Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/67

Rh honest, capable, informed, judicious, and refined New Hampshire Republicans (or Democrats) of his time. In the sense in which we mean it, to be a popular public official, above and outside of every other profitable qualification, a man must have public genius. He must have that peculiar instinct and adaptation that will enable him to be, in a sense, all things to all men. Exalted and dignified in personal characteristics though he be, his communication must be something more than yea and nay. He must be diplomatic in action and in speech. He must know how to safely encounter formidable dilemmas, and successfully harmonize adverse social elements. He must know how to sail between Scylla and Chary bdis, and bridge the gulf between Dives and Lazarus. He must be universal in his sympathies and communistic in his tendencies. Yet he must have an individual concentration of purpose and courage that sometimes impels one to a kind of personal independence of all prescribed formularies, for this is often the strongest cord that binds him to the popular favor. Having once gained public recognition, he must become in a certain sense absolute in authority and power. In a measure, at least, such a man was Matthew Harvey.

In Hopkinton, in a sense, Matthew Harvey stood alone. There was no other Republican of equal public capabilities. There were other professional and influential men, but, until later times, they were mostly federalists. To strictly interpret an individual character, we must contemplate it at home. As he was in himself, Matthew Harvey could be seen only in Hopkinton. A man's peculiar selfhood is best known to his intelligently observing neighbors. In his own familiar circle of acquaintances, Matthew Harvey expressed those personal qualities and traits that become embalmed in anecdote. Arising from individual association, an anecdote, in respect to its details, may be true or false, but the spirit of its illustrative expression is almost always true and unmistakable. In such a matter, too, the spirit is the reliant qualification: the flesh profiteth nothing. In Hopkinton, Matthew Harvey formed a domestic circle. Here he met and married Margaret Rowe, a native (?) of Newburyport, Mass. They had two children, a son and a daughter. In the domestic circle, he apparently exhibited that undiscriminating sympathy which forms a part of the character of an eminently popular man. This sympathy is communistic in its tendencies. That his two tiny, unfolded, endeared, and tender children might early develop instincts of proprietorship, was a thought he reluctantly tolerated. It is said that he ordered for his children two small chairs of exact pattern, size, and ornamentation. There was to be no distinguishing difference; then there could be no exclusive ownership in either. Soon after becoming a portion of the household furniture, they became the subject of a childish dispute. Matthew Harvey was surprised to hear his little son say to his sister, "This is my chair." The father asked, "How do you know that to be our chair?" In an instant the little fellow inverted its position and showed the mark of a knot in the wood on the underside of the seat. There was no similar knot-mark on the other