The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5,
February, 1885, by Various

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Title: Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885
A Massachusetts Magazine

Author: Various

Release Date: November 23, 2004 [EBook #14132]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: W'm Gaston.]

THE

BAY STATE MONTHLY.

_A Massachusetts Magazine_.

VOL. II.

FEBRUARY, 1885.

No. 5.

* * * * *

WILLIAM GASTON.

By ARTHUR P. DODGE.

Victor Hugo has written: "The historian of morals and ideas has a
mission no less austere than that of the historian of events. The latter
has the surface of civilization, the struggles of the crowns, the births
of princes, the marriages of Kings, the battles, the assemblies, the
great public men, the revolutions in the sunlight, all exterior; the
other historian has the interior, the foundation, the people who work,
who suffer and who wait ... Have these historians of hearts and souls
lesser duties than the historian of exterior facts?"

There is much unwritten history of the Bay State: of the exterior, much
is recorded; of the interior, far less. Both are valuable to posterity.
It is believed that succeeding ages will hold of far greater value, and
the youth of our day be benefitted more by the study of the underlying
principles and causes of those events which are given a conspicuous
place in history, rather than by the mere record of the surface facts.

It is profitable to study the habits and methods of individuals who
stand out in bold relief in history. To derive the greatest interest and
value from such lives it is well to follow them from early childhood.
Indeed it is profitable to trace back the ancestry and lineage from
which the man has descended, to study the characteristics peculiar to
each generation, and to note the result of racial mixtures tending to
the typical and representative American of to-day.

Many prominent men received th