GEORGE TIFFANY DAY.

I.

YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD.

1822-1847.

N the eighth of December, 1822, a new

ON

horn child was welcomed to a home of piety and love, in the town of Concord, now Day, Saratoga Co., N. Y.

He was the fifth son and tenth child of Benjamin and Cynthia (Kent) Day. Other Georges had entered life with greater earthly advantages, certainly, to help answer the question, “What manner of

child shall this be?" He owned no illustrious ancestry, nor family name honored even in decay. No delicate training, nor luxurious shielding from rough, unkindly influences awaited his steps. But

intellectual power and royal gifts refuse to enter no cottage, however humble, nor avoid the dwellings of poverty.

At three years of age, he showed unusual aptitude of mind in learning and reciting stanzas of poetry, and some entire Psalms. When three and a half years old, he removed with his parents to Hope, in the town of Scituate, R. I., where he spent nearly two years. At five years of age, George was sent with the older children, to work in the cotton mill, his little help in contributing to family support being deemed necessary.

For several years his time was divided between the mill and the school. Often, however, he worked until nine o'clock in the morning, returning to the mill at the close of school in the afternoon. The days of labor at that period were strangely long and wearisome; beginning, the year round, with the earliest light, and closing at eight o'clock at night, in the fall and winter, and at sunset in spring and summer. It was not uncommon to find children of that tender age, even more closely confined to the mill than he.

Removing from Hope to Hebronville, Mass., and thence, after two years, to Kent, now Lebanon, Mass., the family remained together until October, 1834, just preceding George's twelfth birthday,

when his mother, for whom he possessed a most ardent affection, died. Thirteen of her fourteen children survived her. His father died about eight years after.

The mother keeps the home for the children's returning footsteps and love, and when she passes. away, the wide world claims them. With three other members of the family, George left home for work in the mill at Lonsdale, R. I., soon after his mother's death. Here he remained, with the exception of a few months, until he was eighteen years of age. While at Kent he attended school for a short time only. After removing to Lonsdale, his school days were interrupted altogether.

His parents were members of the Congregational church in Hebronville. Amid poverty and the cares of so large a household, they conscientiously carried forward the religious training of their children. They insisted, with the strictness of an earlier time, upon the observance of religious duties. The catechism and Scriptures furnished tasks to be learned on Sunday. One of the reminiscences of his boyhood, is of a Sunday when he was left at home by his father, with the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm to be committed to memory and recited before sunset. He regularly attended Sunday school at Hebronville, previous to his mother's

death. Before his sixth birthday he was sprinkled by Rev. Thomas Williams, pastor of the Congregational church`at H.

His mature estimate of the value and wisdom of this form of early discipline, finds this expression: There is certainly much to commend in the earnestness with which our New England ancestry sought to indoctrinate the youth of their charge. They believed the sentiments taught in the catechism as fundamental in practical religion, as is education in a popular government. To reject the Westminster Confession of Faith,' seemed to them equivalent to a rejection of God's plan of saving the soul. Their faith was practical, and their conviction expressed itself in action. They felt that their duty was done only when they had securely deposited within the store - house of their children's intellects, that whole digest of theology; and then they waited for religion to spring up from the soil which their training had prepared.

It

Nor was their labor in vain. It may sometimes have cramped the intellect by repressing its inquiries, and curtailing its rational freedom. may sometimes have increased the tendency to fling the charge of heresy at every dissatisfied inquirer, and begotten such a tendency where it was not before. The doctrines of divine appointment and

providence, may have sometimes weakened the feeling of individual obligation, and induced a few daring minds, unable to reconcile the statements with philosophy or consciousness, to plunge boldly into skepticism. After all, that early training operated powerfully as a conservative force in the moral life of that early time; and aided in nurturing and developing elements of character that have done much to make whatever is valuable in American mind and American institutions. It kept alive a solemn reverence for God, for truth, for sacred things, for duty, for moral heroism, for the civil magistracy, for age and for order.”*

The religious training was answered by this large number of children, without exception, by lives of virtue and positions of respectability.

Martin Cheney, pastor of the F. Baptist church at Olneyville, in labors most abundant and self-denying, unable to confine his work to his immediate field, answered frequent and earnest calls for his labors in neighboring towns and villages. Many were thus brought under the influence of the Gospel who had never else heard it. He was accustomed to visit, among these outposts of labor, the vil lage of Lonsdale, at the invitation of some families who had removed thither from Olneyville. Indica

*Life of Martin Cheney, p. 15.