Belford's Magazine, Vol 2, December 1888

Philip Bearcroft.

To the church wardens and vestry of the episcopal church of New Castle, in Pennsylvania."

Returning to America, he officiated at Lewes, Delaware, and at New Castle, Pennsylvania, until his death, which occurred suddenly at Philadelphia, August 11, 1757, while he was visiting his friend Benjamin Franklin, but two years after his removal from Halifax. The Pennsylvania Gazette, at that time owned and edited by Franklin, contained the following obituary – a sober paragraph amidst the bountiful supply of wit and ridicule with which that journal abounded.

"On Thursday last, the 11th, died here the Rev. Mr. Cleveland, lately appointed to the mission of New Castle, by the society for the propagation of the gospel. As he was a gentleman of humane and pious disposition, indefatigable in his ministry, easy and affable in his conversation, open and sincere to his friends, and above every specie of meanness and dissimulation, his death is greatly lamented by all who knew him, as a loss to the public, a loss to the church of Christ in general, and in particular to that congregation who had proposed to themselves so much satisfaction from his late appointment among them, agreeable to their own request."

During Mr. Cleveland's residence in Nova Scotia three children were born to him, they being the last of a family of ten. All these survived the father's death. The widow removed to Salem, Massachusetts, and there made a future home for her children and herself. Aided by a relative, Judge Stephen Sewell, Mrs. Cleveland supported her family in comfort and respectability until the time of her death, in 1788. Aaron (5th), who was also the fifth of the children, was born in Haddam, Conn., February 3, 1744. He lived in Halifax with his parents from his sixth to his eleventh year. He became a member of the legislature of Connecticut in 1799. Subsequently he followed the early calling of his father and became a Congregational minister, and was known throughout New England as a statesman, an orator, and a wit. Twice married, this Aaron (5th) was the father of William, one of fifteen children. Said William was grandfather to President Cleveland.

Aaron was a poet. He never claimed to be such, and the few verses that he allowed to find their way into print were published anonymously. Many of them have been lost. The authorship of others was never given to the public. A few, however, of his poetic word-creations passed into the possession of his grandson, the Rev. Arthur Cleveland Coxe, of Hartford. Illustrating Mr. Cleveland's appreciation of personal merit and personal exertion over that of ancestry, we insert the following satirical composition from his pen:

THE FAMILY BLOOD: A BURLESQUE

"Genus et proavos et quod non fecimus ipsi

Vix ea nostra voco."

Four kinds of blood flow in my veins,And govern, each in turn, my brains.From Cleveland, Porter, Sewell, Waters,I had my parentage in quarters;My fathers' fathers' names I know,And further back no doubt might go.Compound on compound from the flood,Makes up my old ancestral blood;But what my sires of old time were,I neither wish to know, nor care.Some might be wise – and others fools;Some might be tyrants – others tools;Some might have wealth, and others lack;Some fair perchance – some almost black;No matter what in days of yore,Since now they're known and seen no more.The name of Cleveland I must wear,Which any fondling too might bear:Porter, they say, from Scotland came,A bonny Laird of ancient fame:Sewell – of English derivation,Perhaps was outlaw from the nation;And Waters– Irish as I ween,Straight – round-about from —Aberdeen!Such is my heterogeneous blood,A motley mixture, bad and good:Each blood aspires to rule alone,And each in turn ascends the throne,Of its poor realm to wear the crown,And reign till next one tears him down.Each change must twist about my brains,And move my tongue in different strains;My mental powers are captive led,As whim or wisdom rules the head;My character no one can know,For none I have while things are so;I'm something – nothing, wise, or fool,As suits the blood that haps to rule.When Cleveland reigns I'm thought a witIn giving words the funny hit;And social glee and humorous songDelight the fools that round me throng;Till Porter puts on the crown,And hauls the Cleveland banner down.Now all is calm, discreet, and wise,Whate'er I do, whate'er devise;What common sence and wisdom teach,Directs my actions, forms my speech;The wise and good around me stay,And laughing dunces hie away.But soon, alas, this happy veinMay for some other change again!Sewell perchance shall next bear rule:I'm now a philosophic fool!With Jefferson I correspond,And sail with him, the stars beyond:Each nerve and fibre of my brain,To sense profound I nicely strain,And thus uprise beyond the kenOf common sence and common men.Thus great am I, till Sewell's crownAbout my ears comes tumbling down.Wise fools may soar themselves above,And dream in rapturous spheres they move;But airy castles must recoil,And such wild imagery spoil.But who comes now? Alas! 'tis Waters,Rushing and blustering to headquarters:He knows nor manners nor decorum,But elbows headlong to the forum;Uncouth and odd, abrupt and bold,Unteachable and uncontrolled,Devoid of wisdom, sence, or wit,Not one thing right he ever hit,Unless, by accident, not skill,He blundered right against his will.And such am I! no transmigrationCan sink me to a lower station:Come, Porter, come depose the clown,And, once for all, possess the crown.If aught, in Sewell's blood, you findWill make your own still more refined;If found in Cleveland's blood, a traitTo aid you in affairs of state;Select such parts – and spurn the rest,No more to rule in brain or breast.Of Waters' blood expel the whole,Let not one drop pollute my soul:Then rule my head – and keep my heartFrom folly, weakness, wit apart:With all such gifts I glad dispense,But only leave me – Common Sense.

