PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 135 



children at the west, when it was not known but he 

 might make that his future home, he returned to Calais 

 with all the gladness of a boy returning after long 

 absence to his childhood's home. 



When asked by his sister if he was not to live in 

 Minnesota thereafter, he replied: "Emily, I'd rather 

 live in Calais and go up to the cemetery and read the 

 names of my dead friends on their gravestones than to 

 live in Minnesota for all there is out there." Not long 

 before his decease a consensus of the leading citizens of 

 Calais and St. Stephen had been obtained as to whom 

 they regarded the most successful man who had ever done 

 business on the St. Croix and the unanimous opinion 

 was that it was George A. Boardman. He had been 

 happy in his domestic relations ; had been successful in 

 business ; had retired with a competency at a compara- 

 tively early period ; had devoted his life, most rationally, 

 to the pursuit of science ; had won the friendship and 

 confidence of the leading naturalists of the country and 

 had secured the love and respect of his fellow citizens to 

 the extent that he was easily the first citizen of the two 

 cities in which he had spent his entire life. Measured 

 by the standard not alone of dollars or political promi- 

 nence, but of personal enjoyment, the fame that comes 

 of worthy service and the happiness following a well- 

 spent life, Mr. Boardman had lived the simple, successful 

 life and had won the palm of deserved honor at the hands 

 of his peers. 



Because of his Massachusetts ancestry he possessed a 

 large share of the Puritan conscience. If it ruled him 

 to strict life and the performance of rigid duty it was, 

 happily, a duty to which he willingly yielded, day by 



