my absence for 30 days during which time the command will devolve on Col Smith of the 16th Illinois Regiment. Very respectfully Your obedient Servant. Saml R. Curtis Col 2d Iowa Vols CHARLES ELLIOTT PERKINS. BY HON. THOMAS HEDGE. We cannot understand a great life without some knowledge of that life's beginning and of the conditions that shaped its course, or comprehend a great character unless we discover the source of its elements, the influences that drew out and developed them. No life of our time is better worth reviewing and the character it developed better worth studying than the life and character of Charles Elliott Perkins. He was born November 24, 1840, in "the little Third Street House" in Cincinnati, the first child of James Handasyd Perkins and Sarah Elliott Perkins, but the home that he best remembered was at East Walnut Hills, then some three miles from the city, where his father bought a few acres of land and built a small house in the summer of 1845, "a very pretty place with a beautiful forest directly back of us," and to this home was given the quaint name "The Owl's Nest." "From his father's and mother's side he came of pure New England stock and from both he inherited the best qualities of that fine race. Their ideality alike with their practical sense, their rigid conscientiousness and their saving grace of humor, their love of liberty and their profound respect for law, all these were his by right of inheritance. He was tuned therefore to the finest chords that vibrate through our common life. He was of the stuff from which the ideal American manhood is fashioned." These words spoken of his younger brother by an old familiar friend admit of no qualification when applied to him. The scenes of his childhood, his father's and mother's training, the influence of their daily lives, the whole atmosphere of home, were exactly fitted to nurture and strengthen these native qualities. I shall seem to those who knew Mr. Perkins to anticipate some things to be said of him in here presenting his father as he appeared to his neighbors in those days: Looking to the educated men of the country to spread abroad intelligence, respect for what is good and reverence for what is venerable, by professional labor and through schools, lectures and the press, he exerted his own influence in all these ways; so quietly, however, were his public offices performed that the amount of his exertions might have been overlooked except by careful observers. He never did anything for effect and therefore, though always busy, attracted but little attention from the busy world. He was eminently one of those-the truly great-who are felt in a thousand minute and deep relations to society, exerting the most invigorating influence without being seen or wishing to be seen. Further, his labors were remarkable for punctuality and completeness. He never left unfinished or to be done by others the work that properly belonged to himself. Mr. William R. Channing presents this picture of him: Day by day as I met my friend in society and public meetings, observed him in his relations to others and talked with them about him, it became evident how high was the position which quite unawares he really occupied among his fellow citizens. Nothing could have been more unpretentious than his manner as he exchanged offhand greetings as he swept along the street, or entered with gracious demeanor the crowded circles of society, or the quiet houses of friends; wherever he might be he was always himself, quite unique in his singular blending of dignity and diffidenceof firm self-reliance and habitually modest estimates-of essential respect for all, and utter disregard of conventional distinctionsof decision and reverence. A spirit of earnest intelligence, of downright good sense, of interest in great aims and indifference to trifles seemed to spread out from him and clothe him with an air of quiet power. He took naturally and as of right the attitude of brotherly kindness towards high and low, learned and ignorant, men and women, old and young, and met all on the broad table-land of manly truth. This unaffected integrity and characteristic single mindedness it plainly was that gave him such a hold on others. Always he seemed equally self-possessed and present-minded. He used unconsciously a rare skill in clear statements. Though his life ended when he was not yet forty years old, he had accomplished much. Those who had delighted to honor his presence held in grateful honor the memory of the scholar, the historian of the west, the earnest and convincing speaker, the minister of grace and help to troubled men. Their mother did not suffer the shock and grief of their father's death to destroy, or too deeply or too long to darken the home life of her five boys. "To the life of that home how exquisite a charm she gave and how its memory lingers with those who shared it. Sacred to us are those memories and the very walls where that beautiful womanly presence, so wholesome, strong and sweet, once bade us welcome." Mrs. Sarah Elliott Perkins made real to those who knew her Wordsworth's vision of the "perfect woman nobly planned" and better still that ideal of the ages, who stretcheth out her hand to the poor, in whose tongue is the law of kindness, who looketh well to the ways of her household, and whose children rise up and call her blessed. The death of his father brought to the fine mind and true heart of Charles Perkins the consciousness of his special duty as henceforth the mainstay of his mother and as his younger brothers' keeper, developed his considerateness and regard for the rights of others, his faculty of helpfulness, quickened his sense of responsibility, enlarged his capacity to receive from the daily life and seasonable precept of that mother the training essential for right action and useful living; thus his real early education was at home though custom compels us to say that he was "educated" in the common schools of Cincinnati and one winter attended Mr. Bradford's school in Boston. At the age of seventeen he obtained employment as clerk in a wholesale foreign fruit store in Cincinnati, trudging forth and back from his work each day to save car fare, for their worldly condition offered no chance to indolence to dull the spur in the blood" of this young thoroughbred. While thus at work in the summer of 1859 he received this letter: Burlington, Iowa, June 28, 1859. Mr. Charles E. Perkins, Cincinnati, Ohio. My Dear Perkins: see. I have just received your note of the 24th and, filled with deep pity, hasten to enlighten you. Not know what "B. & M." means! To ye railwaye mind it typifies the Burlington and Missouri railroad-running due west from Burlington, bound for the Big Muddy -now taking breath for awhile on the banks of the Des Moines between Burlington and Ottumwa-in summer and autumn it is seventy-five miles of as pretty rail and ties as you would wish to You will have the title of cashier and would have a credit at the bank against which you would check for all bills as presented, duly entering the same in your books and filing them as vouchers. Not a complicated duty and not likely to overtask you. It would leave you time to study the details of the freight and passenger business-and on our short road this would naturally be more open to you than a long road, where there is subdivision of labor and more red tape. I think, myself, the place is quite a good one. Perhaps the best introduction to railway life is to commence on the construction-as rodman or engineer. But a position where you are forced to observe the cost of each and every article used and the cost of each branch of the service, can not fail, I think, to be of service to you. There will be some drudgery, of course, but there will be some pleasant work to relieve it. At the beginning of every month you will be several days on the line paying off the agents and workmen in the fine weather this is very pleasant. The good city of Burlington, as a sojourning place, is not to be sneezed at-and the surrounding country is charming. We can boast of but two packing houses and at first you will naturally feel sad for the pigs you left behind you. Carper and I will do our best to cheer youwe are at this moment in treaty for a small house in the suburbs with trees, one and a half acres of ground and a plank walk to approach it. If successful, we can offer you as pleasant a nest as you would find even in Cincinnati or Cambridge. We have some good books and every few months a box from the east brings more. My office contains boxing gloves and foils and masks-and though I can not say "my bark is on the shore," there is a friend of mine who gladly lends me his for a little piece of silver. We will make even your small pay of thirty dollars a month leave a margin for extras. CHARLES RUSSELL LOWELL. And on the fourth of August he crossed the Mississippi, and took up his abode and began his new course in the town that was to be his home for his remaining forty-eight years. |