vidual
having the care and oversight of children, could be so thoughtless and
inconsiderate, or allow a personal or private reason so to influence
him, as to assume for the child any name that would be liable to cause
it future shame or sorrow. Too much care cannot be taken in this regard,
and it is a duty owing to the child that its rights in this respect
shall be strictly guarded.

It is the object of this paper simply to call attention to a few of the
more prominent points suggested by this subject in order that it may be
examined and discussed, and, if it may be, more judicious and wiser
practices introduced, that nature, art, and taste may combine to produce
a system of names that shall be at the same time, convenient, useful and
beautiful, and that shall carry no burden with them.

* * * * *

JOHN PRESCOTT, THE FOUNDER OF LANCASTER.

1603 TO 1682.

By HON. HENRY S. NOURSE.

The facts that have come down to us whereupon to build a biography of
John Prescott are scanty indeed, but enough to prove that he was that
rare type of man, the ideal pioneer. Not one of those famous
frontiersmen, whose figures stand out so prominently in early American
history, was better equipped with the manly qualities that win hero
worship in a new country, than was the father of the Nashaway
Plantation. Had Prescott like Daniel Boone been fortunate in the favor
of contemporary historians, to perpetuate anecdotes of his daily prowess
and fertility of resource, or had he had grateful successors withal to
keep his memory green, his name and romantic adventures would in like
manner adorn Colonial annals. Persecuted for his honest opinions, he
went out into the wilderness with his family to found a home, and for
forty years thought, fought and wrought to make that home the centre of
a prosperous community. Loaded from his first step with discouragements,
that soon appalled every other of the original co-partners in the
purchase of Nashaway from Showanon, Prescott alone, _tenax propositi_,
held to his purpose, and death found him at his post. His grave is in
the old "burial field" at Lancaster, yet not ten citizens can point it
out. Over it stands a rude fragment from some ledge of slate rock,
faintly incised with characters which few eyes can trace:

JOHN PRESCOTT DESASED

No date! no comment! That is his only memorial stone; his only epitaph
in the town of which, for its first forty years, he was th