DEAR MRS. MANN, I
send herewith a copy of the letter alluded to in my note to W. W. & Co. The
original I have bound with other valuable letters and autographs, and I cannot
detach it without injury.
Your husband's
memory is very dear to me. I was very early impressed by his character, and you
know how durable early impressions are. While the admonitions of the other
"committee men”—many of them able men—have faded away, the counsels he
gave nearly forty years ago in the old schoolhouse are still alive with me. And
then it was easy and natural for me, little boy as I was, to see whom my father
esteemed above all other men, although Mr. Mann was then but a young lawyer,
without any official position save that of "school-committee man." I
remember well when he was first elected to the Legislature. About that time,
the Tremont House was opened, and was the wonder of the people; and it was among
the small-talk of our neighborhood, including several young ladies, that Horace
Mann boarded there. My vivid recollection of this illustrates the adage,
"Little pitchers have great ears." I think it was after I was a few
years older that he astonished and captivated me by a most eloquent (volunteer)
defence of a prisoner in court charged with theft. These words ring in my ears
while I write: “I consider it as much my duty to defend this man as it would be
to reach out my arm to a man floating down a stream and in danger of
drowning." The prisoner was acquitted; the jury not even leaving their
seats. Even the unrelenting prosecuting attorney confessed to the effect of Mr.
Mann's argument.
Pardon me; but it is
a delight to me thus to dwell on the recollections of my boyhood, and of so
great and good a man.
SOURCE: Mary Tyler
Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 343-4
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