Memoirs of G. B DOAR 1866-1882 The Memoirs of George B. Dorr The writings contained in "The Memoirs of G.B.Dorr" files are copies of The Dorr Papers held at The Jesup Memorial Library. An original hard copy is held by the Bar Harbor Historical Society. These fragmented essays were written during the last two decades (1925-1944) of his life. Episodic blindness contributed to their unfinished state. Many are undated and incomplete. None have been published and many are working drafts. Dorr does not appear to have intended that these were parts of an evolving autobiography. They were based on recollections of events that were retold to clerical assistants-often over a dictaphone-- for an unidentified audience. There are several lists of topics to be developed and to be combined into complementary essays. Ultimately they remain fragments of a life gathered here for the first time by an approximated timeframe based on their content. They share "historical associations" with Dorr's published writings (e.g., The Sieur de Monts Publications). Additional memoirs are placed in the subject matter series. See memoirs in the files "France & Frenchman Bay," "Old Farm," "Psychical Research," and "Travel.". filemoirs821 R.H. Epp 1 F4 There were few boarding schools in my school-boy days; Phillips Exeter and Saint Paul's were the only ones I remember hearing spoken of or which were represented at Harvard when I was there. Boys lived at home and went either to the Boston Latin School or to Dixwell's. Epes Dixwell, the son of an old Boston merchant engaged, I think, in the China trade, had been head master at the Latin School and then, with reputation gained as a teacher, had set up his own private school which quickly took the lead in Boston, having practically all its old families represented in it at one time or another, relatively small though the school was for it never had more than fifty odd boys, divided into six classes, from the last of which they entered Harvard. The school had its football team -- playing the old-fashioned open game; baseball as an organized sport was just beginning and tennis and other sports of the present day did not exist, save rowing, which 2. one took up first at Harvard. The only teams with whom Dixwell's played in set matches were the Boston Latin School, or, more seldom, its chief rival, the Roxbury Latin, also a big school of high standing and sending boys to college. Groton and the other schools which came so much to the front in later years were not in existence. School hours were from nine till two with a recess of half an hour from half past eleven to twelve, when, if it were spring or fall, we went out and played football on the Common. There was no choice of studies; all was definite and fixed and the goal was Harvard. When spring came, the parents of most of our school-mates moved out to homes in the country, whence both fathers and sons came in by train, the boys returning in the early afternoon, giving abundant leisure in the long spring days for play at home. Many went to the North Shore where they could go out to row or sail and lived much upon the water, laying the foundation for yachting in later years. It was there that Edward Burgess, the 3. famous cup-designer, an older pupil still at Dixwell in my time, got his first experience and his love of sailing. Many, too, went is the South Shore on Buzzards Bay where the winds were steady and the water warm for bathing. There it was that Charles Francis Adams, the younger, the recent Secretary of the Navy, and a famous skipper in the International Cup Series, got his experience. Other families still went to Chestnut Hills or Milton. Our own home in spring and fall was the town of Canton, beyond the Blue Hills, which we reached by the Providence Railroad, where we went to be near my grandmother. My grandfather Ward had bought an old farm there on which to spend his summers, by his doctor's advice, a few years before his death. It was delightfully wild there at that time, with a big pond to sail on and old roads and woods-roads over which to ride with scarce a house upon them; and it was a wonderful place for birds, whose eggs, like all the boys of my time who had the chance, collected. But it was hot in summer and, school closed, my mother and father would presently pack up 4. and go off to the seashore, or to Lenox, real county then, where my mother had stayed with my uncle and, as a girl, ridden over the whole region -- the most fearless horsewoman, Mr. Curtis the old inn keeper at Lenox, told me in later years, that he had ever known save Fanny Kemble. There we spent delightful summers, driving about the country or exploring it -- my brother and I -- on horseback or on foot. This migratory habit of the family was to prove important afterward in leading us to Bar Harbor. [G.B.Dore] page 2 of the April 6 diotaphone transcription near the middle of Cylinder 1, but a new subject. Frenchmans Baj is the la st considerable opening on the coast as one ROOS north which lies open freely to the ocean. Beyond,all is one great bay of which the tide rolls with sweeping force, that culimnates in the Bay of Fundy, the name given by a Portuguese fisherman who came out upon the Banks to fish in the lattor half of the 16th century, moting there fishermon from Brittanyand f rom England ao a truly Cosmopolitan gathering. The Bay of Fundy is a corruption early of Baiou Fonda, the Deep Bay. The French called it Baie Francoise, but the Portuguese is the one that hold, handed down from one generation of fishermen to another, till it came fixed with all. For naval purposes Frenohmans Bay, a name which goes back to the early 17th century when the French province of Acadia stretched down to the Penobsoot and Frenchmans Bay was the endesvous for #ronch vessels gathering for attack on the New England coast or for sholter in attack. The preax pleasantest prexent and most fortile part of Nova Scotia , the best in soil east and exposure and the most free from fog, lies KB nearly matte of Mount Desert XXXXX Island, though somewhat to the north. It is a well sheltered coast, relatively free from fog, page 3 April 6 and sheltered too, in case of war, from the attack of enemies from overseas. The famous Fishing Banks represent an ancient coast line, that of its Continental Sholf beyond which the ocean bottom descends rapidly into oceanic depths. This anoient coast line extends far out northward and eastward from Nova Scotia and from the fossil ovidence must have once been, in far off times, the fortile and well-protected home or & rich, almost sub-tropical flora, extending the- with 11 ttle change as far, quite certainly, as the Potomao. Nova Scotia itself extends southwart to meet Geroges Bank, ascending from the Cape Cod repion, the waters of a great rivor draining once the Gulf of Maine and carrying to the sea through a deep out north of Georges Bank the drainage from a great forested valley; is Juck is sunk now beneath now the ocean but was once a great forested plain, dwelt in, the evidence show s, by browsing horse", fooding on leaves of deciduous trees and broad-footed to bear thom up in low-lying, marshy ground. The mouttains of Mount Desert ATP of ignoous origin once united in a vast diko of granite whose great crystale geologio sense show long cooling, even in the under a super incumbent mass thousneds of foot in t hickness as the of oooling tells, which long donudation of the region has left because of its superior hardness, standing above the sea which has engulfed the rest. Later and relatively recantly, vast ice sheet formed in the Labrador and Katahdin regions and PAg® 4, April 6 moved slowly southward, a.. solid, dividing the ancient granite mass into separate isolated peaks, the Island's though present mountain ohain. It is & great history, titt but dimly apprehended, That it covers the whole development of life on land , vogetable and animal alike with we clearly know from he rare evidence left