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I. ANCESTRAL

These are my people, quaint and ancient, Gentlefolks with their prim old ways; This, their leader come from England, Governed a State in early days.

* * * * *

I must vanish with my ancients, But a golden web of love Is around us and beneath us, Binds us to our home above.

JULIA WARD HOWE.

Our mother was once present at a meeting where there was talk of ancestry and heredity. One of the speakers dwelt largely upon the sins of the fathers. He drew stern pictures of the vice, the barbarism, the heathenism of the "good old times," and ended by saying with emphasis that he felt himself "bowed down beneath the burden of the sins of his ancestors."

Our mother was on her feet in a flash.

"Mr. So-and-So," she said, "is bowed down by the sins of his ancestors. I wish to say that all my life I have been buoyed up and lifted on by the remembrance of the virtues of mine!"

These words are so characteristic of her, that in beginning the story of her life it seems proper to dwell at some length on the ancestors whose memory she cherished with such reverence.

The name of Ward occurs first on the roll of Battle Abbey: "Seven hundred and ten distinguished persons" accompanied William of Normandy to England, among them "Ward, one of the noble captains."

Her first known ancestor, John Ward, of Gloucester, England, sometime cavalry officer in Cromwell's army, came to this country after the Restoration and settled at Newport in Rhode Island. His son Thomas married Amy Smith, a granddaughter of Roger Williams. Thomas's son Richard became Governor of Rhode Island and had fourteen children, among them Samuel, who in turn became Governor of the Colony, and a member of the Continental Congress. He was the only Colonial governor who refused to take the oath to enforce the Stamp Act. In 1775, in the Continental Congress, he was made Chairman of the Committee of the Whole, which from 1774 to 1776 sat daily, working without intermission in the cause of independence. But though one of the framers of the "Declaration," he was not destined to be a "signer." John Adams says of him, "When he was seized with the smallpox he said that if his vote and voice were necessary to support the cause of his country, he should live; if not, he should die. He died, and the cause of his country was supported, but it lost one of its most sincere and punctual advocates."

The correspondence between Governor Ward and General Washington has been preserved. In one letter the latter says: "I think, should occasion offer, I shall be able to give you a good account of your son, as he seems a sensible, well-informed young man."

This young man was Samuel Ward, Lieutenant-Colonel of the First Rhode Island Regiment, and our mother's grandfather.[1]

[1] Born 1756, died 1832. He graduated in 1771 from Rhode Island College (now Brown University) with distinguished honors.

In Trumbull's painting of the Attack on Quebec in 1776, there is a portrait of Lieutenant-Colonel Ward, a young, active figure with sword uplifted. His life was full of stirring incident. In 1775 he received his commission as Captain, and was one of two hundred and fifty of the Rhode Island troops who volunteered to join Benedict Arnold's command of eleven hundred men, ordered to advance by way of the Kennebec River to reinforce General Montgomery at Quebec. In a letter to his family, dated Point-aux-Trembles, November 26, 1775, Captain Ward says: "We were thirty days in the wilderness, that none but savages ever attempted to pass. We marched a hundred miles upon shore with only three days' provisions, waded over three rapid rivers, marched through snow and ice barefoot, passed over the St. Lawrence where it was guarded by the enemy's frigates, and are now resting about twenty-four miles from the city to recruit our worn-out natures. General Montgomery intends to join us immediately, so that we have a winter's campaign before us. But I trust we shall have the glory of taking Quebec!"

The young soldier's hopes were vain. He was taken prisoner with many of his men while gallantly defending a difficult position, and spent a year in prison. On his release he rejoined the army of Washington and fought through the greater part of the Revolution, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He was at Peekskill, Valley Forge, and Red Bank, and wrote the official account of the last-named battle, which may be found in Washington's correspondence.

During the terrible winter at Valley Forge, Lieutenant-Colonel Ward obtained a month's furlough, wooed and married his cousin, Phœbe Greene (daughter of Governor William Greene, of Rhode Island, and of the beautiful Catherine Ray,[2] of Block Island), and returned to the snows and starvation of the winter camp. Our mother was very proud of her great-grandmother Catherine's memory, treasured her rat-tail spoons and her wedding stockings of orange silk, and was fond of telling how Benjamin Franklin admired and corresponded with her. Some of Franklin's letters have been preserved. He speaks of his wife as the "old lady," but says he has got so used to her faults that they are like his own--he does not recognize them any more. In one letter he gives the following advice to the lovely Catherine: "Kill no more Pigeons than you can eat. Go constantly to meeting or to church--till you get a good husband; then stay at home and nurse the children and live like a Christian."

[2] Granddaughter of Simon Ray, one of the original owners of the island. He was "pressed in a cheese-press" on account of his religious opinions.

Some years after the Revolution, Colonel Ward was in Paris on a business errand. He kept a record of his stay there in a parchment pocket-book, where among technical entries are found brief comments on matters of general interest. One day the Colonel tells of a dinner party where he met Vergniaud and other prominent revolutionists. He was surprised to find them such plain men; "yet were they exceeding warm." On December 29,1792, he notes: "Dined with Gouverneur Morris. Served upon plate--good wines--his Kitchen neither french or English, but between both. Servants french, apartments good.... I have visited the halls of painting and sculpture at the Louvre. The peices [sic] are all called chef d'œuvres by connoisseurs. The oldest are thought the best, I cannot tell why, though some of the old peices are very good. Milo riving the oak is good...."

He went to the theatre, and observed that the features which appeared to him most objectionable were specially applauded by the audience.

Briefly, amid items of the sale of land, he thus notes the execution of Louis XVI:--

"January 15th. The convention has this day decided upon two questions on the King; one that he was guilty, another that the question should not be sent to the people.

"January 17th. The convention up all night upon the question of the King's sentence. At eleven this night the question was determined--the sentence of death was pronounced. 366 death--319 seclusion or banishment--36 various--majority of 5 absolute--the King caused an appeal to be made to the people, which was not allowed; thus the convention have been the accusers, the judges, and will be the executors of their own sentence--this will cause a great degree of astonishment in America....

"January 21st. Went to the Pont Royal to pass it at nine o'clock. Guards prevented me from going over. I had engaged to pass this day, which is one of horror, at Versailles, with Mr. Morris. The King was beheaded at eleven o'clock. Guards, at an early hour, took possession of the Place Louis XV, and were posted in each avenue. The most profound peace prevailed. Those who had feeling lamented in secret in their houses, or had left town. Others showed the same levity or barbarous indifference as on former occasions. Hichborn, Henderson, and Johnson went to see the execution, for which, as an American, I was sorry. The King desired to speak. He had only time to say he was innocent, and forgave his enemies. He behaved with the fortitude of a martyr. Santerre ordered the [executioner] to dispatch him. At twelve the streets were again all open."

There is a tradition that when Colonel Ward quitted Paris, with a party of friends, the carriage was driven by a disguised nobleman, who thus escaped the guillotine.

Our mother remembered him as a "gentleman advanced in years, with courtly manner and mild blue eyes, which were, in spite of their mildness, very observing."

She inherited many traits from the Wards, among them a force and integrity of purpose, a strength of character, and a certain business instinct which sometimes cropped up when least expected, and which caused some of her family to call her the "banker's daughter."

Those were also solid qualities which she inherited from the Rhode Island Greenes. Greenes of Warwick, Greenes of East Greenwich; all through Colonial and Revolutionary history we find their names. Sturdy, active, patriotic men: Generals, Colonels, and Governors of "Rhode Island and Providence Plantations," chief among them Governor William Greene, the "War Governor," and General Nathanael Greene of glorious memory.

Our liveliest association with the name of Greene is the memory of Mrs. Nancy Greene, first cousin of our grandfather Ward and daughter-in-law of the General who died in Middletown, Rhode Island, in 1886, at the age of one hundred and two. This lady was dear to our mother as the one remaining link with her father's generation. A visit to "Cousin Nancy" was one of her great pleasures, and we children were happy if we were allowed to accompany her. The old lady sat erect and dignified in her straight-backed chair, and the two discoursed at length of days gone by. To Cousin Nancy "Julia" was always young, though the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was already written when the old lady charged her to "cultivate a literary taste." On another occasion--it was one of the later visits--she said with emphasis, "Julia, do not allow yourself to grow old! When you feel that you cannot do a thing, get up and do it!" Julia never forgot this advice.

