height); broad-brimmed, soft, black hat;
and style of beard made famous by Napoleon III., an Imperial,
the visitor confesses that he is not only not a Kentucky or
any other sort of Southern Colonel, but that in his younger
days when he had opportunity to lay the foundation for such a
character, by becoming a citizen of the Southern United
States, he refrained from even visiting that section of the
country while he was establishing a record of having been in
31 of the present 48 states of the Union.
He tells listeners to his many tales of
wander-lust that discretion prompted him to stay north of the
Mason and Dixon Line.
The distinguished-looking visitor is Leslie
E. Dennison, brother, of Albert F. Dennison, Commercial
Street, with whom he has been spending part of a summer
vacation in various parts of the Annapolis Valley, after an
absence of more than thirty years since his last visit to
this part of the country.
He is a retired printer, now in his
eightieth year, and was born in Kentville. He is a descendant
of Col. Robert Dennison, one of the original grantees in
Horton Township, who migrated from Connecticut with the New
England Planters to the Minas Basin country in 1760.
Mr. Dennison learned the printing trade in
Kentville, at the old Western Chronicle newspaper and job
office, which was under lease to John E. Woodworth for a year
(March, 1890 to February, 1891), before Mr. Woodworth
established The Register, in Berwick. Mr. Dennison, however,
had started moving some years before Mr.
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EX-PRINTER SEES
(Continued from page 1)
Woodworth appeared on the Kentville scene,
and kept on going for some thirty years until he finally
settled down in Boston where he became more or less famous as
a topnotch printer, humorist and historian.
It was while he was roaming through the
states and territories of the United States domain that he
passed up the chance to qualify as a genuine Southern
Colonel. The Old South, in those days, was reputed not to be
very hospitable to Northerners, and as the itinerant printer
was distinctly Northern, he decided that as far as he was
concerned there would be no great pleasure in going into
Kentucky, Georgia, Mississippi or any other state where there
were ex-Confederate soldiers, and fighting the American Civil
War all over again.
So he hired himself westward and took a
hand in adding a star to the American flag by promoting
adoption of the constitution of Idaho, while being one of the
co-publishers of the Cassia County Times, a country weekly
with a small circulation which could boast nevertheless that
everybody in the county read it. Mr. Dennison, by voice, pen
and typesetting, campaigned for adoption of the constitution,
and at the age of 22 acted as one of the judges in the
balloting which decided that Idaho should become a member of
the Union.
Years later, at a convention of Daughters
of the American Union, in Faneuil Hall, Boston, "Cradle
of Liberty", he all but laid the orators of the day in
the shade by telling the simple story of the part he had
played in helping to expand the Union. By that time, however,
he had become a veteran of the United States Army, having
served in the Philippines when the United States decided that
Spain was not fit to govern those islands; and had also
become historian of the forces that fought that part of he
Spanish-American War, which deprived Spain of all her
overseas empire.
Mr. Dennison also took in seven of the
provinces while knocking about the continent, and can now
boast of having been in eight of the nine, Prince Edward
Island being the only one he has not visited. He worked on
newspapers, large and small as he went along, sometimes
travelling in style in Pullmans, but being ready whenever his
feet began to itch impellingly, to ride the rods if coach or
Pullman fare was not in hand.
Illustrative of his care-free attitude at
that period of his career – which was characteristic of
thousands of the most expert printers who helped to make
newspapers when hand-set type was in vogue – was his
experience in a western town, which he reached, via the rods,
late one afternoon.
The local printer had a job in hand which
he wanted done in a hurry. Dennison undertook to do the job;
the time required was computed and agreed upon by employee
and employer; the owner paid in advance to have the work
done, and went home, instructing his roving employee to put
the door-key under the step. Dennison finished the job,
hopped the next freight out of town and never saw his
employer or the town again.
Twelve years ago, Mr. Dennison retired. He
had been a printer for fifty years. That was long enough to
work at any trade, he thought. He has done a great deal of
writing, and has in hand now his memoirs now amounting to
270,000 words. Not having murdered anybody nor served a
penitentiary term for any offense, he is doubtful if his
writings will be considered profitable for any publisher to
put into print.
Most interesting person Mr. Dennison has
met in Berwick is Hardy P. Morse, who served in the
Philippines at the same time as did the Boston printer.
Neither knew they had been fighting the same war at the same
time, until Albert Dennison told his brother about Mr. Morse.
They spent an evening together, last week, recalling memories
of the historic conflict, sequel to which is today’s
flights of U. S. Super-fortresses that are battering Japan
into submission.
Altogether, Mr. Dennison says he is having
an exceedingly interesting visit. After years of journeying
hither and yon and living in cities, he is glad to move about
in his native land, where he notes evidence of the progress
that has been made since he took foot in hand to seek fortune
in the neighbouring republic. He has seen nothing more
pleasing, anywhere, than the scenes he has beheld while
visiting relatives and old acquaintances in Kings County.
Most impressive, as he glances over the
land, Mr. Dennison says, is the well-nigh universal aspect of
prosperity. Farm homes, he notes are generally very
beautiful, and with the exception of scarcity of apples, the
acres he views seem to be highly productive. The extent to
which machinery is now used in farming and orcharding he has
found astonishing, contrasting as it does with the methods of
production he knew as a boy, when practically all
agricultural activities depended upon manpower, horses and a
few oxen.
All this has given him a new appreciation
of the foresight or good luck of the New England Planters,
from one of whom he is descended, in leaving their lands in
Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York, and
undertaking to develop the then-unoccupied Minas Basin
country and other parts of Western Nova Scotia. These
pioneers and their descendants, he thinks, did a good job.
