<\/p>\n
Many times this program has referred to very old advertisements. One such of peculiar interest was recently sent me by Joseph Williams of Averill Terrace, Waterville. Its source is not identified, but the names make it clear that it referred to a Portland retail establishment in the early 19th century. The ad is dated August 17, 1825, and is worded in the quaint, stilted language of all advertisements of that time. Listen to what it says: “Samuel Alexander and Charles B. Penrose have bought from George Gallagher his large and very extensive stock of merchandise, comprising an assortment of goods suitable for the present and approaching season, and which, at the old stand of George Gallagher, they now offer to their friends and the public at the most reduced prices. From a determination to keep the assortment at all times full, and their disposition to acco~te all who may favor the store with a call, they declare that on their part nothing shall be wanting to afford satisfaction.”<\/p>\n
Like most traders anywhere in New England in 1825, Alexander and Penrose sold all kinds of merchandise. They were indeed a general store. But this particular ad featured dress goods. They had angola cassimeres, satinette, bombazeens, Irish poplins, striped Bengalo, several varieties of silks, Swiss Muslins, Italian crepes, chintz and ginghams, long lawn and linen cambrics. They pointed especially to a big stock of painted muslins and bed ticking. They could provide either sex with kid or York gloves, and they had silk gloves for the ladies. For both sexes also they offered leghorn hats, and for the ladies there were fine straw and gimp bonnets.<\/p>\n
Just to let folks know that the stock was not restricted to materials for wearing apparel, the ad said: “Also for sale is a large supply of rods and rifle powder, brandy, gin, spirits, molasses, sugar, coffee, tea, pepper, allspice and salt.”<\/p>\n
Another ad of the handbill type, circulated in 1.840, proclaimed the virtues of the New Commercial Dining Room on Essex Street in Boston. The place was heralded as lithe largest, neatest and best located eating place in Boston. ‘Tn fact lf , said the handbill, \\lit is the only dining room in this vicinity where there are facilities for giving first-class weekly board or single meals got up in nice orcier, and served promptly at low prices. n .And if you wonder what was meant by low restaurant prices in 1840, just listen to this: “We give for dinner: soup or chowder, fish, choice of four roasts or boiled dinner; two kinds of entrees; two kinds of pudding and three of pie; tea, coffee or milk — all for” (now hold your breath!) “20 cents.<\/p>\n
“For breakfast: oatmeal, hot biscuit and corn cake, beef steak and four other kinds of meat, fish or eggs, hot coffee or tea — 15 cents.<\/p>\n
“For supper: oatmeal, hot biscuit, cake, sauce or cheese, four kinds of meat or fish, tea or coffee — 15 cents.<\/p>\n
“Board by the week: gentlemen \u00a72.75, ladies \u00a72.50.”<\/p>\n
The ad concluded with this punch line: “If you give us one trial, you will be satisfied that we excel in quality and prices.”<\/p>\n
I suppose there are still a lot of ordinary folk who dabble in poetry and succeed in producing only doggerel. But at least we can say that it isn’t so easy to get newspapers to publish the crude verses as it was even half a century ago, to say nothing of an earlier time. The old versifiers wrote about all manner of things, and we owe much to them for preserving memories of murders and hangings, floods and fires, and especially of memorable characters.<\/p>\n
W. B. Bowden, the painter and deco~ator of Burnham, recently showed me some old verses about Hod Nelson’s Sunnyside Farm in Waterville. Nelson was the owner of Waterville’s most famous race horse, also named Nelson, which held the world’s trotting record for several years early in this century. Mr. Bowden says the verses were composed by an unschooled stable hand, commonly called a uswi.pell who at one time worked for Hod Nelson. Admittedly the verses are crude, breaking most rules of rhyme and meter, and are in very simple colloquial language. But they do give a capsule picture of Hod ~elson’s stable of racers at his Sunnyside Farm just beyond the Memorial Bridge on the Oakland Road out of Waterville.<\/p>\n
We have no time to quote the so-called poem in full, but here is a good sample of it:<\/p>\n
“There’s a place called Sunny Side
\nIn the town of Waterville, Maine;
\nAnd once a man goes through there
\nHe’ll never go again.
\nIt is owned by C. H. Nelson
\nAnd when he gets half full,
\nHe’ll drive up in the dooryard
\nAnd roar like a Jersey bull.
\nGo out and get the Sulky mare,
\nThe one with golden hair,
\nWho leads them up to the three-quarter pole;
\nThey go off and leave her there.