Cousin Nancy never read a novel in her life, as she announced with pride. She wished to read the "Annals of the Schönberg-Cotta Family," but, finding it to be a work of fiction, decided not to break her rule. She was a fond and pious mother; when her son needed chastisement, she would pray over him so long that he would cry out, "Mother, it is time to begin whipping!"

If Julia Ward was part Ward and Greene, she was quite as much Cutler and Marion; it is to this descent that we must turn for the best explanation of her many-sided character.

When she said of any relation, however distant, "He is a Cutler!" it meant that she recognized in that person certain qualities--a warmth of temperament, a personality glowing, sparkling, effervescent--akin to her own. If in addition to these qualities the person had red hair, she took him to her heart, and he could do no wrong. All this, and a host of tender associations beside, the name of Cutler meant to her; yet it may be questioned whether any of these characteristics would have appeared in the descendants of Johannes Demesmaker, worthy citizen of Holland, who, coming to this country in 1674, changed his name to Cutler for convenience' sake, had not one of these descendants, Benjamin Clarke Cutler, married Sarah (Mitchell) Hyrne, daughter of Thomas Mitchell and Esther (or Hester) Marion.

To most people, the name of Marion suggests one person only,--General Francis Marion of Revolutionary fame; yet it was the grandfather of the General, Benjamin Marion, of La Rochelle, who was the first of the name to settle in this country, coming hither when the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove the Huguenots into exile. Brigadier-General Peter Horry,[3] friend and biographer of General Marion, quotes the letter which told Benjamin of his banishment:--

Your damnable heresy well deserves, even in this life, that purgation by fire which awfully awaits it in the next. But in consideration of your youth and worthy connections, our mercy has condescended to commute your punishment to perpetual exile. You will, therefore, instantly prepare to quit your country forever, for, if after ten days from the date hereof, you should be found in any part of the kingdom, your miserable body shall be consumed by fire and your impious ashes scattered on the winds of heaven.

(Signed) PÈRE ROCHELLE.

[3] See Horry and Weems, Life of Marion. General Horry was a most zealous and devoted friend; as a biographer his accuracy is questionable, his picturesqueness never.

Within the ten days Benjamin Marion had wound up his affairs, married his betrothed, Judith Baluet, and was on his way to America to seek his fortune. He bought a plantation on Goose Creek, near Charleston, South Carolina, and here he and his Judith lived for many peaceful years in content and prosperity, seeing their children grow up around them.[4]

[4] We have not found the date of his death, but Horry gives the principal features of his will as he got them from the family. He calls Judith Marion "Louisa," but that is his picturesque way. She may have been "Judith Louisa"! Women's names were not of much consequence in those days.

"After having, in the good old way, bequeathed 'his soul to God who gave it,' and 'his body to the earth out of which it was taken,' he proceeds:--

"'In the first place, as to debts, thank God, I owe none, and therefore shall give my executors but little trouble on that score.

"'Secondly,--As to the poor, I have always treated them as my brethren. My dear family will, I know, follow my example.

"'Thirdly,--As to the wealth with which God has been pleased to bless me and my dear Louisa and children, lovingly have we labored together for it--lovingly we have enjoyed it--and now, with a glad and grateful heart do I leave it among them.

"'I give my beloved Louisa all my ready money--that she may never be alarmed at a sudden call.

"'I give her all my fat calves and lambs, my pigs and poultry--that she may always keep a good table.

"'I give her my new carriage and horses--that she may visit her friends in comfort.

"'I give her my family Bible--that she may live above the ill-tempers and sorrows of life.

"'I give my son Peter a hornbook--for I am afraid he will always be a dunce.'"

General Horry goes on to say that Peter was so stunned by this squib that he "instantly quit his raccoon hunting by night and betook himself to reading, and soon became a very sensible and charming young man."

Gabriel Marion, the eldest son of Benjamin, married a young woman, also of Huguenot blood, Charlotte Cordés or Corday, said to have been a relative of the other Charlotte Corday, the heroine of the French Revolution. To this couple were born six children, the eldest being Esther, our mother's great-grandmother, the youngest, Francis, who was to become the "Swamp Fox" of Revolutionary days.

Esther Marion has been called the "Queen Bee" of the Marion hive; she had fifteen children, and her descendants have multiplied and spread in every direction. She was twice married, first to John Allston, of Georgetown, or Waccamaw, secondly to Thomas Mitchell, of Georgetown. The only one of the fifteen children with whom we have concern is Sarah Mitchell, the "Grandma Cutler" of Julia Ward's childhood. This lady was married at fourteen to Dr. Hyrne, an officer of Washington's army. Julia well remembered her saying that after her engagement, she wept on being told that she must give up her dolls.

Dr. Hyrne lived but a short time, and four years after his death the twenty-year-old widow married Benjamin Clarke Cutler, then a widower, Sheriff of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, and third in descent from John Demesmaker,[5] before mentioned, sometime physician and surgeon.

[5] On first coming to this country, Johannes Demesmaker settled in Hingham, Massachusetts. Later he moved to Boston, where he became known as Dr. John Cutler; married Mary Cowell, of Boston, and served as surgeon in King Philip's War.

Our mother was much attached to "Grandma Cutler," and speaks thus of her in a sketch entitled "The Elegant Literature of Sixty Years Ago": "Grandma will read Owen Feltham's 'Resolves,' albeit the print is too small for her eyes. She knows Pope and Crabbe by heart, admires Shenstone, and tells me which scenes are considered finest in this or that of Scott's novels. Calling one day upon a compeer of her own age, she was scandalized to find her occupied with a silly story called 'Jimmy Jessamy.'"

Mrs. Cutler had known General Washington, and was fond of telling how at a ball the Commander-in-Chief crossed the room to speak to her. Many of her letters have been preserved, and show a sprightliness which is well borne out by her portrait, that of a charming old lady in a turban, with bright eyes and a humorous mouth.

A word remains to be said about General Francis Marion himself. This hero of history, song, and romance was childless; our mother could claim as near relationship to him as could any of her generation. She was extremely proud of this kinship, and no one who knew her could doubt that from the Marions she inherited many vital qualities. One winter, toward the end of her life, there was a meeting at the Old South Church at which--as at the gathering described at the beginning of this chapter--there was talk of ancestry and kindred topics. The weather was stormy, our mother well on in the eighties, but she was there. Being called on to speak, she made a brief address in the course of which she alluded to her Southern descent, and to General Francis Marion, her great-great-uncle. As she spoke her eyes lightened with mirth, in the way we all remember: "General Marion," she said, "was known in his generation as the 'Swamp Fox'; and when I succeed in eluding the care of my guardians, children and grandchildren, and coming to a meeting like this, I think I may be said to have inherited some of his characteristics!"

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II. LITTLE JULIA WARD

1819-1835; aet. 1-16

FROM MY NURSERY: FORTY-SIX YEARS AGO

When I was a little child, Said my passionate nurse, and wild: "Wash you, children, clean and white; God may call you any night."

Close my tender brother clung, While I said with doubtful tongue: "No, we cannot die so soon; For you told, the other noon,

"Of those months in order fine That should make the earth divine. I've not seen, scarce five years old, Months like those of which you told."

Softly, then, the woman's hand Loosed my frock from silken band, Tender smoothed the fiery head, Often shamed for ringlets red. Somewhat gently did she say, "Child, those months are every day."

Still, methinks, I wait in fear, For that wonder-glorious year-- For a spring without a storm, Summer honey-dewed and warm, Autumn of robuster strength, Winter piled in crystal length.

I will wash me clean and white; God may call me any night. I must tell Him when I go His great year is yet to know-- Year when working of the race Shall match Creation's dial face; Each hour be born of music's chime, And Truth eternal told in Time.

J. W. H.

Lieutenant-Colonel Ward had ten children, of whom seven lived to grow up. The fifth child and son was Samuel, our mother's father, born in Warwick, Rhode Island, May 1, 1786. When he was four years old, the family moved to New York, where the Colonel and his brother established themselves as merchants under the firm name of Samuel Ward & Brother.