As a wit, Mr. Cleveland's reputation has been immortalized by a few sentences that are frequently quoted, and which the writer furnished to the Editor's Drawer, Harper's Monthly Magazine, August, 1885. Mr. Cleveland was a Federalist of the school of Jay and Hamilton, whom he supported with more than ordinary zeal, and perhaps not without something of the prejudice which ranked all Jeffersonians with French fatalists and infidels. On horseback one day Mr. Cleveland was riding from Middletown to Durham; a little stream bounded the limits of the townships. He halted to water his horse; meanwhile a young man, having come from the opposite direction, drew rein so suddenly in the midst of the brook as to render the water unfit to drink.

"Good-morning, Mr. Minister," said the youth.

"Good-morning, Mr. Democrat," replied the reverend gentleman.

"And pray why do you take me for a Democrat?" queried the young man.

"Pray why did you take me for a minister?" rejoined Mr. Cleveland.

"Oh," said the fellow, "that is plain enough – by your dress."

"And that you are a Democrat is plain enough by your address," was the retort of the preacher.

Mr. Cleveland was buried in New Haven, Conn., where he died suddenly, while paying a visit to friends in that city. He lies in the "New Haven City Burial Ground," the first cemetery in this country that was divided into family lots. The plot in which Mr. Cleveland was interred was at that time owned by Edmund French. Recently it was resold to William Franklin, a proviso of the transfer being that all previous interments should forever remain undisturbed. Two massive stones, of veinless white marble, mark the head and the foot of the scarcely perceptible mound. They are low and unpretentious. The larger is about two feet in height; the smaller is proportionally less tall. Erected but a short time ago, it is said that President Cleveland ordered them that he might mark the last earthly resting-place of his great-grandfather. The inscription reads:

Rev. Aaron Clevelandson ofRev. Aaron ClevelandBorn in Haddam Feb'y 3. 1744Died in New Haven Sept. 21. 1815

A much loved, and respected, and stainless name is the inheritance that this man has left to his descendants.