\nNow go and get out Aldo,
\nThe one that looks so nice;
\nOld Hod may win a race with him
\nNext summer on the ice.
\nVogle Song Was always wrong,
\nYou’ll never get him right;
\nThe old man got a chance one day
\nTo ship him out of sight.
\nNow go and get out Nelson,
\nThat’s called the Northern King;<\/p>\n
It was out in Cambridge City
\nThat he had his chance to win.
\nHis name and fame were worth the
\nHe stepped a mile in ten.
\nNow all the lot that Hod has got
\nAre nothing side of him.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Many older Waterville people remember a show place called Casco Castle at South Freeport. The reason why people of this community and nearby Fairfield were interested in that resort hotel was because the energetic Fairfield promoter, Amos Gerald, had a part in its creation.<\/p>\n
In 1902 Mr. Gerald began construction of an electric railway to connect the existing Portland to Yarmouth road so that a traveler could journey by electric car straight through from Portland to Brunswick. Gerald’s new road did not go directly from Yarmouth to Freeport, but via South Freeport on the Maine coast.<\/p>\n
Always interested in hotels or amusement parks to accompany his electric roads, Gerald encouraged other investors to join him in erecting a sumptuous summer hotel at South Freeport and gave it the name of Casco Castle. The hotel did a flourishing business for several years, but was finally destroyed by fire, <\/em>leaving standing only its prominent tower as the sole reminder of a more prosperous day.<\/p>\n That Freeport electric line, opened in 1902, was kept in operation until 1927.<\/p>\n Did you know that as late as 1920 it <\/em>was possible for a traveler to go from Chicago to Benton Falls, Maine all the way by electric cars? It was quite an era, that of the electric roads, especially the longer interurban lines, and there are plenty of people now living who remember well that trolleyriding time.<\/p>\n Now that the old Colby campus has been swept almost clean of its <\/em>college buildings, it is <\/em>well to be reminded again of the unique memorial which was last summer, at great toil and considerable expense, removed from the old to the new campus in order that it might be preserved as a lasting tribute to patriotic Colby men. I refer to the Lion of Lucerne and its <\/em>accompanying Civil War tablet that stood in a prepared niche on the upper floor of Memorial Hall, the old campus building with the clock tower. On this program as well as elsewhere, I have told about the ~lection of Thorwaldsen’s famous Lion of Lucerne in Switzerland as the model from which the American sculptor Millmore devised the Lion for the Colby memorial to its Civil War dead.<\/p>\n What I want to tell you tonight is about an interesting item that recently came to’my notice about Thorwaldsen’s original in Switzerland.<\/p>\n The item is a small pamphlet, printed in English for the benefit of British and American visitors and distributed by the Depot for Wood Carving and Fancy Articles near the Lion Monument, Lucerne. The Pamphlet is entitled “H:i.storical Details of the 10th of August, 1792 at Parlstt.<\/p>\n So, whenever you see Colby’s Lion of Lucerne in the Miller Library on Mayflower Hill, remember that it is, except for the shield of the United States substituted for the shield of France, an exact copy of the monument carved by Thorwaldsen to commemorate the bravery of Swiss soldiers in the French Revolution in 1792. Let me now tell you the story.<\/p>\n As early as 1616 a regiment of Swiss guards had been recruited to protect the person of the French king, and the practice continued for 175 years. When the Revolution broke out in 1789, the Swiss Guards naturally provided a special target for the revolutionists’ attacks. Finally the situation became so critical that all others guarding the King and his court were dispersed and only the Swiss Guards remained. On August 9, 1792 the attack came. The aroused citizens of Paris broke into the arsenal, overpowered the defenders, and took possession of arms and munitions. Orders were given to the Swiss Guards to repulse the attack. When all but one group had been killed or captured,\u00a0 80 remaining Guards rallied at the foot of the grand staircase.<\/p>\n After a resistance of half an hour:. they were wiped out. All fell under the swords and knives of the angry mob. Altogether there were 750 Swiss victims of fidelity and devotion to the monarch they guarded. When the Swiss people decided to honor the fallen guards, they persuaded the celebrated sculptor, Thorwaldsen, then living in Rome, to execute a memorial. He sculptured a lion dying on broken weapons, and made the sculpture out of the wall of living rock. There it was dedicated in 1821, and there in 1866 the pastor of the Waterville Baptist Church saw it and was so impressed that he persuaded the Colby alumni to have a copy made for Memorial Hall here in Waterville.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #560, Broadcast on January 13, 1963<\/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":[796,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8246"}],"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=8246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}