The firm was only moderately successful; the children came fast. With his narrow income it was not possible for the father to give his boy the college education he desired; so at fourteen, fresh from the common schools, Samuel entered as a clerk the banking house of Prime & King. While still a mere lad, an old friend of the family asked him what he meant to be when he came to man's estate.

"I mean to be one of the first bankers in the United States!" replied Samuel.

At the age of twenty-two he became a partner in the firm, which was thereafter known as Prime, Ward & King.

In a memoir of our grandfather, the partner who survived him, Mr. Charles King, says:--

"Money was the commodity in which Mr. Ward dealt, and if, as is hardly to be disputed, money be the root of all evil, it is also, in hands that know how to use it worthily, the instrument of much good. There exist undoubtedly, in regard to the trade in money, and respecting those engaged in it, many and absurd prejudices, inherited in part from ancient error, and fomented and kept alive by the jealousies of ignorance and indigence. It is therefore no small triumph to have lived down, as Mr. Ward did, this prejudice, and to have forced upon the community in the midst of which he resided, and upon all brought into connexion with him, the conviction that commerce in money, like commerce in general, is, to a lofty spirit, lofty and ennobling, and is valued more for the power it confers, of promoting liberal and beneficent enterprises, and of conducing to the welfare and prosperity of society, than for the means of individual and selfish gratification or indulgence."

Mr. Ward's activities were not confined to financial affairs. He was founder and first president of the Bank of Commerce; one of the founders of the New York University and of the Stuyvesant Institute, etc., etc.

In 1812 he married Julia Rush Cutler, second daughter of Benjamin Clarke and Sarah Mitchell (Hyrne) Cutler. Julia Cutler was sixteen years old at the time of her marriage, lovely in character and beautiful in person. She had been a pupil of the saintly Isabella Graham, and her literary taste had been carefully cultivated in the style of the day. One of her poems, found in Griswold's "Female Poets of America," shows the deeply religious cast of her mind; yet she was full of gentle gayety, loved music, laughter, and pretty things.

During the first years of their married life, Mr. and Mrs. Ward lived in Marketfield Street, near the Battery. Here four children were born, Samuel and Henry, and the two Julias. She who was known as "the first little Julia" lived only four years. During her fatal illness her father was called away by urgent business. In great distress of mind, he arranged that certain tokens should inform him of the child's condition. A few days later, as he was riding homeward, a messenger came to meet him and silently laid in his hand a tiny shoe: the child was dead.

Not long after this, on May 27, 1819, a second daughter was born, and named Julia.

Julia Ward was very little when her parents moved to "a large house on the Bowling Green, a region of high fashion in those days."[6] Here were born three more children: Francis Marion, Louisa Cutler, and Ann Eliza. For some time before the birth of the last-named child, Mrs. Ward's health had been gradually failing, though every known measure had been used to restore it. There had been journeys to Niagara and up the Hudson, in the family coach, straw-color outside with linings and cushions of brilliant blue. Little Julia went with her mother on these journeys; the good elder sister, Eliza Cutler, was also of the party; and a physician, Dr. John Wakefield Francis, who was later to play an important part in the family life. Julia remembered many incidents of these journeys, though the latest of them took place when she was barely four years old. She sat in a little chair placed at the feet of her elders, and she used to tell us how, cramped with remaining in one position, she was constantly moving the chair, bringing its feet down on those of Dr. Francis, to his acute anguish. In spite of this, the good doctor would often read to her from a book of short tales and poems which had been brought for her amusement, and she always remembered his reading of "Pity the sorrows of a poor old man," and how it brought the tears to her eyes.

[6] Reminiscences, p. 4.

At Niagara Falls she asked Dr. Francis, "Who made that great hole where the water came down?" and was told "The great Maker of all!" This puzzled her, and she inquired further, but when her friend said, "Do you not know? Our Father who art in heaven!" she "felt that she ought to have known, and went away somewhat abashed."[7]

[7] Reminiscences, p. 4.

She remembered a visit to Red Jacket, the famous Indian chief, at his encampment. Julia was given a twist of tobacco tied with blue ribbon, which she was to present to him. At sight of the tall, dignified savage, the child sprang forward and threw her arms round his neck, to the great discomfiture of both; baby as she was, Julia felt at once that her embrace was unexpected and unwelcome.

Sometimes they went to the pleasant farm at Jamaica, Long Island, where Lieutenant-Colonel Ward was living at this time, with his unmarried sons, and his two daughters, Phœbe and Anne.

Phœbe was an invalid saint. She lived in a darkened room, and the plates and dishes from which she ate were of brown china or crockery, as she fancied her eyes could not bear white. Anne was equally pious, but more normal. She it was who managed the farm, and who would always bring the cheeses to New York herself for the market, lest any of the family grow proud and belittle the dignity of honest work.

It is from Jamaica that Mrs. Ward writes to her mother a letter which shows that though the tenderest of mothers, she had been strictly imbued with the Old Testament ideas of bringing up children.

DEAREST MOTHER,-- ... I find myself better since I came hither.... Husband more devoted than ever; children sweet tho' something of a drawback on my recovery.... Thus in one page, you have the whole history of my present life, reading and thinking only excepted, which occupy by far the greatest portion of my time.... I was obliged to whip Julia yesterday afternoon, and have been sick ever since in consequence of the agitation it threw me into.... I felt obliged to try Solomon's prescription, which had a worse effect on me than on her.... I think it is the last time, however, blow high or low, for she is as nervous as her mama was at her age, at the sight of a rod, and screamed herself almost to death; indeed her nerves were so affected that she cannot get over it and has cried all today, trembling as violently as if she had the ague all the time I whipped her and could not eat.

Julia was to retain through life the memories of the dear mother so early lost. She remembered her first sewing-lesson; how being told to take the needle in one hand she straightway placed the thimble on the other. She remembered her first efforts to say "mother," and how "muzzer" was all she could produce, till "the dear parent presently said, 'if you cannot do better than that, you will have to go back and call me "mamma."' The shame of going back moved me to one last effort, and, summoning my utmost strength of tongue I succeeded in saying 'mother.'"[8]

[8] Reminiscences, p. 8.

All devices to restore the young mother's failing strength were in vain: soon after giving birth to the fourth daughter, Ann Eliza, she died.

Her life had been pure, happy, and unselfish; yet her last hours were full of anguish. Reared in the strictest tenets of Evangelical piety, she was oppressed with terror concerning the fate of her soul; the sorrows of death compassed her about, the pains of hell gat hold upon her. It is piteous to read of the sufferings of this innocent creature, as described by her mourning family; piteous, too, to realize, by the light of to-day, that she was almost literally prayed to death. She was twenty-seven years old when she died and had borne seven children.

Mr. Ward's grief at the death of this beloved wife was so extreme as to bring on a severe illness. For some time he could not bear to see the child who, he thought, had cost her mother's life; and though he gathered his other children tenderly around him, the little Annie was kept out of his sight.

By and by his father came to make him a visit and heard of this state of things. Going to the nursery, the old gentleman took the baby from its nurse, and carrying it into the room where his son sat desolate, laid it gently in his arms. From that moment the little youngest became almost his dearest care.

He could not live with his sorrow in the same dwelling that had contained his joy. The beautiful house at Bowling Green was sold, with the new furniture which had lately been ordered to please his Julia, and which the children never saw uncovered; and the family removed to Bond Street, then at the upper end of New York City.

"Mr. Ward," said his friends, "you are going out of town!"

Bond Street in the twentieth century is an unlovely thoroughfare, grimy, frowzy, given over largely to the sale of feathers and artificial flowers; Bond Street in the early part of the nineteenth century was a different affair.

The first settler in the street was Jonas Minturn, who about 1825 built No. 22. Mr. Ward came next. The city was then so remote, one could hardly see the houses to the south across the woods and fields.

The Ward children saw the street grow up around them; saw the dignified houses, brick or freestone, built and occupied by Kings, Halls, Morgans, Grinnells, most of all by Wards. Mr. Ward was then at No. 16; his father, the old Revolutionary soldier, soon came to live at No. 7, with his daughter Anne; his brother Henry was first at No. 14, then at No. 23; while his brother John was to make No. 8 a dwelling beloved by three generations.

