SOLO. Thou hast gathered us from the East, and from the West, from the North, and from the South; Thou hast made us companions for the mighty upon earth, even for princes of great nations. TRIO. O! I am inspire us with wisdom and strength, to support The After which Dr. Smith preached a well-adapted sermon. text was taken from the 1st Epistle of Peter, 2d chapter, and 16th The brethren requested a copy of the sermon for publication, and the profits were applied to the use of the poor. verse. After divine service the procession returned to the College; the musical bells belonging to the church and the band of music playing proper Masonic tunes. The brethren being all "new clothed," and the officers in the proper jewels of their respective lodges, and their other badges of dignity, made, we are told, “a genteel appearance." The brethren afterwards departed to their respective lodges, where they dined together. The sum of £400 was collected in the church, among the brethren and others, for the relief of the poor. CHAPTER XXXVII. ON THE EVACUATION OF PHILADELPHIA BY THE BRITISH, DR. SMITH RETURNS TO THE CITY, AND BEGINS THE WORK OF RE-ESTABLISHING THE CollegeHIS GREAT SERVICES OF EVERY SORT, LITERARY, FISCAL AND OF BUSINESS GENERALLY, HEREIN-THE COLLEGE FINANCES PUT UPON AS GOOD A FOOT AS PRACTICABLE IN THE SUPREMACY OF CONTINENTAL PAPER-INSTRUCTORS BROUGHT BACK, AND DEGREES AGAIN ORDERED TO BE CONFERRED. UPON the evacuation of Philadelphia by the British forces, Dr. Smith immediately returned to that city and began to make arrangements to again open the College, Academy and Schools. The opening took place early in January of this year. It at once showed that the character and good fame which the institution had acquired before the war began was still possessed by it. “Pupils," says Dr. Stille, "soon flocked to the schools; though the greater portion of them was in the lower departments." Political spirit, of course, still ran high. Arnold was in command of the city, and under his permission the worst portion of a party, downright and profligately Tory, was insolently asserting itself. Such a nest brought discredit and insult from the common people to a very different class of persons, and, indeed, to some degree to all who had ever belonged to the ancient proprietary party. Any man who had not been violent in denouncing George III., and equally violent in approving of the Declaration of Independence, exactly as and when made, was a target for the arrows of every illiterate and malignant fellow. Dr. Smith came in for a good share. He had hardly got back to the city before an ignoramus, named Cress, who, as the jurat showed, was unable to write his name, published in the newspapers an affidavit as follows: Pennsylvania ss. Deposition of Peter Cress. Before me, Plunket Fleeson, Esquire, one of the Justices of the Peace, &c., comes Peter Cress of the City of Philadelphia, Saddle and Harness maker, and being duly sworn, deposeth and saith, That on the day on which the attack was made by the Vigilant on the fortification at Mud island, Doctor William Smith, Provost of the college of Philadelphia, with a number of other people of the City of Philadelphia, was on the banks near the mouth of the river Schuylkill, viewing the attack with a large Spy-Glass or Telescope. That after the firing from the Round Tops of the Vigilant began and was returned from the fort, he, the said Peter Cress, was standing behind and very near the said Doctor Smith, and heard him, the said Doctor Smith, say, that "if they (the men in the Fort meaning) do not surrender they ought every man of them to be put to the Sword," or words to this effect. And further the deponent saith not. his PETER CRESS. mark Sworn before me at Philadelphia this twentieth day of March, A. D. PLUNKET FLEESON. 1779. Dr. Smith replied to this by a publication in the same paper, in which he denied ever having spoken the words alleged against him, or that he had said anything that could be construed as meaning what they did. Of course nothing came of the matter except to show that " Peter Cress, of the City of Philadelphia, Saddle and Harness maker," was a super-serviceabie ass. We now were beginning to feel severely the calamity, which Dr. Smith had foreseen, of entering on war before we were at all prepared for it, and the consequent issue of paper money beyond our ability to redeem it on demand. The crisis, indeed, had not yet come. We were only on the swelling, or rather on the hugely swollen tide of a paper money system. But this was worse than the crisis which soon after did occur. The extravagant depravation of morals was frightful. Arnold was in command of the city, and peculation, speculation, debauchery, and fraud of every kind prevailed. It is set forth in a paper by Mr. F. D. Stone, read in May, 1879, before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, entitled, “ Philadelphia a Century Ago, or the Reign of Continental Money."