Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D.

Autobiography and Letters of
Orville Dewey,
by Orville
Dewey

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Title: Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. Edited by his
Daughter
Author: Orville Dewey
Editor: Mary Dewey
Release Date: July 31, 2006 [EBook #18956]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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OF ORVILLE DEWEY ***

Produced by Edmund Dejowski

AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND LETTERS OF ORVILLE DEWEY, D.D.
Edited by his Daughter Mary Dewey

INTRODUCTORY.
IT is about twenty-five years since, at my earnest desire, my father
began to write some of the memories of his own life, of the friends
whom he loved, and of the noteworthy people he had known; and it is
by the help of these autobiographical papers, and of selections from his
letters, that I am enabled to attempt a memoir of him. I should like to
remind the elder generation and inform the younger of some things in
the life of a man who was once a foremost figure in the world from
which he had been so long withdrawn that his death was hardly felt
beyond the circle of his personal friends. It was like the fall of an aged
tree in the vast forests of his native hills, when the deep thunder of the
crash is heard afar, and a new opening is made towards heaven for
those who stand near, but when to the general eye there is no change in
the rich woodland that clothes the mountain side.
But forty years ago, when his church in New York was crowded
morning and evening, and [8] eager multitudes hung upon his lips for
the very bread of life, and when he entered also with spirit and power
into the social, philanthropic, and artistic life of that great city; or
nearly sixty years ago, when he carried to the beautiful town and
exquisite society of New Bedford an influx of spiritual life and a depth
of religious thought which worked like new yeast in the well-prepared
Quaker mind,--then, had he been taken away, men would have felt that
a tower of strength had fallen, and those especially, who in his parish
visits had felt the sustaining comfort of his singular tenderness and
sympathy in affliction, and of his counsel in distress, would have
mourned for him not only as for a brother, but also a chief. Now,
almost all of his own generation have passed away. Here and there one
remains, to listen with interest to a fresh account of persons and things
once familiar; while the story will find its chief audience among those

who remember Mr. Dewey [FN My father always preferred this simple
title to the more formal "Dr." and in his own family and among his
most intimate friends he was Mr. Dewey to the last. He was, of course,
gratified by the complimentary intention of Harvard University in
bestowing the degree of D.D. upon him in 1839, but he never felt that
his acquisitions in learning entitled him to it.] as among the lights of
their own youth. Those also who love the study of [9] human nature
may follow with pleasure the development of a New England boy, with
a character of great strength, simplicity, reverence, and honesty, with
scanty opportunities for culture, and heavily handicapped in his earlier
running by both poverty and Calvinism, but possessed from the first by
the love of truth and knowledge, and by a generous sympathy which
made him long to impart whatever treasures he obtained. To trace the
growth of such a life to a high point of usefulness and power, to see it
unspoiled by honor and admiration, and to watch its retirement, under
the pressure of nervous disease, from active service, while never losing
its concern for the public good, its quickness of personal sympathy, nor
its interest in the solution of the mightiest problems of humanity,
cannot be an altogether unprofitable use of time to the reader, while to
the writer it is a work of 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 fulfilment of this pious task, and who would have
done it with a stronger and a steadier hand than mine, BELLOWS, was
called first from that "fair companionship," while still in the unbroken
exercise of the varied and remarkable powers which made his life one
of such [10] large use, blessing, and