Julia did not remember in what year her father bought the tract of land at the corner of Bond Street and Broadway. At first a large part of it was fenced in, and used as a riding-ring by the Ward boys. There was also, either here or at No. 16, something in the way of a garden, which she thus recalls in an address on horticulture, given in her later years:--

"My earliest horticultural recollections go back to an enclosure, usually called a yard, in the rear of my father's house in New York. When my little brother and I were turned out to play there, we might just as well have picked the bugs off the rosebushes as the buds, of which we made wicked havoc. Not knowing what to do with the flower border, we barbarized instead of cultivating it. Being of extremely inquiring minds, we picked the larkspurs and laburnums to pieces, but became nothing the wiser for the process. A little daily tuition might have transformed us into a miniature Adam and Eve, and might have taught us some things that these old friends of ours did not know. But tuition to us then meant six or eight daily hours passed in dry conversation with the family governess or French master. No one dreamed of turning the enamelled pages of the garden for us. We grew up consequently with the city measure of the universe--your own house, somebody else's, the trees in the park, a strip of blue sky overhead, and a great deal of talk about Nature read from the best authors. Much that is most beautiful in the works of all the poets was perfectly unintelligible to us, because we had never seen the phenomena referred to; or if we had seen them, we had not been taught to observe them. You will ask where we passed our summers? In travelling, or at the seashore, perhaps. But we took our city measure with us, and were never quite at home beyond its limits."

She adds: "I state these facts only to show how much of the world's beauty and value may be shut out from the eyes of a human being, by even a careful education! This loss cannot easily be remedied in later years. I myself had reached mature life before I experienced the deep and calm enjoyments of country life. The long, still summer days, the open, fragrant fields, the shy wild blossoms, the song of birds; these won me at last to delight in them--at first they seemed to me only a void. It was a new gospel that the meadows taught me, and my own little children were its interpreters. I know now some country craft, and could even trim fruit trees and weed garden beds. But I have always regretted in this respect the lost time of youth. When I made acquaintance with Nature, I was too old to learn the skill of gardening. Year after year in the savage island of Newport, where labor is hard to hire, I have passed summers ungladdened by so much as a hollyhock, and the garden I at last managed to secure owes nothing to my skill or knowledge."

The truth is, people were afraid of the open air in those days. Julia and her sisters sometimes went for a drive in pleasant weather, dressed in blue pelisses and yellow satin bonnets to match the chariot; they rarely went out on foot; when they did, it was in cambric dresses and kid slippers; the result was apt to be a cold or a sore throat, proving conclusively to the minds of their elders how much better off they were within doors.

Julia's nursery recollections were chiefly of No. 16 Bond Street. Here the little Wards lived a happy but somewhat sober life, under the watchful care of their father, and their faithful Aunt Eliza, known in the family as "Auntie Francis."

The young mother, in dying, had commended her children specially to the care of this, her eldest sister, whose ability had been tried and proved from childhood. In 1810 her father, Benjamin Clarke Cutler, died suddenly under singular and painful circumstances. Her mother, crushed by this event, took to her bed, leaving the care of the family to Eliza, then fifteen years of age. Eliza took up the house-mother's burden without question; nursed her mother, husbanded the narrow resources of the household, brought up the four younger children with a strong hand. "There were giants in those days."

Nothing could daunt Eliza Cutler's spirits, which were a perpetual cordial to those around her. She was often "borrowed" by one member and another of the family; she threatened to hang a sign over her door with the inscription, "Cheering done here by the job by E. Cutler." Her tongue could be sharp as well as merry; witness many anecdotes.

The housekeeper of a certain millionnaire, calling upon her to ask the character of a servant, took occasion to enlarge upon the splendors of her employer's establishment. "Mr. So-and-So keeps this; Mr. So-and-So keeps that:--"

"Yes! yes!" said Mrs. Francis; "it is well known that Mr. So-and-So keeps everything, except the Ten Commandments!"

"Oh! Mrs. Francis, how could you?" cried the poor millionnaire when next they met.

In 1829 Eliza Cutler married Dr. John Wakefield Francis, the historian of Old New York, the beloved physician of a whole generation. He was already, as has been seen, a member of the Ward household, friend and resident physician. His tremendous vitality, his quick sympathies, his amazing flow of vivid and picturesque language, made him the delight of the children. He called them by singular pet names, "Cream Cheese from the Dairy of Heaven," "Pocket Edition of Lives of the Saints," etc., etc. He sang to them odd snatches of song which were to delight and exasperate later generations:--

"To woodman's hut one evening there came A physician and a dancing-master: The wind did blow, io, io, And the rain poured faster and faster."

Edgar Allan Poe said of Dr. Francis that his conversation was "a sort of Roman punch, made up of tragedy, comedy, and the broadest of all possible farce."

In those days "The Raven," newly published, was the talk of the town. Dr. Francis, meeting Poe, invited him to come to his house on a certain evening, and straightway forgot the matter. Poe came at the appointed time. The Doctor, summoned to the bedside of a patient, left the drawing-room hastily, and in the anteroom ran into a tall, cadaverous figure in black. Seizing him in his arms, he carried him into the drawing-room and set him down before his wife. "Eliza, my dear--the Raven!" and he departed, leaving guest and hostess (the latter had never heard of "The Raven"!) equally petrified.

Mrs. Francis adored her husband, yet he must sometimes have tried her patience sorely. One evening they had a dinner party, eighteen covers, a state occasion. Midway in the repast the Doctor rose, and begging the guests to excuse him and his wife for a moment, led her, speechless with amazement, into the next room. Here he proceeded to bleed her, removing twelve ounces of blood; replying to her piteous protestations, "Madam, I saw that you were on the point of apoplexy, and I judge it best to avert it."

In strong contrast with "Uncle Doctor" was "Uncle Ben," the Reverend Benjamin Clarke Cutler, for many years rector of St. Anne's Church, Brooklyn. This uncle was much less to Julia's taste: indeed, she was known to stamp her childish foot, and cry, "I don't care for old Ben Cutler!" Nevertheless he was a saintly and interesting person.

He was twelve years old at the time of his father's tragic death, and was deeply influenced by it. His youth was made unhappy by spiritual anguish, duty to his widowed mother and the call to the ministry fighting within him. The latter conquered. In his twenty-first year he drew up, signed, and sealed "An Instrument of Solemn Surrender of Myself, Soul and Body, to God!" This document was in the form of a testament, in which he solemnly ("with death, judgment and eternity in view") gave, covenanted, and made over himself, soul and body, all his faculties, all his influence in this world, all the worldly goods with which he might be endowed, into the hands of his Creator, Preserver, and Constant Benefactor, to be his forever, and at his disposal. He goes on to say: "Witness, ye holy angels! I am God's servant; witness, thou, Prince of Hell! I am thy enemy, thy implacable enemy, from this time forth and forevermore."

That this covenant was well kept, no one who reads his memoirs and the testimony of his contemporaries can doubt.

There are many anecdotes of Uncle Ben. Once, during his early ministry, he was riding in a crowded stagecoach. One of the passengers swore profusely and continuously, to the manifest annoyance of the others. Presently Dr. Cutler, leaning forward, addressed the swearer.

"Sir," he said, "you are fond of blasphemy; I am fond of prayer. This is a public conveyance, and for the remainder of our journey, as often as you swear aloud, I shall pray aloud, and we will see who comes off best." The swearing stopped!

In his later years, he met one day a parishioner clad in deep mourning for a near relative. The old clergyman laid his hand on the crape sleeve. "What!" he said sternly. "Heathen mourning for a Christian saint!"

But of all the uncles (and there were many) the beloved Uncle John Ward was always first. Of him, through many years Julia's devoted friend and chief adviser, we shall speak later on.

We have dwelt upon the generation preceding our mother's, because all these people, the beautiful mother so early lost, so long loved and mourned, the sternly devoted father, the vivacious aunts, the stalwart uncles, were strong influences in the life of Julia Ward.

The amusements of the little Wards were few, compared with those of children of to-day. As a child of seven, Julia was taken twice to the opera, and heard Malibran, then Signorina Garcia, a pleasure the memory of which remained with her through life. About this time Mr. Ward's views of religious duty deepened in stringency and in gloom. There was no more opera, nor did Julia ever attend a theatre until she was a grown woman. In Low Church circles at that time, the drama was considered distinctly of the devil. The burning of the first Bowery Theatre and of the great theatre at Richmond, Virginia, were spoken of as "judgments." Many an Evangelical pastor "improved" the occasions from the pulpit.

