Part 45

Mr. Clarke has always been interested in farming, and, believing that "blood will tell," has done much with voice and pen to bring about an improvement in the breeds of horses and other stock in the state. His admiration for good horses (of which he is never without several in his stable), and his fondness for hunting, are so much a part of his life that any sketch of him without allusion to them would be incomplete. As a coon hunter he has had no rival in the state. He has served as president of the New Hampshire Game and Fish League from the first, and was the prime mover in its organization.

Within a few past years Mr. Clarke has learned by experience that there is a limit to the amount of care and business the strongest man can undertake, especially when everything is done with the intensity characteristic of his nature. In 1872, being obliged by the advice of physicians to abstain from all business for several months, he visited Great Britain, France, and Germany, to regain the health too close attention to business had temporarily destroyed. He has since applied the wisdom thus dearly bought by limiting the time to be devoted to business, rarely allowing himself to overstep the bounds.

Generous to a fault, Mr. Clarke has contributed liberally to all measures calculated to advance the interests of his town and city, and hardly a public work in Manchester now exists that does not owe something to his influence or pecuniary aid. He has always adhered to the Christian faith in which he was reared, and has been a liberal supporter of the Franklin-street Congregational church of the city, a constant attendant upon its worship, and has been elected to various offices in that society.

Mr. Clarke married, July 29, 1852, Susan Greeley Moulton, of Gilmanton. They have two sons,--Arthur Eastman, born May 13, 1854, and William Cogswell, born March 17, 1856. Both are graduates of the Scientific Department of Dartmouth College, and both are now employed on the _Mirror_.