THE SOLDIERS' DAY AT SHILOH

The wives and little ones at home who knelt one Sabbath morn,And prayed for God to save our land, with battles rent and torn,How little knew the quick reply, while yet they bent the knee,In Shiloh's fierce and stubborn strife beside the Tennessee!Oh, may they never cease to pray for our dear nation's good.Till wrong no more shall lift a hand to claim the price of blood!For heavy was the debt we paid in noble blood and true,When Slavery cast the gage of war between the gray and blue.Bright burst the dawn o'er Shiloh's field, as o'er the northland homes;As o'er the worshippers that rose to seek their shining domes;And gentle morn, that whispered low and woke the sleepers there,Had almost led the soldier back the Sabbath joys to share,When, lo! a murmur through the trees above the breezes came,And shook the forest in our front with thunder-sound and flame!Now all the dreams of peace and home in quick surprise dispelled;Adown the line and far away the clamor rose and swelled!Defenceless on a field of war – 'tis terrible in thought!Then how the holy morn was changed for those who blindly fought!At breakfast fire and forming line, their life-blood stained the green;Before them flashed a fiery storm; behind, the river's sheen!The army smitten in its camps, though flinching, rallied soon,And steady rose the battle's roar on that red field ere noon,While, mindful of their sad neglect, up came our generals then —Alas! they could not form in rank the dead and dying men!Against a crushing battle-tide right well we fought our ground;Full oft the foe that smote our ranks the soldiers' welcome found.That day the swaying underbrush a reaper, all unseen,Smote with the battle's deadly breath as with a sickle keen;The scorner of the widow's wail, the orphans' sore lament,There gathered treasure in his grasp, from hut and mansion sent.With deadly volleys crashing near, the cannons roll afar,That Sabbath closed on Shiloh's field, a bloody scene of war.Ere long the thrilling scenes will fade, the veterans will depart;But ere we leave the land; my child, write this upon thy heart:No soaring genius labored there to guide the stubborn fight —That was the common soldier's day from morning dawn till night;His stinging volleys checked the foe and laid their leader cold,As ever near with gleaming front the wave of battle rolled.Until the western sun was low and succor reached the field,Madly they pressed the volunteers, Columbia's pride and shield.The trump of fame has sounded long for those who led us then,And echoes still where poets sing the praise of mighty men.But where the commoner is found beneath his household tree,The soldier's heavy tramp is heard, the bayonet's gleam we see!Ah! never more in knightly ranks will nations put their trust,And soon the fabled hero's sword will gather mould and rust:As war disclosed the true defence in man's unarmored breast,So has it shown a nation's strength above the dazzling crest.The stars of union raise aloft that once on Shiloh led;Give justice to that rank and file, the living and the dead!And when ye see that flag on high, remember how they faredWho sprang to meet a cruel strife, surprised and unprepared:O children, often when I see our standard quick unfurled,Unconsciously my steps are braced to meet those volleys hurled!Still burdened with the memories of sad and glorious fight,The morning breaks among the tents, by the river falls the night.Remember, 'twas the Sabbath day – the holy, blessed timeWhen neighbors crowd the roadside walks, and bells do sweetly chime —Your fathers thronged the gates of death in Shiloh's bloody fray,Beside the rolling Tennessee: – call that the soldier's day!And oh, for our dear country pray, that all her laws be good,That wrong no more shall lift a hand to claim the price of blood!For heavy was the debt we paid, in noble blood and true,When Slavery cast the gage of war between the gray and blue.Joel Smith.

CHRISTMAS IN EGYPT

"Christmas comes but once a year,And when it comes it brings good cheer."

Or it ought to. But when a Christian finds himself, on that most sacred of all the Christian holidays, in a Moslem country, say in Egypt, the procuring of the wherewithal to make the prescribed good cheer becomes a matter of no small difficulty.

If the Christian be an English one, the difficulties are apt to be increased by the fact that an Englishman is nothing if not conservative.

To the average Englishman the correct celebration of Christmas means attendance at divine service, perhaps!– the regulation Christmas dinner, certainly.

Christmas means a crisp, cold day, the home bright with glowing fires – a yule-log, maybe – and flashing with the brilliant green of ivy and the crimson of holly-berries; a dinner of roast-beef and plum-pudding; and, to wind up with, a bowl of steaming wassail and a kiss under the mistletoe.

When an Englishman finds himself in a country where he can sit in the open air, under a blazing sun, on Christmas Day, and where neither roast-beef nor plum-pudding has any place in the domestic economy, and where the "wassail" is always drunk iced, and called by another name, and where mistletoe does not grow, the possibility presents itself that he would be obliged to accommodate himself to the situation and do without these particular features.

Not at all!

He immediately sets to work to obtain them, crying aloud, meantime, against the barbarity of a land that does not offer, at this particular season, the things that are peculiar to his own tight little island.

To the casual observer this may seem a light task that he has set himself. But it is by no means so. On every hand he is met by an almost impenetrable wall of difficulties.

The fire he cannot have, for the very simple reason that there is no chimney in the house.

The beef he can get by sending for it to England, where it has been purchased from either Northern Europe or America. But where is the great fire before which it ought to be roasted, by the aid of a "jack," and with frequent bastings at the hands of a comfortable, rosy-cheeked, red-armed woman cook, in "Merry England"?

