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Fantasy Fiction Field, June 1944
Page 11
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[M?]-2 Merritt, and he was also an architect and a builder. His mother's name was Ida Priscilla Buck, the daughter of Hannah Fenimore Buck, whose husband had been Philip Buck, the son of Old Cap'n Buck of Cape May, N.J., one of the first skippers of the Yankee Clippers plying the China and Far East trade. Philip died of wounds received during the Civil War. He was on the Union side, as were a number of the Merritts and Fenimores, Coopers and Stevensons -- also grouped in the family tree and most of them were known as Fighting Quakers. On the other hand, most of the Graces were killed, wounded or survived fighting on the Confederate side -- which did not make for family peace in the Beverly households. When he was thirteen, Mr. Merritt was graduated into the Philadephia High School with high honors. After studying there for a year, he decided that his future lay in the law and that completing the four years of high school would be a waste of time. He began "to read", as it was then called, in the office of Andrew J. Maloney, one of the outstanding estate lawyers in Philadelphia, also attending lectures at the University of Pennsylvania. The first year of this, he read Blackstone through twice from cover to cover, Simon Greenleaf's "Treatise on the Law of Evidence," and a few other legal classics. Also, at the advice of Mr. Maloney, who considered the Bible as useful in law as Blackstone, he took up the Book -- no stranger since it had been enforced upon him both in Beverly and Philadelphia, and he can even now quote whole chapters by memory. To the Bible and Blackstone he largely owes, he thinks, whatever present proficiency in English and Latin he may possess. About this time, he met two great men who influenced potently his thinking. One was the famous Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, at that time carrying on his classic experiments in the medical properties of rattle-snake venom, the author of "the Red City," "Hugh Wynn" and other books. Dr. Mitchell, for some reason, took a fancy to Merritt, and turned his mind toward folk-lore and its modern survivals, and other phenomena then whooly speculative and unorthodox, but many of which have since become scientific fact. And also toward some of the little explored paths of literature. The other was Dr. Charles Eucharist de Medicis Sajous, whose studies and discoveries about the ductless glands and their effects upon personality paved the way to most of the modern discoveries about them -- but were then considered also by the conservative wing of the medical party as somewhat too unorthodox. He turned Merritt's mind toward another side of science and literature. Both men gave it a permanent bent. Merritt had the faculty of rapid reading, an unusually retentive memory, an omnivorous curiousity about everything. So the next year and a half represented at least a four year college course, but, of course, a highly specialized one. Later, he was to repay some of his debt to Dr. S. Weir Mitchell by certain personal observations of witchcraft practices, survivals of blood sacrifices, and so on, in the Pennsylvania Dutch region. At this time when he was nearly 19, but looking several years older, he decided that probably his proper field was the newspaper business. One of his very good friends was a star political reporter. It seemed
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[M?]-2 Merritt, and he was also an architect and a builder. His mother's name was Ida Priscilla Buck, the daughter of Hannah Fenimore Buck, whose husband had been Philip Buck, the son of Old Cap'n Buck of Cape May, N.J., one of the first skippers of the Yankee Clippers plying the China and Far East trade. Philip died of wounds received during the Civil War. He was on the Union side, as were a number of the Merritts and Fenimores, Coopers and Stevensons -- also grouped in the family tree and most of them were known as Fighting Quakers. On the other hand, most of the Graces were killed, wounded or survived fighting on the Confederate side -- which did not make for family peace in the Beverly households. When he was thirteen, Mr. Merritt was graduated into the Philadephia High School with high honors. After studying there for a year, he decided that his future lay in the law and that completing the four years of high school would be a waste of time. He began "to read", as it was then called, in the office of Andrew J. Maloney, one of the outstanding estate lawyers in Philadelphia, also attending lectures at the University of Pennsylvania. The first year of this, he read Blackstone through twice from cover to cover, Simon Greenleaf's "Treatise on the Law of Evidence," and a few other legal classics. Also, at the advice of Mr. Maloney, who considered the Bible as useful in law as Blackstone, he took up the Book -- no stranger since it had been enforced upon him both in Beverly and Philadelphia, and he can even now quote whole chapters by memory. To the Bible and Blackstone he largely owes, he thinks, whatever present proficiency in English and Latin he may possess. About this time, he met two great men who influenced potently his thinking. One was the famous Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, at that time carrying on his classic experiments in the medical properties of rattle-snake venom, the author of "the Red City," "Hugh Wynn" and other books. Dr. Mitchell, for some reason, took a fancy to Merritt, and turned his mind toward folk-lore and its modern survivals, and other phenomena then whooly speculative and unorthodox, but many of which have since become scientific fact. And also toward some of the little explored paths of literature. The other was Dr. Charles Eucharist de Medicis Sajous, whose studies and discoveries about the ductless glands and their effects upon personality paved the way to most of the modern discoveries about them -- but were then considered also by the conservative wing of the medical party as somewhat too unorthodox. He turned Merritt's mind toward another side of science and literature. Both men gave it a permanent bent. Merritt had the faculty of rapid reading, an unusually retentive memory, an omnivorous curiousity about everything. So the next year and a half represented at least a four year college course, but, of course, a highly specialized one. Later, he was to repay some of his debt to Dr. S. Weir Mitchell by certain personal observations of witchcraft practices, survivals of blood sacrifices, and so on, in the Pennsylvania Dutch region. At this time when he was nearly 19, but looking several years older, he decided that probably his proper field was the newspaper business. One of his very good friends was a star political reporter. It seemed
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