behind. And that of life upon land goes further ages back to life within the sea, which receded the source of all its varied 11fo on land, plant and animal. Compass Harbor, to return to that, is the only Bayb I know unon the Island, though there may be others, bottomed with quarts sand, the delightful to see and for children to play upon, that comes from the coast southward Ogden's Point, the point from which bounded on the northern side to the vioinity of Schooner head, is the most anoient on the Islnad, built up of hard old rock, and except at Caompass Harbor is cliffed and bold, leaving no opportunity for sand to gather. Compass Harbor got its name from the early settlers from the shores of Massachusetts Bayoff-- settlers who did nt como direct from overseas at the end of the Acediamperiod, who named it from its plaeting opening due north toward toward the Gouldsboro Hills, which give that whole section of the coast its unrivalled beauty, It makes excent.t mally good mooring ground, where I kept my boat, The Wrong page 5, April 6 Cyl 3 built for me by the elder Burgess, Edward Burgess, who safely built some of the earlycup defenders, for eighteen nearly years, though a great midsummer storm once wrecked it as it strained upon the hook of inch thi ck iron by which it was moored, till, when the e torm was over I found it had just hold by chance, being all but straightened out. Onnosito Compass Harbor and the Oldfare shore 11es6 a mile away but nearer, seemingly, the bold, rounded mass of Bald Porcupine, a tox dense mass of ancient lava rock poured out from some bench or crack probably in the earth's surface, on top of its more ancient Cambrian rock which one may see lying in strata beneath the lava at the eastern its foot of the great cl'ff, the sea gulls' nesting place. This island now belongs to my friend and neighbor, on northern that Ogden Point, which forms the eastern bound of the Harbor as it does the southern bound of Cromwell's Harbor, a superb sitro, but limited praotically to the single house site. Mrs Browning bought the island because I told her of what Congressman Crampton, who once stayed with me at Oldfarm with his wife, on their way back fromCanada, told me XX that unless we secured that island which we were then looking at from my Oldfarm windo- porch, we would wake uo some day and find it covered with huge advertisement, so conspiouous an opportunity cyl 3 page 6, April 6 for them were its cliffed faces, west and south, past whi oh all boats went by. So, when I had done, I thought, my share I invited Mrs Browning to purchase it for our joint protection, which she, repeating to her son, he bought it for her and incidentally for me as well. But there is nothing to be done with it but to hold it nd she would gladly give it to the Park, I know, should tt be desired. The Oldfarm property is one of the best and most fortile pieces of farmland on the Island, long cultivated when which he did for my father purchased it in the summer of 1868, the first spent here and a dozen years before we built the Oldfarm house. one of the It was an early farm grant, the earliest on the island, dxtingx stretching back with straight parallel sides onto the nor thern front of the mountain once called Noport for no known reason and now by its Government renoming! Champlain. that further is now part of Acadia National Park, given to it by me, when the Park was formed. The Mount Desert Nurseries occupies the central portion which was-- constituted the 'Cousons' country farm and our Oldfarm house , overlooking the Bay, rises, built of red-tinged granite from the Gorge, rises from one of the most beautiful house sites I know upon all the coast, taken in oan junction with the beauty of the shore and gardens. Cyl 4, page 7, April 6 For gardens, gardens of the hardy perennial plants , natural to this- tjxxxx such northern regions the W orld around seem almost a necessity in this northern land, and on our coast especially with its wild sead One needs the contact . But the early settlers lived ful 1. as much upon the sea as upon the land. It was their only highway and connection with the world of men. Over the seas they traded their lumber and their salted fish for the rude comforts of their life But it is all new country yet; another life Kas long as mine has been in a oquaintance with these shores would take one back close to the first beginnings of all things on the Island or the neighboring coast and what such another will do, going forward through the years to come, lies beyond all conjecture.- the world is moving rapidly in change. The great change lies in communicate When one can hear, as has been lately done along our whole Atlantic coast, a speech delivered by a man in Rome, the capital of Italy, the world has shrunk in respect to / sound at least to the dimensions of a room. The real battleground of the future is the air that carries sppech rather than the land we 11 ve upon, for as men may be moved by speech to think and feel, they may be molded to the speaker's will, the strength a nd indepenednce of the nation may be sapped and yet no blow be struck. Cyl 5, pahe 8TH April 6 That, as I see it, is the great danger for the future. n As a man thinketh, so is he," but it is a poor tool that will not out both ways men may be roused to right action as to wrong if they have but the intealigence to think and the will to choose. The wr ld henceforth may- must be the battlground and prepare fo r it of idease The sooner we recognize it in America, the better, Ideas apart, the future of power lies in the world of chemistry, which ismaking marvellous strides during the last year, opening out to a new world and what it will bring to men, knowledge nd the knowledge of its ignorance part, none can vision. The whole Island formed originally a single township, the township of Mount Desert. The principal settlements in it were Somesville and Southwest Harbor but scattered groups were collected as new settlers came around the various harbors where ooastal vessels could put in, bring goods and load with lumber. One such was Northeast Harbor, the site of an early Indian settlement; others on the eastern side of the Island were Salisbury Cove, Hulls Covo and Bar Harbor. After the end of the French occupation in 1759, with the fall of Louisburg in Cape Breton and Quobec in the following year, sottlers from the Province of Massachusetts Bay came gradually drifting down, approaching from the west and when deeds were drawn it was the western side of the Island facing toward Penobscot Bay that became, in legal description, the Island's front. As new settlers came, the towns were organized, the Town of Eden was laid out, defined by a line drawn from the head of Otter Creek straight by the compass ( across the lakes and mountains to include the Island's western side and the shore beyond it, nearly one half of the Island. 2. Town meetings then were held at Salisbury Cove, as central to the Town and this was the state of things when we first came in 1868-69, when Bar Harbor, growing rapidly, the Town offices were established there, not without opposition, and Town meetings held. From the remainder of the original township the fishing communities collected at Southwest Harbor, so named from the shelter it afforded from southwest winds, and Tremont were set off. And because of its prosperous fishing industries and extensive harbor Southwest Harbor became the chief settlement of the Island, at which, when steamboat lines were organized, the steamer touched, bringing freight and carrying away loads of salted fish. That, too, was the state of things until 1868 when, with the growing summer visitor business the Portland to Eastport coasting steamers first included Bar Herbor in their route. By land Mount Desert Island was then reached by stage from Bangor with stops upon the way at the tavern by Phillips Lake and at Ellsworth, the county seat, which at that time was a prosperous lumbering industry, the sea reaching it for coastal schooners, mill power provided by the falls above, and lumber available from the whole Union River Basin. 