Proceedings OF THE Meeting Held by the City of New York in Honor of the Memory of the late Hon. Andrew Haswell Green, on Wednesday, December 30, 1903. A public meeting in honor of the memory of the Hon. Andrew Haswell Green, late President of the Commissioners of the State Reservation at Niagara, was held by the City of New York in the Aldermanic Chamber of the City Hall, on Wednesday, December 30, 1903. The official invitation read as follows: THE HONOUR OF YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUESTED AT THE SERVICES TO BE HELD BY THE CITY OF NEW YORK IN MEMORY OF THE LATE ANDREW H. GREEN ON THE AFTERNOON OF WEDNESDAY, THE THIRTIEth of December, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND THREE, AT THREE O'CLOCK, IN THE ALDERMANIC CHAMBER OF CITY HALL. COMMITTEE OF ARRANGEMENTS JACOB A. CANTOR, PRESIDENT OF THE BOROUGH OF MANHATTAN, CHAIRMAN. J. EDWARD SWANSTROM, PRESIDENT OF THE Borough of Brooklyn. JOSEPH CASSIDY, PRESIDENT OF THE BOROUGH OF QUEENS. LOUIS F. HAFFEN, PRESIDENT OF THE BOROUGH OF THE BRONX. GEORGE CROMWELL, PRESIDENT OF THE BOROUGH OF RICHMOND. ALDERMAN JAMES H. McINNES. ALDERMAN JOHN T. MCCALL. The Aldermanic Chamber was elaborately draped with the insignia of mourning. Curtains of crape shrouded the windows, walls, balcony and President's chair. Behind the latter hung the Municipal Flag, and on the left stood the life-sized portrait of Mr. Green completed by the artist Mosler for the City of New York just before Mr. Green's death. The Chamber was filled with a distinguished gathering of citizens. The Hon. Jacob A. Cantor, President of the Borough of Manhattan and Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements, led the procession as the city officials and speakers entered and took their seats. He then introduced the Mayor, the Hon. Seth Low, who presided during the meeting. After an opening prayer by the Rev. Leighton Williams, Pastor of the Amity Baptist Church, and Secretary and Treasurer of the Commissioners of the State Reservation at Niagara from 1883 to 1887, the Mayor spoke as follows: Mayor Low's Remarks. Ladies and Gentlemen-The City of New York has arranged for this memorial meeting in honor of the late Andrew H. Green, in recognition of his many and great services to the municipality. So far as I have been able to learn, this is the first service of the kind ever arranged for by the city; certainly it is the first for a very long term of years. This fact expresses, more eloquently than any words, the general feeling of indignation and regret and sorrow that a citizen who had been so eminently useful as Mr. Green, should, in his old age, have met his death by violence. The city will always remember and perpetuate the memory of his public services. The memorial address will now be delivered by Chancellor MacCracken of the New York University. Chancellor MacCracken then spoke as follows: Chancellor MacCracken's Address. Ladies and Gentlemen-A ruling passion of Andrew H. Green was this city of ours. In his early teens he became the lover of this City of the Waters." He abated nothing of the fervor of his affection until the day when he fell under the stroke of a brutish assassin on the pavement of Park avenue. Of that venerable man, dying on a highway which is the property of New York City, it can be said in a profound sense, in which it can hardly be said of any other man, that dying there, he died at home. A New York merchant and banker of my acquaintance, who is only five years younger than Mr. Green, told me not long since, that a modest ring which I had observed upon his finger had never been taken off even for an instant, since a certain day more than half a century ago when it was placed there by his young bride. Andrew Haswell Green never found any bride excepting this city of the waters, but she had bound him to her by a mystic bond more than three and sixty years ago and never had he loosed or put away her claim, even for an hour. The boy, in his sixteenth year, first sees New York when he comes with his elder sister out and away from a New England farm, along through the Sound by steamboat, around the Battery, up into the Hudson to the landing place. Could he have approached any city amid more beautiful surroundings? It is true that New York then was a sleepy little city. All her people together would not show a larger population than is required to-day to make two Assembly districts as populous as the thirtyfifth Assembly district away up in the Bronx. Manhattan Island was in 1835 like the sleeping beauty of the legend. We recall the picture drawn by the poet Tennyson, a picture of the sleeping New York resting upon the waters: "She sleeps! On either hand up swells The gold fringed pillow lightly pressed; A perfect form in perfect rest.” Because Andrew H. Green, a youth of sixteen, and countless young men of whom he was a type, not only of American birth but natives of other lands, sought out the sleeping beauty on this Island and gave her a young man's affection, it came to pass that the maiden, who sleeping was, awaked to new experience of life. Many people will doubt whether Andrew Green should be pictured as entering life with a mind possessed by anything that could be called idealism. Was his dream as a very young man of anything in particular except to make a living? Well, the story he has left in his own words dictated to one of his nieces, telling of his coming to New York and of his early experience here, is as plain and matter-of-fact as anything can be. I quote it as follows: "In 1835 he went with his sister Lucy by steamboat and stage to New York; was employed as errand boy in the store of Hinsdale & Atkins at $50 a year and board; then as clerk with Lee, Savage & Co., wholesale cloth merchants and importers, where he was steadily advanced till reaching nearly the head position when the firm failed in the mercantile embarrassments of 1837. "After a severe illness and return to Green Hill for months of recuperation, he entered the employ of Wood, Johnston & Barritt, linen importers in Exchange place; then he went to the firm of Simeon Draper, where he was kept up nearly all night arranging for sales. "Through a friend of the family, he met Mr. Burnley, who had interest in sugar plantations in Trinidad. Through Mr. Burnley he went, when 21 years old, to Trinidad, where for nearly a year he was engaged on the plantation owned by Mr. Burnley. While in Trinidad he became familiar with the cultivation of sugar cane, the manufacture of sugar, molasses, etc., but, seeing how crude were the methods used, tried without success to introduce improved processes. Realizing that advanced ideas would not be adopted, he determined to return to New York, where he entered the law office of Mr. John W. Mitchell." This is the whole story as told by Andrew Green himself of not merely his first coming into New York but of the entire seven years of his youth from fifteen until twenty-two. Was that youth an idealist in the sense of having his mind full of some lofty conception of life to be fulfilled? I have before me a volume containing the life and letters of the brother next him in age. This brother, a physician by profession, spent most of his life as a missionary of the American Board on the island of Ceylon. Mr. Andrew H. Green writes the introduction to the volume, in which he gives a picture of the home in which his brother was reared, which also was his own home. "It was not far from the city of Worcester, a plain wooden dwelling, two-storied but low in the ceilings, of ample length and breadth, and anchored by a chimney of needless proportions. It stood on a byroad or lane which was but little frequented. About the premises could be seen evidences of taste struggling for a more emphatic manifestation, but confined by imperative demands upon a limited treasury." |