flass Ft'1 
 
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LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
Joseph S. Johnson 
 
 The first white settler in Loring Park 
 
BRIEF GLIMPSES 
 
 Of Unfamiliar 
 
 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 WHEREIN an Account is given of Interest- 
 ing and Memorable Events which have 
 hapned in this Valley, with Agreeable In- 
 quirendoes into the lives of Certain of its 
 Pioneers to which is Appended a Chapter of 
 More Flippant Sort (Composed for the 
 Lighter-Minded) having to do with the 
 Pleasant Adventures of One Dad Hough- 
 ton, the Whole Most Diverting to the 
 Reader. 
 
 By 
 A. J. RUSSELL OF FOURTH STREET 
 
 15. As for man, his days are as grass j 
 
 1 6 . For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone ; . 
 
 17. But— . . . —Psalm CIII 
 
 MINNEAPOLIS 
 
 PRINTED at the Torch Press, Cedar Rapids, for 
 Leonard H. Wells, Publisher, and are to be sold at 
 Powers' Book Section, L. H. Wells, Manager, 
 Marquette Avenue and Fifth Street, Kitty-Corner- 
 ing from the First and Security National Bank 
 Building. 1919. 
 
y, 
 
 *f 
 
 
 ao-i^^t 
 
TO 
 
 herschell v. jones 
 
 "jonesey" 
 
 booklover and book collector napoleonic 
 
 once old reportorial comrade 
 
 now the boss 
 
 yet full of faith and good works 
 
 solicitous to do good 
 
 and to make this a better world 
 
 to those in his employ 
 
 generous beyond belief 
 
 but whose politics i deplore 
 
 this slight effort 
 
 IS 
 WARMLY DEDICATED 
 
O I am but a symbol and a dream 
 
 Moving along the minds of those who sleep — 
 
 Echo of laughter heard phantastically ! 
 And ever through the misty pageant gleam 
 
 Faces I knew, and tender eyes that keep 
 
 Remembrance of some old reality. 
 
 -Leslie Nelson Jennings 
 
PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 ONE hundred years ago, on August 24, 
 18 19, Fort S netting was established at the 
 confluence of the Mississippi and Minne- 
 sota rivers. With this anniversary in mind, and 
 in order somewhat to relieve a too strained atten- 
 tion upon the one subject of thought and conver- 
 sation of long, dark days, I have for a year or 
 more worked at odd moments of busily occupied 
 weeks, and often during the evening and on quiet 
 Sunday afternoons, on a brief history of the 
 urban valley at the foot of the hills of the Lowry 
 range that crosses the city of Minneapolis about 
 a mile from the Mississippi river. Accuracy and 
 historical research, while they have not been 
 avoided, have not been primarily sought, but the 
 attempt has been made to obtain old time flavors 
 and aspects. The only real fiction is found in 
 Section VI. In the other sections, the curtain of 
 the past has, perhaps, been pulled aside at one of 
 its corners for a moment from a darkening stage 
 for brief glimpses of scenes in the rapidly shifting 
 panorama of the Loring Park valley. 
 
 I have hoped sometimes, and especially since 
 the location of the Public Library building has 
 been decided, that this slight sketch might help to 
 
12 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 persuade the people of this city, through their 
 Park Board, to acquire the necessary two remain- 
 ing blocks between Hennepin and Lyndale Ave- 
 nues, blocks that separate the Parade and Loring 
 Park, and so open up forever this beautiful valley 
 to the public use and enjoyment. It would not 
 be necessary at once to wreck the fine buildings 
 that now occupy these two key blocks, for in 
 twenty-five or in fifty years, before they wear 
 out, they will themselves pay for the entire im- 
 provement. The city has all the time there is 
 and fifty years in the history of this valley is but 
 a moment. 
 
 Then, too, there is another consideration, 
 doubtless a foolish one, in writing such little 
 books as "Fourth Street" and "Loring Park As- 
 pects," and that is the thought, too egotistical 
 perhaps, that a few of the book collectors of 
 1950, of 1995, or even of the year 2019, as happy 
 in their searches of the old bookstores, attics, and 
 old furniture stores of their days as we have been 
 in similar pursuits in ours, may stumble upon a 
 yellow, dusty, but fairly preserved copy of "Lor- 
 ing Park Aspects," and bear it joyfully away to 
 their shelves. 
 
 At such a consummation, my happy and flat- 
 tered ghost would knock three mighty raps on 
 the asphalt of Fourth Street or upon the iron 
 work of the Loring Park bridge and then - off to 
 fresh fields and paradises new. 
 
 A. J. R. 
 December 1, 1918 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I The Last Indian . . . 21 
 
 II The First White Settlers . 38 
 
 III Waste Paper Basket of Memories 68 
 
 IV The Indians . . . . 91 
 V The Lost Brook . . . 114 
 
 VI "Dad Houghton" of the Plaza 132 
 
 VII Camping Out in Heaven . . 162 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Joseph S. Johnson . . . Frontispiece 
 
 Loring Park Region in 1874 . . 20 
 
 Mrs. Joseph S. Johnson ... 25 
 
 Sara Johnson (Mrs. Paul A. Pierce) 31 
 
 Etta and George Jewett ... 49 
 
 Oliver C. Gray 61 
 
 Olive Francis Barton (Mrs. A. B. 
 
 Barton) 65 
 
 C. M. Loring in 1864 ... 71 
 
 Mrs. C. H. Wiltberger ... 77 
 
 The Simple Elegance of the Fifties 81 
 
 The Bridge over the Ravine . . 87 
 
 Indian Trails in Minneapolis . 97 
 The Mystery Pictures . . . 142-143 
 
 Camp Comfort 170 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
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THE LAST INDIAN 
 
 NINETEEN grandmothers, placed 
 agewise, would reach back to a 
 time when Jesus walked the shores of 
 Gennesaret And the life of the near- 
 est of these grandmothers would cover 
 the period when the last Indian was 
 making his home in Loring Park. 
 
 This seemingly irreverent metaphor, 
 though in truth it is not so intended, 
 may, perhaps, need elaboration. Grand- 
 mothers there are undoubtedly, and 
 many of them, who grow and ripen in 
 years and in practical wisdom, even to 
 the great age of one hundred. If we 
 may be permitted to use them -though 
 with every respect and veneration -to 
 measure the stretch of the long thread 
 of time, we may picture to ourselves 
 more vividly this narrow span of years 
 as it reaches from our brief day back to 
 
22 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 the notable events in the history of this 
 planet. 
 
 Letting one venerable ancestress rep- 
 resent a century, we find that it requires 
 but nineteen grandmothers laid in a 
 line, end to end, feet of one to the head 
 of the next, to reach back to the begin- 
 ning of the Christian Era. And if we 
 walk or perhaps saunter, as we purpose 
 doing here, towards the past along this 
 line of grandmothers, we find that we 
 do not pass the first one in the series, 
 before we come upon the last Indian 
 still living in Loring Park, now the 
 very center and heart of Minneapolis. 
 
 It would hardly seem possible on 
 first consideration that one interested 
 in the history and romance of Loring 
 Park at this late day could discover the 
 name of its last Indian. For the ab- 
 origines impressed the pioneers much 
 as did the moss and lichens of the an- 
 cient trees of the Big Woods, and they 
 were considered of no more impor- 
 tance. The poetical or artistic person 
 of those days gave them a glance, and 
 the missionary or the trader tried to 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 23 
 
 interest them in schemes of salvation 
 or of barter, but otherwise they were 
 looked upon as "of no use" and their 
 histories and records, which they car- 
 ried in their minds only, were neg- 
 lected. 
 
 Yet no great difficulty was found in 
 bringing to light again the name of the 
 last Indian who lived in this park, or 
 in discovering the name of the first 
 white settler who "took it up" from the 
 government and placed it under culti- 
 vation for the first time in the history 
 of the world. We are all so young and 
 so new to this section, that there are 
 those still living who have seen and 
 talked with this last Indian as he 
 camped beside the Loring Park lake, 
 and who have not only shaken hands 
 with the first white settler, but have 
 actually had their winter's supplies of 
 potatoes from him. 
 
 We owe to Mr. W. H. Grimshaw 
 our acquaintance with Keg-o-ma-go- 
 shieg whose wigwam was "on the site 
 of Fred Boardman's house" at the cor- 
 ner of Oak Grove and Fifteenth Streets, 
 
24 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 just south of the park. In the fifties 
 Mr. Grimshaw with his parents came 
 to Hennepin Avenue, where the present 
 Plaza Hotel now stands, to make his 
 home. As a boy naturally would, he 
 took notice of the delightful wilderness 
 around him on every side and he re- 
 members vividly the old Indian camp- 
 ing by the lake. He learned from the 
 neighborhood gossip and then from the 
 Indian himself that his name was Keg- 
 o-ma-go-shieg and that his ancestors had 
 lived on this spot for generations. This 
 section of the country west of the Mis- 
 sissippi had come under the control of 
 the Government, and the Indians were 
 gone. But led by his love for the spot 
 of his birth, this last Loring Park In- 
 dian was accustomed to return in the 
 summer time and camp here to renew 
 his acquaintance with this beloved val- 
 ley, to fish in its lakes and to hunt the 
 wild game of its hills and meadows. 
 Tall, athletic, splendid in bearing, car- 
 rying a powerful six-foot bow with its 
 tough deerskin thong, Keg-o-ma-go- 
 shieg was a mighty figure in boyish 
 

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 . 
 
 Mrs. Joseph S. Johnson 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 27 
 
 imaginations. He was asked one day 
 if he could shoot an arrow across the 
 lake. A look of contempt passed over 
 the Indian's face. He drew his arrow 
 to the tip and sent it flying over the 
 water. 
 
 "Look in door of spring-house," he 
 said. 
 
 The boys scurried around to the oth- 
 er side of the lake and found the flint 
 head of the arrow driven to the shoul- 
 der in the door of the spring-house erect- 
 ed on the eastern rim of the lake by the 
 first white settler of Loring Park, Jo- 
 seph S. Johnson, for the purpose of 
 keeping his cream and butter sweet. 
 
 In the absence of greater historical 
 figures or of events of national moment, 
 this last Indian in the park becomes of 
 obvious value to us. Reverently as 
 possible, I have stood near "the site of 
 Fred Boardman's house" -as near as 
 one might today without being looked 
 upon in the light of a possible porch- 
 climber -closed my eyes to the present 
 and reconstructed the ancient forest and 
 the ancestral tepees of the Keg-o-ma- 
 
28 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 go-shieg tribe. No tablet marks the 
 spot and no one cares anything about 
 this important matter. 
 
 Yet there are tablets and monuments 
 in Loring Park that are more bewild- 
 ering to the mind than would be a bit 
 of bronze indicating the site of Keg-o- 
 ma-go-shieg's wigwam. A tablet that 
 has to do with the Battle of Fort Gris- 
 wold has been erected by a local chap- 
 ter of Daughters. I asked Edward A. 
 Bromley, the historian, just where in 
 the park Fort Griswold stood. He in- 
 dicated, rather too cheerfully, I felt, a 
 spot at the corner of Willow and Fif- 
 teenth Streets. I learned later that he 
 was mistaken. Fort Griswold is in 
 Connecticut on the Thames River op- 
 posite New London. Loring Park can 
 make little claim to a share in the glory 
 of the soldiers who fought there. But 
 whatever claim we can make, our bit 
 of bronze does make. 
 
 The statue of Ole Bull looks musi- 
 cally down on Harmon Place from the 
 northern exposure of Loring Park. 
 Just what interest the park has in this 
 
LP RING PARK ASPECTS 29 
 
 great artist, it is difficult to discover. 
 Sitting Bull standing there would be 
 more easily understood. 
 
 Many other places of real historical 
 interest besides Keg-o-ma-go-shieg's 
 wigwam site remain unmarked in this 
 valley. A well traveled Indian trail, 
 narrow and beaten six or eight inches 
 deep by the tread of countless genera- 
 tions of Indian feet, passed through it 
 from the Calhoun Indian village to the 
 Falls. The Park Board has not indi- 
 cated this old trail, but it is possible to 
 re-locate it from Mr. Pond's map of 
 the old site in 1834 and from the mem- 
 ories of Mr. Grimshaw who has walked 
 over it. Today not a trace of it can 
 be found in the soil, though I have 
 sought it carefully and with tears. 
 
 And Mr. Grimshaw tells us also of 
 the vast clouds of passenger pigeons, 
 with their long cuneate tails of twelve 
 tapering feathers, wing coverts with 
 black spots, party-colored tail feathers 
 and iridescent necks. In the migrating 
 season they roosted in millions in the 
 trees back of the park. In the after- 
 
3 o LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 noon a dark cloud would appear on the 
 western horizon like a great storm- 
 cloud coming up. Soon the heavens 
 would be entirely covered by these mi- 
 grating birds so that the day was dark- 
 ened. The air was filled with the noise 
 of their wings like the sound of waters. 
 They would alight on the trees in great 
 swarms, breaking down the branches 
 by their mass and weight. But like the 
 buffalo they have gone forever. 
 
 Then there was the old brook that 
 flowed out of the Loring Park lake, ran 
 across Harmon Place under the auto- 
 mobile buildings and out again and 
 across Hennepin Avenue towards Bas- 
 sett's Creek into which it emptied. 
 This ancient valley I have traced, walk- 
 ing over it with Frank Wiltberger who 
 played on its banks in his youth and I 
 have tried to reconstruct the splendid 
 landscape from his descriptions. 
 
 And through this section, roughly 
 along Hennepin Avenue, ran the old 
 military road from the Falls to Fort 
 Ridgely and beyond. And the old 
 Johnson farm-house stood here. Why 
 does its site remain unmarked? 
 
Sara Johnson (Mrs. Paul A. Pierce) 
 
 Who was born in the Park 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 33 
 
 A cousin of the Johnson children, 
 who often visited them and played 
 about the fields and woods of her 
 uncle's farm, paints this pleasant pic- 
 ture of her memories of the spot as it 
 was then: 
 
 I recall how, with my cousins, I flew over 
 that marsh, long curls streaming in the wind, an 
 Indian following and threatening to cut them 
 off. I see the red tufts of the Indian paint 
 brush that dotted the slopes, and the tawny glory 
 of the wild tiger lilies, swaying on their slender 
 stalks among the tall meadow grasses. Can the 
 stiff battalions of the Park Board's flaming can- 
 nas and gladioli make up for that wild grace? 
 
 Joseph S. Johnson came from Farm- 
 ington, Maine, in 1854. He is de- 
 scribed as "quite a fine looking man, 
 large in size, with benevolent features, 
 wavy, abundant gray hair, rather retir- 
 ing, and a man who made little noise 
 in the world." He was a staunch Dem- 
 ocrat and a famous gardener. His 
 house was on the knoll back of the 
 present structure used by the skaters as 
 a "warming-house." It stood about on 
 the site of the present flag staff. The 
 garden extended down the slope be- 
 
34 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 tween Willow Street and the Play- 
 ground. 
 
 The homes of Mr. Johnson's daugh- 
 ter, Mrs. E. P. Wells, and of two of his 
 grandchildren, Mr. Stuart Wells and 
 Mrs. Charles Ireys on Groveland 
 Avenue, all stand on the land of the old 
 farm. 
 
 The old farm-house, the spring- 
 house, the ancient Indian trail, the 
 brook and its flowery valley, the Mili- 
 tary Road, the Indians -all are gone 
 and the Loring Park region, covered 
 with churches, institutions, schools, li- 
 braries, art galleries, and stately homes, 
 is rapidly becoming a great civic cen- 
 ter. Civic centers, like poets, are born, 
 not made and we ought to recognize 
 them when they appear. After they 
 have once defined themselves, the in- 
 terest in them becomes profound. This 
 urban valley comprising the Parade 
 and Loring Park has become one of the 
 city's great centers, even if it is not the 
 official civic center placed on our as- 
 tonished maps by experts imported 
 from abroad. What another hundred 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 35 
 
 years may do in the way of civic centers 
 we may conjecture if we have "time to 
 let." But today a natural center is de- 
 veloping before our eyes in this old 
 valley upon which we look down from 
 Lowry Hill, at which we wonder and 
 over whose future we dream dreams. 
 As we look down from the heights of 
 Lowry Hill we ask ourselves what has 
 been happening in this splendid spot of 
 ground since the dawn of history and 
 in the long, dark night before that 
 dawn? What was going on here be- 
 fore man trod the globe? What did 
 the place look like in the geological 
 eras when the great river ran down the 
 Bassett's Creek basin, across Bryn 
 Mawr and so on south by way of the 
 Lake of the Isles and Lakes Calhoun 
 and Harriet to its juncture with the 
 Minnesota? What was the appear- 
 ance of this spot and what was happen- 
 ing here when Noah sailed and when 
 Abraham led his flocks in the desert? 
 What was doing in this wild garden of 
 the Lord when Jesus sat alone in Geth- 
 semane, when the barons forced King 
 
36 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 John to sign Magna Carta, when the 
 Pilgrims landed on the rock, when 
 Washington was taking the presidential^ 
 oath in New York, when Fort Snelling 
 was established in 1819, and when the 
 land of this park itself was first "taken 
 up" from the government of the Unit- 
 ed States "in the fifties" and became the 
 farm of Joseph S. Johnson? 
 
 If we are walking through the park 
 every day on the way to work, we ought 
 to know more about it. So enormous- 
 ly interesting a stage setting is it that I 
 have been trying to trace out some of its 
 history. My interest in it all was 
 aroused by an old resident of the valley, 
 one who had in fact first attached him- 
 self to the planet here, when he re- 
 marked casually one day on the street- 
 car as we passed over the spot, "Here 
 is where the old brook used to flow. 
 The bridge across Hennepin Avenue 
 was at this spot." "What brook," I 
 asked, "and what bridge?" Then he 
 told at length of the fine stream that 
 once drained Johnson's Lake, flowing 
 across Harmon Place and Hennepin 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 37 
 
 Avenue and emptying into Bassett's 
 delightful "crick." 
 
