Sword and Pen Part 1

Sword and Pen.

by John Algernon Owens.

PREFACE.

No apology will be required from the author for presenting to the public some episodes in the useful career of a self-made man; and while the spirit of patriotism continues to animate the st.u.r.dy sons of America, the story of one of them who has exemplified this national trait in a conspicuous measure, will be deemed not unworthy of record. The lessons it teaches, more especially to the young, are those of uncompromising _duty_ in every relation of life--self-denial, perseverance and "pluck;"

while the successive stages of a course which led ultimately to a brilliant success, may be studied with some advantage by those just entering upon the business of life. As a soldier, Willard Glazier was "without fear and without reproach." As an author, it is sufficient to say, he is appreciated by his _contemporaries_--than which, on a literary man, no higher encomium can be pa.s.sed. The sale of nearly half a million copies of one of his productions is no slight testimony to its value.

Biography, to be interesting, must be a transcript of an eventful, as well as a remarkable career; and to be instructive, its subject should be exemplary in his aims, and in his mode of attaining them. The hero of this story comes fully up to the standard thus indicated. His career has been a romance. Born of parents of small means but of excellent character and repute; and bred and nurtured in the midst of some of the wildest and grandest scenery in the rugged county of St. Lawrence, close by the "Thousand Isles," where New York best proves her right to be called the Empire State through the stamp of royalty on her hills and streams--under the shadow of such surroundings as these, my subject attained maturity, with no opportunities for culture except those he made for himself. Yet he became possessed of an education eminently useful, essentially practical and calculated to establish just such habits of self-reliance and decision as afterwards proved chiefly instrumental in his success. Glazier had a fixed ambition to rise. He felt that the task would be difficult of accomplishment--that he must be not only the architect, but the builder of his own fortunes; and, as the statue grows beneath the sculptor's hand to perfect contour from the unshapely block of marble, so prosperity came to Captain Glazier only after he had cut and chiseled away at the hard surface of inexorable circ.u.mstance, and moulded therefrom the statue of his destiny.

J. A. O.

Philadelphia, _June 14th_, 1880.

CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN OF THE GLAZIER FAMILY.

Lineage of Willard Glazier.--A good stock.--Oliver Glazier at the Battle of Bunker Hill.--The home of honest industry.--The Coronet of Pembroke.--The "Homestead Farm."--Mehitable Bolton.--Her New England home.--Her marriage to Ward Glazier.--The wild "North Woods."--The mother of the soldier-author.

Willard Glazier comes of the mixed blood of Saxon and of Celt. We first hear of his ancestors upon this side of the Atlantic at that period of our nation's history which intervened between the speck of war at Lexington and the cloud of war at Bunker Hill.

Ma.s.sachusetts and the town of Boston had become marked objects of the displeasure of the British Parliament. Later, in 1775, Ethan Allen had startled Captain Delaplace by presenting his lank figure at the captain's bedside and demanding the surrender of Ticonderoga in the name of the "Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." In the language of Daniel Webster, "A spirit pervaded all ranks, not transient, not boisterous, but deep, solemn, determined."

War on their own soil and at their own doors was indeed a strange work to the yeomanry of New England; but their consciences were convinced of its necessity, and when their country called them to her defense they did not withhold themselves from the perilous responsibility.

The statement of Quincy seemed to pervade all hearts. Said that distinguished son of genius and patriotism, "Blandishments will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a halter intimidate; for, under G.o.d, we are determined that, wheresoever, whensoever, and howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, we will die free men."

At such a time, and among such men, we find enrolled in the ranks of the patriot army Oliver Glazier, the great-grandfather of the subject of the present biography.

Oliver's father was John Glazier, a Ma.s.sachusetts Lancastrian, born in 1739. John Glazier was the son of William Glazier, born about the year 1700, his ancestry being respectively of English and of Scotch extraction. Oliver himself, however, was born in the town of Lancaster, in the province or colony of Ma.s.sachusetts, May twenty-third, 1763.

Hence the blood of Norman, of Saxon and of Celt, that had forgotten the animosities of race and mingled quietly in the veins of his ancestors, had become purely American in Oliver, and though but little over fourteen years of age, we find him doing yeoman service upon the ramparts of Bunker Hill.

That he performed well his part in the struggle for liberty, is evident from the fact that he appears upon the rolls as a pensioner, from the close of that memorable contest until the time of his death.