3. The Narrows, separating Mount Desert Island from the mainland, first crossed on horseback only when the tide was out, were crossed, from the early eighteenth century on, by a rickety wooden bridge, with a draw for sailing vessels and a toll taken, and this was not replaced till after the World War when the stato took it over and a free bridge, a memorial to those who fell in the World War, was built, at the expense of Town and County. The road over this, starting from the State capital at Augusta and passing along the Island's northern shore through Salisbury Cove and Hulls Cove to Bar Harbor where the Federal Government postoffice and customs house for the Island are established, contin- ues on thence as a state highway still through the Gorge to Otter Creek, Seal Harbor and Northeast Harbor where it ends, is the most important road upon the Island, passing through its primcipal summer resident commun- ities, well built for motor traffic and much used. It has two sections of great beauty upon it - the one where it crosses the Bluffs from Hulls Cove to Bar Harbor and the other where it turns, with a bold sweep into the gorge, at the outflow from the Tarn. The site my mother, father and I, together with our architect, Henry Richards, chose for the Oldfarm house in the fall of 1878, was the broad, flat top of an old sea-cliff, facing north to the Gouldsboro Hills across the long reach of Upper Frenchmans Bay. This cliff rose well back from the present shoreline, where the breaking surf is now setting its makr on a new shore, thirty to forty feet below the old one, carved evidently in a stormier period. The gently sloping space over which the surf rolled up to break against the cliff, was covered at that time with dark evergreens, mingled with birch and pine. Bald Porcupine rieses opposite, a mile away, dividing eastern with its mass the and northern skies, the dawn long growing in this northern clime before the sun appears. From the high-placed casement windows of the chamber I chose for myself when the house was done, the Sea Room as it as called, I used to see, day after day, this wonderful, slow breaking of the dawn, with the bold rounded mass of the Porcupine black a gainst the growing light reflected in the Bay, then changing insensibly to green a s the light grew stronger. 2. To the west of the site we built on, cliffed also on ed that side, a long level line stretch lift away, making what was at that time the cobblestone or sea-wall beach behind which had lain a considerable mass, as I discovered once on digging down for water, coming at nine feet depth on smooth. glaciated rock with the characteristic fine blue clay left everywhere by the over-riding ice-sheet of the last glacial period. In this I found sheals of a shell-fish extinct in the regional waters now, but extant Still in the arctic still. I gave these shells, in which my father took great interest too, to a friend of ours, Dr. Henry Chapman of Philadelphia, who presanted them to the Philadelphia Natural History Museum, where they were iden ified and placed. theyric Opposite Oldfarm, on The Way Road to the south, the land rises into an upland which was the cultivated ground of the early farmland, with the old farmhouse at its midst, dating, they told us when my father bought the property, to old colonial days, when set- - tlers from Cape Cod came sailing down with their fam- ilies and their goods and chattels, to take possession of the best farm sites along the shore to lumber and send off the standing wood of spruce and pine, or fish and salt down their catch. Oldfarm had, in Compass Harbor, the last safe harborage upon the western shore of Frenchmans Bay going seaward for the small craft of that period, the lands beyond rising into cliffs and storm-lashed rocks till Otter Creek upon the ocean-front was reached. And it was the last land, too, for miles along that rocky shore with opportunity for cultivation. The first settler there was one Henry Higgins, from Cape Cod, the Higgins and Higginson name being a common one in my earlier time, Henry both in Boston and along this shore, and prominent in town affairs. 2. becede Beyond oldfarm, going seaward, great purchases Berry Davis had been made for lumbering purposes in Colonial days word for one of the Baring family of England who, coming agent out to view the land, married, contrary to his father's advice upon his leaving home, an American girl; daughter of one of the wealthiest citizens of the country in that was this floming. time, Mr. Bingham of Philadelphia, and, again against his father's counsel, made extensive purchases of the forest lands of that period in Eastern Maine and else- where in New England, which, held onto, proved in the Black Ellsworks, end a sound investment. The home of Squire Black of Ellsworth, with ample woods about it along the banks of the Union River, now belongs, with an endowment attached, to the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations, which was agent for these lands until Squire Black died. And through him it was that the lands along the shore above Oldfarm passed into summer resident hands, recording in their titles a chapter from the past of special interest to me, for my Grandfather Ward, 3. my mother's father, was throughout his middle and later life the sole agent in America of the great London banking house of Baring Brothers, whose repre- sentative in Parliament, Lord Ashburton, was entertained by him in Boston in my mother's early time, when he came out to settle a boundary dispute between the United States and Canada, embodied in the famous Ashburton Treaty. This, which was satisfactory to both sides, amicably settled a dispute which had at one time threatened war. And this treaty wrote his name for all time on the pages of his- tory as a peacemaker. The Way Road, which bounds Oldfarm on the south, was given by my father, in a friendly spirit, to give entrance to the first purchasers of the Bingham Heir land, as it was called, and, the request for the right- of-way coming to us in the later 1870's during a long stay abroad, the land was laid out for us by Ernest Bowäitch, landscape and civil engineer, descendant of the famous 'Navigator', Nathaniel Bowditch, a friend of my grandfather, who, himself a seaman in early life, held him in high regard. Chrmot. re Old farm Property history 4. - III - Detailed History of the Zacheus Eiggins Lot. I shall consider first that part of the locus taken from the Cousins lot, viz: The Dean Higgins and Zacheus Higgins lot. The Zacheus Higgins lot lying farthest South, I shall consider first. 1 -- Bartholemy and Maria Theresa DeGregoire by warranty deed dated March 28th, 1792 and recorded September 1st, 1794 in Vol. 2, Page 558, conveyed to Henry Higgins a lot containing one hundred acres; being the same lot which is marked on the old plans the John Cousins Lot. 2 -- As appears below the heirs of Henry Higgins conveyed the Western half of the Cousins lot to Dean Higgins. No deed appears of record however of the Eastern half which came to be known as the Zacheus Higgins lot. It would seem probable that one David Stanwood acquired title to it in some way and by a series of deeds the heirs of David Stanwood conveyed this Eastern half of the Cousins lot to different parties. One of these heirs, William Stanwood, by special warranty deed dated August 31st, 1834 and recorded June 27th, 1838 in Nol. 67, Page 178, conveyed his interest in the property to Dean Higgins. 5. 3 -- Sallie Dodge and Roxalana S. Collier in 1846 gave a deed of the whole of the Cousins lot to Martha Higgins, wife of Zacheus Higgins. This deed is dated December 26th, 1846 and recorded September 3rd, 1866 in Vol. 127, Page 143. These grantors were two of the heirs of David Stanwood. Their husbands joined in the deed as did also Eunice Higgins, widow of David Stanwood. 