 . So I began to ask questions about 
 this Lost Brook, about Johnson's Lake 
 and about the family that gave it its 
 name. Many things are still discover- 
 able, but more are lost. The old swamp 
 and "Barber's pasture" on the western 
 side of Hennepin Avenue are gone. 
 There is nothing here now but the 
 great public field called the Parade 
 and, surrounding it, cathedrals, hotels, 
 the growing Dunwoody Institute, the 
 Armory, and the Northrop School. 
 Mr. Johnson, could he come back and 
 cast an astonished eye on his old farm 
 where he toiled and lived, would never 
 recognize the place under its present 
 aspect. All he would see would be a 
 thousand automobiles trying to run 
 over him, great cathedrals and church- 
 es, libraries and splendid homes. But 
 the old countryside, with the weeds in 
 the corners of the fences, and the mud- 
 dy roads, and the brook sluggishly 
 curling its way from the marshes and 
 ponds that are now Loring Park -they 
 are gone. 
 
II 
 
 THE FIRST WHITE SETTLERS 
 
 ONE hundred and sixty acres of 
 land, comprising a portion of the 
 present Loring Park, was conveyed by 
 patent from the United States to Jo- 
 seph Smith Johnson, who paid $1.25 
 an acre for it, on January 19, 1856. So 
 he became legally the first white set- 
 tler in Loring Park. 
 
 It is of interest to trace the claims 
 that have been made to the ownership 
 of this spot of land. Mr. Johnson ob- 
 tained title from the United States. 
 The United States bought it of France 
 in 1803 m tne Louisiana Purchase. 
 France claimed it from exploration and 
 colonization. Before that time Spain 
 laid claim to the continent, including 
 Loring Park, from Columbus' discov- 
 ery. Before Columbus, were the Ab- 
 orgines. 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 39 
 
 The Indians did not bother them- 
 selves to assert personal ownership to 
 land. They assumed that the Great 
 Spirit intended it for the common good. 
 The United States recognized a certain 
 Indian ownership in the land, however, 
 and went through the forms of purchas- 
 ing it from them. 
 
 Joseph S. Johnson, the first white 
 man to get a clear title to the essential 
 park, was a State of Maine Yankee and 
 a Democrat. As this is my own birth 
 and creed political, I am convinced 
 that when you find this unusual com- 
 bination, you find an astute personage. 
 Mr. Johnson had been "around the 
 Horn" with the gold seekers of Cali- 
 fornia in 1849, but had returned to 
 Maine where he heard from his broth- 
 er-in-law, Samuel A. Jewett, the news 
 of the coming opening of the Indian 
 reservation at Fort Snelling and the 
 Falls of St. Anthony. 
 
 The survey of the original township 
 of Minneapolis, not then so called, was 
 made in 1854, the reservation was re- 
 duced in 1855, and Mr. Jewett selected 
 
4 o LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 the one hundred and sixty acres that 
 was filed on by Mr. Johnson on April 
 21, 1855, an( l t0 which he obtained a 
 patent on January 16, 1856. 
 
 The white men began "jumping 
 claims" on this reservation in 1849 and 
 1850, or were given permission by the 
 officers at the fort to hold down claims 
 for services, but most of the "sooners" 
 were driven off by the soldiers or were 
 bought out by those who were ready 
 and waiting to file when the time came. 
 
 Mr. Johnson's "hundred and sixty" 
 was bounded as follows: The north 
 line ran from the corner of Nicollet 
 Avenue and Grant Street, down Grant 
 Street across the park near the present 
 bridge to the corner of Lyndale Aven- 
 ue and Kenwood Parkway; thence 
 south, to the corner of Lyndale and 
 Franklin Avenues; thence east, to the 
 corner of Franklin and Nicollet Aven- 
 ues; thence north, to the aforesaid cor- 
 ner of Nicollet and Grant Street. 
 
 Thus it comprised the southern por- 
 tion of Loring Park, including the 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 41 
 
 larger lake, and the high ridge to the 
 south of it. 
 
 The north half of the park was 
 granted by patent to Allen Harmon on 
 the same day, January 19, 1856. Mr. 
 Harmon had filed on his claim on May 
 l 7) 1855. His south line was Mr. 
 Johnson's north line, from the corner 
 of Nicollet Avenue and Grant Street 
 to the corner of Lyndale Avenue and 
 Kenwood Boulevard; thence north, to 
 the corner of Chestnut and Lyndale 
 Avenues north; thence east, to a point 
 a short distance from the corner of 
 Ninth Street north and Hawthorn 
 Avenue ; thence south, back to the cor- 
 ner of Nicollet and Grant Street. 
 
 Harmon Place, very properly, was 
 named for Allen Harmon who was a 
 deacon of the Free Will Baptist 
 Church. Mary Place was named for 
 Mary Harmon, his wife. Colonel 
 Stevens in his "Reminiscences" tells us 
 something about Deacon Harmon : 
 
 During the fall of 1851, our side of the river 
 received a valuable addition in the person of 
 
42 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 Allen Harmon, who, with his family, came from 
 Maine. He was a man of great worth, and we 
 were pleased to have him for a neighbor, though 
 not a very near one, as his claim was back some 
 distance from the river. He continually resid- 
 ed on it from a few days after the commanding 
 officer at the fort granted him permission to take 
 it until his death some five years ago (1885). 
 He had laid it all out into building lots. 
 
 Colonel Stevens did not consider 
 Deacon Harmon a very near neighbor, 
 for his home was far back from the 
 river, at the corner of Hennepin Aven- 
 ue and Thirteenth Street. It was far 
 out in the country. Deacon Harmon's 
 eldest daughter, Lucy Harmon, mar- 
 ried C. K. Sherburne, sexton of the 
 Free Will Baptist Church, whose house 
 occupied the lot on Fourth Street 
 where the Phoenix Building and the 
 Metropolitan Theater now stand. He 
 "conducted a grocery store" on Henne- 
 pin Avenue, "between the Pence Opera 
 House and the store occupied by T. K. 
 Gray." 
 
 In picturing this valley as it must 
 have been when it was farming land, 
 we are fortunate in having the mem- 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 43 
 
 ories of some of those who saw it in its 
 original beauty. Henrietta Jewett 
 Keith, daughter of Samuel A. Jewett 
 and a cousin of the Johnson children, 
 tells this fascinating story of these old 
 days: 
 
 In 1854, Samuel A. Jewett, professor of lan- 
 guages in East Tennessee University, came up 
 the Mississippi River for a vacation trip. Like 
 the spies who visited Canaan, he was ravished by 
 the beauty of the new land and straightway flung 
 down syntax for the woodman's ax. Hastily 
 gathering together his Lares and Penates in Ten- 
 nessee, including a wife and several small chil- 
 dren, he brought them up the Mississippi River 
 on the big side-wheel steamboat "Grey Eagle" 
 to St. Paul, thence by a Concord four-horse stage 
 to St. Anthony's Falls, placed them in the only 
 vacant house in the town, while he stayed not to 
 see what would happen, but, with an Indian 
 guide and a belt around his waist full of gold 
 pieces, went off into the wilderness to enter pine 
 lands. 
 
 In this same year, Mr. Jewett preempted from 
 the United States Government at $1.25 an acre, 
 one hundred and sixty acres, holding it for his 
 brother-in-law, Joseph S. Johnson, till he should 
 arrive. Mr. Johnson's land included a portion 
 of our Loring Park of today, with the high bluff 
 south of it, now Oak Grove Street, Clifton, 
 Groveland, and Ridgewood Avenues. The West 
 
44 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 Side was a goodly land and fair, and greatly to 
 be desired. It had not then been released by the 
 Government for entry and the tales told of rival 
 claims, fierce fights for possession of some choice 
 tract, would joy Bret Harte. Although fortu- 
 nate in holding the Johnson claim undisturbed, 
 Mr. Jewett was not so lucky for himself. He 
 came home one night to find his own claim on 
 Bassett's Creek occupied by a squatter in a has- 
 tily built shanty thrown together with a few 
 boards. Rather than fight, he paid the squatter 
 for his "rights" and occupied the shanty himself. 
 In due time the Johnson family arrived and 
 took possession of a little white house whose 
 site is now marked by the flagstaff on the knoll 
 in the park. These were the pioneers of Loring 
 Park, the pushing pawns of its future greatness. 
 The little white house on the hill saw many 
 changes, even in its own lease of life, before it 
 was moved off for the making of our city's 
 beauty spot. When it was built, the nearest 
 neighbor was Deacon Allen Harmon whose claim 
 was due north. There was but a baker's dozen 
 of houses on this side of the river, which had not 
 then been bridged though Captain Tapper's 
 ferry-boat was running. There was no Minne- 
 apolis, only broad, rolling prairies, and oak open- 
 ings. But they had wide vision, these pioneers, 
 and Hope, that Circe of adventurers, singing her 
 siren song, came with them, and Expectation 
 stood on tiptoe, lifting confident eyes to the 
 future. 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 45 
 
 It seems a wonderful leap from the few log 
 cabins or claim shanties of rough boards to the 
 magnificent buildings, the costly churches, the 
 elegant and luxurious homes of this city of half 
 a million people, the more wonderful that it has 
 happened in the lifetime of the children of that 
 day. It is like Aladdin's lamp. But even then, 
 those brave pioneer spirits dreamed that dream 
 and saw, across the hazel brush pastures as in a 
 beautiful mirage, the domes and spires of today. 
 
 The pioneers were practical folk and had little 
 time or money to spend on frills. For example, 
 the Johnson kitchen, instead of the front door, 
 faced the lake. And no wonder, for the water 
 supply in winter was obtained by melting great 
 blocks of ice on the back of the kitchen stove, 
 and in summer it was handier to the spring- 
 house for the frequent trips after the milk and 
 butter kept there, as well as the cool drinking 
 water. Wonderful living springs feeding the 
 little lake were among the desirable features in 
 the selection of the homestead. So the view was 
 from the kitchen, the most important part of the 
 house then. 
 
 Those New England women were past grand- 
 masters of cooking and the good things that is- 
 sued from that kitchen were contrived in spite 
 of many missing links in supplies. Fresh meat 
 was unknown except when some stray hunter 
 brought in venison or bear steak. We "put 
 down" our own barrel of pork in the cellar for 
 meat. And the farmer must have his own cows 
 
46 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 or hens or he went without milk and eggs. Nev- 
 ertheless babies lived and thrived and are the 
 sturdy grandparents today of the babies that 
 must have their special foods, with whose prep- 
 aration under the strict surveillance of the baby 
 specialist no other function of life may interfere. 
 Cookies and doughnuts for the children were 
 not taboo then, nor mince pies, though they 
 were made with cranberries, picked by the In- 
 dians, in lieu of apples. The town was not dry 
 either, and the cooks were generous with the 
 "oh-be-joyful." We had real New Orleans 
 molasses to put in them too, a clear, brown 
 amber nectar, fit for the gods; and brown 
 sugar, unadulterate. Happy children, to spread 
 thick slices - no thin modern shavelings - of sweet 
 home bread and butter, generous as those spread 
 by Charlotte to assuage the sorrows of Werther, 
 with a top layer of that delectable brown sugar, 
 moist and rich with the unadulterated juices of 
 the cane, sweeter than honey from Hymettus, 
 and with a flavor of Cuban sunshine and hooped 
 casks. Canned goods were unknown, but could 
 any brand of Oneida corn or Country Gentleman 
 equal in succulent richness the sweet corn our 
 mothers spread on sheets on the shed roof and 
 dried in the clear sunshine. Wild blackberries 
 "in tumbling clusters," and wild gooseberries, 
 we children were set to stem. These latter, 
 made into "gooseberry fool," furnished a dish 
 for which the gods might languish. Then there 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 47 
 
 were cranberries from "our marsh"; strawberries 
 cool from under their green leaves, scarlet, ador- 
 able, sweet as those plucked on Pincian hills; 
 wild plums, that, preserved in a clear, scarlet 
 syrup, carried still in their pungent flavor the 
 breath of those white, perfumed thickets whose 
 May springtime had given them birth. 
 
 We had a "spare chamber," though the chil- 
 dren had to be poked under the big "four-poster" 
 in a "trundle bed" to compass it. The boys had 
 a bed in the open space at the head of the stairs. 
 The spare room was sacred to company. When 
 even that was overflowed, as when there were 
 several ministers billeted on us, beds were made 
 up on the floor for the family. But joyfully we 
 children gave up our beds for the pallet on the 
 floor, for we knew what goodies were brought 
 out for Brother Smith and Brother Jones. We 
 knew that there would be damson sweet pickles, 
 brandied peaches, and great golden blocks of 
 sponge cake, artfully alternated in the big silver 
 cake basket with squares of black fruit cake, 
 heavy with frosting, aromatic with spices. And 
 then the high glass bowl would be brought down 
 from the top shelf and filled with Floating Is- 
 land, a creamy yellow sea, with islands of 
 whipped foam. We did not murmur at the 
 long grace, more like a prayer, which as Lamb 
 says, was as "indispensable as the napkin." 
 
 How can I crowd and press into one brief 
 chapter the recollection of those early days. The 
 
48 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 faces I loved are there, the voices I remember. 
 We are dancing, singing, scampering all over the 
 meadow and bluff-side. 
 
 The Johnson farm yielded most of the family 
 living. On the slope of the knoll, and back of 
 the present rest-house, was the garden, for Mr. 
 Johnson was a famous gardener and nearly al- 
 ways the victor in friendly contests with his 
 relatives as to the first green pease and new 
 potatoes. One favorable season he produced a 
 fine crop of Jersey sweet potatoes on that sandy 
 slope. A picture of Mr. Johnson, in blue jeans 
 overalls and big straw hat, swinging the long 
 scythe or pitching the hay from the marsh into 
 fragrant cocks, is vivid in my memory. He had 
 large, benevolent features and a most kindly 
 blue eye. I remember his wavy, abundant gray 
 hair and winning smile. He was a staunch 
 Democrat and the party could do no wrong. 
 His neighbors were Republicans and political 
 discussion was lively. Mrs. Johnson was dis- 
 tinguished in manner, with all the gentle breed- 
 ing and courtesy of the Cranford ladies. 
 
 The marshy meadow and the steep bluff 
 formed the great playground for the Johnson and 
 the Jewett children in the years before neigh- 
 bors came. Infinite were the possibilities of 
 those mysterious wooded tangles of the great 
 bluff. And sometimes Indians put a fine edge 
 on the enjoyment. A band of Chippewas camped 
 every summer on the high ground, coming down 
 to the lake to fish and appearing at the kitchen 
 
Etta and George Jewett 
 
 Playmate cousins of the Johnson children 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 51 
 
 door with presents of a black bass or a pickerel, 
 said presents having a market value of bills re- 
 ceivable, in the shape of kerosene, flour, salt pork, 
 or potatoes. Indians were common enough then 
 and even the children were not usually afraid, 
 though on one occasion a young Indian gave 
 chase to one of us, making motions to cut off 
 with his knife the long curls flying in the wind 
 as fear lent wings to her feet. 
 
 At another time when the Jewett family was 
 on its way to the Johnson home for the Christ- 
 mas dinner, the trip being made in a big box 
 sled and all the children huddled on the bottom 
 under buffalo robes, some young Indians sprang 
 out from behind the trees in Oak Park, with 
 loud whoops and threatening gestures. But these 
 were only the mad pranks of youthful spirits 
 and nobody minded them. One could never tire 
 watching the squaws, sometimes with flowers 
 pinned on unspeakably dirty inner garments, or 
 of hearing them singing queer lullabies to the 
 bright-eyed papooses. This, of course, was be- 
 fore the Indian outbreak of the sixties. 
 
 To the pioneer women, "help" was a thing 
 that money could not buy. Reaching home from 
 one of his exploring trips in the pine woods at 
 nightfall, Mr. Jewett once brought with him an 
 Indian boy to help in the housework. Diligent 
 search in the morning failed to reveal the faintest 
 trace of the boy, whose lack of enthusiasm in 
 "doing up the dishes" and his reluctance to offi- 
 ciate as a hewer of wood and drawer of water 
 
52 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 had sent him back to the wilderness and his 
 blanket. Indians have ever been "anti's" and 
 have maintained the male supremacy. 
 
 It is worth recalling, perhaps, that at one 
 Christmas, under the plate of the four-weeks-old, 
 visiting baby, was a deed to Lot W, in Johnson's 
 Addition. Thus early were additions and real 
 estate men. A portion of the lot, years after- 
 ward, paid the expenses of the baby's two year 
 stay in Europe. But even that comes short of 
 indicating the magical rise in values of the John- 
 son farm. 
 
 It is worth recording, too, that to these 
 children was given the first Christmas tree in 
 Minneapolis. The tree was cut by one of them, 
 a boy of ten years, on the river bank, with the 
 thermometer standing at forty degrees below 
 zero. This statement may be verified by re- 
 ferring to the files of the Minnesota Republican 
 for the year 1855. The tree was lit with tallow 
 dips set in small square wooden blocks and a 
 large center table had to be removed to make 
 room for it. 
 
 The gifts were purchased in St. Anthony at 
 Wales' book-store, then a household word. A 
 pair of wonderfully colored glass birds on a wire 
 spring, perched on an incredibly green toy tree, 
 is still preserved under a glass case. To Wales' 
 book-store we looked for rare copies of Harper's 
 or Godey's Ladies' Book. And what joy when 
 there was a new novel by Charles Dickens! 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 53 
 
 Brought up in the straightest of straight- jacket 
 ideas as to novels, my whole acquaintance with 
 fiction until my twelfth year was Home Influ- 
 ence, by Grace Aguilar, and Fredericka Bremer s 
 Home, selected, probably, because of the au- 
 thor's visit to these wilds, when frightened and 
 trembling she crossed the Mississippi in an In- 
 dian dugout. These works adorned the parlor 
 table and were regarded as innocuous. 
 
 Then, one red letter day, came into our house- 
 hold like a stream of yellow sunlight, Eliza 
 Cahill, sister of William F. Cahill-one of the 
 first Minneapolis millers - and opened heaven. 
 She was an ardent devotee of Thackeray and 
 Dickens. The charm of her bright wit, the 
 gleam of her Irish gray eye, "the grayest of all 
 things blue, the bluest of all things gray," brushed 
 swiftly away those cobwebs of musty prejudice 
 and almost before anybody knew it, The New- 
 comes in black, beloved boards and Bleak House, 
 formerly hid between the mattresses, were house- 
 hold words. 
 
