FoodNet

Historic Paxton, her days and her ways, 1722-1913

1913

Page 53

Presented as published in 1913. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
"Under this stone lies entombed James Campbell's Dust you see Who was as healthy and as strong As many that may be But now by Death whom all devours Is laid upon this cell. With crawling worms and reptiles base He is obliged to dwell You that these lines do look upon May also call to mind That Death will be your certain fate Therefore improve your time." Scarcely more cheerful is the though under which evidently rests an invalid : "Affliction sore she often bore I hope none were in vain" The choicest of all makes vivid the death of David Mitchell in 1786. True, we get a picture 137 of wonderful virtue in the first lines of the epi- taph before we read : "A mortal paralytic stroke Quickly befell the man of work On Sabbath morning going to church Before 'twas night a breathless corpse Ye who do read these lines be wise And watchful still prepared be None knows the hour when they must launch Into a vast eternity." But we must not linger with Derry of the past, when its name is being spread over the world through the medium of one of the boys of Derry w^ho barely eight years ago, in 1905, returned to his native place to make it famous, even to give it his name. What Mr. Milton S. Hershey, though not a Presbyterian, has done for old Derry Church in beautifying its grounds and contributing to its support is a small part of his work for the uplift of this community. He found a lethargic vil- lage ; he has made a live town — so well governed, so up-to-date, so prosperous, that it is known far and wide as a model for other manufactur- ing communities. But it is not of Hershey from the civic and commercial side that we would speak; though even here the strong men of old Derry, with their Scotch-Irish thrift and love of justice, would be most approving, nor even of that w^ork of Mr. Hershey which would rejoice the heart of its first farmer-parson, Mr. Bertram — the model farms, the great dairies or the last experimental farms 138 o m OS O a; s o where he is testing the feasibility of raising a cow on an acre of ground. The preachings of the older Derry are being practiced to-day in Hershey by a practical Chris- tianity, a broad humanitarianism and a true philanthropy that are all too rare in this self- seeking age. Do you say Mr. Hershey is not living old Derry ideals? Back in the ancient burying ground is old Catharine Steel, consort of David Steele, who in her long life of over eighty years raised nineteen orphan children — so her tomb- stone tells us. Far across the valley in the old stone homestead on the Horseshoe Pike, Mr. Hershey is raising forty orphan boys to be useful men and good citizens. Literature would have lost that epigrammatic and disgruntled foundling, Mary Cary, had its author known only the Hershey Industrial School for Orphan Boys. It is not an institution — it is a home. The spirit of the home reigns in the happy faces of the children, who are taken between two and four years of age and kept until eighteen years of age; it is seen in the dainty touches about the two houses ; the pretty bed ap- pointments with gay quilts to suit childish taste, in the ample provision for amusements indoors and out; in the lack of a distinctive uniform, so hateful to a sensitive nature.