The child inherited a strong dramatic sense from the Marion Cutlers. She had barely learned to read when she found in an "Annual" a tale called "The Iroquois Bride," which she dramatized and presented to the nursery audience, with herself for the bride, her brother Marion for the lover, and a stool for the rock they ascended to stab each other. The performance was not approved by Authority, and the book was promptly taken away.

Her first written drama was composed at the age of nine, but even the name of it is lost.

Mr. Ward did not encourage intimacies with other children. He felt strongly that brothers and sisters were the true, and should be the only, intimates for one another; indeed, the six children were enough to make a pleasant little circle of their own, and there were merry games in the wide nursery. Sam, the eldest born, was master of the revels in childhood, as throughout his life. It was his delight, in the early morning, to wrap himself in a sheet, and bursting into the room where the little sisters slept, leap from bed to bed, announcing himself as a ghost come to haunt them; or, when the three ladies, Mrs. Mills, Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Francis (otherwise known as Julia, Louisa, and Annie) were playing with their dolls, to whisper in their ears that they must on no account venture near the attic stairs, as an old man in red was sitting there. Of course the little Fatimas must needs peep, and the old man was always there, a terrible figure, his face hidden. In "Bro' Sam's" absence it was Marion who played the outlaw and descended like a whirlwind upon the unhappy ladies, who were journeying through dense and dreadful forests.

Mrs. Mills, Mrs. Brown, and Mrs. Francis were devoted mothers, and reared large families of dolls. They kept house in a wide bureau drawer, divided into three parts. Our Aunt Annie (Mrs. Adolphe Mailliard) writes: "Mrs. Mills' (Julia) dolls were always far more picturesquely dressed than ours, although I can say little for their neatness. Oh! to what numberless parties they went, and how tipsy they invariably got! I can see distinctly to-day the upset wagon (boxes, on spools for wheels), and the muddy dresses, for they always fell into mud puddles."

Marion was as pious as he was warlike. His morning sermons, delivered over the back of a chair, were fervent and eloquent; he was only seven years old when he wrote to his Cousin Henry Ward, who was ill with some childish ailment:--

"Do not forget to say your prayers every morning and evening. I hope that you trust in God; and, my dear cousin, do not set your mind too much on Earthly things! And my dear cousin, this is the prayer."

Follows the Lord's Prayer carefully written out. On the next page of the same sheet, the eight-year-old Julia adds her exhortation:--

"Dear Cousin, I hope that you will say the Prayer which my Brother has written for you. I hear with regret that you are sick, and it is as necessary as ever that you should trust in God; love him, dear Henry, and you will see Death approaching with joy. Oh, what are earthly things, which we must all lose when we die--to our immortal souls which never die! I cannot bear the thought of anybody who is dying without a knowledge of Christ. We may die before to-morrow, and therefore we ought to be prepared for death."

This was scarcely cheering for Henry, aged ten; as a matter of fact, he was to have half a century in which to make his preparations.

Some of the nursery recollections were the reverse of merry. When Julia was still a little child, the old housekeeper died. The children loved her, and Auntie Francis did not wish them to be saddened by the funeral preparations; she gave them a good dose of physic all round and put them to bed for the day.

Julia was a beautiful child, but she had red hair, which was then considered a sad drawback. She could remember visitors condoling with her mother on this misfortune, and the gentle lady deploring it also, and striving by the use of washes and leaden combs to darken the over-bright locks. Still, some impression of good looks must have reached the child's mind; for one day, desiring to know what she really was like, she scrambled up on a chair, then on a dressing-table, and took a good look in the mirror.

"Is that all?" she cried, and scrambled down again, a sadly disappointed child.

Her first lessons were from governesses and masters; when she was nine years old, she was sent to a private school in the neighborhood. She was placed in a class with older girls, and learned by heart many pages of Paley's "Moral Philosophy"; memorizing from textbooks formed in those days a great part of the school curriculum. She did not care especially for Paley, and found chemistry (without experiments!) and geometry far more interesting; but history and languages were the studies she loved. She had learned in the nursery to speak French fluently; she soon began the study of Latin. Hearing a class reciting an Italian lesson, she was enchanted with the musical sound of the language; listened and marked, day after day, and presently handed to the amazed principal a note correctly written in Italian, begging permission to join the class.

At nine years old she was reading "Pilgrim's Progress," and seeking its characters in the people she met every day. She always counted it one of the books which had most influenced her. Another was Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," which she read at seventeen.[9]

[9] In later life she added to these the works of Spinoza, and of Theodore Parker.

She began at an early age to write verse. A manuscript volume has been preserved in which some of these early poems were copied for her father.

The title-page and dedication are here reproduced:--

Poems Dedicated to Samuel Ward esq By His affectionate daughter Julia Ward. LET ME BE THINE! Regard not with a critic's eye. New York 1831.

To Samuel Ward.

Beloved father,

Expect not to find in these juvenile productions the delicacy and grace which pervaded the writings of that dear parent who is now in glory. I am indeed conscious of the many faults they contain, but my object in presenting you with these (original) poems, has been to give you a little memorial of my early life, and I entreat you to remember that they were written in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth years of my life.

Your loving daughter JULIA.

The titles show the trend of the child's thought: "All things shall pass away"; "We return no more"; "Invitation to Youth" (1831!); "To my dear Mother"; "Mine is the power to make thee whole"; "To an infant's departing spirit"; "Redeeming Love"; "My Heavenly Home," etc., etc.

At Newport, in 1831, she wrote the following:--

MORNING HYMN

Now I see the morning light, Shining bright and gay. God has kept me through the night; He will, if He thinks it right, Preserve me through this day.

Let thy holy Spirit send Of heavenly light a ray; Thy face, oh! Lord, I fain would seek, But I am feeble, vain and weak; Oh, guide me in thy way!

Let thy assistance, Lord, be given, That when life's path I've trod, And when the last frail tie is riven, My spirit may ascend to heaven, To dwell with thee, My God.

We cannot resist quoting a stanza from the effusion entitled "Father's Birthday":--

Louisa brings a cushion rare, Anne Eliza a toothpick bright and fair; And O! accept the gift I bring, It is a daughter's offering.

Julia's mind was not destined to remain in the evangelical mould which must have so rejoiced the heart of her father. In 1834, at the ripe age of fifteen, she describes her

"Vain Regrets

written on looking over a diary kept while I was under serious impressions":--

Oh! happy days, gone, never to return At which fond memory will ever burn, Oh, Joyous hours, with peace and gladness blest, When hope and joy dwelt in this careworn breast.

The next poem, "The Land of Peace," breaks off abruptly at the third line, and when she again began to write religious verse, it was from a widely different standpoint.

It may have been about this time that she tried to lead her sisters into the path of poesy.

Coming one day into the nursery, in serious mood, she found the two little girls playing some childish game. Miss Ward (she was always Miss Ward, even in the nursery!) rebuked them for their frivolity; bade them turn their thoughts to graver matters, and write poetry.

Louisa refused point-blank, but little Annie, always anxious to please, went dutifully to work, and produced the following lines:--

He feeds the ravens when they call, And stands them in a pleasant hall.

"Mitter Ward" (to give him his nursery title) treasured these tokens of pious and literary promise. He even responded in kind, as is shown by some verses which are endorsed:--

"From my dearest Father. JULIA EUPHROSYNE WARD [sic]."

His letters are full of playful affection. He would fain be father and mother both to the children who were now his all. Under the austere exterior lay a tenderness which perhaps they hardly comprehended at the time. It was in fact this very anguish of solicitude, this passionate wish that they should not only have, but be everything desirable and lovely, that made him outwardly so stern. This sterner note impressed itself so deeply upon the minds of his children that the anecdotes familiar to our own generation echo it. We see the little Julia, weary with long riding in the family coach, suffering her knees to drop apart childwise, and we hear Mr. Ward say: "My daughter, if you cannot sit like a lady, we will stop at the next tailor's and have you measured for a pair of pantaloons!"

