Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. | Page 2

pleasure to the world. None could
make his place good to his elder friend, whose approaching death was
visibly hastened by grief for the loss of the constant sympathy and
devotion which had faithfully cheered his declining years. Many and
beautiful tributes were laid upon my father's tomb by those whom he
left here. Why should we not hope that that of Bellows was in the form
of greeting?
ST. DAVID'S, July, 1883.
[11]I WAS born in Sheffield, Mass., on the 28th of March, 1794. My
grandparents, Stephen Dewey and Aaron Root, were among the early

settlers of the town, and the houses they built the one of brick, and the
other of wood--still stand. They came from Westfield, about forty miles
distant from Sheffield, on horseback, through the woods; there were no
roads then. We have always had a tradition in our family that the male
branch is of Welsh origin. When I visited Wales in 1832, I remember
being struck with the resemblance I saw in the girls and young women
about me to my sisters, and I mentioned it when writing home. On
going up to London, I became acquainted with a gentleman, who,
writing a note one day to a friend of mine and speaking of me, said: "I
spell the name after the Welsh fashion, Devi; I don't know how he
spells it." On inquiring of this gentleman, and he referred me also to
biographical dictionaries,--I found that our name had an origin of
unsuspected dignity, not to say sanctity, being no other than that of
Saint David, the patron saint [12] of Wales, which is shortened and
changed in the speech of the common people into Dewi.'
Everyone tries, I suppose, to penetrate as far back as he can into his
childhood, back towards his infancy, towards that mysterious and
shadowy line behind which lies his unremembered existence. Besides
the usual life of a child in the country,--running foot-races with my
brother Chandler, building brick ovens to bake apples in the side-hill
opposite the house, and the steeds of willow sticks cut there, and
beyond the unvarying gentleness of my mother and the peremptory
decision and playfulness at the same time of my father,--his slightest
word was enough to hush the wildest tumult among us children, and yet
he was usually gay and humorous in his family,--besides and beyond
this, I remember nothing till the first event in my early childhood, and
that was acting in a play. It was performed in the church, as part of a
school exhibition. The stage was laid upon the pews, and the audience
seated in the gallery. I must have been about five years old then, and I
acted the part of a little son. I remember feeling, then and afterwards,
very queer and shamefaced about my histrionic papa and mamma. It is
striking to observe, not only how early, but how powerfully,
imagination [13] is developed in our childhood. For some time after, I
regarded those imaginary parents as sustaining a peculiar relation, not
only to me, but to one another; I thought they were in love, if not to be
married. But they never were married, nor ever thought of it, I suppose.

All that drama was wrought out in the bosom of a child. It is worth
noticing, too, the freedom with sacred things, of those days,
approaching to the old fetes and mysteries in the church. We are apt to
think of the Puritan times as all rigor and strictness. And yet here,
nearly sixty years ago, was a play acted in the meeting-house: the
church turned into a theatre. And I remember my mother's telling me
that when she was a girl her father carried her on a pillion to the raising
of a church in Pittsfield; and the occasion was celebrated by a ball in
the evening. Now, all dancing is proscribed by the church there as a
sinful amusement.
[FN This was the reason why Mr. Dewey gave to the country home
which he inherited from his father the name of "St. David's," by which
it is known to his family and friends.--M. E. D.]
The next thing that I remember, as an event in my childhood, was the
funeral of General Ashley, one of our townsmen, who had served as
colonel, I think, in the War of the Revolution. I was then in my sixth
year. It was a military funeral; and the procession, for a long distance,
filled the wide street. The music, the solemn march, the bier borne in
the midst, the crowd! It seemed to me as if the whole world was at a
funeral. The remains of Bonaparte borne to the Invalides amidst the
crowds of Paris could not, [14] I suppose, at a later day, have