4 -- In 1855, Deborah Rodick, another one of David Stanwood's children and heirs, gave a deed to Martha Higgins. This deed is dated November 16th, 1855 and recorded September 3rd, 1866 in Vol. 127, Page 144. 5 -- Martha Higgins herself was one of the children of David Stanwood. By the above deeds she acquired the interest of three of the other children. One other (William) had con- veyed to Dean Higgins previously as above stated. Eunice R. Foster another heir, did not convey her interest until after Martha Higgins had parted with the property. 6 -- By quit claim deed dated July 15th, 1861 and recorded July 23rd, 1861 in Vol. 114, Page 108, Martha Higgins conveyed to the town of Eden, "Four-fifths of the lot of land a part of which was deeded to the aforesaid Martha Higgins by the heirs of David Stanwood." 6. 7 -- By quit-claim deed dated October 14th, 1865 and recorded September 3rd, 1866 in Vol. 127, Page 145, Benjamin H. Higgins, John M. McFarland and Henry Knowles, selecmen of the town of Eden, reconveyed the same to Martha Higgins. The selectmen do no appear to have been authorized by vote of the town. For comment on this question see page 15. 8 -- By quit claim deed dated January 18th, 1866 and recorded September 3rd, 1866, in Vol. 127, Page 146, Martha Higgins, (her husband joining) conveyed the same to Henry H. Clark. 9 -- By warranty deed dated August 25th, 1868 and recorded September 4th, 1868, in Vol. 131, Page 315, Eunice R. Foster conveyed to Henry H. Clark "A certain undivided fifth part in of a tract of land lying/the town of Eden at Bar Harbor in said town, and known as the Zacheus Higgins place, and is the same lot that Martha Higgins conveyed four-fifths of to the said Henry H. Clark by her deed dated January 8th, 1866 and recorded in the Hancock County Registry of Deeds." Eunice R. Foster's husband did not join in this deed. I have not learned whether he is living or not. 7. 10 -- By warranty deed dated September 1st, 1868 and recorded September 4th, 1868 in Vol. 131, page 314, Henry H. Clark conveyed to Charles H. Dorr and Thornton K. Lothrop a lot of land described as follows: "A certain lot or parcel of land situated in the town of Eden, County and State aforesaid, and bounded and described as follows, to wit; A lot of land lying in the neighborhood of Bar Harbor and known as the Zacheus Higgins lot and bounded as follows: Beginning at a stake and stone at the shore, running South 150 West following the Conners line three hundred and forty-seven rods; thence South seventy five degrees East twenty-five rods; thence North fifteen degrees East to a stake and thence to the shore; thence following the shore to the first mentioned bounds, containing forty-six acres more or less. Said lot is to be twenty-five rods wide and no more, measuring Southeasterly from Conners line square across the lot; the stake and stone at which the boundary of the premises begins, is situated on the Northerly shore of the cove and the above boundaries include the Southern side and landing of the cove." 11 -- By special warranty deed dated July 19th, 1875 and recorded November 12th, 1875, in Vol. 153, Page 268, Thornton K. Lothrop conveyed his part of the same to Charles H. Dorr. - IV - Detailed History of Dean Higgins lot. 1 As stated above the DeGregoires in 1792 conveyed to Henry Higgins a hundred acre lot marked on the old plans John Cousins lot. 8. 2 -- By Warranty deed dated March 11th, 1822 and recorded March 19th, 1822 in Vol. 42, Page 311, Stephen Higgins, Anna Googins and Mary Eaton, heirs of Henry Higgins, conveyed to Dean Higgins a lot containing fifty acres, being the Western half of the above lot. 3 -- By warranty deed dated May 16th, 1838 and recorded June 27th, 1838 in Vol. 65, Page 445, Dean Higgins conveyed the same property (same description) to Ambrose Higgins, and by mortgage deed also dated May 16th, 1838 and recorded June 27th, 1838 in Vol. 65, Page 446, Ambrose Higgins recon- veyed the same property (same description) to Dean Higgins and his wife Eunice Higgins to secure a bond for the main- tenance of the mortgagee Dean Higgins and his wife. The bond does not appear of record but is referred to by the mortgage. 4 -- Ambrose Higgins appears to have deceased prior to July 8th, 1843 for on that date his widow Phoebe Higgins by quit claim deed re-conveyed the same property to Dean Higgins. Deed dated July 8th, 1843 and recorded October 5th, 1846 in Vol. 81, Page 3. For comment see conclusion. of Note given y Serenys Rodick, August 8, 1941. 9. The Oldfarm property came out of a lot which was marked on the Peters Plan as John Cousins. Mr. Rodick does not believe there ever was a deed to John Cousins. Probably the owner of the lot got title by squatters rights. One-half (the eastern half) was known as the Zacheus Higgins lot; the western half was known as the Dean Eiggins lot. Title to both lots eventually became vested in Charles Hazen Dorr and came down to G. B. Dorr through the will of Charles Hazen Dorr and Mary Gray Ward Dorr, his wife. flo In the history of its land-titles, aldfarm goes back to the first days of occupation of the Acadian coast by settlers from the English colonies, sailing down from western poarts to make new homes for themselves along the shores of the former French Province of Acadin. Mount Desert Island, situated on the constantly em- battled coastal border between the French and English colonion Acadia and Massaohmeetts Bay, was thrice conyeyed in gift, once by the Province of Quebec, seat of Government of the French Dominion in America, to Antoine do la Mothe Cadillao, R gentleman of ancient lineage of Gascony in Southwestern Frence, an officer then serving in Acadim, the grant from the Province being confirmed to him soon after, on a temporary return to Paris, by Louis the Fourteenth; again, after the fall of the French dominion in America, to Sir Francis Bernard, last Colonial Governor of English birth of the Province of Massaohnsetts Bay, whose title was similarly confirmed by Georgo the Thirdz and finally, after the Revolutionary War, by the State of Massachusetts, now acting in its own sovereign right, to the heirs of those two former grantees: To the granddaughter of Cadillao and hor husband, H. and Hme. da Gregoiro, refugees from Brance at the oommensement of the -1- 8. Fronoh Revolution, the General Court of Hassachmsotts gave the eastern half; to John Bernard, son of Sir Francis, the western half, sending down two surveyors - Salem Towne and John Petors - to make division and except from the grant such tracts as they might find alroady talesia up and hold by 'squatters rights'. This division was made up the deeply penetrating fiord of Somos Sound and thence northward to the Narrows. John Bernard mortgaged his portion and wont to England, where later he appears as receiving from the Crow, in acknowledgment or his father's services, the Governonship of one of the lesser West Indies, where be thoreafter lived and dieds the de Oregoires came down to Mount Desert and lived upon their grant, building thomsolves a house a Hulls Cove and selling off their lands, tract by tract, as sottlers came down and sought them and the good title which they carried, Among the first tracts sold was that of the present aldfarm and its continution southward up the stoop-foreated side of Champlain Mountain, easternmost member now of the National Park range, to one Henry Higgins, recorded as pur- chasing it in 1792. E. Henry Higgins was born at Eastham on Cape Cod, the son of Terael Higgins who had sailed down with his family from South Truro, on Cape Cod, in 1771 and established himself at Bulls Coves as it soon after became known. But before its purchase by Henry Higgins, John Cousins, son of Elisba Cousins, who had sailed down yet earlier with his family, from Harpswell on Casoo Bay, casting about as he grow up to see what be best could turn his hand to, had sottled himself in true pionsering fashion, asking