with priests and potentates, with principalities and
powers. Nothing could be less consonant with a just estimate of the
strong traits of this lineage, than which neither Hebrew, nor Grecian,
nor Roman nurture has wrought for its heroes either a firmer fibre or a
nobler virtue, than to ascribe its chief power to enthusiasm or
fanaticism. Plain, sober, practical men and women as they were, there
was no hard detail of every-day life that they were not equal to, no
patient and cheerless sacrifice they could not endure, no vicissitude of
adverse or prosperous fortune which they could not meet with unchecked
serenity. If it be enthusiasm that in them the fear of God had cast out
the fear of man, or fanaticism that they placed "things that are
spiritually discerned" above the vain shows of the world of sense, in so
far they were enthusiasts and fanatics. In every stern conflict, in
every vast labor, in every intellectual and moral development of which
this country has been the scene, without fainting or weariness they have
borne their part, and in the conclusive triumph of the principles of the
Puritans and their policies over all discordant, all opposing elements,
which enter into the wide comprehension of American nationality, theirs
be the praise which belongs to such well-doing.

The son of a farmer--a man of substance, and of credit with his
neighbors, and not less with the people of his State--young Chase drew
from his boyhood the vigor of body and of mind which rural life and
labors are well calculated to nourish. Several of his father's brothers
were graduates of this college, and reached high positions in Church and
State. An unpropitious turn of the commercial affairs of the country
nipped, with its frost, the growing prosperity of his father, whose
death, soon following, left him, in tender years, and as one of a
numerous family, to the sole care of his mother. With most scanty means,
her thrift and energy sufficed to save her children from ignorance or
declining manners; maintained their self-respect and independence; set
them forth in the world well disciplined, stocked with good principles,
and inspired with proud and honorable purposes. To the praise of this
excellent woman, wherever the name of her great son shall be proclaimed,
this, too, shall be told in remembrance of her: that a Christian's
faith, and a mother's love, as high and pure as ever ennobled the most
famous matrons of history, stamped the charact