Produced by Edmund Dejowski
Edited by his Daughter Mary Dewey
IT is about twenty-five years since, at my earnest desire, my fatherbegan to write some of the memories of his own life, of the friends whomhe loved, and of the noteworthy people he had known; and it is bythe help of these autobiographical papers, and of selections from hisletters, that I am enabled to attempt a memoir of him. I should like toremind the elder generation and inform the younger of some things in thelife of a man who was once a foremost figure in the world from whichhe had been so long withdrawn that his death was hardly felt beyond thecircle of his personal friends. It was like the fall of an aged tree inthe vast forests of his native hills, when the deep thunder of the crashis heard afar, and a new opening is made towards heaven for those whostand near, but when to the general eye there is no change in the richwoodland that clothes the mountain side.
But forty years ago, when his church in New York was crowded morning andevening, and [8] eager multitudes hung upon his lips for the very breadof life, and when he entered also with spirit and power into the social,philanthropic, and artistic life of that great city; or nearly sixtyyears ago, when he carried to the beautiful town and exquisite societyof New Bedford an influx of spiritual life and a depth of religiousthought which worked like new yeast in the well-prepared Quakermind,—then, had he been taken away, men would have felt that a tower ofstrength had fallen, and those especially, who in his parish visits hadfelt the sustaining comfort of his singular tenderness and sympathy inaffliction, and of his counsel in distress, would have mourned for himnot only as for a brother, but also a chief. Now, almost all of his owngeneration have passed away. Here and there one remains, to listen withinterest to a fresh account of persons and things once familiar; whilethe story will find its chief audience among those who remember Mr.Dewey [FN My father always preferred this simple title to the moreformal "Dr." and in his own family and among his most intimate friendshe was Mr. Dewey to the last. He was, of course, gratified by thecomplimentary intention of Harvard University in bestowing the degreeof D.D. upon him in 1839, but he never felt that his acquisitions inlearning entitled him to it.] as among the lights of their own youth.Those also who love the study of [9] human nature may follow withpleasure the development of a New England boy, with a character of greatstrength, simplicity, reverence, and honesty, with scanty opportunitiesfor culture, and heavily handicapped in his earlier running by bothpoverty and Calvinism, but possessed from the first by the love of truthand knowledge, and by a generous sympathy which made him long to impartwhatever treasures he obtained. To trace the growth of such a life toa high point of usefulness and power, to see it unspoiled by honor andadmiration, and to watch its retirement, under the pressure of nervousdisease, from active service, while never losing its concern for thepublic good, its quickness of personal sympathy, nor its interest in thesolution of the mightiest problems of humanity, cannot be an altogetherunprofitable use of time to the reader, while to the writer it is a workof consecration. He who was at once like a son and brother to my father,he who should have crowned a forty-years' friendship by the fulfilmentof this pious task, and who would have done it with a stronger anda steadier hand than mine, BELLOWS, was called first from that "faircompanionship," while still in the unbroken exercise of the variedand rema