Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 2.djvu/166

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154

��MILITARY AFFAIRS IN HOPKINTON.

��ease with which he would get at any de- sired subject. Judging from their ten- dencies, libraries will grow into a com- mon form ; classifications will be used which will save time and convey infor- mation; co-operative systems of cata- loguing will reduce the drudgery of the librarian; divisions into special and pro- fessional libraries will enable him to know books better than by their titles; and indexes will make available all ar- ticles of the day in periodicals.

There is no slight question as to what books shall be chai acteristic of the libra- ry of the future. Shall we attempt to cre- ate a higher standard of taste? or shall we feed the mind in its crude form? Shall we draw the line between the false and the true at fiction? or shall we make that the nucleus supplying it to the full de- mand and believing with Mr. Poole that people read books better than them- selves? Shall we agree with George Ticknor that a second-class book that will command one reader is better than a first-class one which will remain upon the shelf? Shall we attempt to save ev- ery printed scrap? or shall we with the

��founder of the Rush library leave out all newspapers, calling them " teachers of disjointed thinking ?" Settle these and many other questions as we may, the li- brary of the future is to go hand in hand with the school and to that alone will its educational influence be secondary. The librarian must in the best sense of the word, be a teacher as well as a guide-board and a cyclopaedia in quota- tion marks. He is to furnish facts for the business man and artisan, help the scholar to the best thoughts, have at his command that which will give to every mind amusement and sympathy, and be the means of making many a never to be dissolved friendship between the living men of the dead past and the living men of the living present. Holmes has spok- en of libraries as chemical laboratories where all the best thoughts of men have been crystalized. But the large library of which we are speaking, will be a uni- versity on the most liberal plan, where the doors will never be closed and the sessions never end; where every man will elect for himself and the course cover the entire domain of knowledge.

��MILITARY AFFAIRS IN HOPEINTON.

��BY C. C. LORD.

��The early settlers in Hopkinton soon experienced the effects of war. It was in consequence of the French War that the Indians broke into Woodwell's gar- rison, surprised six persons in their beds and hurried them away into captivity, on the 22d of April, 1746. From the same cause Abraham Kimball and Sam- uel Putney were captured by the In- dians on the 13th of April, 1758. From the second volume of the report of. the Adjutant General of New Hamp- shire for 1866, we take the following item :

"On the 27th* of April [1746] an attack

  • The reader will notice a slight dis-

crepency between the statements of this quotation and our foregoing account; it is a result of a difference between au- thorites.

��was made at Hopkinton. by the Indians, and eight persons taken captive. Capt. John Goffe was ordered to pursue the enemy, and in six days he was at Pen- acook (now Concord), with a company of fifty men in pursuit of them. .While at Penacook, news came of an attack upon Contoocook (now Boscawen). Capt. Goffe immediately went in pursuit of the enemy, but without success. This scout ended about the 20th of May. Only a few of the men composing it are known, as the roll is lost, and those only from the fact that Capt. Goffe persuaded them to re-enlist for another scout often days."

These re-enlisted men were John Goffe, Nathaniel Smith, William Walk- er, Philip Kimball, James Stickney. Ste-

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