Among the commonest words on everybody’s lips these days is the word “security”.\u00a0\u00a0I suppose if all the men and women in the world could put into a single\u00a0word their greatest desire, that one word would be security.\u00a0But it is quite another matter to determine what security really is. When\u00a0is a man or woman secure? Men once thought it was a material thing, so they built\u00a0moated castles and turreted walls. But from the Great Wall of China to the\u00a0Maginot Line, physical defenses have never spelled security. Nor can it be found\u00a0today in jet planes and guided missiles and atom bombs.<\/p>\n
There have been other times and other places in which security was thought to\u00a0lie in law. “If we can only get a law passed”, people said, “we’ll have no more\u00a0trouble. ” Well, the Medes and the Persians passed such laws that men called them\u00a0“the laws of the Medes and the Persians, which altereth not”. But where are the\u00a0Medes and the Persians today? Their inalterable laws did not make them secure.\u00a0Probably most people think that money is security. “If we only had money”,\u00a0they say, “we WOULD. have no fear”. But money can be lost, inflation lowers its\u00a0value. Security is not spelled in dollars and cents.<\/p>\n
By this time we know, with sad disillusionment, that security does not come\u00a0by political promises. We are not so ready today to follow the “vote-for-me-and-I-will-\u00a0take-care-of-you” politician. There is no security in the privileges\u00a0that arise out of political power.\u00a0If security is none of these things, what is it? Security is not outside,\u00a0but inside. It is not material, but spiritual. It is something that lives in the\u00a0heart.<\/p>\n
Did you see the heart-warming movie “I Remember Mama”? You won’t soon for-\u00a0get the story of that Norwegian family living in San Francisco — living always\u00a0on the ragged edge of poverty. But they knew Mama had a bank account in the big\u00a0bank downtown, kept for an emergency. Emergencies came, but they always found\u00a0a way to meet them without turning to the bank account. Yet just knowing it was\u00a0there held the family together and gave them strength. Years passed and the children\u00a0prospered. At last they said: “Now, Mama, we don’t need to worry about living\u00a0expenses any more. You go downtown, take all the money out of the bank,\u00a0and spend it on yourself.” Then Mama confessed that there had never been any bank\u00a0account.\u00a0Security is in the heart.<\/p>\n
We want to tell you tonight about another small-town newspaper. A north Kennebec\u00a0town that once had a newspaper was Clinton. The Clinton Advertiser was started\u00a0in 1877 by a man of several undertakings. Indeed he was Clinton’s undertaker, as\u00a0well as furniture dealer, Benjamin Foster. After a time he took into partnership\u00a0Miss Etta Pratt, and until 1903 the Advertiser was published every week by Foster\u00a0and Pratt. After Miss Pratt’s death, Foster sold the paper to a more recent undertaker\u00a0and furniture dealer of Clinton, Marcellus Cain, who published the Advertiser\u00a0for five years, selling it in 1908 to William Tracey. Tracey kept the paper going\u00a0for about a year. He is quoted as saying there was more glory than dollars in\u00a0printing a paper in Clinton. Anyhow the paper last appeared in 1909.<\/p>\n
We think those publishers did very well to keep a paper going, week after week,\u00a0in so small a village as Clinton, foi32 years. They deserve a lot of praise for\u00a0their persistence, and probabl~ all of them were out of pocket in their laudable\u00a0attempt to give Clinton a newspaper.\u00a0For my information about Clinton’s paper I am indebted chiefly to Mrs. Lillian\u00a0Brown of Clinton, who has kindly sent me a copy of the Advertiser dated October 11,\u00a01888.<\/p>\n
Three columns of the second page are devoted to short paragraphs under the\u00a0heading “Home Items”. Some of them are not what a modern paper would call news,\u00a0but they show that people in 1888 were talking about the same subject that claims\u00a0our attention today. I quote from the Clinton paper: “When is it going to clear\u00a0off? is the question asked by nearly everyone you happen to meet”. Another paragraph\u00a0later on: “The steady rain of the past few days has caused the river to rise\u00a0to a very high pitch for the time of year.”<\/p>\n