 We brought with us, too, in the hold of the 
 "Grey Eagle" the first piano in West Minne- 
 apolis, a harpsichord, that, before the river voy- 
 age, had crossed the seas from France. The 
 quaint relic now sings low, very low, in the Ard 
 Godfrey House of the Pioneers' Association. 
 
 Shall I ever forget the astounding news 
 brought by C. A. Widstrand, the first music 
 teacher of Minneapolis, when he came to give 
 
54 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 a lesson to the small fingers, that the new Sus- 
 pension Bridge, pride of our hearts, had blown 
 over in the night? 
 
 And now we have neighbors. Friendly lights 
 cheer the dark of winter nights. The hospitable 
 walls of "The Grays" rise white among the 
 trees, and the narrow path through the meadow 
 and up the blufl side is widened by the passing of 
 friendly footsteps. What joy, to "sup with a 
 friend and go by lantern home," through the 
 bushes and trees of what is now Oak Grove 
 Street and Clifton Avenue. The white house of 
 the Grays, though girt about with many addi- 
 tions, still stands on the original spot and is still 
 the family home. 
 
 T. K. Gray's drug store still does business at 
 its original stand on Bridge Street, now 108 
 Hennepin Avenue. Oliver Gray was our first 
 teacher and his school was in a new store build- 
 ing, now the corner of First Street and First 
 Avenue S. I can see now, the wonderful pyra- 
 mid bouquets that adorned the desk of this Adon- 
 is among school teachers, devoted tokens brought 
 by the big girls, their splendor built up, tier 
 after tier, with brilliant wild phlox, tiger lilies, 
 butter- and-eggs, and jimweed. The engineering 
 skill developed by the big girls in piloting their 
 hoop skirts safely between the crowded desks 
 made a deep impression on my mind. We 
 thought nothing, having no street-cars, of walk- 
 ing a mile or two to school, though in winter, 
 Deacon Harmon, Deacon Jewett, and Brother 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 55 
 
 Johnson would drive up with their bob-sleds and 
 take aboard all who lived anywhere along their 
 road. Even now my throat tightens, as I recall 
 the small girl, by some chance missed out from 
 the load, running weeping after the vanishing 
 bells, stumbling in the deep, cold snow, not half 
 as cold as her cold little heart. 
 
 One day, one of the boys circulated an excit- 
 ing whisper that "the Indians were in town." 
 There was a swift, though silent, exodus, nor 
 was there any return, for we spent the rest of the 
 day in admiring attendance on the Indians, and 
 at night we escorted them to their camp on 
 Hoag's Pond. 
 
 Hoag's Pond! How many memories cluster 
 about its classic shores. There we built rafts 
 and caught frogs, and built great bonfires to 
 skate by. As we grew older, the bonfires were 
 sometimes less attractive than the shadowy cor- 
 ners and thickets that skirted the shore. 
 
 // the bonfire got too warm, then a strong and 
 manly arm, 
 Steered her to a friendly corner — far enough, 
 And her little feet would slide closer, closer to 
 his side 
 And a little hand steal from a friendly muff. 
 
 Charles Hoag, for whom the pond was named, 
 also gave to Minneapolis its musical and rhythmi- 
 cal name. How grateful we should be that we 
 did not continue to hide under that musty old 
 brown cloak of St. Anthony's Falls, which Fa- 
 
56 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 ther Hennepin substituted for lovely "Kakabi- 
 kah" - "Severed Rock," the name the Chippewas 
 had given them. 
 
 The new town is growing now, and every 
 boat brings many arrivals. The Bartons came, 
 and tucked their house on the blufl side, buried 
 among the trees, looking to our young eyes as 
 picturesque and stately as a French chateau on 
 wooded heights. The house still occupies its 
 old site, but fronts now on Clifton Avenue, in- 
 stead of, as formerly, on the lake. Florence 
 Barton is now Mrs. C. M. Loring, and their 
 lovely home is near the old house. It seems so 
 right and fitting that our beloved "Father of 
 Minneapolis Parks," whose broad vision and love 
 of nature gave us Loring Park, as he listens for 
 "the summoning bells of twilight time," should 
 spend these last calm days on the ground made 
 so beautiful by his labors of love. 
 
 The stream of laughing boys and girls that 
 troop in and out of the Shelter House by the 
 great swing, Mr. Loring's beautiful gift, little 
 reck of those pioneer children who played be- 
 neath those same oak trees sixty-odd years ago. 
 But to us, the echo of their gay young voices 
 rings clear, and before us opens a landscape far 
 different, wild, untamed, but full of infinitely 
 endearing charm. With eyes, "like dry, brown 
 flower pods still gripped by the memory of lost 
 petals," we see again the scrubby oaks, the thistles 
 in the fence corners, the fringing willows, the 
 marsh, the slender path that "strung field to wood 
 and wood to field." 
 
LP RING PARK ASPECTS 57 
 
 Did the children who played under those oak 
 trees, who drank tea from their acorn cups and 
 gazed wide-eyed at the queer little Indian pa- 
 pooses, did they ever faintly dream of the state- 
 ly park, of the white walks, and of the throngs 
 that would pass and re-pass on those walks to- 
 day? Did they see the trim turf and the proud 
 and haughty flowers that neither know nor care 
 of bygone cowslips and violets but can never out- 
 beauty them in our hearts? Did their elders 
 dream of the steep bluff cut down and graded 
 into streets lined with costly homes? Of the 
 reflections of the Pro-cathedral, and the lovely 
 tower of St. Marks, mirrored in the reedy lake, 
 shining and shimmering like fairy towers? Of 
 the stately Plaza and Armory looking down, 
 where they hoed corn and raked the meadow 
 hay ? Could their wildest fancies picture Loring 
 Park at night, a fairy land of magical beauty 
 with its gleaming lamps, the myriad lights of 
 the city around it, the great buildings rising like 
 white castles of mystery over the hilltops ? Such 
 things were to be. Such things were to come 
 to pass in the lifetime of the children who played 
 under those trees and in those hazel brush 
 thickets. 
 
 But ah, in all the busy rush and whirl of life 
 to-day, with all its wonder of achievement, to us 
 older dreamers there are dreams that are not of 
 the future but of the past. 
 
 What laughter was it that I heard? 
 What stir of footsteps entered in? 
 
58 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 What was the murmur, what the word, 
 
 That made my heart a swirling din, 
 That made me lean to other eyes 
 And made the sudden tears arise? 
 
 Mr. C. M. Loring, for whose efforts 
 for the park system of this city we can 
 never be thankful enough, adds in a 
 private letter these early remembrances 
 of the park that has been named for 
 him: 
 
 When I first saw Johnson's Lake, there was 
 a very large spring of water called the Big 
 Spring on the south side of it, a spring that kept 
 the water so high that a large stream flowed from 
 the lake and discharged into Bassett's Creek. 
 When the sewer was built on Fifteenth Street, 
 it cut off the spring much to our regret. For 
 several years after the park was acquired, the 
 spring kept as much as an acre of water from 
 freezing so that it had to be fenced off to prevent 
 the skaters from getting too near the thin ice. 
 After the spring was cut, the lake froze entirely 
 over and all the fish died so that tons of them 
 had to be hauled away in the spring. 
 
 The only trees now living in the park that 
 were on the land when it was purchased are the 
 tamaracks, the great willows, and the grand old 
 oaks. When Fifteenth Street was graded, many 
 fine trees were destroyed. 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 59 
 
 A marsh occupied the spot now covered by 
 the smaller lake. Through this marsh the stream 
 ran. The marsh was taken out and the material 
 spread over the high land as it was very rich in 
 lime. Just under the turf the marl was almost 
 pure lime. I had it analyzed and it was ninety- 
 five per cent pure. It was as white as snow. 
 
 What a wonderfully beautiful quarter section 
 of land that was ! Many times I wandered over 
 it when I first came to Minneapolis, and I came 
 very near purchasing the lot Mr. Wells bought, 
 but my wife and I decided that it was too far out 
 in the country. 
 
 Joseph S. Johnson was born at Farm- 
 ington, Maine, June 15, 181 1, the son 
 of Joseph Johnson, a merchant. He 
 obtained his education in the public 
 schools there. After a few years in 
 California following the year 1849, he 
 returned to Farmington. But the lure 
 of the Great West was on him and he 
 could not resist the call. Samuel A. 
 Jewett was then living in St. Anthony. 
 He owned a large tract of land on 
 Western Avenue along what was later 
 known as Bassett's Creek. Mr. John- 
 son joined him here and took up the 
 land of the park which Mr. Jewett had 
 
60 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 selected for him against his arrival. 
 He at once began building the little 
 white cottage. 
 
 While at work on it, he gave the 
 name of "Jewett Lake" to the little 
 sheet of water afterwards known as 
 Johnson's Lake. This was in honor of 
 his wife, Ann Wilder Jewett, a daugh- 
 ter of Samuel and Sarah (Kimball) 
 Jewett, natives of Massachusetts. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Johnson had three 
 daughters. One was Mrs. Anna K. 
 West, recently deceased; the second is 
 Mrs. E. P. Wells of Groveland Ave- 
 nue; the third, who was born in the 
 Park (Sara Johnson), is Mrs. Paul A. 
 Pierce of New York. 
 
 Mr. Johnson died in 1891 at the aee 
 of eighty. His wife lived until 1898. 
 They were among the first members 
 of the First Baptist Church. 
 
 T. K. Gray was born of Scotch an- 
 cestry at Jefferson, Maine, on June 17, 
 1833, was educated at Wescosset Acad- 
 emy at Waldoboro, Maine, and ac- 
 quired a general knowledge of drugs 
 from reading medical books. He was 
 
Oliver C. Gray 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 63 
 
 in Toledo, Ohio, until 1855, when, with 
 his brother, Oliver C. Gray, he came 
 to St. Anthony's Falls. Early in 1857 
 he bought the interest of Dr. Greeley 
 in a West Side drug store and with 
 another brother, John Gray, formed a 
 new partnership under the name of 
 Gray Brothers. John Gray retired in 
 1874. In 1865, T. K. Gray married 
 Miss Julia Allen, daughter of the Rev. 
 Lorenzo B. Allen. Six children were 
 born in the house at the corner of 
 Spruce Place and Oak Grove Street. 
 Mr. Gray died on December 24, 1909, 
 the oldest retail merchant in Minne- 
 apolis. 
 
 A. B. Barton, another of the early 
 "neighbors," was born in Portland, 
 Maine, was for a time in business in 
 Boston, but came to St. Anthony's Falls 
 in 1859. 
 
 Olive Francis Barton, his wife, was 
 born in Livermore, Maine. 
 
 The Bartons bought nine acres of the 
 old Johnson farm and built the house, 
 now greatly changed, that stands at 202 
 Clifton Avenue. At the time it was 
 
64 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 built, it faced Oak Grove Street and a 
 lane led up the hill to it. Clifton Av- 
 enue, when cut through, was to have 
 been named for Mr. Barton, but with 
 his customary modesty he declined the 
 honor. He was in the retail dry goods 
 business on his arrival, was an early 
 secretary of the Board of Trade, first 
 superintendent of Lakewood Cemetery, 
 and one of the organizers of the Gen- 
 eral Electric. He died in 1904 and his 
 wife in 1905. One daughter, Florence 
 Barton, Mrs. Charles M. Loring, sur- 
 vives. 
 
 Thus we behold the pictures of the 
 Johnson family, the first white settlers 
 in Loring Park, get brief glimpses of 
 the daily life of the old farm-house in 
 the park, and obtain some slight in- 
 formation about "the neighbors" in 
 "the fifties." 
 
 The rest is silence and forest and 
 field, quiet country, and old immemo- 
 rial woods and hills. But a great and a 
 restless population is pushing rapidly 
 westward, swarming over the fertile 
 prairies and crossing the great rivers 
 
Olive Francis Barton (Mrs. A. B. Barton) 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 67 
 
 and mountain ranges on its way to the 
 Pacific. And it will soon overrun 
 these old fields and woods and hills and 
 build over the surfaces of these quiet 
 farms a great and a still growing city. 
 
Ill 
 
 WASTE PAPER BASKET OF MEMORIES 
 
 THE Park Idea is Born-O there 
 were cakes and ale in St. Anthony 
 and in the town that was to be Minne- 
 apolis in the days when Bridge Square 
 was in its glory! Pioneers who are 
 now well up on the beach, thrown like 
 battered old conches high and dry- not 
 always so dry -by the receding tide, 
 smile, nay, chuckle when "Jimmie 
 Cyphers" is mentioned. Jimmie ran 
 the only restaurant in town in the early 
 sixties, in a small room ten by twenty 
 feet in happy adjacency to the law of- 
 fice of McNair & Wilson. 
 
 McNair & Wilson's office was a good 
 deal like "the Club." On gay Satur- 
 day evenings prominent business men, 
 when their wives were out of town, and 
 too often when they were not, met at 
 "Mac's" (William Woodbridge Mc- 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 69 
 
 Nair) and at 'Gene's (the Hon. Eu- 
 gene M. Wilson) place to play "Old 
 Sledge" and, incidentally, to talk over 
 village affairs. It was the first Civic 
 and Commerce Association. "Among 
 those present" were David Redfield, J. 
 K. Sidle, Richard Martin, George Kin- 
 nan, Major Emmet, and C. M. Loring, 
 who alone of all these remains with us 
 today. 
 
 One evening famous in history, 
 though the members of the Club knew 
 it not, "Mac" remarked that the town 
 was growing and cited the names of 
 several men who had recently come to 
 the Falls with money to invest. Every- 
 body was interested then. Talk be- 
 came general. Jimmie Cyphers cir- 
 culated "the spread." I assume that 
 some of it was in liquid form. "Mac" 
 recurred to his theme and stated that 
 he believed that "this town was some 
 day going to have fifty thousand peo- 
 ple!" Everybody paused to consider 
 the glory of the prospect. It would be 
 a city! 
 
 Then up spake "C. M." (Charles 
 
70 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 M. Loring, general merchandising, of 
 the firm of L. Fletcher & Co.) and said 
 that if such were to be the case, then it 
 was time "that we were looking out for 
 ground for a park." 
 
 So Loring Park and the others were 
 born. For this was the germ of the 
 whole park idea in Minneapolis, and 
 the first time that parks were mention- 
 ed. Mr. Loring, "the Father of the 
 Minneapolis Park System," never lost 
 the inspiration and has ever since con- 
 sistently "followed the gleam." 
 
 For these and other reasons we have 
 the Loring Park of today. Something 
 it yet needs to make it for us all that it 
 should be and will be. We must give 
 it the flavors. 
 
 A Background is Needed- "Shall 
 we take the Long Path?" asked the gen- 
 tle Autocrat of the Breakfast Table of 
 the school mistress at the close of an 
 autocracy of which none complain. 
 And then he asked her to be quite sure 
 of her answer, for if she decided to take 
 the Long Path with him, it would be 
 for life. 
 
C. M. LORING IN 1864 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 73 
 
 They were on Boston Common to- 
 gether and the Long Path is a well 
 known feature of the Common. And 
 so it got itself into literature and hun- 
 dreds of persons go there and take the 
 Long Path for Oliver Wendell Holmes' 
 sake. 
 
 And at midnight on January r, 1900, 
 on the opening of the new century, Ed- 
 ward Everett Hale stood at the head of 
 the Common and read to a great mul- 
 titude the Psalm beginning, "Lord, 
 thou hast been our dwelling place in 
 all generations." This Psalm was read 
 from the same place at the opening of 
 the century before. It will be read 
 again in the same place on January 1, 
 2000. 
 
 Something of such a background as 
 this Loring Park needs. 
 
 The Light of Other Days -Yet 
 who shall say that the park has not al- 
 ready something of this atmosphere? 
 While this book was underway, I 
 clipped from the columns of the Min- 
 neapolis Journal the following poem 
 
74 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 with the caption line "Loring Park in 
 the '6o's" signed by the initials H.P.K. : 
 
 I dream beneath the willows gray; the years 
 Roll back, the sedgy pond appears, 
 Again I see the waving meadow grass, 
 Again the flying feet that swiftly pass 
 Along the meadow path, when in our play 
 We ran that way. 
 
 I see the young, green willows, straight and slim 
 Make leafy lairs, with shadows cool and dim, 
 The "sallies" where we played at hide and seek 
 And wandered in our little bare white feet. 
 Willows with trunks now old and gnarled and 
 gray 
 
 Like me today. 
 
 I see the meadow grasses, deep and free, 
 Rolling in wind swept waves like a green sea; 
 The warm and scented path, the droning bees. 
 The butterflies, the clover to our knees; 
 I see the cowslips' yellow glory rim 
 The lake's low brim. 
 
 Again I pluck the flag root and the fern, 
 Again I see the Indian paint brush burn 
 Its crimson torches on the sidling hill, 
 And the wild columbine its honey spill 
 And nod its red and yellow tassels still. 
 
 I see the tiger lilies on the slope 
 
 Swaying on slender stalks; the wild gentian ope 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 75 
 
 Blue eyes from under fringing lids. I see 
 The red bird flash, a flame from tree to tree, 
 And you-dart like the bird from flower to flower 
 So gay the hour. 
 
 Oh , dear and far off days, kept in my heart 
 With you, my playmate sweet, long years apart! 
 Oh but to sing the songs of childhood sweet, 
 To tread the meadow path with flying feet! 
 I dream beneath the willows old and gray. 
 Like me today. 
 
 Gold Hunters Camp Here -I was 
 told by a man who was almost born on 
 the fringes of Loring Park that "in the 
 seventies" one of his boyhood joys was 
 to chum with the gold hunters who were 
 camping beside the brook that flowed 
 out of Johnson's Lake and crossed Hen- 
 nepin Avenue under the bridge about 
 one hundred feet south of Superior 
 Avenue. On the other side of Henne- 
 pin, across from the present Pro-cathe- 
 dral site, was a fine camping spot cov- 
 ered with splendid trees and bordering 
 on the brook that flowed under the 
 present site of the stone and tile auto- 
 mobile buildings now on the corner of 
 Harmon Place and Hennepin. 
 
