412 LANTERN HILL SILEX MINE. the interest of bird life and of plant life, and of places where men have lived and died. There is a storied past which gives a strangeness and significance to the roads, the old houses, the old wharves, and the deserted ship-yards. Mr. Charles The village has six churches and two high schools; the Mystic Valley Institute, now entering upon its thirty-first year; and the Mystic Oral School, situated about a mile north of the village in the historic mansion once the home of Silas E. Burrows. On Great Hill is the Grove of the Universal Peace Union where annual meetings are held, and the sessions, also, of the Summer Peace Institute with courses of lectures in the arts and sciences. And The Mystic Press and the Mystic Journal together with New London and Westerly dailies gines, soap, twine velvets, and worsted gather and give the news. The Mystic and Noank Library was founded in 1892, by Captain Elihu Spicer. Upon a memorial tablet within the building is inscribed-"Elihu Spicer gave this Library to the People. 'Large was his bounty and his soul sincere !'" The building is beautiful; in design, structure, and finish, it satisfies the taste, and it gives to books-if one might say so a modern goods. Some of these business interests have been identified with Mystic for many years. Among the merchants the business sign of I. W. Denison and Company has been over the store for fifty-one years. The Prospect Hill Farm is known for importing and breeding Brown Swiss cattle. There are the Lantern Hill Silex Works, Sutton's Spar Yard, Edgcomb's Telescope Manufactory, the Wilcox Fertilizer Works and the fishing business at Quiambaug, the Mystic Twine Company, and the Monumental Works of Trevena and of McGaughey. The iron industry, begun in the early forties, is carried on by the Stan dard Machine Company, manufacturing bookbinders' and printers' machines. The best advertised and most widely background and a mediaeval atmosphere. Sprigs of ivy were gathered, some years ago, by Mrs. Sarah Spicer Dickinson, sister of Captain Spicer, from the church-yard of Gray's Elegy, from Blarney Castle, from the home of Gladstone, and from the home of Scott; and this ivy now grows upon the walls of the Library. The Librarian, Miss A. A. Murphy-a teacher for many years — has now in her charge a library of well selected books for reference and general reading, an influence more subtile and not less positive than that of the schools. The last decade has been an era of industrial development. There are made here, spools and braid rolls, globes and school supplies, spars, telescopes, machinery, monuments, boats, launch en BUSINESS SECTION, EAST MAIN STREET. known product of Mystic enterprise is, doubtless, the "All Healing Pine Tar Soap" of the Packer Tar Soap Manufacturing Company; this company located in New York, has its manufacturing plant here. Mr. Daniel F. Packer, inventor of the soap and founder of the business, is a Mystic man belonging to a family that has been prominent in the affairs of the valley for nearly two hundred and fifty years. 414 Germany. This business, started in May, 1898, now employs about one hundred hands operating seventy looms. The industry, comparatively new in the United States, is successful here and the goods of this company, have recognized excellence in the velvet trade. These velvets are blacks and a great variety of colors suitable for ladies' hats and dresses. The second of these new industries is the manufacture of the finest quality of fancy worsted goods. The Mystic Manufacturing Company was Members of formed in November, 1898. this company have mills in Huddersfield, England. The finest worsteds in England are made in those mills, and the "Mystic Worsteds" are of the same quality. It is safe to say that the reputation which Mystic has to win in these new mercantile days may securely rest with the velvets and the worsted suitings made by these two companies. THE CORDNER HOUSE, PEARL STREET. Mystic's representative in the ship-building business to-day is Captain R. P. Wilbur, a member of 'the Robert Palmer and Son Ship-building and Marine Railway This company, Company of Noank. located at the mouth of the Mystic River, built twenty-six vessels last year aggregating 15,206 tons. Within the last few years have come accessions of business: the Allen Spool and Printing Co., Cheney Globe Co., Church's Boat and Repair Shop, Kidder's Church Publishing House, Lathrop's Naptha Launch Engine Works, Mallory's Yacht Exchange, Mystic Electric and Gas Light Co., Mystic Manufacturing Co., Mystic Distilling Co., the Clift Witch Hazel Distilling Co., and Rossie Brothers Velvet Mill. The Mystic Industrial Company, composed largely of Mystic men, erected the Velvet Mill and leased it to its present occupants. National tariff legislation has given to Mystic two new industries. The first of these is the manufacture of velvets by Rossie Brothers of Suchteln, The Mystic Board of Trade, of which C. D. Holmes is president and O. D. Sherman secretary, has accomplished much for the prosperity of the valley: the streets have been lighted, the river channel has been widened and deepened, and PLEASURE STEAMER, SUMMER GIRL. and coal to its wharves. The Shore Line of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad places Mystic within twenty minutes of New London, and four hours of New York on the west, and within an hour and a half of Providence, and three hours of Boston on the east. The Stonington and the New London steamers connect with New York. The valley is supplied with Mistuxet water, electric lights, and the telephone connections of the Southern New England Telephone Company. Thus equipped with water, lights, telephone service, and the best transit facilities, Mystic, with all its picturesque corners and historic associations, is a modern town. Mystic is beautiful for situation. Walk up the west hill to the Mason monument, and then a little farther north to the Pequot battle ground, and look to the north-east, down into the valley and away to the hills beyond. Just below is the river, a third of a mile in width, lying in complete calm; to the north it narrows until it is lost among the trees and hills RESIDENCE OF DR. J. K. BUCKLYN, JR. that line its course. Across on its east bank is the plain of Elm Grove Cemetery. Among the elms and the firs granite and marble mark the dead. It is consecrated to sorrow, but nature and man have wrought together to give it peace; on two sides the river flows, and at the east entrance is a granite memorial |