Sketches from Concord and Appledore | Page 7

forward slightly to catch the familiar sentence with his eye,
and then calmly surveying his audience as if to see where he could
deliver it most effectively.
Henry Ward Beecher drew the largest house, and produced great
enthusiasm by comparing the United States to an elephant,--though at
that time there can hardly be said to have been any United States; but
the fine oratory of Wendell Phillips made the strongest impression,
rather too rhetorical to be permanent--but it was intense while it lasted.
A young lady who was obliged to take laughing-gas a few days after
his lecture on Toussaint L'Ouverture repeated passages from it with
appropriate gestures, in the dentist's chair, and finally concluded, not
with the name of the negro statesman, but of the Concord high-school
teacher. Phillips was an especial favorite with the older ladies of the
town, who organized a local anti-slavery society in his honor, and held
a meeting of it whenever he came there.
But neither Phillips nor Beecher could equal a lecture by the Unitarian
clergyman on the naval policy of England, which was based on
valuable facts and might well be compared to a few grains of wheat in
the midst of infinite chaff.
Judge Hoar did not lecture before the lyceum, which seemed strange,
for he was not only a man of vigorous intellect, but had, as Lowell said,
"More wit and gumption and shrewd Yankee sense Than there are
mosses on an old stone-fence,"
and he could have made any subject interesting in which he was
interested himself.
The Hoar family for some time past had been almost kings in Concord,
as frequently happens where there is an uncommonly strong man, either
a lawyer or a manufacturer, in a town of two or three thousand
inhabitants. They were a hardy New England race, lawyers by an
inherited tendency, and had now made their mark in public affairs for
three generations. They can count among their immediate relatives
more senators and representatives to Congress than any other American
family. It was said in 1775 that while Samuel Adams represented the
force and virtue of New England life, John Adams was the best product

of its cultivated side; and it would seem as if old Samuel Hoar, the
founder of his line, were a mean between the two. Fortunate is such a
father if he has a son who inherits his talents and virtues as well as his
property; and fortunate is the son whose father knows from his own
experience what is best to do for him.
The Judge was always an interesting figure in the Concord streets, and
also a pleasant person to meet, for there was never the least pretention
about him. He usually had the air of a man with an object before him,
and yet it was sufficiently evident that he did not intend to claim more
than his rightful share. He walked the ground with a tenacious step, but
with no unseemly haste. There was a keen, frosty sparkle in his eye,
and a certain severity of manner which, however, covered a great deal
of kindness. He liked successful men such as were his own equal in
ability, but he was quite as likely to take an interest in those who were
unfortunate. A brother of Dr. Holmes, a constant invalid and great
sufferer, who required much consideration, was a more frequent visitor
at his house than Lowell or Agassiz. His face bore a striking
resemblance to Raphael's portrait of the war-like Pope Julius Second,
the last of the great popes. He admired Emerson, and was frequently
seen in his company; but Alcott and Thoreau he seemed to have little
respect for. Mr. Alcott once said, "I suppose Judge Hoar looks on me as
the most useless person on the continent; but I can at least appreciate
him."
He was the youngest judge that had ever been appointed to the supreme
bench of Massachusetts, member of Congress, president of the Harvard
Alumni, etc.; but his real distinction now is that as a member of
General Grant's cabinet he was the first American in public life to take
a determined stand in regard to civil-service reform.
For thirty years he had seen the government patronage turned into an
enormous engine of political corruption, and endure it longer he could
not. He went to Washington, much to his own inconvenience, mainly to
strike a blow at this monster. Did he realize the magnitude of the work
before him--one which thousands of patriotic men have since attempted
and signally failed to accomplish? It was like taking the meat away
from a tiger, or trying to lift the Mitgard serpent. Judge Hoar found
himself quite alone in the president's cabinet, and with the exception of
Sumner, Garfield, and a few others,