"C M Kornbluth - The Events Leading Down To Tragedy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

historian, Dr. Donge. Donge states (Old Times on the Oquanantic, 2nd ed., 1873, pp. 771-2): "No less
to be deplored than the routing of theWestBranceCanalto bypassEleusiswas the duel in which perished
miserably Major Elisha Watling and Colonel Hiram Fraskell, those two venerable pioneers of the
OquananticValley. Though in no way to be compared with the barbarous blood feuds of the benighted
Southern States of our Union, there has persisted to our own day a certain division of loyalty among
residents of Tuscarora Township and particularly the borough of Eleusis. Do we not see elm-shaded
Northumberland Streetadorned by two gracefully pillared bank buildings, one the stronghold of the
Fraskellite and the other of the Watlingist? Is not the debating society ofEleusisAcademysundered
annually by the proposition, "Resolved: that Major Elisha Watling (on alternate years, Colonel Hiram
Fraskell) was no gentleman'? And did not the Watlingist propensities of the Eleusis Colonial Dames and
the Fraskellite inclination of the Eleusis Daughters of the American Revolution 'clash' in September, 1869,
at the storied Last Joint Lawn Fete during which eclairs and (some say) tea cups were hurled?" [Dear old
Donge! Prose equal Dr. Johnson!]



If I may venture to follow those stately periods with my own faltering style, it is of course known to us all
that the controversy has scarcely diminished to the present time.Eleu-mAcademy, famed alma mater (i.e.,
"foster mother") of the immortal Hovington1 is, alas, no more. It expired in flames on the tragic night of
August 17, 1901, while the Watlingist



*vide Spoynte, H.: "Egney Hovington, Nineteenth-Century American Nature Poet, and his career at
EleusisAcademy, October 4тАФOctober 28, 1881" (art.) in Bull of the Tuscarora Township Hut. Soc.,
VoL XVI, No. 4, Winter, 1929, pp. 4-18.



members of that Eleusis Hose Company Number One which was stabled in Northumberland Street
battled for possession of the fire hydrant which might have saved the venerable pile against the members
of the predominantly Fraskellite Eleusis Hose Company Number One which was then stabled in
Oquanantic Street. (The confusion of the nomenclature is only a part of the duel's bitter heritage.)
Nevertheless, though the Academy and its Debating Society be gone, the youth ofEleusisstill carries on
the fray in a more modern fashion which rises each November to a truly disastrous climax during
"Football Pep Week" when the "Colonels" ofCentralHigh Schoolmeet in sometimes gory combat with the
"Majors" of North Side High. I am privately informed by our borough's Supervising Principal, George
Croud, Ph.B., that last November's bill for replacement of broken window panes in both school buildings
amounted to $231.47, exclusive of state sales tax; and that the two school nurses are already
"stockpiling" gauze, liniment, disinfectants and splints in anticipation of the seemingly inevitable autumnal
crop of abrasions, lacerations and fractures, [mem. Must ask Croud whether willing be publ. quoted or
"informed source." HS] And the adults ofEleusisno less assiduously prosecute the controversy by choice
of merchants, the granting of credit, and social exclusiveness.



The need for a determination of the rights and wrongs in the affaire Fraskell-Watling is, clearly, no less
urgent now than it has ever been.