Here, in Egypt, the only fire to be procured will be a tiny one of charcoal, one of a dozen, but each separate, like the squares on a chess-board, and not much larger. And the cook will, in all likelihood, be a wizened, yellow little man, smelling of "arrack," and much given to peculation.

He may succeed in procuring his Christmas pudding, if he, early in November, orders the ingredients for it from England, through his English grocer, and if the ladies of his household agree to compound it.

Then the dreadful question presents itself, how is it to be cooked? A Christmas pudding of fair proportions needs to be boiled from four to six hours, and during those hours it wants to be kept steadily and continuously boiling, or it becomes what the English cook calls "sad." And so do its consumers.

Now a charcoal fire is a good deal like Miss Juliet's description of lightning, "it doth cease to be, ere one can say it lightens." And no power on earth less than a file of the Khedive's soldiers would keep an Egyptian cook in his kitchen, feeding a fire, four or five hours.

Aside from the fact that he hates and despises, as a good Mussulman should, his Christian employer, and regards with horror and disgust the pudding around which cluster the hopes of this Christian family, he has a great number of little habits and customs that demand his frequent absence from the scene of his distinguished labors.

He has a "call" to the little shed at the corner of the street where "arrack" is illicitly sold by a cyclopean Arab. No sooner is this accomplished, and he slinks back to his kitchen, furtively watching the windows and wiping his treacherous mouth with the back of his dirty yellow hand, than he feels himself obliged to again rush out and indulge in a war of words with the old man who has brought the daily supply of water to the household.

This is a very dirty old man, bare as to his legs and feet, and without any toes to speak of. He is clothed in a goat-skin, as is also the water, for he carries that blessed commodity on his back, in a goat-skin that is distended like an over-fed beast, with its legs "foreshortened" and all in the air, like a "shipwrecked tea-table."

The greatly overtasked cook has scarcely had time to recover from this sally, when he feels himself called upon to again issue forth and attack the donkey-boy, a small and inoffensive child who brings him vegetables, which the patient little donkey carries in two panniers slung over his back.

After invoking upon the head of this child a string of polyglot curses, one of which is that his progeny, to the sixth generation, maybe born with their faces upside-down, he again retreats to his kitchen, gives the pudding a vicious punch and the fire a morsel of charcoal.

Soon he must go and squat in the sand at the back of the house, safe from all fear of observation, and play a game of dominoes with "Nicolo," the cook of the neighboring house.

Then he must smoke two or three cigarettes, which he deftly rolls with his dirty yellow fingers.

Is it surprising that after these manifold exertions his exhausted nature demands repose? He stretches himself in the warm white sand, and, indifferent to the sun and oblivious of the fleas, he falls into a sweet sleep.

For the pudding? Let us draw the mantle of silence over that heavy, stately ruin. When he wakes to find the ruin he has wrought, he will weep and wail and beat his breast, and call upon Allah to witness that never – not for an instant – has he left the kitchen.

And in his heart he will secretly rejoice.

The Moslem servant always secretly rejoices in the annoyances and discomfitures of his Christian employer. If that Christian employer is met by annoyance and discomfiture while attempting to keep up any custom associated with his religion, or to celebrate any Christian holiday, the Moslem servant is especially and particularly pleased.

And in this he obeys one of the laws of Mohammed, which forbids friendship or good-feeling between Moslems and either Christians or Jews.

The Moslems have a great number of holidays in their calendar, but these are nearly all fast-days.

The Arabs are a temperate, abstemious race, a race of light feeders; naturally, they have a contempt for gluttony. In the matter of food, an Egyptian would feast luxuriously for a week on the amount that an American or Englishman would consume at a single meal.

Thus the very abundance of the preparations which the Englishman makes for his Christmas dinner repels good Mussulmen.

Then, they do not celebrate the birthday of their own prophet; and the celebration, in their own country, of the day which to us is invested with so much love and reverence they consider an insult to them and to their faith, and they submit to it with an ill grace and in sullen silence.

All these things make a combination of opposing forces against which the Englishman, endeavoring to enjoy his Christmas in Egypt, struggles in vain.

So he eats his roast-beef, which is braized, and his boiled plum-pudding, which is fried; takes his kiss – if he has any sense – without mistletoe; winds up an unsatisfactory day by drinking, instead of the time-honored "wassail," a jorum of champagne punch, cooled with artificial ice; and goes grumbling to bed, with the conviction that a Christmas in Egypt is a very "brummagem" sort of Christmas.