Or we hear the child at table, remarking innocently that the cheese is strong; and the deep voice replying, "It is no more so than the expression, Miss!"

The family was still at 16 Bond Street, when all the children had whooping-cough severely, and were confined to the house for many weeks. Mrs. Mailliard writes of this time:--

"I remember the screened-off corner of the dining-room, which was called the Bower, where we each retired when the spasms came on, and the promises which we vainly gave each other each morning to choke rather than cough whilst Uncle Doctor made his visit to the nursery; for the slightest sound from one of us provoked the general order of a dose all round."

It was after this illness that Julia Ward first went to Newport. A change of air was prescribed for the children, and they were packed off to the farmhouse of Jacob Bailey, two or three miles from the town of Newport. Here they spent a happy summer, to be followed by many others. They slept on mattresses stuffed with ground corncobs; the table was primitive; but there was plenty of cream and curds, eggs and butter, and there was the wonderful air. The children grew fat and hearty, and scampered all over the island with great delight.

(But when they went down to the beach, Julia must wear a thick green worsted veil to preserve her ivory-and-rose complexion.

"Little Julia has another freckle to-day!" a visitor was told. "It was not her fault, the nurse forgot her veil!")

Julia recalled Newport in 1832 as "a forsaken, mildewed place, a sort of intensified Salem, with houses of rich design, no longer richly inhabited." She was to watch through many years the growth of what was always one of the cities of her heart.

But we must return to Bond Street, and take one more look at No. 16. The Wards were soon to leave it for a statelier dwelling, but many associations would always cling about the old house. Here it was that the good old grandfather, Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Ward, used to come from No. 7 to talk business with his son or to play with the children. Our mother had a vivid recollection of once, when still a little child, sitting down at the piano, placing an open music-book on the rack (though she could not yet read music), and beginning to pound and thump the keys with might and main. The Colonel was sitting by, book in hand, and endured the noise patiently for some time. Finally he said in his courtly way, "Is it so set down in the book, little lady?" "Yes, Grandpapa!" said naughty Julia, and went on banging; the Colonel, who indeed had little music, made no further comment. But when a game of "Tommy-come-tickle-me" was toward, the children must step in to No. 7 to share that excitement with their grandfather, since no cards were permitted under Mr. Ward's roof.

The year of the first Newport visit, 1832, was also the terrible "cholera year." Uncle Ben Cutler, at that time city missionary, writes in his diary:--

"The cholera is in Quebec and Montreal. This city is beginning to be alarmed; Christians are waking up. My soul, how stands the case with thee?"

And later:--

"I am now in the midst of the pestilence. The cholera, the universal plague, arrived in this city four weeks ago. It has caused the death of over nine hundred persons. This day the report of the Board of Health was three hundred new cases and one hundred and thirty deaths."

Many parts of the city were entirely deserted. Dr. Cutler retained through life the vivid recollection of riding down Broadway in full daylight, meeting no living soul, seeing only a face here and there at an upper window, peering at him as at a strange sight.

Newport took the alarm, and forbade steamboats from New York to land their passengers. This behavior was considered very cold-blooded, and gave rise to the conundrum: "Why is it impossible for Newporters to take the cholera? Answer: Because they have no bowels."

Grandma Cutler was at Newport with the Wards and Francises, and trembled for her only son. She implored him to "flee while it was yet day." "My most precious son," she cried, "oh, come out from thence! I entreat you; linger not within its walls, as Lot would have done, but for the friendly angels that drew him perforce from it!"

The missionary stood firm at his post, and though exhausted by his labors, came safe through the ordeal. But Colonel Ward, who had not thought fit to flee the enemy,--it was not his habit to flee enemies,--was stricken with the pestilence, and died in New York City, August 16. His death was a grievous blow to Mr. Ward. Not only had he lost a loving and beloved father, but he had no assurance of the orthodoxy of that father's religious opinions. The Colonel was thought in the family to be of a philosophizing, if not actually sceptical, turn of mind; it might be that he was not "safe"! Years after, Mr. Ward told Julia of the anguish he suffered from this uncertainty.

It is with No. 16 Bond Street that we chiefly associate the sprightly figure of "Grandma Cutler," who was a frequent visitor there. The affection between Mr. Ward and his mother-in-law was warm and lively. They had a "little language" of their own, and she was Lady Feltham (from her fondness for Feltham's "Resolves," a book little in demand in the twentieth century); and he was her "saucy Lark," or "Plato." Mrs. Cutler died in 1836.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter III

"THE CORNER"

1835-1839; aet. 16-20

But well I thank my father's sober house Where shallow judgment had no leave to be, And hurrying years, that, stripping much beside, Turned as they fled, and left me charity.

J. W. H.

The house which Mr. Ward built on the corner of Bond Street and Broadway was still standing in the middle of the nineteenth century; a dignified mansion of brick, with columns and trimmings of white marble.

In her "Reminiscences," our mother recalls the spacious rooms, hung with red, blue, and yellow silk. The yellow drawing-room was reserved for high occasions, and for "Miss Ward's" desk and grand piano. This and the blue room were adorned by fine sculptured mantelpieces, the work of a young sculptor named Thomas Crawford, who was just coming into notice.

Behind the main house, stretching along Broadway, was the picture gallery, the first private one in New York, and Mr. Ward's special pride. The children might not mingle in frivolous gayety abroad, but they should have all that love, taste, and money could give them at home; he filled his gallery with the best pictures he could find. A friend (Mr. Prescott Hall), making a timely journey through Spain, bought for him many valuable pictures, among them a Snyders, a Nicolas Poussin, a reputed Velasquez and Rembrandt. It was for him that Thomas Cole painted the four pictures representing "The Voyage of Life," engravings from which may still be found in old-fashioned parlors.

Some years later, when the eldest son, Samuel, returned from Europe, bringing with him a fine collection of books, Mr. Ward built a library specially for them.

This was the house into which the family moved in 1835, Julia being then sixteen years of age; this was the house she loved, the memory of which was dear to her through all the years of her life.

The family was at that time patriarchal in its dimensions: Mr. Ward and his six children, Dr. and Mrs. Francis and their four; often, too, "Grandma Cutler" and other Cutlers, not to speak of Wards, Greenes, and McAllisters. (Louisa, youngest of the Cutler sisters, one of the most beautiful and enchanting women of her time, was married to Matthew Hall McAllister.) One and all were sure of a welcome at "The Corner"; one and all were received with cordial urbanity, first by Johnson, the colored butler, later by Mr. Ward, the soul of dignified hospitality.

Another inmate of the house during several years was Christy Evangelides, a Greek boy, orphaned in a Turkish massacre. Mr. Ward took the boy into his family, gave him his education and a start in life. Fifty years later Mr. Evangelides recalled those days in a letter to his "sister Julia," and paid beautiful tribute to his benefactor.

To all these should be added a host of servants and retainers; and masters of various kinds, coming to teach music, languages, even dancing, for the children were taught to dance even if they never (or very seldom) were allowed to go to dances. Many of these teachers were foreign patriots: those were the days when one French émigré of rank dressed the hair of fashionable New York, while another made its salads, the two going their rounds before every festivity.

Julia's musical education began early. Her first teacher was a French artist, so irritable that the terrified child could remember little that he taught her. He was succeeded in her tenth year by Mr. Boocock, a pupil of Cramer, to whom she always felt that she owed a great deal. Not only did he train her fingers so carefully that after eighty years they still retained their flexibility, but he also trained and developed her inborn taste for all that was best in music.

As she grew toward girlhood, the good master found that her voice promised to be a remarkable one, and recommended to her father Signor Cardini, formerly an intimate of the Garcia family, and thoroughly versed in the famous Garcia method. Under his care Julia's voice developed into a pure, clear mezzo-soprano, of uncommon range and exquisite quality. She felt all through her life the benefit of those early lessons.

When she was eighty years old she attended a meeting of the National Peace Society at Park Street Church, Boston. The church was packed with people. When her turn came to speak, the kindly chairman said:--

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now to have the great pleasure of listening to Mrs. Howe. I am going to ask you all to be very quiet, for though Mrs. Howe's voice is as sweet as ever, it is perhaps not quite so strong."