Mr. Frank Renehan, in a sketch contributed by him to an elaborate work which was published by the New York and Hartford Publis.h.i.+ng Company in 1871, comments as follows upon the coincidence of Oliver Glazier in 1775 and Willard Glazier in 1861--both being at the time of entering service comparatively boys in age, enlisting for the defense of their country: "The former, though then but fourteen years of age, partic.i.p.ated with the patriots in the battle of Bunker Hill, and to the last contributed his young enthusiasm and willing services to the cause he had espoused; thus giving early testimony of his devotion to the land of his adoption and of fealty to the principles of popular government involved in the struggle for American independence. So remarkable an instance of ancestral fidelity to the interests of civil liberty could not but exercise a marked influence upon those of the same blood to whom the tradition was handed down, and here we find our subject, a scion of the third generation, a.s.sisting in 1861 on the battlefields of the South, in maintenance of the liberty his progenitor had contributed to achieve in 1775 on the battlefields of the North! This is not mentioned as a singular fact--history is replete with just such coincidences,--but merely for the purpose of suggesting the moral that, in matters of patriotism, the son is only consistent when he imitates the example and emulates the virtues of his sires."

In this eloquent pa.s.sage occurs an error of fact. Oliver Glazier while in the patriot army was _not_ fighting for the "land of his adoption."

As we have seen, he was native here and "to the manor born." Indeed, in the light of historic proof and with the example of men descended from Was.h.i.+ngton and Light Horse Harry Lee before us, we are rather inclined to admire the paragraph as a fine specimen of rhetorical composition than to admit its accuracy as a deduction in philosophy.

Subsequent to his term of military service--an experience through which he had safely pa.s.sed--Oliver Glazier became a resident of West Boylston, Ma.s.sachusetts, where he married a Miss Hastings.

The name of Glazier, Lower tells us, is purely English, and is derived from the t.i.tle given to the trade. However that may be, those who have borne it have always expressed a pride in having sprung from the great ma.s.s--the people--and have held with the philosopher of Sunnyside, that whether "hereditary rank be an illusion or not, hereditary virtue gives a patent of n.o.bility beyond all the blazonry of the herald's college."

The name of Hastings takes its rise from a n.o.bler source; for Mrs.

Oliver Glazier brought into the family as blue blood as any in all England. The great family which bears that name in Great Britain can show quarterings of an earlier date than the battle which gave a kingdom to William of Normandy. Macaulay says that one branch of their line, in the fourteenth century, "wore the coronet of Pembroke; that from another sprang the renowned Lord Chamberlain, the faithful adherent of the White Rose, whose fate has furnished so striking a theme both to the poet and historian," and while it is probable that this wife of an American patriot was many degrees removed from the powerful leaders whose name she bore, the same blood undoubtedly flowed in her veins that coursed through theirs.

Oliver, during the many years of a happy married life which terminated in his death at the ripe age of ninety-seven, became the father of eight children. His son Jabez left Boylston at an early age, and after considerable "prospecting" finally married a Miss Sarah Tucker and settled in the towns.h.i.+p of Fowler, St. Lawrence County, New York. Out of their union sprang three sons, George, Ward, and Henry, and four daughters, Elvira, Martha, Caroline and Lydia. During a visit he made to his "down East" relations, Ward married a young lady by the name of Mehitable Bolton, of West Boylston, Ma.s.sachusetts.

This young lady was a true representative of the New England woman, who believes that work is the handmaid of religion. She entered a cotton factory at Worcester when only seventeen years of age, and worked perseveringly through long years of labor, often walking from her home in West Boylston to the factory at Worcester, a distance of seven miles.

At the time of her marriage--which occurred when she was twenty-five--she had acc.u.mulated the snug little sum of five hundred dollars, besides possessing a handsome wardrobe, all of which was the fruit of her own untiring industry.

If it be true that the mothers of men of mark are always women of strong and n.o.ble characters, then we are not surprised to find in the mother of Willard Glazier those sterling qualities which made her young life successful.

The early married life of Ward Glazier was pa.s.sed upon the farm first cleared and cultivated by his father, and which has since become known to the neighborhood as the "Old Glazier Homestead." This farm is situated in the towns.h.i.+p of Fowler, midway between the small villages of Little York and Fullersville.

The towns.h.i.+p is a tract of rugged land, containing only the little village of Hailesborough, besides those already named. Along its borders rushes and tumbles a turbulent stream which still retains its original Indian appellation--the Oswegatchie; a name no doubt conveying to the ear of its aboriginal sponsors some poetical conceit, just as another stream in far off Virginia is named the Shenandoah, or "Daughter of the Stars."

Those who are at all familiar with the scenery that prevails in what in other sections of the country are called the great North Woods, and in their own neighborhood the great South Woods, can readily imagine what were the geological and scenic peculiarities of Fowler towns.h.i.+p. Bare, sterile, famished-looking, as far as horticultural and herbaceous crops are concerned, yet rich in pasture and abounding in herds--with vast rocks crested and plumed with rich growths of black balsam, maple, and spruce timber, and with huge boulders scattered carelessly over its surface and margining its streams, St. Lawrence County presents to-day features of savage grandeur as wild and imposing as it did ere the foot of a trapper had profaned its primeval forests.

