times, but the effect of life upon the individual man has been singularly civilizing, mild and kindly.

This is why he has given away a good deal of his substance and why the public has but recently heard of much of this almost quaint benevolence.

He derives from his parents the elements of piety and gratitude.

He has been a great many years coming to moderate affluence, but every step of the route seems to have been progressive, so that he has reached maturity like a tree, in the temperate regions, which may last a very long time by the slow and solid conditions of its growth.

EARLY STORY.

Levi Parsons Morton was born May 16th, 1824, at Shoreham, Vermont.

The time was the conclusion of Monroe's administration and the impending succession of John Quincy Adams. The place was nearly opposite Fort Ticonderoga and within sight of the commonwealth of New York.

At Shoreham, the senior Morton was a Congregational minister and the earlier portion of Mr. Morton's life was spent in the family of a minister kept more or less moving from fold to fold.

The sons of clergymen have played no unim

portant part in our public history, and the public would be surprised to see a full list of the sons of ministers who have been in great station.

The wife of Washington was of a ministerial family, and the wife of President John Adams was a New England clergyman's daughter-generally reckoned the ablest woman ever in the executive family; at least her son, also, became President of his country.

Aaron Burr was the son and the grandson of ministers, and if he has not been the purest, he has probably been the most romantic of American politicians. The State of New York has been moulded more in accordance with his views of popular politics than those of any other man, and he was a long time ahead of all other New York leaders in foreseeing the power of the populace and of the large cities.

The influences around President Buchanan were clerical and his brother became a minister.

Both Arthur and Cleveland were the sons of clergymen, and Garfield was, himself, a preacher.

The New England Congregational pastor has always been very much of a public man, in that the Puritan settlement was rather in the manner of congregations, and the pastor was, by virtue of his office, in the earlier days, a magistrate; as in the English church of to-day.

The Congregational worship of New England was almost identical with that sect to which

Cromwell belonged, where every church was a republic of the elect of God.

Hence the sons of New England pastors abound in our commercial marts. Morse was one of

these the inventor of the telegraph; the Field family, conspicuous at the bar and on the Exchange, are the sons of a New England preacher. The Potters and the Browns draw their strain from Dr. Nott. The first name to the Declaration of Independence-written large, "so that John Bull could read it"-was that of the son and the grandson of New England clergymen, who preached about the town called Lexington.

The father of Mr. Morton was the Rev. Daniel Oliver Morton, and his mother was Lucretia Parsons, who was both the daughter and the granddaughter of clergymen.

Mr. Morton's family settled in Middleborough, Mass., as early as 1623, at the very foundation of the Bay Colony.

A clear strain of public spirit and moral duty has come down this family line during many American generations, and yet such are the cramped worldly circumstances of the Protestant ministry that Mr. Morton's father probably never drew a larger salary in his life than $600 per

annum.

He greatly desired to educate all his children, but his means were not sufficient to put Mr. Morton through college, though he succeeded in

giving that opportunity to his elder son, Daniel Oliver Morton, who graduated at Middlebury College, Vermont, and, going West, became a prominent citizen of Toledo, Ohio, and of Cleveland, and was United States District Attorney for Ohio under President Franklin Pierce.

It will be perceived that these two only brothers were not of the same political view.

There was a difference of nine years between them.

When the Lecompton Constitution, however, was forced by Buchanan's administration upon the people of Kansas, Mr. Morton's brother in- dignantly repudiated the performance and turned his sympathies toward securing a free empire for free men.

Posterity of this brother-who died in 1859is notably married, and it is significant that the Morton connection, in general, is given to honorable rather than affluent marriages.

Mr. Morton had four sisters, the first of whom, Lucretia, married the Rev. Mr. Safford, who established a seminary at Evansville, Indiana, and was a Presbyterian pastor in Kentucky; this sister died last year in Philadelphia.

The next sister, Electa Morton, married Mr. Joseph Minot, of Brockport, N. Y.

The third sister, Mary, married William F. Grinnell, at present United States consul at Bradford, England.

The fourth sister, Martha, married Rev. Alenson Hartpence, who was settled for some time in Tennessee, and subsequently removed to Philadelphia; their daughter is the widow of Mr. Mahlon Sands, who was recently killed while riding in Hyde Park, London.

MR. MORTON'S PROGRESS.

When Mr. Morton was about eight years of age his parents removed to Springfield, Vermont, which is near the Connecticut river, and there the family remained four or five years, within sight of the clear, green waters of the Connecticut and its dewy valley, and of the outposts of the Green Mountains.

The next removal was made to Winchendon, Mass., which is on the borders of New Hampshire. The younger son, being now an active, sprightly boy, soon left his home and entered a country store at Enfield, Mass., which is at no great distance from Northampton and within sight of Mount Holyoke.

He there remained two years, with Mr. Ezra Carey, and in the course of time his father was stationed at Bristol, N. H.

Levi Morton then taught a district school, in one of the neighboring towns, and finally entered a general store at Concord, N. H., in 1841, when he was aged seventeen.

His father had partially prepared him to enter Middlebury College, but did not feel able to sus