"But it carries!" said the pupil of old Cardini. The silver tone, though not loud, reached the farthest corner of the great building; the house "came down" in a thunder of applause. It was a beautiful moment for the proud daughter who sat beside her.

Music was one of the passions of her life. Indeed, she felt that it had sometimes influenced her even too much, and in recording the delight she took in the trios and quartets which Mr. Boocock arranged for her, she adds: "The reaction from this pleasure, however, was very painful, and induced at times a visitation of morbid melancholy, which threatened to upset my health."

She felt that "in the training of young persons, some regard should be had to the sensitiveness of youthful nerves, and to the overpowering response which they often make to the appeals of music....

"The power and sweep of great orchestral performances, or even the suggestive charm of some beautiful voice, will sometimes so disturb the mental equilibrium of the hearer as to induce in him a listless melancholy, or, worse still, an unreasoning and unreasonable discontent."[10]

[10] Reminiscences, p. 43.

In a later chapter of her "Reminiscences," she says: "I left school at the age of sixteen, and began thereafter to study in good earnest. Until that time a certain over-romantic and imaginative turn of mind had interfered much with the progress of my studies. I indulged in day-dreams which appeared to me far higher in tone than the humdrum of my school recitations. When these were at an end, I began to feel the necessity of more strenuous application, and at once arranged for myself hours of study, relieved by the practice of vocal and instrumental music."

These hours of study were not all passed at home. In 1836 she was taking certain courses at the boarding and day school of Mrs. E. Smith, then in Fifth Avenue, "first house from Washington Square."

The Italian master was a son of the venerable Lorenzo da Ponte, who in his youth had written for Mozart the librettos of "Don Giovanni" and "Le Nozze di Figaro."

Four languages, English, French, German, and Italian, Julia learned thoroughly; she spoke and wrote them throughout her life correctly as well as fluently, with singularly pure accent and inflection, and seldom or never was at a loss for a word; nor was she less proficient in history. For mathematics she had no gift, and was wont to say that her knowledge of the science was limited to the fact that four quarts made a gallon: yet the higher mathematics had a mysterious attraction for her, as an unexplored region of wonder and romance.

She was always a student. When she began the study of German, she set herself a task each day; lest anything should interfere to distract her mind, she had herself securely tied to her armchair, giving orders that she was on no account to be set free before the appointed hour.

This was characteristic of her through life. The chain of habit once formed was never broken, and study was meat and drink to her. Her "precious time" (which we children saucily abbreviated to "P.T.") was as real a thing to us as sunrise: we were not to break in upon it for anything short of a fire--or a cut finger!

Many years later, she laid down for the benefit of the younger generation these rules:--

"If you have at your command three hours per diem, you may study art, literature, and philosophy, not as they are studied professionally, but in the degree involved in general culture.

"If you have but one hour every day, read philosophy, or learn foreign languages, living or dead.

"If you can command only fifteen or twenty minutes, read the Bible with the best commentaries, and daily a verse or two of the best poetry."

In the days when Julia was going round the corner to Mrs. Smith's school, Sam was newly returned from a long course of study and travel abroad, while Henry and Marion were at Round Hill School under the care of Dr. Joseph Greene Cogswell and Mr. George Bancroft. The former was a beloved friend of the Ward family, and often visited them. We have pleasant glimpses of the household at this time, when the lines of paternal guidance, though still firmly, were somewhat less rigidly drawn.

Breakfast at "The Corner" was at eight in winter, and at half past seven in summer, Mr. Ward reading prayers before the meal, and again at bedtime. He would often wake his daughters in the morning by pelting them with stockings, crying, "Come, my rosebuds!"

The young people were apt to linger over the breakfast table in talk. If this were unduly prolonged, Mr. Ward would appear, "hatted and booted for the day," and say, "Young gentlemen, I am glad that you can afford to take life so easily. I am old, and must work for my living!"

Dinner was at four o'clock, supper at half past seven.

At table, Julia sat beside her father; he would often take her right hand in his left, half unconsciously, and hold it for some time, continuing the while to eat his dinner. Julia, her right hand imprisoned, would sit dinnerless, but never dreamed of remonstrating.

She had a habit of dropping her slippers off while at the table. Mr. Ward one day quietly secured an empty slipper with his foot, and then said: "My daughter, I have left my seals in my room. Will you be so good as to fetch them for me?" A moment's agonized search, and Julia went, "one shoe off and one shoe on," and brought the seals. Nothing was said on either side, but the habit was abandoned.

Mr. Ward's anxious care for his children's welfare extended to every branch of their conduct. One evening, walking with Julia, he met his sons, Henry and Marion, each with a cigar in his mouth. He was much troubled, and said: "Boys, you must give this up, and I will give it up too. From this time I forbid you to smoke, and I will join you in relinquishing the habit."

He never smoked again; nor did the boys--in his presence!

Three lads, young, handsome, brilliant, and eminently social as were the Wards, could not be kept out of society. They were popular, and would fain have had Julia, the only one of the three girls who was old enough, share in their pleasures; but this might not be. Mr. Ward had money and sympathy to spare for every benevolent enterprise, but he disliked and distrusted "society"; he would neither entertain it nor be entertained by it. Our mother quotes an argument between him and his eldest son on this point:--

"'Sir,' said my brother, 'you do not keep in view the importance of the social tie.'

"'The social what?' asked my father.

"'The social tie, sir.'

"'I make small account of that,' said the elder gentleman.

"'I will die in defence of it!' impetuously rejoined the younger.

"My father was so amused at this sally that he spoke of it to an intimate friend: 'He will die in defence of the social tie, indeed!'"

Julia's girlhood evenings were mostly spent at home, with books, needlework, and music, varied by an occasional lecture or concert, or a visit to some one of the uncles' houses in the street, which ought, one would think, to have been called "Ward Street," since at this time almost the whole family connection lived there.

Much as Julia loved her home, her books and music, she longed for some of the gayety which her brothers were enjoying. "I seemed to myself," she says, "like a young damsel of olden times, shut up within an enchanted castle. And I must say, that my dear father, with all his noble generosity and overweening affection, sometimes appeared to me as my jailer."

Once she expostulated with him, begging to be allowed more freedom in going out, and in receiving visits from the friends of her brothers. It may have been on the occasion when he refused to allow the late Louis Rutherford, of venerated memory, to be invited to the house, "because he belonged to the fashionable world."

Her father told her that he had early recognized in her a temperament and imagination over-sensitive to impressions from without, and that his wish had been to guard her from exciting influences until she should appear to him fully able to guard and guide herself.

Alas! the tender father meant to cherish a vestal flame in a vase of alabaster; in reality, he was trying to imprison the lightning in the cloud. When our mother wrote the words above quoted, on the power of music over sensitive natures, she was recalling these days, and perhaps remembering how, denied the society of her natural mates, her sixteen-year-old heart went out in sympathy and compassion to the young harper who came to take part in the trios and quartets, and who fell desperately in love with her and was summarily dismissed in consequence.

Yet who shall say that the father's austere régime did not after all meet a need of her nature deeper than she could possibly have realized at the time; that the long, lonely hours, the study often to weariness,--though never to satiety,--the very fires of longing and of regret, were not necessary to give her mind that temper which was to make it an instrument as strong as it was keen?

The result of this system was not precisely what Mr. Ward had expected. One evening (it was probably after the marriage of his eldest son to Emily Astor, when he joined perforce in the festivities of the time) he did actually take Julia to an evening party. She did not dance, but she was surrounded by eager youths all the evening, and when her father summoned her to go home, she was deep in talk with one of them. There was no disobeying the summons; as she turned to take her father's arm, Miss Julia made a little gesture of farewell, fluttering the fingers of her right hand over her shoulder, to cheer the disconsolate swain. Mr. Ward appeared unconscious of this, but a day or two later, on leaving the room where Julia was sitting, he said: "My daughter,--" and fluttered his fingers over his shoulder in precise mimicry of her gesture.

Another anecdote describes an occasion singularly characteristic of both father and daughter.

Julia was nineteen years old, a woman grown, feeling her womanhood in every vein. She had never been allowed to choose the persons who should be invited to the house: she had never had a party of her own. The different strains in her blood were singularly diverse. All through her life Saxon and Gaul kept house together as peaceably as they might, but sometimes the French blood boiled over.

