5388 
and multiplied to a very considerable 
extent is satisfactory evidence that they 
are capable of enduring our rigorous 
climate. The committee on public 
squares of the city government of Bos- 
ton have just made arrangements to 
Ste nt Pea Mtl Tip mare OO ROS a leo 
NE ‘ef our earliest recollections 
conneeted with the City of Broth- 
erly Love is\that of a visit made in 
school-days to\Penn’s famous Treaty 
Elm, in the old\ship-building district 
of Shakamaxon. “History had excited 
our youthful enthusiasm and curiosity 
sufficiently to induce‘ws to walk from 
one end of the city to the other to view 
with our mortal eyes the ground where- 
on the old English Quakér had con- 
summated that rather sharp\ financial 
operation with the Indians, oe 
of which there was ceded to him the ter- 
ritory now known as Pennsylvania\and 
Delaware, in return for glass bead 
many colors, cloths of dazzling dye 
hatchets, rings, and blankets. Arriving ’ 
at the spot, we found the elm gone; and” 
in its place stood a four-sided, tapering 
shaft of stone, duly recording, in/not 
choice orthography, the legend 6f the 
Treaty ; but as it looked myth like 
many another stone that we /had seen 
in churchyard rambles, out curiosity 
sought other objects for/its gratifica- 
tion, and the first that presented itself 
was something directly opposite to the 
site of the old tree, and quite within its 
shadow, if that tetrible 3d of March 
wind, Anno Dgmini, 1810, had not 
blown it down, so that the friendly shad- 
ow had ceased to fall for many a year. 
There, in the fierce glare and ‘heat of 
the noonday sun, we saw the figure of 
a young/man chained to a stake, in the 
yard of a not altogether unpretentious 
mansion. A picket fence, three or four 
feet high, enclosed the grounds in 
which this strangely clad and moaning 
A Modern Lettre de Cachet. 
[May, 
introduce them into the Public Garden 
and the Common. Other cities have 
joined in the same movement, and we 
cannot doubt that the house-sparrow 
will erelong become one of our most 
common and familiar favorites. 
arta meters e  metnmma pd Ree Mepeee mee Met Map R MRA TEM Bik, - 
y 
f 
4 
A MODERN LETTRE DE CACHET: f 
figure walked to and fro to the extent 
that his chain would permit, 
We were then scarcely’ higher than 
the fence, and, going cl@se up to it, we 
looked through the pafings at the un- 
easy figure of the prjSoner. Seeing his 
face plainly, we Knew, young as we 
were, that the gbject of our curiosity 
Inquiry elicited that 
yolent or vicious, but sim- 
Further inquiry assured 
was not considered a cruel 
daily thronged that particular street, to 
pose him to the burning rays of the 
sun, to compel him to bear the burden 
f a stake and chain,— not cruel or in- 
hitman, although his family were, if not 
i citizens of good estate. 
What intelligent progress has been 
made im the treatment of the insane 
since that,day, when such an exhibition 
of shameléss wrong was not only toler- 
ated, but unéensured, in the great city 
of Penn! Humanity and a nobler 
civilization have‘erected many and gen- 
erously appointed asylums for them, 
wherein, if they carfnot be restored to 
reason, these poor unfertunates can find 
a shelter from the noonday sun and the 
unpitying stare of the multitude. 
Science and humanity ‘have gone 
hand in hand, taking gigantic\strides in 
this direction; but while they have ad- 
vanced upon their certain way ‘to the 
rescue of those who have “first \died 
atop,” rearing homes, asylums, an hs 
pitals for their use in every State an 
