THE ANNUAL MEETING, NOVEMBER, 1921 HE ANNUAL MEETING of the Society was held at the Algonquin Club, No. 217 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, on Monday, 21 November, 1921, at half-past six o'clock in the evening, the President, FRED NORRIS ROBINSON, Ph.D., in the chair. The Records of the last Stated Meeting were read and approved. The CORRESPONDING SECRETARY reported that a letter had been received from Mr. WILLIAM BRADFORD HOMER Dowse accepting Resident Membership. Mr. WILBUR CORTEZ ABBOTT of Cambridge was elected a Resident Member. The Annual Report of the Council was read by the Rev. Dr. CHARLES EDWARDS PARK. REPORT OF THE COUNCIL The Society has held five meetings during the year, three in the house of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, to which we again acknowledge with sincere gratitude our indebtedness; one, that of January, in the home of our Registrar, Mr. Alfred Johnson; and that of April, in the home of our Treasurer, Mr. Henry H. Edes. At these meetings a wealth of papers and communications have been presented, all of which will be available to members when the current volume of Transactions is issued, and all of which will make valuable additions to our store of historical knowledge. one, The Society was duly represented at the Annual Conference of Historical Societies held in Washington. An annual report of the Council is perhaps necessarily a rather dry document, which it were well to make as brief as possible. At the same time, there are certain facts pertaining to our activity which ought to be known, not only in the interest of open diplomacy, which seems to be the order of the day, but because they bear directly upon the success of our Society in its more serious undertakings. Assuming a genuine solicitude on your part in the well-being of our Society, your Council ventures to lay these facts before you. The demand for our Publications is increasing. During the past year the number of sales has been of unprecedented size. Several of these sales have been of full sets; and among our new customers, four have asked to have their names entered as permanent subscribers to all future publications. These are the Bigelow Free Library, the Henry E. Huntington Library, Leland Stanford Jr. University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Quite apart from this increased demand, is the purchase by the New England Society in the city of New York of a large number of copies of the Plymouth Church Records. Your Council feels that this fact indicates a greater general recognition of the value of the work we are doing, and is fain to share its gratification with you. Those of us who have occasion to refer to our Publications feel grievously handicapped by the lack of a general index. You will be glad to know that a consolidated index covering the first twenty-five volumes is in process of compilation, and has been well advanced during the year. But in this work, and in fact in all our activities of like nature, we feel the pinch of poverty. Our resources have been recently increased by two bequests, that of Mr. Wheelwright of $20,000, and that of Mr. Leverett of $30,000. Whatever confidence we may have felt by reason of these bequests has however been dissipated by an over-balancing increase in the cost of making a book, and the wolf is again at the door leaner and hungrier than ever. We have found it necessary to discontinue temporarily further work on certain volumes of collections, like the Harvard College Records and the Instructions to the Royal Governors of the Province. It is altogether too bad that the hope of seeing these valuable documents in print should be again deferred, but unless more gifts or bequests are forthcoming we can do no other. We feel, moreover, that Fate has been amazingly kind to us in permitting us to enjoy the invaluable services of our Editor at a salary which, by the wildest flight of imagination, can only be called nominal, and which, even so, is made possible by the generosity of a very few of our members. Your Council feels that it cannot justly withhold these facts from you. The extent of our activity and our usefulness is a matter that lies in your own hands, and must be determined by the degree of your own interest and substantial support. One member during the year has availed himself of the privilege of commuting his annual dues. This may be done by the payment of $100, which is added to our permanent endowment. No further annual dues are required of those who make such a payment. The Editor reports that since the last Annual Meeting, Volume XXI, containing the Transactions for the year 1919, and Volume XXII, containing the first half of the Plymouth Church Records, have been published. Volumes XV and XVI, containing Harvard College Records, are in statu quo, still going through the press. Volume XXIII, containing the second half of the Plymouth Church Records, is in cast proof as regards the text and in galley proof as regards the index, and should be ready for publication before another summer. There seems to be a cabalistic significance attaching to this Volume XXIII which may perhaps explain the evil fortune that has overtaken the Editor's industry at this point. His normal tribulations have been greatly augmented by a printers' strike, which has lasted six months and is not yet wholly settled. In consequence whereof, Volume XXIV, which is the current volume of Transactions, is not half done, and the Editor refuses to predict the date of its appearance. You are asked to possess your souls in sympathy and patience. During the year five gentlemen have been elected to Resident Membership: ALFRED LAWRENCE AIKEN, FREDERICK LAWTON, GEORGE HUBBARD BLAKESLEE, JOHN ENDICOTT PEABODY, WILLIAM BRADFORD HOMER DOWSE. And during the year the Society has suffered a heavy loss through the deaths of four Resident Members and one Corresponding Member: BARRETT WENDELL, Overseer of Harvard College, and Professor of English, Emeritus. His sound scholarship, enlivened by an unusual natural discernment, a thoroughgoing originality of thought and expression, an uncompromising courage, and a faculty for committing judicious indiscretions, made him for thirty-five years one of the most picturesque and at the same time most illuminating teachers in America. He was a pronounced, fearless, and lovable personality. CHARLES PICKERING BOWDITCH, a soldier, a philanthropist, and a thoughtful scholarly gentleman, who, inheriting the obligations that attach to a great family name, fulfilled those obligations in such wise as to leave that name enriched by an added lustre. In all his varied and useful activities he was animated by a quick sense of personal responsibility for the welfare of the community of which he was an honored and a distinguished member. JOHN ENDICOTT PEABODY, whose death occurring but five months after his election to this Society prevented his attendance at a single meeting of the Society, and who therefore stands to us for a promise unfulfilled. Descended from our oldest families, educated in England, he impressed all who knew him by the vigor of his nature, by his excessive vitality and love of life. He was a trained and discriminating critic of art, a passionate lover of the great outdoors, frank and hearty and generous. His purposes were broken off by a death which, at any age, would have been untimely. LINDSAY SWIFT, editor and publicist, for forty-three years identified with the Boston Public Library. In him were preserved the best traditions of the journalist-fidelity to fact, unbiased judgment, breadth of sympathy, and industrious scholarship. The apparent contradictions in his nature vanished when one understood his aversion to any form of partisanship. He was a conservative in that he hated radicalism as a school of thought. He was a radical in that he scorned the fetters of class conservatism. He was a competent individualist, a free lance abundantly able to take care of himself. He worked in a serene seclusion, and the fruits of his labors are of lasting value. JAMES PHINNEY BAXTER, historian and public servant, poet and philanthropist, six times Mayor of Portland, president of the Maine Historical Society and of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. His early success in business was but the opportunity for his truer and larger life—a life of literary and historical achievements of lasting value, of wise and disinterested public service, and of far-sighted philanthropies. His long span of ninety years, beginning in humble things and ending in universal honor, respect, and affection, presents a stirring picture of the best kind of success. |