toric Windsor in 1761. In the Windsor charter Col. Ashley's name was the first of the grantees; he was appointed Moderator, and, as in the charter of several other townships his sons, Oliver and Samuel Jr., were also named among the grantees.

The personal and private work of the Ashleys was, as we have seen, dealings in charters and lands. Their public work was, mainly, in that great world event, the American Revolution. Col. Ashley was a member of the several Provincial Congresses convened at Exeter in 1774 and 1775, later a member of the General Assembly of the State. In May 1775 he was selected one of the nine who constituted the famous Committee of Safety for the Province. In January 1776 he was elected a member of the Council which with the Committee of Safety to a large extent managed the government and affairs of the state during the Revolution. He raised a regiment of which he was commissioned colonel. In March 1779 he was chosen one of the two representatives to the Continental Congress; but for some reason declined to serve; perhaps, like many others disgusted with the inefficiency of that body, he felt that he could be of more service by continuing his work in the state and in the army. On the day of sending in this declination he was appointed one of a committee "to confer with Ira Allen, Esq., agent for the people of the place called Vermont." He was appointed a member of many other important committees by the General Assembly.

At the head of his regiment he marched to the defence of Ticonderoga in May 1777; he served as Brigade Major on the staff of General Stark, and continued in the service under General Gates until the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga. A letter from General Gates, no very

certain compliment, commends his work in that campaign. He probably did as much if not more than any other subordinate officer in the prompt mustering of the very efficient New Hampshire troops during the Revolution. His eldest son, Oliver, represented "Clairmont" in the Fourth Provincial Congress. On July 1st 1775, Oliver, with Jonathan Childs of Lyme, was appointed to confer with the Congress in Massachusetts, and the Assembly in Rhode Island and Connecticut, respecting "the situation. of Ticonderaga, Crown Point & Canada & the Frontiers of New York & New Hampr,.... & relative to any plan of operations in those parts." From the official report that he traveled 976 miles a long distance on horseback, in the discharge of his duties between May 17th and November 16th, 1775 we gather that Captain Ashley was fairly active at that time. He was captain of the Claremont company which marched from "Number Four" on August 17, 1777, to fight at the battle of Bennington, his brother Samuel Jr., was a lieutenant in the company. This necessarily brief relation does scant justice to the efforts of the Ashleys in the settlement of the town and in the Revolution; but it suffices, in some degree, to show why the locality might have been called by their

D

ISHES and dusting have a philosophic effect upon us. We always recite poetry, preferably psalms, over a dishpan, and in the process of getting the GRANITE MONTHLY moved into its new quarters in the Patriot Building, dusting and cataloguing cuts and books and putting old files to rights, we have been evolving a philosophy of moving which in our estimation will compare favorably with Thomas Carlyle's philosophy of clothes.

We haven't worked out details yet. We've got only as far as the main thesis which is that living to-day is like living in the midst of a perpetual furniture moving performance. One is neither here nor there. Hence confusion which would be resolved to simplicity could one move the clock backwards or forwards a few years.

For instance, there may be some satisfaction in living when the U. S. Army Air Service gets the upper hand of man's old enemy weather. In those days Dartmouth, desiring fair weather for carnival day, won't have to go to the expense of weather insurance. They'll just send up an air-sweep to electrocute the clouds and clear up the blue.

Assuredly the times to come have some advantages.

On the whole, however, our vote is in favor of moving back the clock to the Good Old Days.

And strangely enough we believe a secret ballot of the Legislature would reveal a similiar lack of the progressive spirit. Not a few of the law-makers sigh we have heard them for the good old days when voting was simplified by the presence of the high oracle just across the street, when a man's first duty was to his political bossand there was no second duty.

Only the other day a member of the present legislature told us that his first taste of politics came when, as a boy of fourteen, his father, a political leader in his little village, sent him through the autumn woods one night to carry a message to a farmer, who with his two grown sons lived in a lonely little cabin. The message was

"Father says tell you he'll give you sixty dollars for your three cows this year."

The old farmer smiled shrewdly and stroked his chin.

"You tell your Dad I've been offered seventy-five dollars for them cows this year."

And the boy-who was a politician even in those days-swallowed hard and said:

"In that case, Father said I was to offer you seventy-five dollars for your three cows."

"You tell your father that he shall have the cows!"

And with no mention of politics, no bothersome arguments about issues or personalities, the political deal was closed and the boy went home to report a successful campaign to his father.

The teller of the story is an earnest and upright statesman. He would scorn to traffic in votes to-day. But as he tells the story of that moonlight ride years ago his eyes light up with gleam of regretful reminiscence and longing for the Good Old Days.

Romance and picturesqueness belong back there. Not so very far back some of it. The other evening at the Governor's Ball we saw the Governor's staff standing behind the receiving line in drab khaki uniforms. Governor's staffs used to be resplendent in gold lace. The war changed that.

And they tell us that time was when Governors reviewed troops from the back of a prancing white horse. That custom, we understand, was abandoned because of the death of the only horse in the state with a spirited but gentle But it was prance. a good custom while it lasted.