Rose Eytinge.

STATISTICS OF IDLENESS

Reliable statistics relative to the number of men out of employment and seeking work have always been difficult to obtain. In June, 1879, the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor investigated the matter in that State, reporting "28,508 as the aggregate number of skilled and unskilled laborers, male and female, seeking and in want of work in Massachusetts." In November of the same year the number was reported as being 23,000. This was a little less than five per cent of the total number of skilled and unskilled laborers in the State at that time. Upon that basis, says the report, "there would be 460,000 unemployed able-bodied men and women in the United States, ordinarily having work, now out of employment." On the basis of the June report, there would have been 570,000 unemployed in the United States. This was the only statistical report upon the subject made prior to 1885; and coming, as it does, from Colonel Carroll D. Wright, through the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, it possesses as much authority as statistical statements ever do.

While taking the census of Massachusetts for 1885, Colonel Wright thoroughly canvassed the subject of the unemployed in that State, the result being published in the Report of the Bureau of Labor for 1887. This report, though much delayed, is a remarkable one, not only for its completeness and the masterly analysis of the figures it contains, but also for its minute divisions of the classes of unemployed; giving the age, sex, nativity, and trade of each person unemployed, and how many months in the year such enforced idleness is suffered.

Out of a total of 816,470 persons employed in gainful occupations in Massachusetts in 1885, 241,589, or 29.59 per cent, were unemployed. The duration of the idleness varied greatly in different industries and localities, but the average loss of time was 4.11 months per year for each of the unemployed. Over 29 per cent of Massachusetts protected workingmen idle for over four months of each year! The idleness of 241,589 persons for 4.11 months is equivalent to 82.744 persons unemployed for an entire year. This is nearly 11 per cent of the entire population employed in gainful pursuits. Idleness, that is enforced idleness, increased 110 per cent in Massachusetts between 1879 and 1885; and this average time unemployed is net average, as the 10,758 persons, whose loss of time at their "principal occupation" or trade was partially made up by securing "other occupations" and "odd jobs," are separately tabulated, and the amount of work at "other occupations" is deducted from their loss of time at "principal occupation," thus giving a net average of the time wholly unoccupied at any sort of labor. It is interesting to note the industries in which the greatest percentage of this enforced idleness occurs. I take the following from an elaborate table given in Mr. Wright's report. In the boot and shoe industry of Massachusetts, 48,105 male adults are supposed to be employed. Of these 15,731 get steady work, while 32,374, or 67.3 per cent, are unemployed four months in the year. The same industry employs 14,420 females, of whom 10,250, or 71 per cent, are idle four months, an average of 2.62 months idleness for all persons employed in that industry. The cotton-mill operatives number 58,383 of whom 26,642 are males, 31,741 females. Of all these operatives, 24,250, or 41.5 per cent, are idle more than one third of the time.

In the manufacturing of agricultural implements, a protected industry that, being carried on in factories, needs not stop for weather, 69.1 per cent of all persons employed are idle 4.12 months per year; whereas, of farm laborers, whose occupation is unprotected, and whose employment is wholly at the mercy of seasons, only 30.19 are idle during any part of the year, while 69.81 per cent find steady employment the year around.

Carpenters, also, whose labor is unprotected and dependent largely upon season, report 52.82 per cent steadily employed, with 47.18 per cent idle three months in the year.

Compositors and printers number 4541 in the State, only 450, or 9.91 per cent, of whom are idle during any part of the year, while 90.09 per cent find steady work. On the other hand, 51.31 per cent of the stove-makers are idle 4.09 months per year, and 66.4 per cent of rolling-mill employés are idle 4.04 months. Stone-workers and brick-masons fare better, though unprotected, since but 46 per cent of these are idle during any part of the year; while the tack-makers, taking both sexes, have 70 per cent of idleness for one-third of the time, only 30 per cent finding steady work. The silk industry employs 1975 persons – 556 males and 1419 females; of these, 979, or 49.5 per cent, are idle nearly four months each year.

The woollen industries of Massachusetts employ 22,726 operatives of both sexes. Of these, 9463, or 42 per cent, are idle four months in the year.