no leave of any, where there was as yet no owner but the State, on this same tract, with its tall pinos and spruces, fit far masts and building, and its good harbor for shipping them off to western markets. Into this work he throw him- self with such energy and good result that for gonerations after, though he never had or claimed a legal title to it, the land remained known as the 'Cousins Lot'. Henry Higgins died early and the tract acquired by him from the de Orogoires passed by inheritance to others, whose names and those of their successors it would be 1d1o to recall; they are all on record. In the summer of 1868, our first at Bar Harbor and the first in which land was bought on Mount Desert Island for summer residence, the eastern partion of the Henry Higgins lot was purchased by my father, Charles Hazen Dorr, and 4. his friend, Thornton K. Lothrop, who had come down with us from Boston to see the new coastal landscape of whose beauty and pleasantness we all had heard so much. The western portion of the Henry Higgins lotj as it was then divided, had been purchased a few wooks previously by Professor Mahan of West Point, father of Captain A. T. Mahan, a boy then, who became famous a generation later for his writings on the influence of sea power upon history and the fate of nations. Three and a half years later, early in the winter of 1871-172, Professor Mahan died and his widow, on my father's writing her, sold him the land she and her husband had earlier planned to build upon. The land my father bought from Mrs. Mahan contained in st the deep-soiled, cultivated land of the old farm and two splendid house sites between which, when we came to build, we hositated, but finally chose - wisely, I think - the site the aldfarm house stands built upon. Finally, in 1875, when we were making plans to build at Oldfarm the following year, my father acquired from Mr. Lothrop his share in the joint earlier purchase, uniting once again the original one-hundred-aore Henry Higgins lot. 5. The site we chose when we came to build in the autumn of 1878 was the broad, flat top of an ancient sea-cliff whose base had been raised by coastal elevation some forty- odd feet above the present level of the sea, where the waves in their oeaseless activity are now at work on forming a new and lower coast-line. From it one looked out due north across the whole wide stretch of Upper Frenohmans Bay to the Gouldsboro Hills, forming a picture which in the long, slowly-deepening twilight of the northern sunmer is one of surpassing beauty. The oliff we built on markes the western termination of a line of ancient rooks, hard and contorted and rising beyond Oldfarm into yet higher cliffs, which, continuing eastward to Schooner Head, is the oldest geologic formation on the Island. To the west the cliff we built on descends abruptly to the level of a former sea beach, marked by the surf-piled stones of a sea-wall, behind which lay, as in many another spot along the present coast, a salt marsh, now become a fertile moadow-land, across which our Oldfarm house looks out, evening after evening, to the deep-red sunset glowp while to the south the area drops gently away to rise again 6. into the deep-soiled cultivated lands of the old farm, which extend away, with no house in sight, framed in the distance by the mountains of the National Park. cyl 3 page 6, April 6 for them were its cliffed faces, west and south, past which all boats went by. So, when I had done, I thought, my share I invited Mrs Browning to purchase it for our joint protection, which she, repeating to her son, he bought it for her and incidentally for me as well. But there is nothing to be done with it but to hold it and she would gladly give it to the Park, I know, should st be desired. The Old farm property is one of the best and most fertile pieces of farmland on the Island, long cultivated when which he did for mJ father purchased it in the summer of 1868, the first spent here and a dozen years before we built the 01Afarm house. one of the It was an early farm grant, the earliest on the island, dxt strotching back with straight parallel sides onto the no them front of the mountain once called Noport for no known reason and now by 1 to Government renomings: Champlain. that further is now part of Acadia National Park, given to it by me, when the Park was formed. The Mount Desert Nurseries occupies the central portion which was-- constituted the 'Cousons' country farm and our Oldfarm house , overlooking the Bay, rises, built of red-tinged granite from the Gorgo, rises from one of the most beautiful house sites I know upon all the coast, taken in conjunction with the beauty of the share and gardens. 61714 C 1938 3. A Oldfarm as its name tells broad feet plift Oldfarm, the house, stands on a stage of the same hard and amient rook that encloses Companas Harbor along the coast on either side, against whose baso, whon the land stood at lower level in relation to the sea during the last glacial period, the WAVES must have broken with tromendous force. To the north it faces across the whole length of the Upper Bay to the Gouldsboro Hills; to the south the Oldfarm lands and gardens merge unbrokonly into those of Aoadia National Park which drew from them their early inspiration for the origin of the Park. X+ I The house, fitting well the landscape, is built story? up to the second floor of warm-tomod, nativo granitog above It is covered with shingles of the California Redwood, similar in tone, which have never needed to be renowed, save in portions of the roof, sinco the house was built, now close onto sixty years. It is spaciously designed, with ample out-door porches, soreened from the driveway, fronting on the view, while broad stone stops, laid in easy descent, lead from it to the lawns abovo the shore. (then follows History, which is paged History- 1 etc. LONDON TIMES as revised from Dictaphone article, September 19, 1938. Always when we were abroad and wherever we might be, the London Times followed us, my father reading it with constant interest. It was altogether the best newspaper in the world at that time, broad in its outlook, judicial in its tone and all-inclusive, in the subjects it took up, whether of the sciences, politics or literature, and reporting and commenting upon interesting law cases. Generally my father allowed me, partly that we might discuss what we read together and partly because I still was limited in the use I could make of my eyes, to read it with him. To read it is this way was an education in itself and since he died I have continued reading daily the best newspapers I could get - generally, in America, the New York Times and some Boston or Maine newspaper as well. Guestine Tuesday evening Dec 13. Returning from a brief trip to America, my father took the train from Liverpool to London which ran through, expr 888, with but a single stop upon the way, at Chester. My father left Liverpool in an else empty coach. At Chester another gentleman got in and settled down to read his newspaper. Pres ntly, that done, he entered into conversation with my father and finding he had just come over from New York, asked him some questions bearing on the political situation there. My father always took great interest in such matters from a broad standpoint, and they had a long and interesting talk together on matters american and English which lasted till they came to London. My father's fellow traveler it then tunrned out, was Mr. Gladstone then at the height of his political career My father took much interest in this chance meetng and opportunity for talk. He never had met Gladstone before nor did he ever see him afterwarts, but he bore him in high regard for his high humanity and broad, liberal views, and looked back upon the meeting with great interest. For his opponent Disraeli, he had slight regard, and I no more. Now, 88 then, it is it is hard for mc to realize how a Jew of his type could have been accepted by the English noblemen a conservative party, as their leader, or how Queen Victoria ocould have looked on him with favor and siven him her intimacy and support. 