The scene of T. S. Arthur’s gloomy sermon is the rural hamlet of Cedarville, where, during ten nights scattered over a decade, an anonymous travelling man observes the cancerous ravages of the saloon on an innocent community. Stopping for the First Night at the Sickle and Sheaf tavern, he is impressed by his neat lodgings and his friendly landlord, Simon Slade. But this seeming idyl is marred by the sight of the drunkard, Joe Morgan, and the furtive nips taken in the bar by Slade’s twelve-year-old son, Frank. At this point, the slides take up the story:
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There is no documentary proof that the Liberty Bell actually rang to announce the Declaration of Independence in July of 1776. But if it did not, it must have seemed strange to the citizens of Philadelphia. The Liberty Bell, like all other town bells, was there for a reason. Bells and bell-ringing were an important part of everyone’s life two centuries ago, indispensable chroniclers of each passing day.
On page 101 of the Oct. ’63 issue of A MERICAN H ERITAGE you characterize as apocryphal the story of Washington praying in the woods at Valley Forge. Please inform me of reading matter that supports the view you present. I am inclined to agree with you, but I’d like to have some basis for asserting it to pupils.
The best summation of the evidence is in George Washington and Religion, by Paul F. Boiler, Jr., (Southern Methodist University Press, 1963) pp. 8–11. Boiler says that the Valley Forge story is “without foundation in fact,” despite its being the favorite, perhaps, of all those who wish to make Washington a pious figure. Its inventor was the same Parson Weems who invented the story of Washington and the cherry tree.
Your handsomely got-up October issue contains at least two articles in which the Republicans, as usual, come off as snobs, tyrants, inept little men. … Why not a nice little article about the character and habits of “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald? Or Tammany Hall? …
We published an article on Boston’s Mayor James Curley (“The Last of the Bosses”) in our June, 1959, issue. One on “Honey Fitz” was in fact scheduled for our last issue, but has been postponed for obvious reasons. A feature on Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall is coming soon.
I am writing to protest the insolence of the author of “Vice vs. Virtue, A Puritan Remembrancer,” in the December, 1963, A MERICAN H ERITAGE . The question is not “… how could … people, … many of them our own forebears, have taken such things so literally and seriously?” The issue is, how could people in only a few decades degenerate to the point of openly ridiculing truth and righteousness? … There are still people in America to whom some things are sacred and honorable.
Mr. Forester replies:
I have said that “Prevost stayed idle in his lines” and I see no reason to modify this statement. A divisional general pushed a reconnaissance across the Saranac, presumably to make certain that the Americans were still in their lines; it cannot have been more than a reconnaissance when the casualty list totalled no more than thirtyseven. The two brigades mentioned must have numbered nearly 4,000 men, and any serious move could only have resulted in a loss ten times as great as was actually experienced.