. They lingered a day or two longer in Manchester, in which they enjoyed a moonlight stroll on the beach, as well as a long, interesting drive all over Beverly Farms. While driving through Franklin Haven's beautiful grounds, which he so generously opens to the public, they, with others who had gone before them, gratefully appreciated this privilege of seeing such beauty away from the public thoroughfare. "In a peculiar sense," mused Mrs. Gordon, "such men are benefactors. They rest the tired eye, and calm the troubled nature."
The Gordons returned to their suburban Boston home wiser than they left it. And they are fully determined to take another trip next summer. (If they do, the readers of the New England Magazine shall hear of it.)
EDITOR'S TABLE.
Socialism in America and Europe. It is a spectacle quite too sad for laughter, and yet too comical for tears, which was offered a few weeks ago by the unemployed and hungry thousands who disturbed the quiet and alarmed the fears of the people of London. That strange and unlooked-for outbreak was probably only the first act in a drama the end of which we have not yet seen. If "coming events cast their shadows before," what has happened in England, and is constantly happening in other European countries and in America, bodes ill for the stability of governments and the peace of the world. Socialistic theories fill the air, disturb the minds, and inflame the passions of men. Socialism, in one or other of its forms, counts its disciples by tens of thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. With the majority it is a dim and indistinct craving after an ideal condition of society, without any intelligent conception as to how it is to be reached and realized. The acknowledged lights and leaders of the movement, however, teach it as a philosophy, preach it as a gospel, advocate and practise it as a new style of social refinement, or labor for its adoption and establishment as a desirable scheme of social reform. There are philosophical socialists, and Christian socialists, and æsthetic socialists, and socialists whose dream can only be fulfilled by a general overturning of the existing order of things with a view to a more just and equitable distribution of wealth, labor, liberty, and happiness. They disagree in many things very radically, but they are all captured by one ideal and animated by one ambition, and it is a sublime and beautiful conception too, being nothing less than the consummation of human happiness—so far as such a thing is possible—and the creation of a heaven upon earth. Socialism contemplates a condition of society in which not only all shall share equally in work, profit, property, and enjoyment, but in which there will be no "capitalists, no middle-men, no rent-taking, and no interest-drawing, and if there is any wage-paying, only such wage as is a due and full equivalent for the portion of work done, which shall be measured by the exigencies of the community, and shall be so assessed and paid for as to leave no margin of profit to any but actual workers;" a state of society, in a word, on which all kinds of toil, the lowest as well as the highest, will be so pleasant and agreeable as to be no toil at all. With so high and admirable an aim, it seems a pity that socialism can find no better way to fulfil itself than by a resort to lawlessness and violence. Notwithstanding all that has been said, sung, and written in its favor, especially in the two great English-speaking countries, it may still be described as "a thing with its head in the clouds and its feet in the intolerable mud." However, our business with our fellow-beings, as Spinoza said, is not to censure them, nor to deplore them, but simply to understand them.