76 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 These gold hunters were on their 
 way to the Black Hills. The smoke of 
 their camp-fires filled this little hollow 
 of the hills. 
 
 A year or so later, they came back 
 there and camped. Their outfits were 
 pretty well shot to pieces and they had 
 not gathered up the gold by the barrow 
 load as they shovel out the iron on the 
 range. This Black Hills gold was 
 down deep and stuck fast in the rocks 
 and it required about a million dollars 
 of capital to "make a mine." But 
 think of the glorious adventure these 
 Loring Park campers had in finding 
 out these now patent facts. 
 
 Hutching Hill-W. H. Grim- 
 shaw relates the incident of seeing a 
 crowd of men and boys come scurry- 
 ing down Hutchins' Hill on their way 
 to Lake Calhoun to rescue Eliza Win- 
 ston, a slave girl, held there by a South- 
 ern gentleman who had come North 
 for the summer. The Eliza Winston 
 incident is well known in the early his- 
 tory of the town and I need not go into 
 it here, but why Hutchins' Hill? It 
 
Mrs. C. H. Wiltberger 
 Who lived on the site of the Cathedral 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 79 
 
 took some research, but it was finally 
 discovered. It was the hill that ran 
 down and out Hennepin Avenue from 
 Fifteenth and Sixteenth Streets to the 
 Loring Park brook. Chandler Hutch- 
 ins built the house that stood on the 
 site of the present Catholic Pro-cathe- 
 dral. Silas Hutchins, his father, lived 
 near-by. Hence Hutchins' Hill. A 
 daughter of Silas Hutchins married 
 John Green who took up the quarter 
 section that is now Green's Addition on 
 the top of Lowry Hill. A grand- 
 daughter of Silas Hutchins, Mrs. L. 
 E. Carpenter, still resides on Douglas 
 Avenue on the land of the old Green 
 farm. 
 
 The Chandler Hutchins house, par- 
 tially built over, was later occupied by 
 the C. H. Wiltberger family and still 
 later by the well known R. F. Jones as 
 a zoological farm. The house re- 
 mained until the Pro-cathedral re- 
 placed it. 
 
 The Indian Trail -The Indian 
 Trail through this valley ran from the 
 Calhoun village of the Dakotas to the 
 
8o LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 Falls of St. Anthony, along the eastern 
 sides of Calhoun and Lake of the Isles, 
 across Green's Addition, down Waver- 
 ly Place, west of Spring Lake, to Bas- 
 sett's Creek and so, following the creek 
 to the river. 
 
 The Military Road -This govern- 
 ment road ran through the Loring 
 Park Valley to Fort Ridgely and be- 
 yond. The Snelling Branch and the 
 Falls Branch joined in the valley of the 
 Minnesota. It followed, generally, the 
 present course of Hennepin Avenue to 
 the Cemetery and so on to the "Red 
 Mill" at Edina. 
 
 Mount PiSGAH-The high ridge, 
 now cut down, formerly along the site 
 of the present Ridgewood Avenue and 
 Clifton Avenue extending from near 
 Vine Place nearly to Lyndale Avenue, 
 was called Mount Pisgah from a pop- 
 ular hymn of that day, two lines of 
 which ran: 
 
 As from Mount Pisgah's lofty height 
 I view my home and take my flight. 
 
The Simple Elegance of the Fifties 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 83 
 
 KAKABIKAH-The translation of this 
 word is "Severed Rock." It was the 
 Chippewa name for the Falls of St. 
 Anthony. 
 
 Gray's Lake -This was the present 
 Spring Lake beyond the Parade. It 
 was at one time also called Huron 
 Lake, but the name did not stick. It 
 was named for T. K. Gray. A stream 
 ran from it and joined Lost Brook on 
 its way to Bassett's Creek. 
 
 Old STEEPY-The bluff in front and 
 south of the Thomas Lowry house, 
 later cut away to let Hennepin Avenue 
 over the hill, was called Old Steepy. 
 This bluff was "as steep as the roof of 
 a house" and was most difficult to 
 climb. The whole top of this hill has 
 been cut away and the earth thrown in- 
 to the Parade swamp. 
 
 Dennis Peters "took up" this won- 
 derful quarter section of land on the 
 sides and top of Old Steepy. It was 
 afterwards sold to Dr. C. G. Goodrich 
 whose daughter was the wife of Thom- 
 as Lowry. Hence Mr. Lowry's fine 
 house, built in 1874 and now the prop- 
 
84 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 erty of T. B. Walker. A portion of 
 this Lowry homestead block has been 
 given to the city by Mr. Walker for a 
 public library and art gallery. Dennis 
 Peters' house was about on the site of 
 the Lowry residence and his sheds and 
 barns in a ravine to the south, about 
 Groveland Avenue. This ravine ran 
 fifty feet under the present surface 
 where the Lowry statue stands. It was 
 filled in for the Government road and 
 the whole cut down later. 
 
 The Washington Yale Woods - 
 This was the forest that orginally cov- 
 ered the north section of Loring Park 
 and the adjacent property. Many of 
 the old trees remain. The "Picnic 
 Ground" of those days was near the 
 corner of Spruce Place and Fourteenth 
 Street. 
 
 The Old Chief's Grave -This 
 grave I am unable to locate exactly. It 
 was on the top of the bluff about where 
 Logan or Morgan Avenues cut Mount 
 Curve Avenue. It is thought that the 
 grade has been cut down and the old 
 site lost. For many years after John 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 85 
 
 Green took up his quarter section, the 
 Indians were accustomed to make sum- 
 mer pilgrimages to this grave and re- 
 main there for a day or two at a time. 
 The four great bowlders that marked 
 it, they would every year paint over 
 red again. Finally, when the white 
 people became too numerous, the In- 
 dians returned for the last time, opened 
 the grave and removed the bones to 
 some more secure location. Who this 
 Great Chief or Medicine Man was, I 
 have not been able to discover. 
 
 The Haunted House- All the pio- 
 neers of the Loring Park section tell of 
 "the haunted house." Two small 
 houses occupied lots between the Plaza 
 Hotel and the Brook. The house near- 
 est the Plaza block was occupied by a 
 man named John Holmes, and in this 
 house, because of despondency, he 
 killed himself. The house was known 
 to be haunted after that time, but I 
 have been unable to discover any living 
 person who saw or heard the ghost. 
 
 The Beede House- Built and occu- 
 pied by William Beede this house was 
 
86 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 next in line north of the haunted house. 
 No pictures of these houses survive. 
 
 Barber's Pasture -This was west of 
 Lyndale Avenue in the valley between 
 the bluff and the hill back of the Dun- 
 woody Institute. Here the cows of the 
 town were driven to pasture by the 
 boys. It was owned by D. R. Barber. 
 
 Powderhorn Lake -This lake was 
 in the vicinity of Lyndale Avenue and 
 Franklin. The present Powderhorn 
 Lake was then called Casey's Lake. 
 
 The Bridge over the Ravine -The 
 bridge picture with this section gives a 
 view of the ridge that few living Min- 
 neapolitans have seen. This bridge 
 started on or near the present Clifton 
 Avenue, a little east of the Barton res- 
 idence, and ran over a deep ravine to a 
 second and much more mountainous 
 ridge somewhere near the present 
 Groveland and Ridgewood Avenues. 
 The exact location is lost, for when this 
 section was "improved," the tops of the 
 two ridges were cut away and thrown 
 into the ravine. Old residents mourn 
 that the landscape artist of later days 
 
The Bridge over the Ravine 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 89 
 
 was not then born to treat properly in 
 the matter of streets and sites this in- 
 comparable residence section. 
 
 The house faintly indicated in the 
 picture at the top of the bluff was the 
 residence of William W. King, who 
 built it in i860 or 1861, with a long car- 
 riage road down to Nicollet Avenue. 
 Vine Place did not then exist. Mrs. 
 King was Julia Lovejoy, daughter of 
 James A. Lovejoy. The youngest son 
 of this family now resides at 1716 Col- 
 fax Avenue south, and a daughter, Mrs. 
 Charles S. Hardy, at 68 South Elev- 
 enth Street. 
 
 James Couchman purchased the 
 King house in 1864 and lived there for 
 many years. His daughter still lives at 
 Lake Minnetonka. A niece, Mrs. 
 W. G. Hollis, resides at 3035 Irving 
 Avenue south. 
 
 The Rev. James H. Tuttle, so well 
 known here, occupied the King house 
 later in its career, until it was taken 
 down and its stately site reduced. 
 
 The Finest View in the Valley - 
 Emerson in his "Divinity School Ad- 
 
9 o LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 dress" speaks of the unique impression 
 of Jesus upon mankind, "whose name is 
 not so much written as plowed into the 
 history of this world." 
 
 Standing at the southeastern corner 
 (the inside corner) of the Hennepin 
 Avenue Methodist Church, it is pos- 
 sible to obtain a view across this valley 
 that few persons have seen. The eye 
 glances along the eastern sides of the 
 Hennepin Avenue Methodist Church 
 and of St. Mark's Pro-cathedral, across 
 the valley to the front of the Pro-cathe- 
 dral of St. Mary, giving a wonderful 
 illustration of the influence of Jesus 
 upon this valley in the short time that 
 it has been occupied. This is the finest 
 view, architecturally speaking, to be 
 found in Minneapolis. 
 
IV 
 
 THE INDIANS 
 
 PUBLIC opinion and the prevalent 
 sense of humor do not permit the 
 emotional American to express himself 
 with any degree of freedom. I know 
 of one person who, for these reasons, 
 looked carefully around to see that the 
 action was not observed by his fellow 
 countrymen before he placed his arms 
 as far as they would go around the 
 great oak tree at the Grant Street en- 
 trance to Loring Park and pressed a 
 kiss of real affection and understanding 
 against its rough back -much as one 
 roaming in the park of a sunny after- 
 noon might greet his long gone great- 
 great-great-grandmother should he 
 meet her unexpectedly, still vigorous 
 and flourishing, despite a passage of 
 time in which decades and centuries 
 had fallen "like grains of sand." 
 
92 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 This enormous vegetable -reference 
 is made to the oak tree and not to the 
 aged female relation -was undoubtedly 
 growing where it now stands, a sturdy- 
 young forest tree, when Fort Snelling, 
 for many years thereafter the extreme 
 outpost of frontier civilization, was 
 erected in 1819. No white man had 
 laid hand or ax to it, for it was many 
 years after this time before there was a 
 white settlement north of Prairie du 
 Chien. It was the policy of the Gov- 
 ernment of the United States to allow 
 no white men except the employes of 
 the fur companies in Loring Park or on 
 any of the other Indian lands, and this 
 tree, as long as the Indians maintained 
 their opposition to hard manual labor 
 such as lumbering entails, was as safe 
 as any tree on this continent could well 
 be. For why should any sensible per- 
 son engaged in the pursuit of happiness 
 cut down trees while there was plenty 
 and to spare of dead and down timber 
 that would serve as firewood? The 
 Indian was not so great a fool. He 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 93 
 
 spent his time, and there seemed to him 
 to be plenty of it, in living. It is an 
 art that many of his successors on this 
 spot have lost if they ever had it. They 
 merely work in the office, or elsewhere, 
 pending the time when they will be 
 able to escape and live. This expected 
 happy time is like tomorrow. It fails 
 to keep its appointments. 
 
 The Indians had for thousands of 
 years been occupied in perfecting their 
 art of living. I have consulted numer- 
 ous authorities in an attempt to discov- 
 er where these Indians originally came 
 from and how long they have been here, 
 but I find that even the wisest among 
 the writers of books about them are 
 rather non-committal. Perhaps the 
 best ethnological bet is that the red men 
 were originally Mongolian Tartars 
 who, in some unknown way, possibly 
 by means of boats or of ice floes follow- 
 ing the breakup of the glacial period, 
 found themselves "across" and worked 
 their way down the coast, gradually 
 spreading over the whole of North 
 
94 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 America. These last six or seven 
 thousand years would give them all the 
 time needed for this program. 
 
 We do know, however, that our 
 Sioux were once "Easterners" who, 
 centuries ago, adopted some dusky 
 Horace Greeley's advice to "Go West 
 and grow up with the country." Eth- 
 nologists have shown that the tribes of 
 the Sioux linguistic stock, a stock to 
 which those found in the vicinity of 
 Loring Park belonged, at one time oc- 
 cupied the Piedmont and Atlantic 
 Coast areas between the Appalachian 
 range and the Atlantic Ocean in the 
 present states of Virginia, North Caro- 
 lina, and South Carolina. The bison 
 had crossed the Appalachians, proba- 
 bly by the Cumberland Gap, and were 
 once in the Piedmont area. It is 
 thought that the retirement of the bison 
 from that section, or their growing 
 scarcity there, drew the ancestors of 
 our Dakotas westward. Prior to 1800 
 the bison were found in the western 
 portion of Wisconsin and over nearly 
 all the State of Minnesota. But on the 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 95 
 
 whole it is just as likely that it was the 
 wild rice that held the early Sioux in 
 the Mississippi and Minnesota valleys. 
 This wild rice was God's free offering 
 to the aborigine and he accepted it 
 gratefully and thought no more about 
 it. 
 
 Schoolcraft states that in the first 
 part of the nineteenth century the Da- 
 kotas were in three principal villages. 
 "The first of these was east of the Mis- 
 sissippi and about four miles from the 
 Minnesota river. The second was on 
 the Mississippi river. The third was 
 on both sides of the Minnesota river 
 about six miles from its mouth." 
 
 La Harpe mentions nine Dakota vil- 
 lages west and seven east of the Mis- 
 sissippi. In these he figures about two 
 thousand inhabitants, an estimate that 
 other authorities consider far too small. 
 Seven or eight thousand is a much more 
 reasonable supposition. The Calhoun 
 village on the site of the city of Minne- 
 apolis was made up of these Indians. 
 How long they had been in and out of 
 Loring Park it is idle to conjecture, 
 
96 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 but we find them strongly in evidence 
 in the vicinity when Father Hennepin 
 reached the Falls in 1680. 
 
 When Fort Snelling was erected in 
 1 8 19, the Dakota village at Lake Cal- 
 houn, which the Indians called "the 
 Inland Lake," had a population of five 
 hundred to seven hundred persons -to 
 say nothing of the dogs. These In- 
 dians were familiar with Loring Park, 
 Spring Lake, and the glens and heights 
 of the Lowry Hill Range, but they had 
 done nothing to improve them. As a 
 matter of fact they needed no improve- 
 ment, for they furnished famous hunt- 
 ing grounds as they were. There were 
 otters in Bassett's Creek where it 
 crossed Fourth Street long after Col- 
 onel Stevens had built his house above 
 the Falls and what Lost Brook may 
 have contained in the way of otter, 
 beaver, and other wild life, we can now 
 only conjecture. 
 
 Thanks to the Brothers Pond, Sam- 
 uel W. and Gideon H., who came to 
 the Calhoun village as missionaries in 
 1 834, we know much about the outskirts 
 
dPTorth 
 
 \ 
 
 
 f# I: 
 
 \ 
 
 Indian Trails in Minneapolis 
 
 Mr. Pond's Map, taken from the book, Two Volunteer 
 Missionaries Among the Dakotas, by S. W. Pond, Jr. 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 99 
 
 of Loring Park. In a letter one of the 
 brothers has left this description of the 
 Indian town: 
 
 The village which stands on the southeast side 
 of the lake (Calhoun) consists of fourteen dwell- 
 ing houses, besides other small ones. The houses 
 are large and two or three families live in some 
 of them. You would not see our house from the 
 village but turning to the right along the east 
 bank of the lake, and ascending a hill, after 
 walking about a quarter of a mile, you would 
 find our house on the high ground I mentioned 
 before as being covered with timber, between 
 the woods and the lake. 
 
 Mr. Pond's letter was accompanied 
 by a rude map of the present site of 
 Minneapolis, giving the location at 
 Lake Calhoun of the Indian village 
 which occupied^ apparently, the site 
 upon which the Misses Elsa, Brenda, 
 and Anne Ueland spent their child- 
 hood. Mr. Pond also indicated on his 
 map the two well trodden Indian 
 trails or paths from the village to the 
 Falls. One of these passed through 
 our own Hollow of the Hills. So we 
 have the first thoroughfare through the 
 valley all laid out for us to study and 
 
ioo LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 retrace. The other trail bent away 
 from the lake and, avoiding the rough- 
 er ground of the Lowry Hill section, 
 bore away for the Falls across the prai- 
 rie over towards Nicollet Avenue, 
 striking the river somewhere from 
 Fourth to Eighth Avenues south. 
 
 But the first trail, and this is our 
 peculiar property for it runs through 
 our valley, made its way along the 
 eastern shore of Lake Calhoun, skirted 
 the eastern shore of Lake of the Isles, 
 thence struck a little east of north, cut- 
 ting the Lowry Hill bluff at Waverly 
 Place. The trail then connected with 
 Bassett's Creek by running west of 
 Spring Lake and across Bryn Mawr, 
 and followed the valley of this beauti- 
 ful stream to the river. Near where 
 Waverly Place cuts the Lowry Hill 
 bluff, a glen or depression ran down 
 through the hill. Even to modern 
 times traces of the old glen were to be 
 found extending back from the bluff 
 across Humbolt Avenue and the lots 
 now occupied by Ezra Farnsworth, C. 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 101 
 
 W. Somerby, G. Fred Smith, Frank 
 Reed, and the eastern portion of the 
 large lot on the Mount Curve frontage 
 of the same block. When the Pond 
 map is imposed on the present map of 
 the city, the old trail appears to find its 
 way over the brow of the hill near the 
 former Waverly Place glen. 
 