But

All these pictures appeal to us. the one around which our memory— vicarious memory, that is, collected from the tales of those who have really known the past-plays most fondly is one of the early days of the GRANITE MONTHLY when the editor used to solicit subscriptions through the countryside. In an old buggy, behind a leisurely old horse, he made his way along the sunny country roads, stopping at the farms. along the way. Sometimes his subscribers gave him eggs and potatoes to pay for the subscriptions. Sometimes there were home-made toys for the little daughter who sat beside him in the old buggy. And as he went along from house to house, he built up friendships with the people to whom, each month, he sent out his magazine.

That's what we envy him. We'd give a good deal to be able to drop in to see you for a social call this afternoon and let you tell us just what you'd like to see done with the GRANITE MONTH

Announcements

The time limit on the prize contest for high-school boys and girls, announced in the October issue of the GRANITE MONTHLY, has been extended to May 1. This will give our contestants a little more time to polish off their work and some good essays should result.

We have been fortunate in securing as judges for this contest three persons who are well qualified for the work from both a literary and an educational standpoint. Mr. Harlan Pearson, former editor of the GRANITE MONTHLY, certainly needs no introduction to readers of this magazine. Mrs. Alice S. Harriman of Laconia and Mr. Walter S. May are both members of the State Board of Education. Mr. May is Deputy Commissioner. Mrs. Harriman has been active in many forms of public service, including woman's club work.

We are very glad to announce that Miss Vivian Savacool, who is the author of "Twentieth Century Manchester" in this issue, has consented to undertake the management of our book review department.

There is a rapidly growing opinion on the part of those who have studied New England's farm situation that if we are to continue to maintain our agricultural positon we must do it not by attempting to turn out great quantities of material as the great western states do, but rather by putting our energies toward quality production. An example of what is already being done along these lines here in New Hampshire is afforded by our dairy industry. The series of articles on "Leading Dairy Herds" which will begin begin in the March GRANITE MONTHLY will tell the stories of some of the important ventures which have succeeded. No herd will be included in this series which is not being conducted on a business basis.

I

N the spring of 1919, a young man just returned from France looked out across the mud of Camp Eustis and tried to map out the new future ahead of him. With the idealism born of his war experience, he demanded of that future something more than a livelihood. He wanted "a chance to discover and build under the new social and economic conditions." He found this chance in enlistment as a private in the industrial army of America's basic industry, steel: he went to work on an open hearth furnace near Pittsburg.

As he worked he set down, simply, directly, without any attempt to exploit a theory, without retouching the lines of his pictures, a simple chronicle of every day-"of sizzling nights; of bosses, friendly and unfriendly; of hot back-walls and a good firsthelper; of fighting twenty-four-hour turns; of interesting days as hot-blast man; of dreaded five-o'clock risings, and quiet satisfying suppers; of what men thought, and didn't think."

It is safe to say that "Steel" will appeal to you. It is not so easy, however, to tell just what you will find in it. Some, perhaps, will find chiefly the charm of letters home from a New Hampshire boy, a vivid description of a unique and colorful experience, through which a familiar personality is seen and enjoyed.

Others will find an epic of a great great industry-there are passages of sheer dramatic power equalling, if not surpassing, anything which Hergesheimer has written. "An express train shot into view in the black valleyI thought of the steel in the locomotive, and thought it back quickly into sheets, bars, blooms, back then into the monumental ingots as they stood, fiery from the open-hearth pouring,

against a night sky. Then the glow left, and went out of my thinking. Each ingot became a number of wheelbarrow loads of mud, pushed over a rough floor, Fred's judgment of the carbon content, and his watching through furnace peepholes. The ladlefuls ceased as steel, becoming thirty-minutes' sledging through stoppage for four men, the weight of manganese in my shovel, and the clatter of the pieces that hit the rail, sparks on my neck burning through a blue. handkerchief, and the cup of tea I had with Jock, cooked over hot slag at 4:00 a. m.

Still others will see in the book an arraignment of an industrial systeman arraignment poignantly summed up in the words of the Italian thirdhelper-"To hell with the money, no can live."

But perhaps those to whom the book will mean the most are those who read it simply as a tale of men working together, and who find its primary value in its human quality, its quick sense of the significance of small events. One incident is enough to illustrate the point and to give the keynote of the book:

As third-helper on the open hearth, Mr. Walker's job was to carry out the orders of the Anglo Serbian second-helper who, in moments of stress, delivered these orders in a mingled stream of profanity, Serbian, and broken English. Clinging to a few familiar words, the third-helper executed the instructions, as he understood them, only to find, time after time, that he had missed the point entirely.

"It suddenly occurred to me one day, after some one had bawled me out picturesquely for not knowing where something was that I had never

heard of, that this was what every immigrant Hunky endured; it was a matter of language largely, of understanding, of knowing the names of things, the uses of things, the language of the boss. Here was this Serbian second-helper bossing his thirdhelper largely in an unknown tongue, and the latter getting the full emotional experience of the immigrant. I thought of Bill, the pit boss, telling a Hunky to do a clean-up job for him; and when the Hunky said, 'What?' he turned to me and said: 'Lord! but these Hunkies are dumb.'

"Most of the false starts, waste motion, misunderstandings, fights, burnings, accidents, nerve-wrack, and desperation of soul would fall away if there were understanding-a common language, of mind as well as tongue."

"Steel" has a special interest for New Hampshire people because Mr. Walker is a son of Dr. Charles R. Walker, who was a well-known and well-loved physician in Concord. Mr. Walker is a Yale graduate and is at present associated with the Atlantic Monthly.