Another: “So much stormy weather has greatly hindered the work on the Free\u00a0Baptist Church, which it was hoped to have finished before cold weather. It will\u00a0be ready to receive the plastering the first of next week.”\u00a0As for the news items, Mrs. Elvin Jaquith had made over a hundred dollars\u00a0worth of cheese; Secretary Gilbert of the Maine Board of Agriculture met with\u00a0Clinton farmers; Mrs. Lucy Witham of Richmond committed suicide by taking “Rough\u00a0on Rats”; and Rev. Osgood, presiding Elder of the Methodist District, preached on\u00a0“The Interest Felt by Angels in Man’s Salvation”.\u00a0As usual with these old newspapers, the ads are the best revealers of the\u00a0times. Dodge and Jaquith, dealers in Clothing, Shoes, Crockery and Glassware,\u00a0evidently sold other articles as well, for in a part of the paper separate from\u00a0their regular ad they announced the arrival of a lot of very nice, pure tea.<\/p>\n
B. T. Foster, publisher of the paper, ran a full column ad of his own, setting\u00a0forth his fine assortment of lounges, chamber sets, looking glasses, crockery, curtains,\u00a0caskets and burial shrouds. The last item of his ad reads: “A good cloth\u00a0covered casket. $12 and upwards.”\u00a0Two carriage manufacturers advertised their skills: W. I. Brown and S. W.\u00a0Steward. L. Wright, the blacksmith, wanted folks to know that he now ran the shop\u00a0formerly occupied by C. Jaquith. Making use of that apocryphal yarn about George\u00a0Washington and the cherry tree, J. P. Billings showed an amusing wood-cut, and\u00a0under it the words: “I cannot tell a lie, either; I did it with one of Billing’s\u00a0axes. All kinds of edge tools manufactured by J. P. Billings, Clinton, Maine.”<\/p>\n
G. H. piper thought, now the crops were in, it was time he got paid for\u00a0the spring fertilizer. He advertised: “Notice. All parties indebted to me for\u00a0phosphate please settle their account on or before November first.”\u00a0I think the ad of D. G. Webber, Clinton’s dentist, is the only instance I\u00a0can recall of a dentist announcing as follows: “Gas free for extracting teeth …<\/p>\n
Not all the ads originated in Clinton. Tuttle and Frazier, in the Burgess\u00a0Block, Corner of Main and Bridge streets, Fairfield., had a full column ad in\u00a0baseball jargon headed “A Base Steal Stopped”. They said: “In our game against\u00a0competitors, the latest feature is the clever stopping of a base steal, by whiCh\u00a0our opponents schemed to steal our trade by a sharp, secret cut in prices. But it\u00a0didn’t work. The pennant will go to the firm that undersells every other and\u00a0knocks all competition flat. That firm is Tuttle and Frazier. We don’t need base\u00a0steals. We’re making clean hits. Hit No.1 — A sweeping reduction in swmner\u00a0shawls and mantles. Hit No. 2 — Chevot shirting for working men and boys, to be\u00a0sold regardless of cost.”<\/p>\n
Another Fairfield firm, D. W. Allen and Co., also advertised for the Clinton\u00a0trade, offering kitchen ranges from $18 to $45, as well as a splendid assortment\u00a0of parlor heating and oven parlor stoves. The pride of their collection, however,\u00a0was a stove called the sub Base, Which burned wood and was guaranteed to keep a\u00a0steady fire as easily as a coal stove. This stove, proudly said Allen, would keep\u00a0plants from freezing, maintain even temperature in a sick room, and keep everybody\u00a0in the house warm and comfortable.\u00a0We are grateful to Editor Foster for printing on his front page casual items\u00a0of Clinton in the long, long ago. In this particular issue of 1888 he was concerned\u00a0with town meetings in the 1840’s and results of the Clinton vote in the September\u00a0state elections.<\/p>\n
The record is sprinkled with names that meant a lot to Clinton a hundred\u00a0years ago — names that are still well remembered in the town. Among them are\u00a0Philander Soule, Francis Low, Samuel Burrill, RiChard Wells, John Stinchfield,\u00a0Mathew Pratt, John Totman and Sargent Jewell.\u00a0The Hunters were a famous Clinton family. There were James, David and Z:irnti,\u00a0and doubtless several others, back there in 1846, when James Hunter won his famous\u00a0law suit against the Town of Clinton. A raft of lumber, being floated down\u00a0the Sebasticook by its owner, James Hunter, had run against the abutment of the\u00a0bridge with suCh impact that the raft broke up and the lumber went its wild, unChaseable\u00a0way down the Sebasticook and the Kennebec. Hunter claimed damages of\u00a0the town, and, believe it or not, he collected.<\/p>\n
Knowing that some of my listeners are interested in unusual items from the\u00a0world of books, I want to tell you about a book 1,200 years old that has never\u00a0been printed.\u00a0Some time in the eighth century the monks of Kells in Ireland produced by hand\u00a0what has become one of the world’s most famous illuminated manuscripts of the\u00a0gospe1s. It has long been considered one of the world’s most beautiful books.<\/p>\n