 Mahpiya Wicasta, whose name is 
 translated Cloud-Man or Man-of-the- 
 Sky, was chief of this Calhoun band of 
 Sioux. He is described, in 1834, as a 
 man of about forty years of age, re- 
 spected and loved by his people and as 
 well obeyed as Indian chiefs usually 
 were. He was an intelligent man of a 
 good disposition and showed no hos- 
 tility to the approach of white civiliza- 
 tion. Some of his band -and these are 
 the names of Indians who formerly 
 roamed the Loring Park district and 
 trapped game there- were Eagle-Head, 
 Whistling-Wind, Spirit- Walker, Iron- 
 Lightning, Thunder-Face, Zitkadan- 
 Duta (Red Bird), Rapacoca-Maza, 
 Owanca-Duta, two brothers named 
 
102 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 Hepi and Catan, Wamdiokie, Seca- 
 Duta, Minnie-apa-win and To-te-duta- 
 win. 
 
 While the translations of some of 
 these names are, perhaps, better than 
 others of which we read, it must be con- 
 fessed that the pioneer as a rule, in his 
 translations into English of Indian 
 names, was not happy. Take the ra- 
 ther humorous Indian name of Rain-in- 
 the-Face and give it its proper quality 
 by a correct translation of the thought, 
 and we have the noble appellation 
 of Man-Who-Turns-His-Face-to-the- 
 Storm or perhaps better still, He-Who- 
 Faces-the-Storm. Perhaps the Indian 
 of the Calhoun band who was called 
 by the white men Whistling-Wind finds 
 a better and more correct place in 
 history as The-Strength-of-the-Storm. 
 Iron-Lightning, too, may weigh heav- 
 ier in the estimation of posterity as 
 Heaven's-Hard-Stroke. Even Spirit- 
 Walker loses some slight humorous 
 connotation with our own Weary Walk- 
 er by a translation that better indicates 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 103 
 
 his peculiar gift, One-Who-Slips- 
 through-the-Forest-Like-a-Shadow. 
 
 These dignified and photographic 
 names have something of the native 
 dignity of their original Indian posses- 
 sors. 
 
 Beyond the shadow of a doubt, these 
 very Indians roamed this very hollow, 
 knew its circling hills as we know them, 
 dreamed their dreams, sang their songs, 
 lived out their days, and knew the joys 
 of life and the fear of death here, as 
 we know them today. I picture the 
 solitary Indian wending his way down 
 the Lowry Hill bluff and singing to 
 himself his tribe's "Song of the New 
 Spirit on Arriving in the Spirit 
 World": 
 
 Ate he u-we, ate he u-we 
 Ate eyaya he u-we lo, 
 Ate eyaya he u-we lo, 
 Yanipe-kta eya u-we lo, 
 Yanipe-kta eya u-we lo, 
 
 There is the father coming. 
 There is the father coming, 
 The father says this as he comes, 
 The father says this as he comes, 
 
io 4 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 "You shall live/' he says as he comes, 
 "You shall live!' he says as he comes. 
 
 Or perhaps, while sitting by the side 
 of Lost Brook, he hummed to himself 
 the old Sioux hymn that claimed this 
 beloved bit of the earth as the work of 
 Wakantanka, the Great Spirit or Fa- 
 ther. This song was called "Lechel 
 Miyoqan-kte" : 
 
 Lechel miyoqan-kte lo — yoyoyol 
 
 Lechel miyoqan-kte lo — yoyoyol 
 
 Taku maka-ichagha hena mitawa-ye lo — yoyoyo! 
 
 Taku maka-ichagha hena mitawa-ye lo — yoyoyo! 
 
 Ate heye lo — yoyoyo! 
 
 Ate heye lo — yoyoyo! 
 
 Eya yoyoyo! 
 
 Eya yoyoyo! 
 
 This is to be my work — yoyoyo! 
 This is to be my work — yoyoyo! 
 All that grows upon the earth is mine — yoyoyo! 
 All that grows upon the earth is mine — yoyoyo! 
 Says the father — yoyoyo! 
 Says the father — yoyoyo! 
 Eya yoyoyo! 
 Eya yoyoyo! 
 
 The Indians were not altogether 
 hunters and poets. Some of them al- 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 105 
 
 lowed and encouraged their squaws to 
 cultivate on the fertile prairie east of 
 Calhoun considerable fields of quickly 
 maturing corn. In the year 1839 Can- 
 puha raised 100 bushels; Xarirota, 50 
 bushels; Hoxidan-Sapa 50 bushels; 
 Karboka, 240 bushels, and Ohin-Pa- 
 Duta, 440 bushels. While the squaws 
 did the work, the men more nobly spent 
 their time hunting and ranging the 
 woods. Frequently they listened in 
 awe to the thunder of the Falls or wan- 
 dered idly in Loring Park. 
 
 Their attire, before the costumes of 
 the white men contributed to it, was 
 picturesque and nobly beautiful. It 
 was made up of leather hunting shirt, 
 leggings reaching to the thigh, large 
 blanket, and moccasins. The leggings 
 and ornamentation were of striking col- 
 or, some black, others blue, red, or yel- 
 low. Sometimes one legging was black 
 and the other blue or red, thus adding 
 an agreeable variety in legs to the beau- 
 ties of the primitive landscape. The 
 men wore breech-cloths, which formed 
 
106 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 the only difference in the dress of the 
 sexes. 
 
 With them roamed their faithful 
 dogs, friendly but suspicious. Mr. 
 Pond estimated that in the Calhoun 
 village there were about six hundred 
 dogs, all of them ambitious to announce 
 anything from the appearance of the 
 new moon to the arrival of a hostile 
 Ojibway "and as soon as the first bark 
 has cleft the stillness, a discordant 
 chorus resounds to the remotest border 
 of the camp." 
 
 But one hot day in July of 1839, they 
 found something to announce that 
 stirred this entire region to its depths. 
 Men, women, and children of the vil- 
 lage were happily engaged in swim- 
 ming, fishing, chopping wood, singing, 
 yelling, playing, and wailing, when 
 suddenly, "like a peal of thunder when 
 no cloud is visible," writes Mr. Pond, 
 "here, there, everywhere, awoke the 
 startling war-whoop. Hoo, hoo, hoo! 
 Blankets were thrown into the air; men, 
 women, and children ran -they ran for 
 life., Terror sat on every face -mo- 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 107 
 
 thers grasped their little ones. All 
 around was crying, wailing, shrieking, 
 storming, and scolding. Men vowed 
 vengeance, whooped defiance, and 
 dropped bullets into their gun barrels. 
 The excitement was intense and univer- 
 sal! The Chippewas! The Chippe- 
 was have surrounded us -we shall all 
 be butchered! Rapacoca-Maza is 
 killed!" 
 
 On the southeastern shore of Lake 
 Harriet the son-in-law of the chief lay 
 dead, a bullet hole through his body 
 and his scalp torn from his head. The 
 summoning runners were soon scudding 
 in all directions bringing up additions 
 to the forces of vengeance. 
 
 And this is what the Loring Park 
 trail now sees late on the hot afternoon 
 of that July day. The avengers of 
 blood from as far away as Shakopee's 
 band, to the number of about four hun- 
 dred, in full war-paint, with Red Bird 
 at their head, come trailing down over 
 Lowry Hill, across Bryn Mawr and 
 along the valley of Bassett's Creek to 
 the Falls. A long wail goes up from 
 
108 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 four hundred throats. Red Bird utters 
 his imprecatory prayer to the gods and 
 the spirits of the ancestors. The pipe 
 of war goes down the ranks and Red 
 Bird lays his hands on all heads bind- 
 ing the warriors to strike valiantly for 
 their gods and for their homes. 
 
 The next evening the runners with 
 news from the battle begin to trail their 
 way back again through our Hollow 
 of the Hills to the Calhoun village. 
 Red Bird, his son, and a dozen others 
 of the warriors are killed. But the Da- 
 kotas have exacted a terrible penalty 
 from their ancient enemies. The Chip- 
 pewa band is nearly exterminated. 
 Seventy scalps dangle from poles 
 on Judge Ueland's lawn. The scalp 
 dance lasts for a month. Mr. Pond 
 bears this eloquent witness : 
 
 "It seemed as if hell had emptied it- 
 self here." 
 
 But it was not all rejoicing and glory. 
 The plaintive song and the bitter and 
 long continued waitings of the bereaved 
 mother and lonely wife resound in these 
 woods and along these shores and hills, 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 109 
 
 "one of the saddest sounds," writes Mr. 
 Pond, "when heard in the silence of the 
 forest, in the dusk of evening, which 
 ever fell on human ear or issued from 
 human lips. It was a wailing for the 
 dead." 
 
 Long before we came here, our Hol- 
 low of the Hills, our hillsides and 
 shores had their solitary weepers, those 
 who wandered through Loring Park or 
 sat upon the hills surrounding it, pon- 
 dering the questions of the heart, the 
 old problems of life and death and! 
 grief and finding no answer. 
 
 For the Indians were not at first in- 
 clined to accept the statements and ex- 
 planations of the missionaries. They 
 considered themselves religious al- 
 ready. The Rev. Gideon H. Pond 
 makes this entry in his diary: 
 
 This afternoon I had some conversation with 
 Kayan Rotanka who is strongly of the opinion 
 that their religion and that of the bible are the 
 same, and that he has been a Christian twenty 
 years. Deluded man ! Can these dry bones live ? 
 
 Yes, these dry bones can live and they 
 do live. Cloud-Man, chief of the Cal- 
 
no LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 houn band, had two daughters and sev- 
 eral sons. One of the daughters mar- 
 ried, in the Indian form, an officer in 
 the army at Snelling. She was, as Mr. 
 Pond bears witness, "a fine intelligent 
 child, one of the most prepossessing in 
 appearance of her race, and as bright 
 and intelligent as she was handsome." 
 She picked up a great deal of instruc- 
 tion at the mission. Her daughter, 
 who was called "Nancy" by the white 
 people, although her proper name was 
 Great Spirit, had two sons, active, in- 
 telligent, and influential men. Their 
 names are well known in the North- 
 west. One of them, the Rev. John 
 Eastman, was pastor of a Presbyterian 
 church at Flandreau in South Dakota, 
 and the other, Dr. Charles Eastman, a 
 graduate of Dartmouth and a man of 
 superior attainments, both literary and 
 medical, has as his wife the poetess, 
 Elaine Goodale. 
 
 The book from which I have quoted 
 so freely, Two Volunteer Missionaries 
 Among the Dakotas, a book that should 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS in 
 
 be on the shelves of every Minneapolis 
 library, says of these men: 
 
 These two young men have usually been spo- 
 ken of as full Dakotas, but strictly speaking they 
 are three-quarter bloods. They are the great- 
 grandsons of Cloud-Man of Lake Calhoun, the 
 patriotic elements of whose character they seem 
 to have inherited in marked degree. Such men - 
 thoughtful, progressive, practical - are an honor 
 to any age and to any race. 
 
 The Indians were certainly religious 
 enough in their way and they had their 
 prophets and seers too. The descend- 
 ants of the Red Wing band of the Sioux 
 have preserved the details of the 
 following extraordinary premonition 
 which was told to Dr. John D. Quack- 
 enbos by one of the tribe. More than 
 a century before Fulton launched the 
 "Clermont," Tatankamani, an aged 
 chief, predicted that a strange creature, 
 with two black parallel horns emitting 
 smoke, would come up the Mississippi 
 River and enter Lake Pepin, defying 
 the children of the forest in terrible 
 war-whoops. Thus the seer described 
 the advent of the steamboat which he 
 
ii2 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 interpreted as a bad omen for his race. 
 He chanted his prophecy on an over- 
 hanging bluff of the river so impress- 
 ively and with such assurance of its 
 fulfilment that it was never lost sight 
 of by his people. And when the first 
 steamboat ascended the Mississippi and 
 entered the lake, the Indians gathered 
 on the bluff and as they gazed in won- 
 der they sang the prediction of their 
 prophet in his own words. 
 
 Yes, the little forest tree, now the 
 great and venerable oak at the Grant 
 Street entrance of Loring Park, has 
 seen all this -and much more. In the 
 old woods it was elbowing its compan- 
 ions for its place in the sun long before 
 modern civilization had set foot in this 
 section of the country. It has seen the 
 Indian disappear and Lost Brook wan- 
 der away forever. It has seen the first 
 white man appear, measuring and se- 
 lecting the lands he was to cultivate. 
 It has watched the city in all its power 
 and glory grow up around it. It has 
 seen the old farms give way to the great 
 streets and avenues flung across the 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 113 
 
 flanks of the hills, to splendid buildings 
 and to broad, sweeping parks and play- 
 grounds. 
 
 Very taciturn and determined this 
 great oak has stood there all these 
 years, building over air, sunshine, mois- 
 ture, and soil into good, solid oak wood 
 and worried neither by Indians, lum- 
 bermen, lovers, farmers, poets, nor 
 Park Boards. If it could tell its story, 
 we should know much more about Lor- 
 ing Park Valley and the little hills that 
 shut it in. 
 
THE LOST BROOK 
 
 I HAVE always respected the engi- 
 neering ability that turned the Chi- 
 cago River around. Here was a mud- 
 dy and befouled stream pouring its 
 floods of defilement into the city's 
 drinking water. It was impossible to 
 purify it. The only thing left to do 
 was to make it flow the other way, out 
 of the lake instead of into it. It was 
 an indignity that no other river has 
 suffered. It took mind, money, and 
 time, but these essentials were at hand 
 and the astonished river soon found it- 
 self going the other way. 
 
 Tennyson adopted the brook as the 
 symbol of the eternal flow. Men might 
 come and men might go, but the brook, 
 chattering on its way to join the brim- 
 ming river, went on forever. But 
 these smaller streams have been even 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 115 
 
 more cavalierly treated by the hands 
 and minds of men. They have been 
 filled in and the water carried away in 
 drains or left to find its lost way as best 
 it might. 
 
 It is doubtless a foolish wish and per- 
 haps a dangerous one that the same en- 
 gineering skill that has turned the Chi- 
 cago River around and has filled in the 
 valley of our own Loring Park brook, 
 might be applied to the River of Time. 
 
 But it is neither upon the banks of 
 the Chicago River, nor upon the marge 
 of Tennyson's brook, that we stand to- 
 day, but upon the new surface of the 
 earth that now overlies the Lost Brook 
 that once flowed in the Loring Park 
 district, a stream that the hand of man 
 has wiped so utterly from the earth that 
 it can no longer be located in Hudson's 
 complete "Dictionary of Minneapolis" 
 nor found upon any of the present maps 
 of the city. Barely a trace of its for- 
 mer course can be seen in its old valley. 
 Yet by consulting the minds of the eld- 
 ers we may find this stream still flow- 
 ing and we may bring to the surface 
 
n6 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 once more that old fertile, flowery, 
 bird-haunted valley. For in a few hu- 
 man hearts this stream flows still, as 
 blue as the skies that once smiled above 
 it and as free and unfading. 
 
 "Where is the stream?" he cried with tears. 
 "Seest thou not the blue waves above us?" He 
 looked up and lo! the blue stream was flowing 
 gently over their heads. 
 
 In the wild country back of the grow- 
 ing town of Minneapolis, before the 
 city had begun to be thought about, 
 this Lost Brook was a conspicuous 
 meadow stream. It drained Johnson's 
 Lake, now the Loring Park Lake, and 
 it also took care of the surplus waters 
 of Spring Lake and of the spongy, 
 swampy country between. It began 
 its course from the lake and from the 
 great springs that formerly burst from 
 the ground just east of the bridge in 
 Loring Park and on the south side of 
 the larger lake. It flowed through a 
 swamp, now the smaller Loring Park 
 Lake, and ran thence directly north. 
 It crossed the yet unmarked Harmon 
 Place about one hundred feet from that 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 117 
 
 thorofare's future point of junction 
 with Hennepin Avenue, and ran 
 through the lowlands now covered by 
 the buildings on the corner. Here it 
 broadened somewhat and lingered. 
 Then it slipped away suddenly to the 
 west across the old country road (Hen- 
 nepin Avenue) which was rudely 
 bridged at a later day to give it pas- 
 sage. How many of those who now 
 travel Hennepin Avenue in ever grow- 
 ing numbers look down and see, twelve 
 or fifteen feet under the present sur- 
 face of the avenue, the blue waters of 
 the Lost Brook that once ran there? 
 
 Crossing the field west of Hennepin, 
 on land now owned by the city, the 
 stream twisted north again and ran 
 along what is now Lyndale Avenue, 
 then bent west on Superior Avenue, 
 turning north again farther up the 
 avenue to join the Bassett's Creek 
 swamp beyond the car tracks and the 
 Laurel Avenue bridge -and so on to 
 the Mississippi River. 
 
 Walking over the ground with one 
 who had spent much of his childhood 
 
n8 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 upon its banks, I have carefully re- 
 traced the old valley of the Lost Brook, 
 and I have followed its windings until 
 all trace of them is lost in the mazes of 
 the railroads. It was not so small a 
 stream as one might imagine. Portions 
 of its course boasted two feet of water. 
 The boys had their swimming holes in 
 these places and two of the children 
 (Frank Wiltberger and Louise Hig- 
 gins) once launched a home-made ca- 
 noe upon the brook where it deepened 
 in the hollow north of Harmon Place, 
 a spot that is now covered with the tile 
 and stone structures of the automobile 
 trade. 
 
 I have seen the Loring Park brook 
 only through other eyes or as I have 
 reconstructed it for myself from the old 
 maps and from the descriptions of those 
 who played upon its banks. It is a 
 brook of lost youth. It symbolizes this 
 invisible Brook or River of Time, flow- 
 ing so steadily, and bringing you "and 
 all your folks" into Loring Park for 
 an afternoon of rest and sunshine -and 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 119 
 
 then flowing remorselessly over you in 
 your turn, and so on forever. 
 
 I have spent long years within or up- 
 on the rim of the hills that surround 
 this depression of the earth's surface 
 in which the Lost Brook once flowed - 
 this Hollow of the Hills made up of 
 Loring Park, the Parade, and the Bryn 
 Mawr country- and it has all become 
 dear to me, although the books of the 
 city and county show no more than fif- 
 ty feet of the precious soil that I may 
 legally call mine. Possession in this 
 way, however, is cumbersome and un- 
 necessary. Appreciation is possession, 
 and in that way one may be heir to the 
 whole domain, though the tax assessor 
 know him not. 
 