2. Wherever he went while we were abroad, then and later, the London Times followed us in it S daily edition, my father reading it always , even to its reports on law cases tried in court, and its book reviews, letters from corre pondents and reports of travelers. It even followed us to America after our last trip together, when we went up the Nile, and I have still some unopened copies left of the last issues that c2me out to us following his death. Left-alene After my father died, I read the Boston Herald , then ably editied by my friend, Robert Lincoln O'Brien, but when he resigned his post on it, I subscribed to the New York Times, which followed me in turn wherever I was or went. These three newspapers have been to me a great political education, the best the world could give, following daily its events and their comments on them, but forming my own opinion from occasionally their editorials. Sucn newspapers CS these reflect the movement of the world. and are better than books, such- except histories if one must choose between them, but it is only a few newspapers that one can read in such fashion and get value from and they are not for the multitude. Oha Slimp I met in Rome an English laddy, a Mrs. Wynne Fingh with whom I fell into very pleasant relation. She was twice & widow and her first husband had been the head of the old LaStrange family in England. Her son, Harvey LeStrange had married one of the Wardsworth family of Geneseo, New York. Hor daughter had married Lawrence Oliphant, author of Piccadilly, while ahe had & younger son of near my own age, Guy LaStrango who won my admiration by the gallant fight he was making to write the history of the Caliphate. Mrs. Wynn Fingh was notable in London for her delightful little dinners of eight, nover more, to which the Prince of Wales, King Edward VIIth afterward, used not infrequently to come. She kindly asked mo 88 I passed through London that spring to one of those dinners along with James Russell Lowell, then our minister to England, and others whom I now forget but not the pleasantness of the occasion. Her son, Harvey LaStrange inherited and was living at the old family manor house and estate of Hystanton, close beside the Wash, from whose shore we could see 2. what KYLL they there called Boston Stump, the tall tower of St. Botolph's church in English Boston. Hunstanton was a very interesting old Hanor House of the Elisabethan period with a famous garden and a wide moat with drawbridge. It WRS placed in a wide, grassy park with old oak- trees Bcattered about, a true countryscene of the lesser nobility, such as Jane Auston might have described. The same WRD was a good deal of an antiquary in its way and had a muniment room where he kept locked up family records and memoranda going back for many generations. He showed me one of these which WAD quite delightful of an old lord of the manor, a very simple lord he seemed to have been, played cards with his neighbors at the village inn, his wife noting down carefully the small Bum he made or loat, the keeping the family account. He was fond of playing the violin, which she found annoying and built him hard by a grove of old oaks in the Park April 14, page 5 still Cyl 2 Separate paper. The National Park had its origin at Oldfarm, the old Cousens' farm grant, one of the earliest on the Island where preceding its Bingham purchases Note for copyist Please get and read to me Richard Hale's paper on the Bingham purchases which he sent me lately, and which I asked, I think to have copied. The Bingham purchases which bordered it originally on the south, extending from it along the shore to the Sand Beach and beyond and extensively over the mountain. Like the other early grants of that time it ran a mile back from the shore and- at mean low tide for a measured mile, the measurement taking in whatever it encountered mountains, lakes or in a woodland and running definite course with two parallel sides and an end perpendicular to them. This was the case a O1dfarm which W as as defined by t he Cousens farm grant, a very various piece of ground, extending from the-nerth-side from high upp on the north side of Champlain Mt to the sea two brooks flowing through it , Bear Brook next the mountain , rising in the wooded Gorge between Picket Mountain and Champlain, and Compass Harbor Brook draining the farmland to the north, and winding widely through the Ogden Coles and other lands to come out finally at the base of Ogden's point into Compass Harbor. It is not only 6 of April 14 2 but exceedingly interesting piece of land, CO taining also sono of the best farmland on the Island, Fro the beginning on it has been tied up inextricably wi th the Park, It is long before the Park was established that its real history begins. In writing my history of the Park beginning, I want this clearly recognized and established. Cyl 3 The present generation will pass as my own has done, but the mountain S and the woods, the coasts and streams that have now passed through the agency of the Park to the National Government will continue as a national possession, a public possession, as-a-national- henceforth for all time to come. It ne ver will be given up to private ownership again. The men in control will change, the Government itself will change, but its possession by t he people will remain whatever new policies or developments may come. The important thing now is to start the Park it right in its service to the public and for this tt is wonderfully placed , looking out across the Atlantic to the coasts of Europe from the Mediterranean to the British channel and the Irish Sea. It is a part and a unique feature of the eastern boundary of the c country, but a true international boundary now to be guarded and defended. For the new developments of 3 page 7, April 14 science are bringing our country dangerously near what was SO have remote a nd distant a hundred years ago. The changes that back come in my lifetime here, commencing in the eighteen sixties, are are but the beginnings of others that we cannot in any way foresee That is the point that impresses itself now upon my bounded past human mind the shortness of the Paxics whose history we 80 largely know and the boundless future which we cannot read but yet can influence. And the story we now tell, the shaping thit we give the present, will remain as a tale of origin and as a shaping force through endless generations if man endure. That is the point I want to emphasizes The brief past and the immesasurable future which changes all- beyond all human predication Which that brief past has already seena nd the changes the future may bring yet greater than the past. For the Park the main thing is to open it as widely as may be to the people while yet keeping it from being a mere playground; to make it a source of real reoreation- re-creation and save it from vulgarization. To make it something that will uplift and inspire its visitors, while giving them new health and bigor. And to develop all the possibilities that it offered for study along many fields for the giving out of ideas to a grea t audience, for in one of those spots that it and the to whole coast about it has which people always come in summer, unique in i ts situation on sea and the yinxx facing that it has across it to the lands of its parentage, beyond. the source A page 8, Apri 14 perhaps of future danger, the source quite certainly of new ideas whether for good or ill. Note: One of the things to be established is a flying service across the entrance to the bay of Fundy to the western ooast opposite, of Nova Scotia. It would make a m 08 t interesting excursion to be done by flying boat from the Upper Bay and you ld be reached at any point desired in an hour, flying boat would limit it to the shore in aeroplane provided on