Page:Men of Mark in America vol 1.djvu/15



After the first settlements of the American colonies it was natural that the fathers should look to Europe, and especially to England, for their examples and inspirations. The illustrations in physical matters are curious, sometimes amusing. When the comfortably rich gentlemen of Boston wanted to plant trees on their Common which they had reserved to feed their cows upon and for a training field, they sent for English elms to England and planted them. Since that day Michaux has pronounced the American elm to be the monarch of the vegetable world, as it is. But as Mr. Everett says, "Our fathers were Englishmen," and it never occurred to them that they could make a perfect avenue, like the nave of a cathedral, of the trees which they could bring from Muddy Brook, within two miles of their Common.

Here was the same notion which had tempted poor Winthrop to ask that men with halberds might go before him when he went to the General Court. In that case the people showed that they were already breathing American air, by refusing to vote him the halberds. It is in just the same way that for the older public buildings of the United States, marbles were imported from Europe; and it was only in the last half of the nineteenth century that we found we had for most purposes better marbles at home.

In precisely the same spirit every other novelty here had to begin with European patrons. And that is a distinct step forward and upward which is observed when we begin to do things in our own way. A good instance is the advertisement of a Connecticut pin maker who used to put up his pins with the inscription that described him as "pin maker to the universe" where his English rival called himself "pin maker to the Prince Regent."