 The Lost Brook had been flowing so 
 long that, at its death, it outdated the 
 pyramids of Egypt. For our first def- 
 inite knowledge we have of Loring 
 Park takes us back about 7,803 years. 
 This may be made clearer to the imag- 
 ination if it is written 5,885 B.C. It 
 may seem difficult at first thought to 
 
120 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 connect such ancient worthies as Adam, 
 or Noah, or Abraham with Lowry 
 Hill, but it is well within the possibil- 
 ities of research. Long before Adam's 
 day, if the figures on the sides of the 
 columns of the King James version of 
 the Bible may be trusted (though I am 
 given to understand by scholars that 
 they may not be) the Mississippi River 
 was running through the Bassett's 
 Creek valley, across the Bryn Mawr 
 lowlands and through the present 
 Lowry Hill range, then not there, and 
 through Cedar, Lake of the Isles, Cal- 
 houn, and Harriet lakes, to its junction 
 with the Minnesota River above Fort 
 Snelling. This left Loring Park in a 
 delightful prairie valley sloping grace- 
 fully down to the river west of it. It 
 was the valley of the possible stream 
 that flowed there before the Lost 
 Brook, on whose banks we are dream- 
 ing today, was born. For the Lost 
 Brook followed the last Glacial Epoch. 
 But no description of the Loring 
 Park section previous to the year 5,885 
 B.C. will be attempted here. You 
 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 121 
 
 must see it for yourself and bring to 
 the view whatever power of the scien- 
 tific imagination you may happen to 
 possess. All that we are sure of is that 
 the Mississippi River was then flowing 
 across North Minneapolis through the 
 Bassett's Creek basin and the lakes, 
 joining the other river somewhere be- 
 tween Snelling and Shakopee. The 
 great gorge it cut through the Trenton 
 limestone is there today, filled with 
 glacial debris, to give us this geological 
 tip. 
 
 But it was long before the year 5,885 
 B.C. that the Preadamites who lived in 
 the Loring Park section told one an- 
 other as they went down to their work 
 in the morning that the climate was 
 changing. At that time at least, they 
 were correct in their assumption. The 
 great Ice Age was coming on. It is 
 probable that the last Glacial Epoch 
 took centuries to perfect its suit. It 
 had all the geological time there was 
 and it was not hurried in the least. If 
 the occurrence of our winter in aphe- 
 lion, caused by the- Precession of 
 
122 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 Equinoxes and the revolution of the 
 Line of the Apsides, about 11,300 years 
 ago, was the cause of the last Glacial 
 Period, it follows that it took about 
 3,500 years for the establishment and 
 withdrawal of the ice margin at Loring 
 Park. What are little things like cen- 
 turies between geologists? 
 
 We do know at any rate that some- 
 where around these formidable dates 
 an eternal winter like that of the in- 
 terior of Northern Greenland set in 
 over Loring Park and Lowry Hill and 
 that the great ice fields came grinding 
 remorselessly down over them from the 
 north. One of these glacial streams 
 went down the valley of Lake Michi- 
 gan, another down the valley of Green 
 Bay and its continuation to Madison, 
 Wisconsin. Still others streamed from 
 Keweenaw Point and Duluth into Cen- 
 tral Minnesota and Wisconsin It was 
 one of these latter ice streams that came 
 grinding and crushing into Loring 
 Park. It filled the entire gorge of the 
 great river in the Bassett's Creek basin 
 solid full of old clay, bowlders, gravel, 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 123 
 
 glaciers, and icebergs larger than the 
 First National and Security Bank. The 
 puzzled and bedammed river, unable 
 to force a way through, turned to the 
 east and northeast and made various 
 channels to the present Mississippi- 
 Minnesota valley and so, finally, began 
 the Falls of St. Anthony where the riv- 
 er tipped over into the gorge some- 
 where near the present site of Fort 
 Snelling. 
 
 Since that time we know what has 
 happened to the Falls. They have been 
 receding steadily, cutting into the lime- 
 stone ledge, until they have arrived 
 where they are at the present time. 
 This has taken 7,803 years as Professor 
 N. H. Winchell has figured it. From 
 the study of old documents and pictures 
 of the Falls, he found that the rate of 
 recession from 1680, Father Henne- 
 pin's time, to 1856, was from four to 
 six feet per year. As the whole dis- 
 tance the Falls have gone is eight 
 miles, the time required for the cutting 
 of the gorge was found to average out 
 at about 7,803 years. 
 
i2 4 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 We may make fanciful guesses at the 
 appearance of Loring Park in the cen- 
 turies before the ice era, but there is no 
 doubt of its exact status about 7,803 
 years ago, after the glacial streams of 
 ice and debris had passed across the 
 country from the north. Anyone who 
 thinks of this glacial time as "a cold 
 snap" or as "a spell of weather" is not 
 doing the climate of that time justice. 
 Professor Alexander Winchell writes 
 of it in words that show its catastrophic 
 quality. 
 
 The entire continent north of an irregular 
 line passing through New York, Fort Wayne, 
 Madison, Minneapolis, and Yankton lay, like 
 the soil of Greenland in our time, buried beneath 
 a bed of snow and ice some thousands of feet 
 thick. The summits of the Adirondacks, the 
 Catskills and the White Mountains barely 
 emerged above the desolate, featureless waste. 
 
 When we stand on the little heights 
 of the Lowry Hill range, or when we 
 build our homes upon them, and mar- 
 vel that ice and water could transport 
 such great masses of material, we 
 should stop for a few moments and try 
 to visualize the great ice and snow 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 125 
 
 fields piled thousands of feet high over 
 Loring Park and above Lowry Hill, 
 and we should remember that they had 
 been grinding away at the hills and 
 valleys all the way from Duluth, and 
 how much further we do not know, 
 plowing and dragging along whatever 
 soil or rock could be picked up in their 
 interrupted progress. With this vast 
 ice mass in mind, we may be able to 
 appreciate the fact that Lowry Hill is 
 merely a handful of incidental gravel - 
 a bit of cosmic dust in the eye of crea- 
 tion. The fact that this gravel dropped 
 where it did and became Lowry Hill 
 was merely a slight incident in the 
 melting and subsidence of the ice sheet. 
 The returning warmth found Loring 
 Park very comfortably shut in by its 
 little hills and fairly free to develop 
 into the glorious and fertile valley that 
 it became. Fanciful persons have 
 thought to connect Noah's flood with 
 the melting of this great ice deposit 
 around the northern hemisphere of the 
 planet. The supposition is not entirely 
 foolish. Tradition might well have 
 
126 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 handed down a story from so terrific 
 and overwhelming an inundation. 
 
 As the ice melted more and more 
 freely with the passing of the epoch, 
 Loring Park was filled with water and 
 debris. The lake soon began to define 
 itself and the present features roughly 
 to appear. And it was at this time that 
 the birth of Lost Brook took place. I 
 am told by those of the early settlers 
 who had interest enough in the face of 
 the earth to take casual notice, that the 
 brook that flowed out of Johnson's 
 Lake had cut steep banks through the 
 high ground of the present Harmon 
 Place north of the smaller lake. The 
 lake at one time evidently filled the en- 
 tire Loring Park basin to the Harmon 
 Place rim, where the spillway of the 
 rainy seasons must have been. This 
 spillway cut deeper and deeper as time 
 went on and as the floods came and 
 went, until the brook had cut through 
 the drift deposit where it flowed over, 
 and had established itself a valley lead- 
 ing to the Bassett's Creek lowlands, and 
 so to the river. The deeper the cut, 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 127 
 
 the lower the Loring Park lakes, until 
 in the forties and fifties, when the white 
 man arrived to settle there, the smaller 
 lake had become a swamp and the 
 greater lake was beginning to show 
 some of the characteristics of a bog. 
 
 When the Park Board of Minne- 
 apolis secured the Central Park tract 
 in 1883, the smaller lake was excavated 
 from the old swamp and the great lake 
 was considerably enlarged and its banks 
 built up from the sediment taken out. 
 Harmon Place forever dammed the 
 Lost Brook which ceased to flow when 
 the city's sewers cut the sources of the 
 springs that fed the lakes. Hennepin 
 Avenue's great bluff to the south was 
 cut down, the bridge over the stream 
 taken away and the street filled in. The 
 entire valley of the Lost Brook soon 
 disappeared and little trace of it is now 
 to be found anywhere along its former 
 course. 
 
 The present form of this Hollow of 
 the Hills, then, dates back to the time 
 of our First Great Navigator. For we 
 will assume that the great waters upon 
 
i 2 8 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 which Noah embarked with so much 
 assurance were of the same general 
 origin as those which laid down the 
 glacial drift across the plateau upon 
 which Minneapolis is built and which 
 filled all this Lowry Hill valley rim- 
 and-bank-full and to overflowing. The 
 Loring Park of those mud and gravel 
 banks, of the bowlders, and of the flot- 
 sam and jetsam of the drift, was a sad 
 sight and hopeless indeed in its desola- 
 tion to one who did not trust God. Not 
 a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass 
 nor a struggling weed was to be found 
 anywhere in this valley, nothing but 
 water, mud, gravel banks, and bowl- 
 ders. 
 
 But life never dies nor can it be 
 buried permanently in any tomb, even 
 with thousands of feet of ice and mud 
 piled above it. It feels no need of 
 hurry in rolling away the stone and in 
 accomplishing its resurrection. Time, 
 we are told, is one of the forms of the 
 sense consciousness, a form through 
 which we are obliged to run our experi- 
 ences to make them fit us properly. 
 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 129 
 
 Life is not so circumscribed by cate- 
 gories. Leisurely, and with the utmost 
 freedom and deliberation of action, life 
 took up the interrupted work in Loring 
 Park and on the slopes of Lowry Hill, 
 and the old manifestation, as old as 
 God himself, began again. The seeds 
 from the pyramids of the ice Pharaohs 
 were ready to sprout when the condi- 
 tions again became favorable. Birds 
 from the southlands brought other 
 needed seeds. Billions of benevolent 
 germs drifted in with the summer 
 winds and settled here to carry out 
 their appointed tasks. The Spirit-that- 
 Formed-This-Scene had its work well 
 under way again in Loring Park before 
 the ice and water were fairly gone. 
 
 Life appears to be inherent every- 
 where and ready to burst into manifes- 
 tation when proper conditions are 
 given, be they in a desert or in a human 
 heart. Give the desert water and sun, 
 and it blooms a garden. Give the heart 
 love and a friend, and the valleys of dry 
 bones are full of living men. 
 
 Loring Park had everything life 
 
i 3 o LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 could ask in the way of a stage for the 
 unrollment of its great drama. And 
 the scene shifters were now busy. If it 
 were wilderness for which Moses was 
 looking when he led the Children of 
 Israel out of bondage, he could have 
 found no more gloriously wild scene 
 than Loring Park and Lowry Hill of- 
 fered at the time of the Exodus. With 
 poetic and constructive pleasure, we 
 may dream of these long, unoccupied 
 leisurely centuries that added their con- 
 tributions of tree and soil. 
 
 O ye green and happy woods, breathing like 
 sleep! O safe and quiet population of these 
 leafy places, dying brief deaths! O earth! O 
 heavens, never uttering syllable to man! Is 
 there no way to make known the meaning of 
 your gentle silence, of your long, basking pleas- 
 ures and brief pains? 
 
 I know this Spirit that brooded over 
 the face of Loring Park and Lowry 
 Hill and that still broods, and I see and 
 feel it at work and at rest everywhere. 
 Often when walking through this liv- 
 ing valley and climbing these gentle 
 hills I find myself repeating the great 
 lines that America's Homer wrote of 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 131 
 
 the Platte Canyon in Colorado, and I 
 find them applicable as well to Loring 
 Park, to the valley of the Lost Brook, 
 and to the simple and foolish little hills 
 of the Lowry Range : 
 
 Spirit that formed this scene 
 
 . . . this naked freshness, 
 
 These formless wild arrays . . . 
 
 / know thee, savage spirit -we have com- 
 muned together 
 
 . . . thou that revelest here - spirit that 
 formed this scene. 
 
VI 
 
 "DAD HOUGHTON" OF THE PLAZA 
 
 WG. HOUGHTON, of the Plaza 
 Hotel, Loring Park, strolled up 
 and down Chestnut and Linden Ave- 
 nues with two problems on his mind. 
 While he was turning them over and 
 back again, he presented to an observer 
 the appearance of a man meditatively- 
 regarding the smoky old houses that 
 had been left by the receding tide when 
 the city began to flow in a direction 
 that its founders and pioneers had not 
 foreseen. Cities have tricks of their 
 own as to their ebbs and floods and the 
 shrewdest of founders and owners are 
 sometimes mistaken in their forecasts 
 and are left so high and dry on the 
 beach that even the spring tides fail to 
 reach them. 
 
 Mr. Houghton had been one of the 
 luckiest operators in real estate and it 
 had become his business -and his pleas- 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 133 
 
 ure as well -to study urban growths and 
 trends. At the age of fifty, and perhaps 
 half a decade or more beyond it, he had 
 accumulated in this way money and 
 property of various kinds -but he was 
 lonesome. And he noticed that this 
 unpleasant state of mind was growing 
 on him even faster than was his prop- 
 erty. Books, gentleman farming, or art 
 occupied the thoughts of some of his 
 confreres who had money put away and 
 mind and time to let, but Mr. Hough- 
 ton kept to his old ways. Real estate 
 was his "game." 
 
 And then one day, to the astonish- 
 ment of his friends at the Plaza and on 
 Lowry Hill, his interest shifted to the 
 ladies of the Cinderella Opera Com- 
 pany. Now, as he strolled over a back- 
 water section of the city, his mind was 
 divided between the charm of their fly- 
 ing skirts and the possibilities of profit- 
 able investment. There was an electric 
 line coming into the city that must log- 
 ically find its terminal somewhere in 
 this section. For a moment, considera- 
 tion of the certainty of this fact drove 
 
i 3 4 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 the feminine garment from his inner 
 eye. But it returned flauntingly. 
 
 And now, look who's here! It's a 
 lady and her name is Fate! And see 
 what she does to us with her shep- 
 herdess' hook that comes around our 
 necks and changes our courses, controls 
 our wandering steps, and brings us into 
 line with her purposes, if she has any, 
 or with her whims if she hasn't, and all 
 in the flipping of a card or the twink- 
 ling of a -stocking. 
 
 For as Mr. Houghton walked, divid- 
 ing the swift mind between these and 
 those widely diverse matters, lo a half 
 burned playing card lying, face down, 
 on the sidewalk at his feet! Evidently 
 enough someone had tried to destroy 
 the cards and one of the deck, half con- 
 sumed, had found its way into the street 
 to play its little part in the sport of 
 chance for awhile longer. 
 
 "Hm," mused its victim, "I'll just 
 pick YOU up for luck. If you're black, 
 nothing doing on either. If you're red, 
 then it's diamonds for the investment 
 and it's hearts for the girls!" 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 135 
 
 It was up to Fortune. The galled 
 jade never winced. Mr. Houghton 
 stooped over and picked up the charred 
 half of the Jack of Hearts! Whether 
 this luck was good or bad is as it may 
 be. The facts remain to be collected 
 into the story and the cards of the phi- 
 losophers may go into the discard. Mr. 
 Houghton crumbled off the charred 
 portion of the pasteboard and put the 
 half hearted card into his vest pocket 
 on the top, right-hand side close to his 
 bank book. 
 
 "I've never had any fun at the Plaza 
 or on Lowry Hill," he put the matter 
 to himself, "and I'm going to run with 
 this bunch of girls for awhile and see 
 what there is in it." 
 
 Long friendly in a business way with 
 the manager of the house where the 
 Opera Troupe was singing its way 
 through a crowded week to full seats, 
 Mr. Houghton had already found no 
 great difficulty in passing the barriers 
 and in meeting the girls in his easy way. 
 Now as they saw more of him, they 
 took to him naturally. In fact the 
 
136 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 whole troupe, male as well as female, 
 liked him, and, as he played no favor- 
 ites and seemed to want to give every- 
 body concerned a good time, they soon 
 began calling him "Dad" and other af- 
 fectionately familiar names. The re- 
 sult was that "Dad" Houghton became 
 the angel of the company and actually 
 followed it on its tour of a number of 
 the larger cities. Others might wonder 
 and conjecture, but their amazement 
 and amusement did not trouble "Dad." 
 
 "They're nice little women," he said 
 to a friend who had expressed his sur- 
 prise at Dad's new interest in life, "and 
 I like to slip one or another of them a 
 wrist watch or something now and then, 
 or take them out to dinner. It lightens 
 the work for them and it's some fun for 
 me. What's the harm of this big fam- 
 ily of mine if nobody's hurt but the 
 neighbors' feelings?" 
 
 So, during one of these empty morn- 
 ings of a week when the troupe was 
 playing at the Metropolitan, Mr. 
 Houghton found that his mind was 
 recurring to his former pursuits. He 
 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 137 
 
 began again strolling about and ap- 
 praising this section of Deacon Har- 
 mon's old farm from which the city 
 was obviously growing away. Among 
 the houses that caught his wandering 
 eye was a cottage or story-and-a-half 
 house with ell, occupied by Mrs. Ma- 
 hala Paull who was at this time en- 
 gaged in sweeping the porch and 
 looking out on the deserted street for 
 someone to talk to. The front window 
 of the house bore the legend "Rooms 
 for Rent." 
 
 "All the rooms taken?" ventured Mr. 
 Houghton for the purpose of making 
 talk with so quaint a relict of the street's 
 vanished past. 
 
 "Taken! I wish they were. Folks 
 all seem to want to go out on Lowry 
 Hill or towards the lakes. They won't 
 stay down here." 
 
 "A little out of the line of traffic, 
 eh?" 
 
 "We did think this was going to be 
 one of the fine sections. Mr. Paull used 
 to say that this place would make us 
 well off if we could only hold on long 
 
138 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 enough. But I guess not now -not in 
 my day." 
 
 "You can't tell how soon or when 
 things will turn around in a growing 
 city. What have you got for rooms?" 
 
 "There's this setting room with bed 
 room in behind and three rooms in the 
 upstairs and two in the ell." 
 