the NUva Scotia and have the whole Maritime provinces (end of record not good) Monday, February 12, 1940. It was my father's purchase of this old farm whi ch Henry Higgins had sailed Himself down with his family from Cape Cop to build a century before on the yet wild shore of Frenchmans Bay with its mountain lands and wood- lands, its safe little harbor facing north on Frenchmans Bay, its pleasant site for building on and good land for cultivation, that oddly enough became as the years went by the foundation stone from which, as a starting point, Acadia National Park has risen. And it is to tell of how this came about step by step that I am writing this today. All from the beginning flowed on consecutively through various channels but with the end undreamt of till the last to the establishment of a unique and striking monument to a chapter, great in its consequences, in world the history: the struggle and its issue between great colonizing powers of France and England for the control of North America. fateful The historian who has made that contest peculiarly his own, Francis Parkman, came down for years with President Eliot and his sons, sailing himself down with his boys aid, to camp on Calf Island in Frenchmans Bay and Parkman took the opportunity President Ellot offered to s al 1 down with them and gather material for his work. One of the lesser but boldest and most outstanding of the mountains in the Island chain was named by the Government on its acceptance of the Homans gift + CH.Dorr Impt. Acadia N.P. origins rooted in Anglo-Frozelf, Crite / as Sieur do Monta National Monument which preceded Acadia National Park, in his honor at President Eliot's request. Li Had the French after the death of Henry IV, Henry of Navarre, their great warrior king, held on to what his early enterprise had won, Acadia and the river of Canada the St. Lawrence -- with the great lakes beyond and the vast, fortile central region, by the Mississippi. from the lakes southward to the Gulf of Mexico, be retained which by them, / they might easily have done had they but devoted & fraction of the wealth to it which they wasted in fruitler wars upon the continent of Europe, the whole course of history would have been altered and, barring a strip along its eastern coast east of the Appalachian chain, might have ruled and developed & land far greater than their own and made themselves by means of it the greatest of world powers. Such territory they did own in the time of Ladillac, first owner of Mount Desert Island, by the gift of Louis XIV, builder under Fontenac of the city that controlled the states, Detroit, as the name relates, and later yet, during his last years, governor of Louisiana, named for the king, which included then the whole great valley of the Mississippi So flow, checked and altored by what seemed to us afterward small causes, obstacles that might with foresight have been roadily overcomo, the streams of history. In this struggle, whose issues were to be 80 great, neither side received but little help from their home government. It was the greater 3. energy of the English colonists strung along the Atlantic coast and derived from their greater independence in religion and self-government, which prevailed. A historic of great moment to the future is that of the causes which produce that greater energy, skown alike by the English Puritans and the French Huguenots who, Ap had they come in greater numbers to these shores, fleeing from would France on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, have made themselves assuredly one of the greatest forces in America as what has been accomplished racially by those who did come and develop their initiative in freedom amply shows. And so too with the Dutch in constrast to to the Belgians. They were the same stock originally, the a virile race from the time of Caesar down, who had trouble in their conquest, never completely achieved. Freedom, religious and civil, giving scope to enterprise, made the difference at the time when the Notherlands were rulod by Spain, narrowest and most bigoted of mediaeval and later powers. That the Moor8 in their higher civiligation with failed to hold their own in their contest Paragon and Castille has ever seemed to me one of the tragedies of history. It also shows that other than racial causes lie at the root of the groat development men have made here and there throughout the course of history and that the capacity of man for development lies far ahead evon at the best of his achiovements. (Fobruary ar) 1940) 4. with President Eliot, then at the beginning of his long career at Harvard, came besides Parkman the Presi- donts two sons, the older of whom, Charles Eliot, full of public spirit, "was making himself what promised to be a great career in his chosen profession of landscape art when, still young, he died. And it was in memory of him who had conceived and brought about The Tunstoos of Public Reservations for the State of Massachusetts that President Eliot proposed, ten years after his son's death, a similar organization for Mount Desert Island, widened afterward to Hancook County. And this in turn in which I had taken active interest brought us our first gift, the Bowl and Beehive at the southern end of what was then known as Newport Mountain now Champlain, given us by Mrs. Charles D. Homans of Boston in memory of her son. And it was this gift, as I have elsewhere told, that made with me a starting point for gathering the land that presently, seizing the opportunity created by an attack in the Maine State Legislature, I made the foundation for Acadia National Park. That Mrs. Homans' came to Bar Harbor and purchased the land she built her home upon and with it the land 8he gave the Park was due to her brother's coming earlier with my father at the time my father purchased Oldfarm, and it was there that President Eliot came to tell me of Mrs. Homans' gift. It all ties up together wonderfully, even to the success I had in gathering lands for placing in (February 12, 1940) 5. reservation with our Corporation which caused the attack tupon it in the State Legislature which resuated in my con- ceiving the plan, opposed at first by President Eliot as surrendering our control, to the National Government which alone could in pointof fact hold them as it has done. Notes on matters to tell about Florida, ET mother and father's visit there to St. Augustine in 1850'a; my father and EY brother in the late 60's a with Henry Bowditch & companion; our own visit in the early 1880's, to St. Augustine when the railroad went no further. The trip up the river to the great spring in which it rose, clear to the deep bottom;and the toroh lighted trip up at night with dark forests on either side. The St. John's River with its orange plantations. The old book of the naturalist which Mr. Caldwalder of Philadelphia lent mo in first edition when I was staying with Mr. Colos in Philadelphia; and the trip across the southern Appalachians who when only Indians inhabited them contained in the same volume. Canoeing in New England waters. Ingraham. X Once talking with Judge George L. Ingraham he told me of his early youth and of his father, a Preebyterian of the old rigid type. When he and his brother were ohildren they attended church twice on Sunday and the services were long, the sermons inter- minable. Nor were they allowed on Sundays to read any book but oertain portions of the Bible. But when they grew up, he and his brother, they went their own way and it was a grief to their father. When Judge Ingraham was grown up his father fell ill and knew his hour had come. Judge Ingrham, a young lawyer then, was with him and hie father ask ed him to read him a chapter out of Jonathan Edwards. He read it to him and his father said, "Do you see any flaw in that, George!" "No father", said Judge Ingraham, "I see no flaw in it, granted the premises." "You oannot grant the premises", his father asked again, and he replied, "No