[p. 9] children, and shook hands with the general.
Mrs. Rowe also says her mother's father was captain of the Medford company that assisted in receiving the visitors.
Six years after his visit to America Lafayette was introduced to Maria (Gowen) Brooks, a pleasing young widow, then in Europe with her brother.
She was Medford born, and has given fame to her native place as a poetess of imagination and brilliancy, known as Maria del Occidente.
Like a gallant Frenchman, Lafayette was susceptible to feminine charms, and so pleased was he with Mrs. Brooks that he was eager to befriend her, and learning that she desired for her son an appointment to a United States military academy, he procured it for her, a favor which she had been unable to attain.
To come in touch with a great event of the past, with but one person between it and ourselves as a connecting link, gives greater significance to that event, and a more vivid realization of it than if we read an account from the printed page.
So receptions to Lafayette, and the honors bestowed upon him in this vicinity, seem real to me for the following reasons.
My maternal grandmother, at the impressionable age of eighteen, from an excellent position on Park street, witnessed the ovation given America's great guest by the city of Boston.
She was never tired of relating the story to me, nor of repeating those lines composed by Charles Sprague for the occasion, and inscribed on an arch thrown across Washington street— Welcome, Lafayette.
The fathers in glory shall sleep,
That gathered with thee in the fight;
But the sons will eternally keep
The tablet of gratitude bright.
We bow not the neck; we bend not the knee;
But our hearts, Lafayette, we surrender to thee.
The account of the dinner at Dudley Hall's was told by one whose father and aunt were in the employ of the Hall family at that time (see Register, July, 1912, page 65).
The fathers in glory shall sleep,
That gathered with thee in the fight;
But the sons will eternally keep
The tablet of gratitude bright.
We bow not the neck; we bend not the knee;
But our hearts, Lafayette, we surrender to thee.
The account of the dinner at Dudley Hall's was told by one whose father and aunt were in the employ of the Hall family at that time (see Register, July, 1912, page 65).