 "Taxes pretty steep, I reckon." 
 
 "They're awful. Sometimes I think 
 I'll have to let them have the place. I 
 approached the assessor some four or 
 five years ago and he done the best he 
 could for me. He used to know T. B. 
 Paull. Everybody used to call my hus- 
 band the 'Postle Paull and me his 
 'Pistle. They would say, 'Here comes 
 the 'Postle Paull and his 'Pistle,' but 
 bless you, we didn't mind that." 
 
 The old lady screwed up her face at 
 the recollection of those happy days and 
 then became sober again. 
 
 "Here's our pictures in these old 1 da- 
 
 1 The two daguerrotypes reproduced in this chap- 
 ter form the mystery of the book. Many years ago, 
 because of a love for this beautiful old art, they were 
 purchased for a song at a Salvation Army store in 
 Minneapolis. All attempts to identify them have so 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 139 
 
 guerreotypes taken before we were 
 married when Deacon Harmon lived 
 up on the corner of Thirteenth Street 
 and the Johnsons over by the swamp. 
 Wasn't my husband a fine looking 
 man? When he knew he was going to 
 die with his disease, he began splitting 
 up kindling wood for me. He had 
 three rows piled as neat as wax across 
 that cellar. It lasted me seven years." 
 "You don't say so ! Well, Mrs. Paull, 
 I am going to take that front room up 
 stairs for a month and I rather think 
 that I can fill the other rooms with the 
 girls who are in the Opera Company at 
 the theater if you don't mind the hours 
 they keep. They have a few weeks' en- 
 gagement in this town, I figure." 
 "They're all right, ain't they?" 
 "You know it! They are nice little 
 women, about all of them — and work- 
 ing hard for their pay. Of course 
 there's the same mixture of good and 
 
 far resulted in failure. The opinion of pioneers who 
 have been consulted is that they were brought here 
 from the East many years ago and that they represent 
 persons who did not live in this vicinity. 
 
i 4 o LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 bad in the theater business as there is 
 in all lines of trade. We have to take 
 them as they come." 
 
 "I suppose so. Anyhow, it will be a 
 great help." 
 
 Dad Houghton talked with the girls 
 at their late breakfast and before night 
 he had four of them comfortably in- 
 stalled in Mrs. Paull's rooms and the 
 'Pistle running about in a flutter of 
 pleased excitement. The cheaper ho- 
 tels over .the stores along Hennepin 
 Avenue and Seventh Street that the 
 girls were accustomed to patronize 
 were dingy and noisy. Mrs. Paull's 
 house was home-like and quiet in com- 
 parison. 
 
 "This is Elsie Maltravers, Mrs. 
 Paull," Dad was doing the honors of 
 the occasion. "Of course that isn't her 
 name, and Tricksie McCall and the 
 Misses Geraldine French and Helen 
 Homans." 
 
 "I'm glad to have you all," replied 
 Mrs. Paull, "thanks to Mr. Hough- 
 ton." 
 
 "Dad's worst vice is always wanting 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 145 
 
 to be doing something for others," 
 smiled Miss Maltravers at her hostess. 
 "He wouldn't be happy if he wasn't. 
 So he has found us this nice place." 
 
 "He gave me this watch," broke in 
 Miss Homans. "I'm almost thinking 
 of leaving the profession for him." 
 
 "You'd know it from his face," said 
 Mrs. Paull, screwing up her eyes at 
 them. 
 
 "You're going pretty far," said Dad 
 soberly but pleased nevertheless. "You 
 better be getting settled in your rooms 
 and if Mrs. Paull complains of you, 
 you'll settle with me." 
 
 "Isn't he hard?" sighed Miss Mal- 
 travers. 
 
 Mrs. Paull grew to like her cheerful, 
 irresponsible charges so much and was 
 so genuinely anxious to please and to do 
 the little things for them, that they soon 
 began calling her "Ma" and treating 
 the place like home. Cheerful laugh- 
 ter and snatches of song were common 
 sounds about the lone Chestnut Avenue 
 house and Dad Houghton felt that it 
 was the life. 
 
146 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 Then in a few days Elsie came home 
 bringing Mrs. Albert, who was play- 
 ing an "elderly part" at the Schubert. 
 Elsie had been thrown in with this ex- 
 cellent actress before and had struck up 
 a friendship with the older woman that 
 went, when they were separated, even 
 to the point of correspondence. And 
 that, with the ladies of the stage, is far. 
 
 Mrs. Albert was one of those vet- 
 erans of the stage whom popularity, 
 good repute, and a large measure of 
 public affection had followed through 
 her long career into her Indian Sum- 
 mer. Her work for the season would 
 close with the week and Elsie had per- 
 suaded her to occupy a room at Mrs. 
 Paull's for a few weeks before return- 
 ing to her summer home on the coast. 
 
 "Mrs. Albert," said Elsie impress- 
 ively, "permit me to present Mr. 
 Houghton, the Angel of the House and 
 the best friend of our company." 
 
 "I am much touched," responded 
 Dad gallantly, "but I've always sup- 
 posed that angels were ladies." 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 147 
 
 "Perfect ladies," said Miss Mal- 
 travers. 
 
 "Not at all," said Mrs. Albert, "St. 
 John's, you know, has excommunicated 
 all the ladies from angelhood. It's 
 only men who are angels now." 
 
 "I'm sure of it," sighed Miss Ho- 
 mans. 
 
 Dad Houghton still held her hand 
 and was regarding Mrs. Albert with a 
 smile. 
 
 "You were Etta Palmer and you 
 were born in Farmington, Maine. I've 
 always followed your career with in- 
 terest. You don't remember me, but I 
 was born there too." 
 
 "My goodness, it's Willie Hough- 
 ton," cried Mrs. Albert, shaking his 
 hand vigorously. "I must have known 
 you by a sort of inspiration, for nat- 
 urally you have changed some in forty 
 years." 
 
 "I was twelve or fifteen years old 
 when you left Farmington and went on 
 the stage," said Dad. "We thought of 
 you as one of the big girls then and I 
 
148 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 looked upon you with great awe and 
 distant worship." 
 
 "Oh girls," exclaimed Miss Mal- 
 travers excitedly, "isn't this just lovely. 
 Here they are united again after all 
 these years! 
 
 "Something will come of this I am 
 sure," said Miss Homans, and the other 
 girls murmured in concert. Dad 
 Houghton was somewhat flustrated by 
 this personal and intimate view of the 
 matter, but Mrs. Albert was too good an 
 actress to show any perturbation. The 
 talk went into reminiscence, the refuge 
 of the aged. 
 
 Mrs. Albert fitted easily into the life 
 of the house and enjoyed it. The girls 
 were inclined to continue a semi-hu- 
 morous personal view of the situation. 
 Mrs. Albert and Dad were thrown 
 much together and struck up a great 
 friendship of the comfortable arm- 
 chair and long conversational order. 
 Seeing this, the girls became too sud- 
 denly quiet. 
 
 "Mrs. Albert," said Dad one evening 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 149 
 
 as they sat before a little open fire, for 
 the night was cool, "the girls think they 
 have something on us." 
 
 "Yes, the dear things, and it is a 
 shame to disappoint them. The de- 
 nouement will be a sad one for them." 
 
 "It will indeed," grunted Dad sol- 
 emnly. 
 
 "They have been seeing aged ro- 
 mance and hearing its sighing in this 
 house ever since they discovered that I 
 remembered you as a boy. But there 
 is one thing more valuable to us now 
 even than romance -'at our age,' to 
 quote. And you know what that is as 
 well as I do." 
 
 "It is Human Freedom," said Dad, 
 as dramatically as he was able to put 
 it over with chest expanded and one 
 arm aloft in the best Edwin Booth tra- 
 dition. But the inspiration faded at 
 once. 
 
 "I do hope when I come to die," 
 murmured Mrs. Albert unmoved, as 
 she regarded the cheerful blaze in the 
 grate, "that there will be a little open 
 
150 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 fire in the room. And I trust that you 
 will not say that you hope that I may 
 not go where there is a greater one." 
 
 "I won't," replied Dad, "but it is 
 too bad to disappoint the girls, isn't 
 it?" 
 
 "No, I don't think so," bridled Mrs. 
 Albert. "They had no right to assume 
 anything. I don't just like it." 
 
 Dad was thoughtful for several mo- 
 ments, gazing at the fire. 
 
 "We might, if you'll excuse the ex- 
 pression, put something across that 
 might surprise them." 
 
 Mrs. Albert looked up quickly. 
 "Just what do you mean?" 
 
 "Perhaps," said Dad thoughtfully, 
 "you might call it a light society com- 
 edy with you and me in the stellar 
 roles." 
 
 "Society comedy is my forte," said 
 the mature actress. 
 
 "My plot then is something like 
 this," continued Dad, developing it in 
 his mind as he went along, "though 
 we'll have to rely on you to get in the 
 correct touches and the-the-ATMOS- 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 151 
 
 PHERE. (Dad listened to his own star 
 word with evident pride.) I purpose 
 setting the stage for the comedy they 
 are expecting to see and then giving the 
 play, but with the plot left out. Do 
 you follow me?" 
 
 "Suppose you unwind it a little fur- 
 ther," smiled the actress. 
 
 "Well," continued Dad, "the play 
 opens with us giving, rather ostenta- 
 tiously, a little family dinner here at 
 this house, if we can get Mrs. Paull in 
 on that, and I think we can. Everybody 
 is invited. The assumption will be 
 strong in the minds of these dear little 
 busybodies that there is something do- 
 ing then for sure." 
 
 "I follow you. They will be looking 
 for An Announcement." 
 
 "They will. And they will be all 
 ready with their 'I-knew-it-all-the- 
 times,' their 'I-suspected-its,' their 
 Ve-saw-it-from-the-very-firsts' and all 
 the rest of them -and nothing will de- 
 velop. It will be interesting to watch 
 their faces through it all as the play 
 goes on with Hamlet off somewhere 
 
152 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 fishing or nursing his problems in the 
 seclusion of a bench in Loring Park." 
 
 "Mr. Houghton," exclaimed the act- 
 ress, "you have missed your vocation. 
 You should really give us something to 
 put on. I am old-fashioned now, I sup- 
 pose, but I do think that the stage 
 needs these quiet society comedies. We 
 are too Noisymoving. I think that 
 your idea in this case anyhow is de- 
 lightful and workable. 
 
 "It looks like an idea to me," said 
 Dad, swollen with the pride of the 
 amateur playright who has deposited 
 his first egg. "We must get Mrs. Paull 
 into it." 
 
 The arrangements were easily made 
 with the cheerful landlady. Mrs. Paull 
 was enjoying the life like a girl. Chest- 
 nut Avenue had not been so full of life 
 since the seventies. 
 
 "I will provide the materials for the 
 feast," said Dad after he had inter- 
 viewed Mrs. Paull, "and you girls may 
 cook 'em up and frame up the table to 
 your own taste. Get what extras you 
 need and leave the expense to me." 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 153 
 
 And so on the day of the great event, 
 Dad came riding up to the house on the 
 grocery delivery wagon much larger 
 than life and with a brace of young but 
 massive turkeys, several lobsters from 
 Shiek's, bunches of asparagus, heads of 
 lettuce, young onions, boxes of straw- 
 berries, bottles of olive oil, and a few 
 other necessities that he had happened 
 to get an eye upon. 
 
 "Land sakes!" exclaimed the aston- 
 ished Mrs. Paull, peering over her 
 glasses at the array upon the kitchen 
 table. 
 
 Dad Houghton was now in his ele- 
 ment. On the back porch he "shucked 
 the lobsters" for the salad and sniffed 
 appreciatively at the odors of roasting 
 turkey that came through the windows 
 of the busy kitchen. 
 
 "Land sakes!" said Mrs. Paull again, 
 "this will overwhelm the girls." 
 
 "I hope so," said Dad, "there's grow- 
 ing up here a square meal that is cal- 
 culated to satisfy the most worldly- 
 minded." 
 
 "The girls will be going out to 
 
154 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 breakfast about now," and the land- 
 lady. "Trifling time away in bed all 
 morning! I never could do that if I 
 was out all hours. I suppose now- 
 here comes Elsie. Good mornin', Miss 
 Maltravers." 
 
 The little actress smiled in at the 
 door in passing. The others drifted 
 leisurely down. 
 
 "Oh how good you smell!" 
 
 "I dunno about dishes," observed 
 Mrs. Paull, somewhat perturbed, "but 
 I guess, somehow-" 
 
 "If the dishes fail, some of us will 
 have to double up, that's all," said Dad. 
 "They're used to it, ain't you girls? 
 And they are willing to do most any- 
 thing for a real home meal, huh?" 
 
 The eventful dinner hour came and 
 started itself off in the jolliest manner. 
 Little snatches of song broke in on it. 
 Dad told his best stories. Miss Ho- 
 mans related her troubles with a recent 
 admirer who had sent her flowers and 
 had haunted the stage door in the alley 
 off Fourth Street. 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 155 
 
 "I told him to chase himself/' said 
 the lady, "but he said he had a rheu- 
 matic knee." 
 
 Miss Homans had delightful red 
 hair of the shade that artists rave about 
 and story writers call "Titian." 
 
 "I think it's wonderful," sighed 
 Elsie when the conversation "switched" 
 to Miss Homans' locks -such a verb is 
 pardonable in this connection surely. 
 
 "It's just red hair and that is all that 
 there is about it," protested Miss Ho- 
 mans. "It's not nearly so wonderful 
 as yours." 
 
 Miss Maltravers had the sort of red 
 hair that goes invariably with a clear 
 complexion but which is not always ap- 
 preciated by its owner. 
 
 "As for that," broke in Dad, mis- 
 chievously, "you can secure either of 
 them at Circler's. Miss Homans' is a 
 dollar and seventy-five a bottle and I 
 don't just know what Miss Maltravers' 
 comes to now. But it's not prohibi- 
 tive." 
 
 "Mine is the most expensive of all," 
 
156 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 sighed Mrs. Albert, "for time is money 
 and it takes sixty years to produce my 
 kind." 
 
 Mrs. Paull told the story of her 
 lucky penny and affirmed that she 
 never could doubt it again. Attempts 
 were made to borrow it, but she refused 
 all demands. 
 
 The girls now began looking expect- 
 antly at their host and hostess. Mrs. 
 Albert wore a half humorous and a 
 self-conscious look and now and then 
 she simpered a little and bridled per- 
 ceptibly with that exquisite art that has 
 delighted us for so long. Dad had an 
 important and impressive cast of coun- 
 tenance as of a man with a weighty 
 secret on his mind. 
 
 Then when the chairs were pushed 
 back, Dad arose impressively, cleared 
 his throat, used his handkerchief mild- 
 ly, seemed to find his hands somewhat 
 in the way, finally put them in his 
 pockets and to a very attentive circle of 
 listeners he began : 
 
 "Ladies and gentlemen -the latter 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 157 
 
 being myself -I have something of an 
 announcement to make- 
 
 (Thrills, visible and evident!) 
 that I suppose, will be something of a 
 surprise to you." 
 
 "Not a bit of it!" This interruption 
 was from Miss Maltravers. 
 
 "No? Then I have not kept my 
 secret as well as I thought. But, how- 
 ever, I will go on. I have something 
 of an announcement to make, seeing 
 that our happy home here is to be brok- 
 en up, something of my own plans that 
 may be of interest to my dear girls here 
 and to Mrs. Albert as well-" 
 
 "Oh, Dad, no surprise to her I am 
 sure." This from Miss Homans. 
 
 "I am not so sure of that, my girl. 
 Well, as I was saying when interrupted, 
 I have an announcement to make re- 
 garding my own activities this summer 
 which I hope you or some of you will 
 have an interest in when we may hope 
 to meet again, if the Cinderella Opera 
 Company holds together- and I be- 
 lieve it will. Hm. Let me see, where 
 
158 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 was I ? Oh yes, I remember. Well, my 
 announcement is that I propose this 
 summer devoting some time to the 
 composing of a play- a sort of light 
 comedy in which I hope you or some 
 of you will possibly have parts when it 
 is presented on the boards. We have 
 been so long together this season that I 
 felt sure you would be interested in my 
 little disclosure even if you have no 
 confidence in my ability to put it over. 
 That's about it, I guess. God bless you 
 all and give you jolly times this sum- 
 mer and here's to our meeting again 
 next season." 
 
 Dad raised his glass of water and 
 looked out composedly on the disap- 
 pointment of the ladies' small circle. 
 
 "You don't think I can do it, ha?" 
 
 "Oh, oh yes, surely you can!" "No 
 doubt about it at all." "I'm sure you 
 can!" These were some of the cries 
 that arose upon the turkey-tainted air. 
 Mrs. Albert smiled composedly and 
 Dad was quite complaisant as the sub- 
 ject was tossed to and fro. 
 
 "I was hoping for something else, 
 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 159 
 
 though," sighed Miss Maltravers fin- 
 ally. The others murmured. 
 
 So the dinner broke up in happy con- 
 fusion and many hands made light 
 work of what Mrs. Paull called "the 
 mess." 
 
 The girls had gone and the house 
 was rather lonesome. Mrs. Albert was 
 going tomorrow and Dad was figuring 
 on getting back to his lonesome rooms 
 in the Plaza and to the garish lights of 
 Loring Park just as soon as he could 
 make up his mind on the matter of ad- 
 vising Mrs. Paull about her real estate 
 in which he had been taking an inter- 
 est. At least that was the excuse he 
 now gave for staying on. 
 
 Dad and Mrs. Albert were sitting 
 before the open grate again in which 
 burned the merest apology for a sum- 
 mer fire "to take off the dampness of 
 the house." 
 
 "It all comes to ashes at last," mused 
 Mrs. Albert not so uncheerfully as the 
 remark sounds in print. 
 
 "Yes," said Dad, "and the dust 
 
i6o LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 thrown in. They always go together in 
 books, you know. The firm of Dust & 
 Ashes is an old and respectable house 
 and it's as sound as the First and Se- 
 curity National Bank." 
 
 "Those poor girls/' sighed Mrs. Al- 
 bert. "I was rather sorry for them 
 after all. They had their minds simply 
 set on us." 
 
