We have no desire to add to the sentimentality that has characterized newspaper and radio reports of the tragedy which made the headlines just a week ago. We would only point out the common truth it reveals: nothing pulls at the heart strings of us common folk as does injury to a little child. Our generation is accused of being cold and unfeeling, but in reality we are just as inclined to sympathy and concern as were our grandparents. In a week when two major disasters snuffed out multiple lives, it is interesting to note that what hit us hardest was the death in a deep well-pipe of one little child.<\/p>\n
There is something genuinely human about that seeming paradox, our relative callousness toward wholesale slaughters and our concern about a single life. That was the way Jesus acted and taught. His concern was for individual men and women — for the one lost sheep and the one lost coin. It may be that not only human nature, but divine will, also cares for the single life.<\/p>\n
At least two listeners doubt that any bridge on the Gaspe is 1,400 feet long. Now I cannot vouch for that length, but I can vouch for the fact that several well known families in waterville originated on the Gaspe-Peninsula. Perhaps some of them can tell us about the Gaspe bridge.<\/p>\n
At any rate Paul Glasgow, a college student now living at Fairfield Center, and Mrs. Nellie Dunphy of Waterville, both insist that the longest covered bridge is the huge 1,280 foot span over the St. John River at Hartland, New Brunswick. An anonymous listener sends me a picture of the Hartland bridge; the accompanying text says it is 1,282 feet, and at the end of the bridge is a sign: “Longest covered bridge in the world”.<\/p>\n
We picked up information about one more covered bridge in Maine. Our attention is called to the covered bridge over Kenduskeag Stream on Harlow Street in Bangor. Is that the only covered bridge left in a large community?<\/p>\n
Last week we mentioned an old-time warning sign at the Winslow end of the now extinct covered bridge over the Kennebec. Long after the coming of automobiles an even more expressive sign was nailed to each end of the famous Columbia Bridge, a covered structure crossing the Connecticut River at Lemington, Vermont. The sign read: “Walk or Pay Two Dollars”. Now those are simple words. A child knows what every one of those five words means. But what do they mean as they are put together here: walk or pay two dollars? Did they mean that you could walk across the bridge for nothing, but it would cost you two dollars to ride across? Hardly that. None of the old toll bridges had so high a fee. Two dollars was a lot of money among rural people a hundred years ago and few travelers could spare it. No, the sign meant that you must walk your team across the bridge. If you trotted or ran the horses across, you would be fined two dollars.<\/p>\n
A Waterville man has just published a distinguished book. For more than a\u00a0 quarter of a century a resident of this city, Carl J. Weber of Burleigh Street, has been writing books and he now has nearly a dozen to his credit. Known as the world’s leading authority on the English poet and novelist, Thomas Hardy, he has gathered into the Robinson Treasure Room at Colby College not only the most complete collection of Hardy items to be found anywhere in the world, but many other unique collections.<\/p>\n
Professor Weber is somewhat of a literary detective and he is always turning up something new. His book that has just come from the press is the only book ever published on its subject. It is called “A Thousand and One Fore-Edge Paintings.” What is fore-edge painting? Don’t feel too chagrined if you can’t answer. I didn’t know either until a few months ago. It is painting on the edges of the leaves of a book. Most schoolboys know the trick of fanning the leaves, holding them firmly in that opened, spread position, then writing the owner’s name on the fore-edge.<\/p>\n
When the ink dries and the leaves spring back into nonnal position, the writing on the edges all but vanishes, appearing as little more than a wavy line. But always thereafter, as long as the book holds together, one who spreads and fans the leaves, as the boy did when he wrote his name there, can see the clear design of letters and name. One looks at a particular book and sees nothing on the fore-edge except hazy, indistinct bits of color. He fans the pages and sees a distinct painting. When that happens, he has found a book with fore-edge painting. In his volume of two hundred pages, Professor Weber tells the enchanting story of the development of this peculiar art. He tells us about the artists I bookbinders and publishers who played their parts in it: Daddy Gilpin, Edwards of Halifax, Lewis of London, and many others.<\/p>\n
The book is richly embelliShed with 24 illustrations, exemplifying fore-edge paintings of great variety and striking design. The frontispiece in full color is a landscape of a country mansion, painted on the fore-edge of a Book of Common Prayer, printed in Paris and sold by Edwards and Sons of Halifax in .1791. Professor Weber’s book is not only interesting reading; it is also a beautiful example of fine book-making. It is the kind of book one can cherish in the home for many years. Unlike the national commentator who immediately precedes me on this station, I am not given to prophecy. Until tonight I have never made a prediction \u2022. But I will venture one now. Carl Weber’s “A Thousand and One ForeEdge Paintings” will be selected as one of the fifty finest printed books of 1949.<\/p>\n