Yet its farms and its dwellings are numerous, its villages and towns possess all the accompaniments of modern civilization, the spires of its churches indicate that the gentle influences of religion are not forgotten, and there, as elsewhere, the indomitable will of man has won from the wilderness a living and a home.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Birth-place Of Willard Glazier.]

CHAPTER II.

BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF WILLARD GLAZIER.

The infant stranger.--A mother's prayers.--"Be just before you are generous."--Careful training.--Willard Glazier's first battle.--A narrow escape.--Facing the foe.--The happy days of childhood.--"The boy is father to the man."

The Glazier Homestead, as we have said, is upon the main road leading from Little York to Fullerville. It is a substantial and comfortable farm-house, with no pretension to architectural beauty, but, nevertheless, is a sightly object in a pleasant landscape. Standing back two hundred feet from the road, in a grove of gigantic elms, with a limpid brook of spring water a short distance to the right, and rich fields of herd gra.s.s stretching off rearwards towards the waters of the Oswegatchie, which hurry along on their journey of forty miles to the St. Lawrence River, the old house is sure to attract the attention of the traveller, and to be long remembered as a picture of solid and substantial comfort.

In this old house, upon the morning of August twenty-second, 1841, to Ward Glazier and Mehitable, his wife, a son was born who was subsequently named Willard. The father and mother were by no means sentimental people--they were certainly not given to seeing the poetical side of life; they were plain, earnest people, rough hewn out of the coa.r.s.e fibre of Puritanism, but the advent of this little child brought a joy to their hearts that had its softening influence upon the home in which he was to be reared.

The thoroughness of Ward Glazier's nature, that conscientiousness in excess which made him radical in all things, was of the _heart_ as well as of the head, and though not a demonstrative man, the intensity of his paternal love cropped out in many ways. As to his wife, hers was truly "mother's love." And what notes are there attuned to sacred music, in all the broad vocabulary of the English tongue, which gives any idea of the sentiment that links a woman to her babe, except the three simple syllables, "mother's love!" Brooding over the tiny stranger, ready to laugh or cry; exultant with hope and pride, despondent with fear, quivering with anguish if the "wind of heaven doth visit its cheek too roughly," and singing hosannas of joy when it lisps the simpler syllables that she so patiently has taught, covering it with the broad wing of her measureless affection, and lavis.h.i.+ng upon it such "sighs as perfect joy perplexed for utterance, steals from her sister sorrow,"

there is nothing except G.o.d's own illimitable affection for his creatures, that can rival in depth and strength and comprehensiveness, a mother's love.

The heart of Ward Glazier's wife, at this time, blossomed in absolutely rank luxuriance with this feeling, and ran riot in the joy of its possession; but she determined within herself that it should be no blind or foolish wors.h.i.+p. It grew, therefore, into a sober, careful, provident affection.

Quiet and un.o.btrusive in manner, her face always wore a look of gravity befitting one who felt that G.o.d had entrusted to her charge a fresh human soul to mould for good or evil. She fully realized the fact that her son would grow up with honor or sink down into ignominy just as she should guide or spoil him in his youth. She quite comprehended the stubborn truth, that while the father to some extent may shape the outward career of his son, the mother is responsible for the coloring of his inner life: and that

"All we learn of good is learned in youth, When pa.s.sion's heat is pure, when love is truth."

Though of Puritan stock, though reared in the austere faith of John Knox, there was nothing hard or harsh in this mother's character, and still less was there anything of the materialist about her. She would have utterly scouted the doctrine of Cabanis and his school, which held that the physical was the whole structure of man; that all instincts, pa.s.sions, thoughts, emanated from the body; that sensibility is an effect of the nervous system, that pa.s.sion is an emanation of the viscera, that intellect is nothing more than a cerebral secretion, and "self-consciousness but a general faculty of living matter." She had drunk inspiration of a different kind from her infancy. In her New England home the very atmosphere was charged with religious influences.

She was taught, or rather she had learned without a teacher, not only to see G.o.d in the flowers and in the stars, but to recognize his immediate agency in all things terrestrial.

Night after night, listening to the tremulous tones of her father as he read a lesson from the sacred page, not only to those of his own blood, but to his "man-servant, his maid-servant, and the stranger within his gates," she had felt the presence of a tangible G.o.d, and when, at last, she followed the fortunes of the chosen one of her heart far into the great North Woods, nature spoke to her from the forest and the cataract, deepening each early impression and intensifying each early belief, until she realized as a living fact that the "Lord was ever in his holy temple" and that his temple was the universe.