 "I know it," replied Mr. Houghton. 
 "It was almost wrong for us to do it, 
 but they brought it on themselves." 
 There was a pause while the fire 
 burned. "Mrs. Albert," resumed Dad 
 meditatively, "what do you think of re- 
 marriage anyhow?" 
 
 "Now," said the fine actress, "if 
 you're honest and not joking, I will tell 
 you freely that it has always stood to 
 me as the Great Temptation. But I 
 have had the sense to keep the house of 
 my heart for twenty-five years under 
 lock and key- and the key thrown 
 away." 
 
 Dad sighed a real estate sigh. 
 
 "You're right, of course. With us 
 who have been married, the thing's 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 161 
 
 done. But, as you say, it's a tempta- 
 tion. Time gets lonesome." 
 
 "Deliver us from temptation," said 
 Mrs. Albert piously. "There are worse 
 things than lonesomeness." 
 
 "Mrs. Albert," mused Dad, knock- 
 ing a bit of the burning wood with the 
 poker, "supposing you should find that 
 lost key some time and should open up 
 the house again, which do you suppose 
 would come out- the lady or the tiger?" 
 
 Mrs. Albert dropped a stitch and 
 carefully picked it up again before re- 
 plying. Then she drew the yarn out 
 at arm's length to loosen it from the 
 ball. 
 
 "I wonder!" 
 
VII 
 
 CAMPING OUT IN HEAVEN 
 
 THE difficult question, "Why should 
 there be anything anywhere," pro- 
 pounded, I believe, by William James 
 in a moment of philosophical humor, is 
 one of the first to challenge us on the 
 surface when we are strolling in Lor- 
 ing Park. Why should there be any- 
 thing here, or why should there be any- 
 thing anywhere? It is no small prob- 
 lem. Then, too, here is all this noble 
 and satisfying beauty, with delightful 
 slopes of lawn wooded hills, forest 
 glades, sheets of silent water mirror- 
 ing the still trees by day and the quieter 
 stars by night. Is all this merely on 
 the surface? Is there no hidden mean- 
 ing to it all, no underlying and more 
 permanent reality? 
 
 Many years ago I consulted a sup- 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 163 
 
 posedly learned man on this matter. 
 He had an easy answer when he finally 
 discovered the problem that was worry- 
 ing the immature mind of the question- 
 er? It was all merely Nature. It just 
 happened that there was something 
 somewhere. He found it just as easy 
 to have something as to have nothing. 
 Something simply always was -that was 
 all there was to it and nothing to worry 
 about either. 
 
 I was contented with this solution at 
 first but in time I became dissatisfied 
 with it. Why should there be any Na- 
 ture, whatever it was? Why should it 
 just happen that there was something 
 where one naturally might have expect- 
 ed to find nothing? 
 
 In studying the ways in which the 
 substances that make up the materials 
 of this something settle into form, or 
 crystallize, if left to themselves, it is 
 found that they take these remarkable 
 geometrical shapes in accordance with 
 mathematical law. There is no chance 
 about it, no "just happening." Matter 
 is all shot through and through with 
 
164 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 law, is governed by law and is held by 
 law everywhere. The simplest con- 
 sideration of crystallography shows that 
 matter, by the operation of molecular 
 attraction, assumes definite structure 
 with forms of solids enclosed by plane 
 surfaces arranged according to the laws 
 of mathematics. How can this as- 
 tounding thing just happen? Here 
 seems to be plain enough evidence of 
 the workings of infinite mathematical 
 Mind, and so tremendous a Mind does 
 it appear to be from its works that I 
 do not hesitate to allow it the compli- 
 ment of the capital letter. In Loring 
 Park you are treading on forces, laws, 
 mathematics, and formulas with ev- 
 ery careless step, and you are simply 
 compelled to say "God." And then, 
 there is life in the park too, more won- 
 derful and mysterious, even, than the 
 mathematical planes bounding crys- 
 tals -and much more interesting and 
 fascinating. For this little life that we 
 see with our eyes and feel in our 
 breasts may well be, in some way, the 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 165 
 
 reflection of the great Life of the Uni- 
 verse. 
 
 So the first thing you may say to 
 yourself, if so disposed, when you walk 
 in Loring Park in the cool of the day, 
 is -"God." It is all God, every tree 
 and shrub is a burning bush, burning 
 with the living fire, and the place is 
 Holy Ground. 
 
 Other persons by their natural and 
 spontaneous abilities have even less 
 difficulty in finding God in Loring 
 Park. I once asked a wise woman, 
 trying in my childish way to puzzle 
 her and, incidentaly, to show a cer- 
 tain fascinating and superior brillian- 
 cy of mind, "Why should there be any- 
 thing here?" and she declared at once 
 and offhand, that there wasn't -not a 
 thing here, not a thing anywhere, only 
 just God. 
 
 "Then," I countered, somewhat non- 
 plussed and a little piqued, "What is 
 Loring Park?" And, as one who had 
 been there from the first and who was 
 in the secret of all its secrets, she ex- 
 
1 66 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 plained that Loring Park was just 
 made up of laws, forces, life, beauty, 
 truth, love, and what-nots of similar 
 variety. The outside of it that we saw 
 with our eyes was phenomenal merely, 
 the result of our material sensory ap- 
 paratus. If we saw it as it really is, we 
 should see infinite Life, infinite Beau- 
 ty, infinite Power, infinite Law, and in- 
 finite Love. 
 
 Perhaps she is half right. These 
 things seem to be more necessary to 
 happiness as we appear to advance in 
 years, and they seem to be lying around 
 in Loring Park in infinite abundance. 
 
 That simple philosopher Kant, by 
 an irreverent American referred to as 
 the Koenigsberg Bantam, and whose 
 books we doubtless carry in our pockets 
 to read in our leisure moments on the 
 street cars that run through the Loring 
 Park valley, would have delighted in 
 the assertion that we do not see Loring 
 Park as it is in itself, but under the 
 guise of appearances which the sense 
 organs unavoidably impose. The in- 
 habiters of some of the planets may 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 167 
 
 well see their Loring Parks quite oth- 
 erwise from the way in which we see 
 our's. Outside Nature "exists only for 
 sense beings. The worlds of sense may 
 be very different according to the dif- 
 ferences of sense perceptions in various 
 world beholders while the world of un- 
 derstanding which lies at the founda- 
 tion remains always the same." 
 
 The outside Loring Park, then, with 
 the rest of the sense world, is, in this 
 philosophy, "nothing more than a mere 
 appearance, ... a picture which 
 hovers before our present modes of 
 knowing and, like a dream, has no real- 
 ity in itself." 
 
 But even granting for a moment that 
 all these things are so, yet there re- 
 mains the great phenomenon, the sen- 
 sory illusion, the splendid stage setting 
 of Loring Park as we see it in our im- 
 perfect way. What romances and 
 stories it has told ! What tragedies and 
 dramas of life and death have played 
 themselves out on its stage! What a 
 theater it offers for splendid and im- 
 mortal adventure! 
 
168 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 And what wonderful adventurers we 
 all are! Every living person, if he has 
 mind enough to dramatize ordinary 
 events or to estimate them properly 
 when they are unrolled before him and 
 while he unrolls with them, is living a 
 life of most extraordinary adventure. 
 All possibilities lie in the way of one 
 who is merely crossing the Loring Park 
 valley. 
 
 In the early nineties I was a great 
 wanderer within that small section of 
 the face of the earth known to Hud- 
 son's "Dictionary of Minneapolis" as 
 "the city limits." No portion of it held 
 greater charm than the rim of hills be- 
 ginning west of Bryn Mawr and run- 
 ning easterly till they lose themselves 
 in the prairies east and south of the 
 former W. D. Washburn residence. 
 
 The first breach in this range of hills 
 was made when the Lowry bluff was 
 cut down to allow Hennepin Avenue 
 to run through. The first railroad 
 made use of the natural opening west of 
 the Lowry hill. Last of all came the 
 

 Si 
 
 o 
 U 
 
 < 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 171 
 
 cutting through of the Bryn Mawr hill 
 to allow Superior Avenue a direct 
 route to Minnetonka. 
 
 One unoccupied Sunday in those 
 years when the section where Superior 
 Avenue leaves the valley was as wild 
 a country as it was when Joseph S. 
 Johnson cultivated the land of his Lor- 
 ing Park farm, I wandered up into 
 these "Little Hills" which, I believe, 
 is the translation of the words "Bryn 
 Mawr," and found, squatting in a little 
 opening in the woods on the hillside 
 looking out over the valley, a small 
 colony of campers from the city. When 
 I close my eyes now, the sunshine of 
 those days all comes flooding back 
 again, with the reds and browns of the 
 sumacs, the black boles of the oak trees, 
 and the rich greens of field and foli- 
 age -and I am standing looking down 
 into Camp Comfort again. You would 
 look for the site today in vain. The 
 gravel man has dug the entire hill and 
 valley away and used the material for 
 the roofs of buildings. The sand of 
 "the eternal hills" has been combined 
 
172 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 with the cement of commerce for vari- 
 ous other serviceable purposes. Camp 
 Comfort is a memory only, but I know 
 on what screen all that old glory of 
 sunlight and summer, that wild beat- 
 ing of wind and rain, those long nights 
 of leafy murmur and of insect orches- 
 tration still are shown. 
 
 I soon formed a real and living ac- 
 quaintance with the three occupants of 
 the little tent in the hills and became a 
 constant night and day visitor. This 
 acquaintance grew and, ripened until I 
 pitched my tent there for weeks at a 
 time and took a living part in the fight 
 for life that made these hills for the 
 campers a stern and rather terrible bat- 
 tle-ground. But it is all past now. The 
 battle was lost and won. All, all are 
 gone, the old familiar faces -and evert 
 the eternal hills are gone. 
 
 After living on.a bit of land for some 
 time, one may discover much of inter- 
 est about it. That all the land of these 
 hills had been "laid out" into city lots 
 and sold to customers here, there, and 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 173 
 
 everywhere, neither we who were en- 
 camped here, nor the birds, the flowers, 
 the stones, and the trees for a moment 
 suspected. A day came at length that 
 revealed the facts. A gentle and cul- 
 tured w 4 oman from the East wandered 
 into the camp looking for the corner of 
 two uninhabited streets that appeared 
 on the map*, but which were not appar- 
 ent on earth. Some years before, she 
 had purchased, "sight unseen" as the 
 boys once said when swapping jack- 
 knives, a lot of land in this vicinity. 
 Here was the whole wide world spread 
 out before us, and she claimed to hold 
 fifty unincumbered front feet of it as 
 her own personal property, her very 
 own! 
 
 We knew in a general way where the 
 streets should have run if there had 
 been any, and we led her to the spot. 
 At the sight of the "impenetrable for- 
 est," the wind flowers, the trilliums, and 
 the undisturbed surface of the planet 
 generally, she threw up both hands and 
 spoke in milder terms than I should 
 have done of the perfidy of man and 
 
174 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 especially of that section of mankind 
 engaged in the real estate business. She 
 had paid one thousand, two hundred 
 dollars for fifty front feet of this forest 
 which the map showed to be not so far 
 distant from the geographical center of 
 the city. The real estate man (and he 
 was a "personal friend") in negotiating 
 the sale of the land to his distant cus- 
 tomer, had neglected to mention the 
 railroad tracks and other minor matters 
 of a similar nature tending to keep pop- 
 ulation at a distance. 
 
 Among the mysterious things that 
 caught our attention in this little open- 
 ing in the woods were two abandoned 
 and almost overgrown excavations that 
 had the appearance of old basements 
 of long forgotten houses. We were 
 deeply interested in the discovery and 
 it was some time before we ascertained 
 that we were camping in the front- 
 yard, or back-yard, or door-yard, or 
 barn-yard of the old Michael Hallo- 
 ran claim. 
 
 Four brothers, Michael, Patrick, 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 175 
 
 John, and Thomas Halloran, came 
 from County Cork, Ireland, in the fif- 
 ties and took up land from the govern- 
 ment around the Lake of the Isles, west 
 of the present Cedar Lake Road ad- 
 joining Bryn Mawr and in North Min- 
 neapolis. Their descendants still live 
 here, some of them on the old claims. 
 The struggles and triumphs of their 
 sturdy forbears would fill a book. It 
 is a family record that some of these 
 descendants should put down on paper 
 while the facts and traditions are still 
 available. 
 
 One dead of night, lying half asleep 
 in the white tent through which the 
 moonlight filtered dimly, I listened in 
 some trepidation to a strange halting 
 approach, now silent, now renewed, 
 like the hesitant movements of some 
 ancient ghost of the place. It ad- 
 vanced, stopped, came on, halted, then 
 advanced again till it reached the tent. 
 Then all was silent. The bull terrier 
 gave hoarse growls at intervals, and 
 then a gruff half bark or two. He 
 
176 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 trembled violently, shaking the floor of 
 the tent perceptibly, but he did not of- 
 fer to go out and he refused to accept 
 our advice to that end. As nothing 
 more came of the mysterious visitor, 
 we soon dropped to sleep again. 
 
 In the morning I noticed with some 
 distaste that an ancient reptile of a tur- 
 tle had settled himself comfortably un- 
 der the tent in the wet sand in which 
 we had buried the jar of butter to keep 
 it cool. This grateful coldness was ap- 
 preciated by the turtle as well as by the 
 butter. In some strange way, occult 
 to us, he had detected this cool spot 
 from a distance and had come to dem- 
 onstrate the reason for his strange in- 
 ner confidence. That is turtle "faith." 
 If only our own human faith in things 
 unseen may obtain a parallel demon- 
 stration! 
 
 We were unreasonably disturbed by 
 the thought of this innocent reptile 
 crouched beside the family butter no 
 matter how carefully it was covered, 
 and we finally collected him in a bas- 
 ket and bore him far away. But he 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 177 
 
 returned. It became necessary, final- 
 ly, to transport him as far as Cedar 
 Lake and there he was content to re- 
 main. 
 
 A solemn toad went through the 
 same performance and had to be car- 
 ried a long distance away in order to 
 discourage his inevitable return. 
 
 The only treetoad I ever saw made 
 his home with us between the tent and 
 the fly and sang his heart out for our 
 benefit. He was a strange and shy 
 creature, but we felt that rapture must 
 be at the heart of him and he was a 
 welcome boarder. 
 
 A splendid girl on horseback one 
 afternoon galloped up the Cedar Lake 
 Road, came across the fields, and tied 
 her horse to a tree on the hilltop. Be- 
 fore long the leading man in the un- 
 written drama appeared on the scene. 
 They met as lovers and talked long and 
 earnestly together at the edge of the 
 woods. And then she rode away across 
 the field, waving back to him a farewell 
 with her long, streaming veil. He 
 
178 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 stood and watched her. We could see 
 them through the screen of the boles 
 of the trees. 
 
 Many a romance we wove from this 
 delightful incident. The reality could 
 be no more fascinating than our per- 
 haps more dramatically perfect tragi- 
 comedies of life built on its slight 
 foundation. 
 
 But though the glorious summers 
 came and went at Camp Comfort and 
 we came and went with them like the 
 birds, and though this university of the 
 hills was teaching us many things, not 
 the least among them the strange phe- 
 nomenon that the flowers of love often 
 blossom their sweetest on the edges of 
 graves, nevertheless, all was not going 
 well at Camp Comfort. 
 
 "How can you possibly know of 
 things so palpably in the future," I 
 asked the Lady of the Hills as we sat 
 for long stretches of hours on the brow 
 of the little mountain, looking out over 
 the skyline of the city and beyond it 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 179 
 
 into distant spaces and fast coming 
 days. 
 
 One might as well have asked the 
 migrating bird, born that summer, of 
 the monitions in its little heart of the 
 certainty of the coming winter. 
 
 So the perfect days unrolled them- 
 selves in our little valley until, one ear- 
 ly autumn day, a bird flew in at the 
 tent opening, fluttered a moment, and 
 flew away. And not long after that 
 omen, it became apparent to us all that 
 "the latest strife was lost and all was 
 done with." 
 
 After the others had gone, I re- 
 mained alone in the hills all of that 
 quiet Sunday afternoon until evening. 
 The night came on and the lonesome- 
 ness became so profound that, full of 
 heaviness, I wandered down through 
 the glen towards the Bryn Mawr val- 
 ley. Coming out of the woods, I 
 looked across this Hollow of the Hills 
 along the dusk of the north side of the 
 Lowry range, with its friendly stars of 
 houselights among the trees, and there, 
 
180 LORING PARK ASPECTS 
 
 on the far eastern horizon line of the 
 valley, shone out the Cross of Light on 
 the top of the spire of the Wesley 
 Church at the corner of First Avenue 
 south and Grant Street, far away but 
 very hopeful and bright. It hung 
 towering not only o'er the wrecks of 
 time in the Loring Park valley, but 
 over the living and ever renewed crea- 
 tions of the mysterious life that is all 
 the time making all things all over 
 new again and better than they have 
 been before. 
 
 So I have come to regard this dear 
 valley in another and a far different 
 light from the things that seem to be 
 "passing away." If the material ap- 
 pearance before our eyes, the setting 
 and the shifting of the scenery for our 
 little tragi-comedies of life and death, 
 is so beautiful, what must be the real- 
 ity back of it all when the play is over 
 and the audience has gone home? If 
 Loring Park is separated by "a discrete 
 degree" from the unknown reality of 
 itself, the "doctrine of correspondence" 
 that goes with these degrees gives us 
 
LORING PARK ASPECTS 181 
 
 many hints of an underlying Loring 
 Park which might easily furnish, for 
 one who drops his sense consciousness 
 only to exchange it for a deeper pene- 
 tration and perception, as satisfactory 
 a heaven as any of which we may con- 
 ceive. 
 
 The original meaning of the word 
 "paradise" is "park." With mortal 
 and fading eyes we look out upon Lor- 
 ing Park, but if we look through it and 
 a little deeper, or perhaps higher, we 
 may well be directing our unanxious 
 gaze across the very Plains of the 
 Blessed. Through this long night of 
 Time, we catch glimpses of "edges" 
 and "bordering lights." 
 
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