Who remembers the country peddlers? No one now living remembers the peddlers of the early nineteenth century, made famous in fiction and historical narrative. That breed vanished so long ago that I believe they are not depicted in the Currier and Ives prints, which included almost everything in the rural life of the mid-century. Those early peddlers carried almost every non-perishable commodity pins and needles, notions and ribbons, yard goods, tinware, lanterns, brooms and hundreds of other articles. Fifty years ago the country peddler with his horse and cart had not entirely disappeared, but he had become more specialized. The so-called tin peddler lasted a long time. He was familiar on city streets as well as on the farms. He became the well-known rag man, with his cry “Any rags, any bones, any bottles today”. Tinware was the stock which he bartered for rags Then there was the extract man. In my town lived one of those men, known all over Cumberland County as Bennett Strout, the extract man. Before the day of modern synthetic flavoring, he made many of his essences out of natural products. He was especially proud of the quality of vanilla beans which he imported. After the snow mel ted from the roads and the mud was not too deep for travel, he would”load up his fancily painted cart, drawn often by a span of horses, and start off on a two weeks’ trip through the countryside. With only a day or two at home in between, he would keep up these fortnightly trips until November snows made travel difficult. Then he would spend all winter making up supplies for the next summer’s sales.<\/p>\n
Cl0sely allied to the extract man was the medicine man. Not to be confused with the travelling shyster of the medicine show, palming off his worthless concoctions for a dollar a bottle, the regular medicine man, with his semi-annual visits, was an honest, respected and well known citizen. The one in my community had the gayest peddler’s cart of all the itinerant salesmen. Its big box body, like a fish cart, was painted in yellow and red and had turned posts, like barber’s poles, rising from each corner. The horses wore harness with highly polished brass, and with red plumes over the bridles.<\/p>\n
The driver himself wore a Prince Albert coat and high winged collar, and he spoke with great dignity and precision. Because of & home-made remedy which he had patented, he was called Opodildoc Knight. He had other medicines too. For miles around a favorite spring tonic was Knight’s Sassaparilla, a concoction whose vile taste was supposedly a guarantee of its curative value.<\/p>\n
Long before the coming of chain stores, evidence of chain business had crept into the countryside. The early peddlers were an independent, individual lot each owning his own business and frequently manufacturing his own wares. But not so the Grand Union Tea man. He represented an organization; he was one of a chain. His big, green cart became a familiar object on the rural landscape, and the farm folk waited eagerly for his regular rounds.<\/p>\n
The meat man, the fish man, the fruit man and the vegetable man still remain. All four can yet be found in many rural regions of Maine. Not quite obsolete are the foreign peddlers of special wares: the Armenian rug peddlers, the Greek and Albanian women with their beautiful embroidery, and Italian salesmen of costume jewelry. The Indian basket weavers seldom go, any longer, from door to door. Business is better and easier when they set up shop near some well traveled highway. Even in my boyhood day, when telephones were rare and cOnmm1nication was geared to the speed of horse and buggy, the peddlers were purveyors of news. They were an important link between farm and town; to isolated rural families they brought the latest happenings from distant places and the juiciest~gossip from down the- valley or over the hill. They played an important part in the development of our great country, and some of them, like Johnny Appleseed, have made their way into folklore and legend. May their memory long survive!<\/p>\n
On this holiest day of the Christian year what have you been doing? Many of you have been to church, have heard the joyous Easter music, have listened to the words of hope. Others of you would have gone, if illness or other uncontrollable circumstances did not keep you at home. Perhaps others of you did not care to go. That is your privilege in this land of the free. But whatever your belief, however far you may feel removed from formal religion, or however close you may be to it, you cannot escape the gripping power that Easter has upon the minds and emotions of men. The New Testament story tells us, “and the angel of the Lord rolled back the stone from the door”. Vengeance and hate and spite had had their evil way. Mercy and goodness and truth lay imprisoned within the tomb. But the executioners had not reckoned with the angel of the Lord. And the stone was rolled back from the door. The stone of fear, binding men in craven servitude; the stone of prejudice, making men always spillers of each other’s blood; the stone of despair, making men to feel that the end of existence is a sealed tomb. The lesson of Easter, coming as it does when nature herself bursts forth anew from winter’s bonds, is that the evil, the frustration, the cynical despair that entombs mankind give way when the angel of the Lord rolls back the stone from the door.<\/p>\n
Year: 1949<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #23, broadcast on April 17, 1949<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[741,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7017"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}