WEBSTER LETTER PROPHESIED TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH
A tribute to Daniel Webster as a far-seeing prophet of the telephone and telegraph, as a farmer of ability and a loyal son of New Hampshire, is contained in a letter written by Judge Edgar Aldrich '91, of Littleton, of the United States district court, to former Gov. John H. Bartlett '94.
The letter is in connection with the proposal to name the "river road" after the famous statesman and orator, and is in reply to one of tribute to Webster from former Governor Bartlett. Judge Aldrich's letter contains many reminiscences of the leading national figure of pre-Civil War days, with interesting extracts from Webster's' letters. Judge Aldrich's letter reads in part as follows:
My Dear Governor Bartlett: Your letter received. It rings true to the New Hampshire spirit.
You speak of Daniel Webster as a New Hampshire asset, and you say: "I heartily favor naming the central state highway of New Hampshire after the greatest American defender of the best constitution ever written, —a son of the best state in the union.—Daniel Webster." I like that sentiment.
Did you hear, or have you seen the notable address of Senator Lodge, delivered at Plymouth Rock, December 21, 1920?
In it he paid a high tribute to Daniel Webster, who delivered the oration there one hundred years before. Senator Lodge, in referring to Daniel Webster said:
"I shall call up to remembrance only one past celebration, and only one speaker, (Daniel Webster) who made that particular day famous, and who was at once interpreter of the past, and prophet of the future."
Among other things Senator Lodge said:
"The people who gathered here to listen to the orator of the day did not look upon the Webster so familiar to us, who looms so large during the succeeding thirty years of the country's history. In 1820 Webster was only thirty-eight years old. He stood before his audience in the very prime of his early manhood. The imposing presence, the massive head, the wonderful voice, the dark, deep-set eyes burning, as Carlyle said, with a light like dull anthracite furnaces, the mouth 'accurately closed,' were then as they were to the end arresting, and held the attention of all who looked and listened."
And further continuing, he said:
"One cannot help wondering how many then present even dimly guessed what he-who spoke to them was to be and to what heights he was destined to climb. In 1820 his public life had consisted of four years' service as member of Congress from New Hampshire, Service distinguished but not extraordinary. He had removed to Boston and there begun his practice at the bar of Massachusetts. His second period in the House, his long years in the Senate, his service as secretary of state were all in the future. Ten years were to pass before he reached his.zenith in the reply to Hayne—one of those rare speeches which has become an inseparable part of our history.
"The speech to the jury in the White murder case was yet to be made, and that which he was to deliver at Plymouth was the first of the occasional addresses which so added to his fame and which generations of schoolboys were fated to recite. In his profession alone had he already given absolute proof of his future eminence. His argument in the Dartmouth College case had put him in the front rank at the American bar, but the world at large probably had little knowledge of the closing sentences of that argument which must have revealed to those who heard him and to the few outsiders of penetrating and critical judgment that a great orator as well as a great lawyer was before them. If the Plymouth audience did not understand, and it was hardly possible that they should, that they were about to hear one of the great orators of all time they must have suspected, when Mr. Webster closed, that they had listened to an unusual man making a speech quite beyond anything- they had ever heard before."
On that occasion Senator Lodge brought out the fact that Daniel Webster at the celebration a hundred years ago, prophesied that there would be exercises there a hundred years from that day, and that there would be greetings, and with dramatic effect quoted from Webster's peroration the words of prophecy— and this was the prophecy: "On the morning of that day, although it will not disturb us in our repose, the voice of acclamation and gratitude commencing on the Rock of Plymouth, shall be transmitted through millions of the sons of the Pilgrims, till it lose itself in the murmurs of the Pacific seas."
According to the Transcript account of this episode, at the point when Senator Lodge had just repeated the peroration from the oration which Webster gave at Plymouth 100 years ago. in which that great statesman had prophesied that the words of the sons of the Pilgrims would be carried even to the waves of the Pacific a telephone bell rang and Senator Lodge announced "The governor of California is calling." The telephone was then passed to Governor Coolidge, who said:
"Hello, Governor Stephens?" Then he waited an instant for a reply and said, "This is Governor Coolidge. * * * Yes, of Massachusetts. * * * I am sitting in the chair of Governor Bradford.
Someone on the California end must have said that he was speaking for Governor Stephens, for Coolidge continued: "I wish you'd say to him that Massachusetts and Plymouth Rock greet California and the Golden Gate. The Sons of the Pilgrims, according to the prophecy send the voice to you that is to be lost in the waves and the roar of the Pacific Ocean." This incident aroused much enthusiasm and there was tremendous applause.
This dramatic incident, and the prophecy, caused a very considerable amount of discussion in the Boston papers and in scientific circles, as to what Webster had in mind when he expressed the idea, that a hundred years from then a voice commencing at Plymouth Rock would be transmitted across the continent and lose itself in the murmurs of the Pacific seas—whether he foresaw, or had in mind the telephone—and even possibly wireless telegraphy?
Strangely in recently glancing through a publication of Webster letters my eye fell upon a letter written by Daniel Webster from his seat in the United States Senate in 1849 to his friend, Mr. Blatchford, of Boston. It was written from Webster's desk when debate was running in the Senate. It was a letter half playful—half serious. He spoke of the weather—the snow—the gloomy day—the ease of verbal greetings, and partings, with men, and with women—and in closing gave another prophecy as to the possibilities of electricity— a prophecy quite significant of the meaning of his Plymouth Rock prophecy twenty-eight or nine years before. These were Webster's words:
"If writing and sending were as ready and easy as talking and shaking hands, these morning salutations of friends, would be equally pleasant on paper. Perhaps electricity will help us to the means of all this yet; so that when you are giving advice or receiving fees, in your office in Hanover street, I may speak to you from on board my boat, at Sunk Rock,' and tell you when I have a bite. Mr. Badger is making a very able speech in reply to Mr. Hale. Yours, D. Webster."
