Of course Mr. Reed is interested in the welfare of Portland, and he cherishes the idea that some day the city of his birth will become one of the great cities of the continent. "Portland harbor is one of the finest on the Atlantic coast. It is at least two days nearer Europe than New York, and one day nearer Europe than Boston. The annexation of Canada to the United States, or the union of the two countries, one of which is bound to come in the course of time, will surely bring to Portland the great prosperity that should be hers by reason of her admirable harbor and her geographical position. And," he added, "while I like the life in Washington, especially when the session is active and there is plenty of work to do, it has never yet been the case that I have left Portland without regret, or gone back to it without pleasure."
[Illustration: MR. REED'S HOME IN PORTLAND.]
The frame house in which he was born still stands, shaded by two elms of obvious age. Henry W. Longfellow was born just around the corner from it, in a dwelling that marks the spot where, in 1632, one George Cleeve built the first white man's habitation ever erected in the territory now included in Portland's boundaries. The settlement was called, in tender remembrance of an English field, "Stogumnor," and its founder's life was one of almost ceaseless conflict, now with the redskins and now with the white neighbors of other settlements, so that Cleeve left behind him the impress of a bold, vigorous fellow. His daughter married Michael Mitten, whose two daughters in turn married two brothers named Brackett. One of the Brackett daughters married a fisherman named Reed, whose descendant, Thomas Brackett Reed, has exhibited, in a different way and under vastly different circumstances, much of the nerve and daring that animated his stern old fighting settler-ancestor, George Cleeve.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE ROOF OF MR. REED'S HOUSE.]
At nine Mr. Reed entered the grammar school, at eleven the high school. He was sixteen years old when he completed his course in the latter. His boyhood friends say he was fond of fun, though the amount of knowledge he absorbed would indicate that he was also fond of books; yet Mr. Reed himself confesses that literature in general, and old romances in particular, attracted him more than text-books. He still remembers his first schoolmaster, a spare young man, "the best disciplinarian I ever knew," who had the art of holding a turbulent school by finding out what was the particular spring he could touch to control every one of his lawless boys.