Although many attempts have been made to reproduce by hand the rich illumination\u00a0the drawn pictures, the laviSh capital letters and the ornamental page borders\u00a0they have never been successfully duplicated. Since 1661 the book has been\u00a0kept at Trinity College, Dublin.\u00a0Now at last, thanks to modern methods of color photography and color printing,\u00a0a Swiss publiSher, after four years of patient experiment, has produced a method\u00a0that makes possible printed copies of this rare old book. The printing is being\u00a0done at Berne, Switzerland, but don’t be too eager to own a copy. Only 120\u00a0copies will be for sale and the price will be $450 a copy.<\/p>\n
The original hand-written manuscript of the Book of Kells contained 344 pages\u00a0and a binding of riCh gold. Some time in the eleventh century, when William the\u00a0Conqueror’s Normans were invading England, thieves stole the book and stripped\u00a0off the binding. That gold binding was all they wanted; the precious book itself\u00a0they threw away. It was later found under a pile of sod, with five pages\u00a0missing. It is the remaining 339 pages that are now being printed.\u00a0Some idea of the color problem facing the printer is shown when we learn\u00a0that the original book contains more than 650 distinct shades. Yet the 48 pages\u00a0which will be reproduced in full color will have the exact shades of the original.<\/p>\n
If you can’t own one of those $450 copies, perhaps you may some day visit\u00a0Dublin and see the original book. If you do that, you will see only two pages. In\u00a0the Trinity College library the book lies open. Every morning an assistant turns\u00a0over a new page. Any visitor who wants to see the whole book must\u00b7 come back for\u00a0170 successive days.<\/p>\n
More than a year ago on this program I talked a bit about folk-etymology,\u00a0the process by which people fit strange words into familiar moulds — sparrow\u00a0grass for asparagus, cutlash for cutlass. I told you how folk-etymology accounted\u00a0for such words as primrose and rosemary (neither of which are roses), and for\u00a0pantry and buttery .(which have nothing to do with pans or butter), and I referred\u00a0to a few family names that originated by the same process. One of those names\u00a0was Simpson, as applied to families of French-Canadian descent.<\/p>\n
Simpson is a very old English name. How did French-Canadian families happen\u00a0to have it? I told you that Dr. Julian Taylor, whose memory of Waterville went\u00a0back to years before the Civil War, once assured me that the French-Canadian family\u00a0name of Simpson was the English way of trying to say Sans Souci. The name Sans\u00a0Souci was very strange to English ears, but it sounded something like Simpson;\u00a0so Simpson the Sans Soucis in New England became.<\/p>\n
Now Joseph Bolduc of Elmhurst Street, who has a rich fund of historical knowledge\u00a0and is a man very well worth knowing, comes forward with a more complete\u00a0and very interesting explanation. Whether the explanation is fact or mere legend\u00a0out of old French Canada doesn’t matter much. It makes a good story anyhow.<\/p>\n
It seems that long ago there came to Canada two brothers named Bureau,\u00a0with land grants from the Crown of France. One brother, thrifty and industrious,\u00a0located on good, fertile land, took good care of it, and prospered. The other\u00a0brother, happy-go-lucky and easy-going, took up a piece of swampy, brushland\u00a0nearer town, failed to clear it properly, and gradually found himself in poorer\u00a0and poorer circumstances. That happy-go-lucky brother came in time to be called\u00a0by his neighbors Bureau Sans Souci (Carefree Bureau). By the time the next generation\u00a0had grown up the Bureau part of the name was dropped, and Sans Souci became\u00a0the recognized family name. Generations later, when the Sans Souci, no longer\u00a0impoverished and thriftless, like the first possessor of the name, but hardworking\u00a0immigrants with ambition and zeal, came to New England, folk-etymology\u00a0changed the Sans Souci to Simpson.<\/p>\n
Year: 1951<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #98, broadcast on February 25, 1951<\/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":[786,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207"}],"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=7207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}