* The minutes of the Board of Trustees show that on the 25th of March, 1779, both Dr. Smith and Dr. Alison represented to the Board that their receiving, "in the present currency," only double the nominal sums of their former salary was no way adequate to the increased price of necessaries, and prayed that the fact might be taken by the Trustees into consideration. The Board ordered that in the notices of next meeting it should be inserted that the disposition of money would be part of the business before it. At this next meeting the salaries were raised. The work of the College now goes on, though it is to some degree the work of reconstruction. Dr. Smith and Dr. Alison, at a meeting of May 4th, 1779, informed the Board that they had examined one Mr. Cochran, who offered himself as an usher in the Latin School at the rate of £400 per annum; and that they were of opinion that, though he had not for some time been employed in teaching the classics, yet by diligent study he might supply an usher's place. It was therefore ordered that he be received on a quarter's trial. Dr. Smith's universal usefulness exhibits itself now even above what it did in earlier times. He was requested by the Board to visit the tenants on the Perkasie Manor, and to report the state of the farms; to give the tenants notice that their leases being expired they must come to Philadelphia and enter into new agreements for rents in wheat, or the price thereof as it may be at Philadelphia, yearly, when the same becomes due. This, with an * See The Pennsylvania Journal of Biography and History, Vol. 3., p. 361 authority "to employ some person to collect the old rails scattered on the different parts of the Norriton Plantation, and enclose the meadows as soon as possible to prevent them being damaged further by cattle and swine," was rather strange business to put upon the Provost of the College, he too a Reverend Doctor of Divinity by diplomas of Oxford, Edinburgh, and Dublin. However, disdaining no office in life where he could be useful to science and letters, Dr. Smith went at it all cheerfully and did it all effectively. A controversy arose with Colonel Bull about the lands which, we have mentioned in our first volume, were sold by him to Dr. Smith, at or near Norristown, and which Dr. Smith had transferred to the College; Colonel Bull claiming certain small islands or sand-banks, which he pretended had not passed by his grant to Dr. Smith, while Dr. Smith and the College, on the strength of a map which accompanied the deed, asserted that they had; and, moreover, that as certain parts of the estate, undeniably granted, were wholly useless and incapable of being in the least enjoyed, unless the parts claimed by Colonel Bull passed also, that they were absolutely appurtenant and had been well conveyed. Colonel Bull finally relinquished his claims. He visited the farms belonging to the College in Perkasie Manor, and, in the presence of witnesses whom he took with him, Mr. John Heany and Colonel Smith, one of the members of Assembly for Bucks county, received the proposals of the tenants for new leases, and appointed them to attend the Board of Trustees at a meeting to be held May 18th. The tenants accordingly attended at the proper time, and, being called in one after another, the terms of their future leases, for seven years from the 25th of March, 1779, were settled with them severally, and leases were ordered to be executed to them under the seal of the Corporation, and the counterparts duly executed to be deposited with the treasurer. With respect to the year, from 25th March, 1778, to 25th March, 1779, which they have severally held over their former term, it was mutually agreed to take a note of hand from each of them for the like payments in wheat or its value on the 15th of September next, as they were severally to pay for each year of their new term. Certain trespassers-Clark, Painter, and others-on the Woodlands on Rockhill, by making settlements without leave, were ordered to move off in three months from the day of notice given them by Dr. Smith, and to remain accountable for the damages and waste they had committed. It was further ordered that no persons should be allowed, for the future, to settle on the said Woodlands, but that that portion of the estate be reserved for the supply of the other plantations* now leased, in such manner as the Trustees or their agents should direct. Lastly it was ordered that a power of attorney should be given to Mr. Heany, in whose neighborhood they were, to superintend the plantations now leased in order to prevent waste and breach of covenant. The vigilant and effective agency of Dr. Smith extended itself over every part of the estates of the College. We find him at this same meeting acquainting the Board that part of the "New Buildings" having been rented by him, at the desire of the Trustees, to one Mr. Dancer, at the rate of £30 per quarter, either party to have the liberty of giving the other a quarter's notice for dissolving, and the value of money being now greatly altered, he had given notice to Mr. Dancer more than three months ago, that he could not continue at that rent; and that Mr. Dancer had never yet paid any rent. It was accordingly ordered that he be called upon for his past rent, and that he deliver up the house unless he comes to a new agreement for a larger rent. How completely, indeed, every detail-even those of the most homely and unappropriate kind—were thrown upon the Provost in these days of war and desolation appears from the records of a meeting of the Trustees, held June 1st, 1777, when Mr. Dancer, having been ejected from the premises for which he would pay only in "bankruptcy" the rent that he had promised to pay in bullion, it was ordered that an inventory be taken of the kitchen furniture, and that Dr. Smith and Dr. Alison direct the same to be sold at public vendue, and these gentlemen were to agree with another person, one Monsieur Marie, for one quarter's rent of the house. However, in the midst of all these disgusting details, the care of which would have been better consigned to a real-estate agent—if, indeed, one who had the capacity, the zeal, the fidelity, and the humility of Dr. Smith could have been found-it is *They were fourteen in number. |