father, I cannot." His father was silent for a time, then turning to Judge Ingraham said, "George, I do not believe I shall be saved." Judge Ingraham replied, "Why father you have been a good man all your days. You have done kindness to others and your duty as you have seen it." His father answered and said, Ingraham -8 "Yes, that 18 true,but unless I am among the elect I oannot be saved and I think if I were among the elect I should have received some sign, And I have record no sign. grim dootrine but not different probably from what many of our Puritan ancestors in England and New England held. 3/21/2017 George Landon Ingraham - Wikipedia George Landon Ingraham From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia George Landon Ingraham (August 1, 1847 - January 24, 1931) was a lawyer and judge in New York City. George Landon Ingraham Biography Ingraham was born in New York City in 1847 to Mary Landon Ingraham and Daniel P. Ingraham, the presiding justice for the First District of the New York State Supreme Court. He graduated from Columbia Law School in 1869, was admitted to the New York City Bar Association the same year, and began a lucrative law practice. In 1882 he was elected to a judgeship on the New York Superior Court. In 1891 he was appointed to the New York State Supreme Court by New York Governor David B. Hill. He became one of the first associate justices of the First Division of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court at its formation in 1896. He became presiding justice in 1910, and remained in that position until his retirement in 1915. After leaving the bench, Justice Ingraham remained continued to serve as Director of Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States president of the New York City Bar Association (1917-1918), Chairman of the District Appeals Draft Board, official referee of the 1st Judicial District of Supreme Court, and vice president of New York Ingraham as Presiding Justice of New York Law Institute. Supreme Court, Appellate Division, 1910 Born August 1, 1847 Sources New York City, New York Died January 24, 1931 (aged 83) Biography of George Landon Ingraham. Appellate Division First Department, New York City, New York New York State Court System. (https://www.nycourts.gov/courts/ad1/centennial/B Education ios/glingraham2.shtml) Columbia University (1863) "Gov. Hill Appoints Judges; George L. Ingraham and H.A. Gildersleeve the Lucky Spouse(s) Georgina Lent Ingraham Men." The New York Times. April 17, 1891. (https://query.nytimes.com/mem/archi Children ve-free/pdf?res=9E0DE1DD163AE533A25754C1A9629C94609ED7CF) Daniel Phoenix Ingraham Retrievedfrom"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=George_Landon_Ingraham&oldid=765757303" Categories: 1847 births 1931 deaths Columbia Law School alumni American judges American lawyers Presidents of the New York City Bar Association This page was last modified on 16 February 2017, at 07:48. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. Mental heiling a Illness in 1880. Early in the 1880s I had a long illness with a complete break-down of nervous rigor and energy. The cause was obscure. Leading doctors, physicians of high standing, were unable to help me, unable to understand it or get at its foundation. It looked as if I might not live. Then I chanced upon a book telling of some wonderful cures, well authenticated, that had been effected by suggestion, people being put into mesmeric tranees for the purpose of receiving the suggestion given them. Much I found had been written about it during a number of years past and remarkable experiments had been tried by a doctor whose name I now forget, on patients in a hospital in India maintained in charity for natives. The name Braid comes back to me in this connection but I cannot be sure of it now. This, the work done in this hospital, experimentally, was at the time of the discovery of ether. The physician in charge at the hospital who was trying the experiments found that not everyone was capable of being put into a memneric trance and that it was necessary, when he did suc- ceed, to train the patient for a time to make him, or her, subject to the influence. But when he did succeed he was able to perform operations of the most serious nature without causing pain or loss of consciousness to the patient. Illness -2 The whole work was carried on on a high scientific plane; there was no charalatanism about it or lack of careful observation, nor lack of understanding by the physician conducting the experimentsof their profound importance. But on the publication of his experiments in England he had been attacked in the leading English medical and surgical journal, The Lancet, in the vilest manner. An account of these attacks being given publica- tion along with reports on the experiments themselves in the book I chanced upon. It made me indignant and showed me how little fair play or intelligence was to be counted on in the medical profession when brought in contact with new ideas. The result was a desire to make experiment of this new force myself and see if it might help me. At this time a remarkable new mo vement was taking place in Boston as a center but spreading widely out, making use of this same forde apparently but using no mesmeric or other trance to render people suggestable to its influence. A number of people had taken it up and were practicing it under different names. 'Mental healing' was that taken by one group, and it was a good descriptive term for the mind was the instrument and one knew nothing nothing more, nothing as to how the suggestion became effective or the physical work was done, save that it operated plainly Illness -3 through the all-readhing and controlling nervous system. Another group, combining the new force with old religious doctrines, called themselves Christian Scientists and took up Mrs. Eddy as their leader. I had an open mind but was not superstitious or ready to take up on faith doctrines I could not understand or give rational credit to. But there was no question in my mind that a profoundly interesting and important force was there, and one which very probably might explain many phenomena of which there was record in the past, such as certain well-attested phenomena at Lourdes and else- where, miracles of the Catholic church, well-attested apparently but not to be explained along the lines of interpretation given them by the Catholic church. So my mother sought out for me a practitioner of the 'mental healing doctrine I first described and made an appointment for me to go and see her --for it was a woman -- and one, I found, of good intelligence and education whom I could talk with frankly. I told her I wanted to try if their new, to me, doctrine could help me, but frankly also that such books as I had come acros8 upon the subject, other than Braid's, and one or two besides, carried no conviction to me as to the religious basis of the cures affected and that if I needed to be convinced of this I feared it would be useless for me to try. Illness 4 Mrs. D, to call her so, said that there was no need for this; all that was necessary was to be quiescent in one's attitude and have an open mind. The power lay deeper than words. I might not be responsive to its influence but she would gladly try. And on that basis I went to her regularly at stated times for two weeks or so without perceiving any marked effects, but suddenly I realized a change and felt a new power, a new energy rising within me and this cont inned for some weeks more, working a real transformation in my state, though no words had been exchanged carrying conviction to me. Whatever the change was did not enter through the gate-way of consciousness but through some influence of what I can describe only as the unconscious mind. It reached 8 certain point and there it stopped but it had given me the lift I needed and the improvement continued on, gradually bringing me new strength and vigor.