Calling her brothers in council, she told them that she was going to give a party; that she desired their help in making out lists, etc., but that the occasion and the responsibility were to be all her own. The brothers demurred, even Sam being somewhat appalled by the prospect; but finding her firm, they made out a list of desirable guests, of all ages. It was characteristic of her that the plan once made, the resolve taken, it became an obsession, a thing that must be done at whatever cost.

She asked her father if she might invite a few friends for a certain evening: he assented. She engaged the best caterer in New York; the most fashionable musicians; she even hired a splendid cut-glass chandelier to supplement the sober lighting of the yellow drawing-room.

The evening came: Mr. Ward, coming downstairs, found assembled as brilliant a gathering as could have been found in any other of the great houses of New York. He betrayed no surprise, but welcomed his guests with charming courtesy, as if they had come at his special desire; the music sounded, the young people danced, the evening passed off delightfully, to all save the young hostess. She, from the moment when the thing was inevitable, became as possessed with terror as she had been with desire. She could think of nothing but her father's displeasure, of the words he might speak, the glances he might cast upon her. During the whole evening, the cup of trembling was at her lips.

The moment the last guest had departed, the three brothers gathered round her. "We will speak to him!" they cried. "Let us speak to him for you!"

"No!" said Julia, "I must go myself."

She went at once to the room where her father sat alone. For a moment she could find no words; but none were needed. Gravely but kindly Mr. Ward said he was surprised to find that her idea of "a few friends" differed so widely from his own; he was sorry she had not consulted him more freely, and begged that in the future she would do so. Then he kissed her good-night with his usual tenderness, and it was over. The matter was never mentioned again.

The Wards continued to pass the summers at Newport, but no longer at good Jacob Bailey's farmhouse. Mr. Ward had bought a house in town, which a later generation was to know as "The Ashurst Cottage," on the corner of Bellevue Avenue and Catherine Street.

Here the severity of his rule relaxed somewhat, and the pretty house became the centre of a sober hospitality. Indeed, Newport was a sober place in those days. There were one or two houses where dancing was allowed, but these were viewed askance by many people.

One evening, a dancing party was given by a couple on Bellevue Avenue. They had a manservant named Salathiel, a person of rigid piety. When supper-time came, Salathiel was not to be found. The other servants, being questioned, said that he had rushed suddenly out of the house, crying, "I won't stay to see those people dancing themselves to hell!"

Though Julia might not dance, except at home, she might and did ride; first, with great contentment, on a Narragansett pacer, "Jeanie Deans," later on a thoroughbred mare, a golden bay named Cora. Cora was beautiful but "very pranky." After being several times run away with and once thrown off, it was observed by her sisters that Julia generally read her Bible and said her prayers before her ride: she has herself told us how, after being thrown off and obliged to make her way home on foot, she would creep in at the back door so that no one might see her.

She calls the "cottage" a "delightful house," and speaks with special pleasure of its garden planted with roses and gooseberry bushes by Billy Bottomore, a quaint old Newport sportsman, who took the boys shooting, and showed them where to find plover, woodcock, and snipe. Billy Bottomore passed for an adopted son of old Father Corné, another Newport "character" of those days. This gentleman had come from Naples to Boston, toward the end of the eighteenth century, as a decorative artist, and had made a modest fortune by painting the walls of the fine houses of Summer Street, Temple Place, and Beacon Hill. He chose Newport as his final home, because, as he told Mr. Ward, he had found that the climate was favorable to the growth of the tomato, "that most wholesome of vegetables." The Ward boys delighted in visiting Father Corné, and in hearing him sing his old songs, French and Italian, some of which are sung to-day by our grandchildren.

Father Corné lived to a great age. When past his ninetieth year, a friend asked him if he would not like to revisit Naples. "Ah, sir," replied the old man, "my father is dead!"

Our mother loved to linger over these old-time figures. The name of Billy Bottomore always brought a twinkle to her eye, and we never tired of hearing how he told her, "There is a single sister in Newport, a sempstress, to whom I have offered matrimony, but she says, 'No.'" The single sister finally yielded (perhaps when Billy inherited old Corné's money) and he became a proud and happy husband. "She keeps my house as neat as a nunnery!" he said. "When Miss E., the housekeeper, died, she nursed her and laid her out, and when Father Corné died, she nursed him and laid him out--"

"Yes, Billy," broke in our Aunt Annie, "and she'll lay you out too!"--which in due time she did.

He congratulated Julia on having girl-children only.

"Give me daughters!" he cried. "As my good old Spanish grandfather used to say, give me daughters!"

"Of this Spanish ancestor," our mother says, "no one ever heard before. His descendant died, without daughter or son, of cholera in 185-."

We forget the name of another quaint personage, a retired sea-captain, who once gave a party to which she was allowed to go; but she remembered the party, and the unction with which the kindly host, rubbing his hands over the supper table, exclaimed: "Now, ladies and gentlemen, help yourselves sang froidy!"

The roses and gooseberry bushes of the Newport garden once witnessed a serio-comic scene. There was another sea-captain, Glover by name, who had business connections with Prime, Ward & King, and who came to the house sometimes on business, sometimes for a friendly call. He was a worthy man of middle age and unromantic appearance; probably the eighteen-year-old Julia, dreamy and poetic, took no more notice of him than civility required; but he took notice of her, and one day asked her to walk out in the garden with him. Wondering much, she went. After some desultory remarks, the Captain drew a visiting-card from his pocket, wrote a few words upon it, and handed it to his young hostess. She read:--

"Russell E. Glover's heart is yours!"

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

IV. GIRLHOOD

1839-1843; aet. 20-23

The torch that lit these silent halls, Has now extinguished been; The windows of the soul are dark, And all is gloom within.

But lo! it shines, a star in heav'n, And through death's murky night, The ruins of the stately pile Gleam softly in its light.

And it shall be a beacon star To cheer us, and to guide; For we would live as thou hast lived, And die as thou hast died.

Julia Ward, on her father's death, 1839.

In Julia's childhood her brother Sam was her ideal and her idol. She describes him as a "handsome youth, quick of wit and tender of heart, brilliant in promise, and with a great and versatile power of work in him." He had early shown special proficiency in mathematics, and to the end of his life rejoiced in being one of the few persons who clearly understood the function called "Gamma." His masters expected great things from him; but his brilliant and effervescent spirit was forced into the Wall Street mould, with kindly intent but disastrous effect. His life was checkered, sun and shadow; but from first to last, he remained the delight of all who knew him. Sam Ward; Uncle Sam to three generations, his was a name to conjure with: the soul of generosity, the essence of wit, the spirit of kindliness. No one ever looked in his face, ever met the kindling glance of his dark eyes, ever saw the sunshine break in his smile, without forgetting all else in love and admiration of one of the most enchanting personalities that ever brightened the world.

Sam Ward returned from Europe in 1835, and took up his residence under his father's roof. In 1838 he married Emily, daughter of William B. Astor. The wedding was a grand one. Julia was first bridesmaid, and wore a dress of white moiré, then a material of the newest fashion. Those were the days of the ferronière, an ornament then so popular that "evening dress was scarcely considered complete without it."[11] Julia begged for one, and her father gave her a charming string of pearls, which she wore with great contentment at the wedding.

[11] Reminiscences, p. 65.

The young couple took up their residence with the family at "The Corner," the Francises having by this time moved to a house of their own.

With all these changes, little by little, the discipline relaxed, the doors opened wider. The bridal pair, fêted everywhere, must, in their turn, entertain their friends; and in these entertainments the daughters of the house must have their share.

Julia Ward was now nineteen, in the fulness of her early bloom. Her red-gold hair was no longer regarded as a misfortune; her gray eyes were large and well opened; her complexion of dazzling purity. Her finely chiselled features, and the beauty of her hands and arms, made an ensemble which could not fail to impress all who saw her. Add to this her singing, her wit, and the charm which was all and always her own, and we have the Diva Julia, as she was called by some who loved her. Her sisters, also, were growing up, each exquisitely attractive in her way: they became known as the "Three Graces of Bond Street." Louisa was like a damask rose, Annie like a dark lily; dark, too, of eyes and hair were Sam and Marion, while Henry was fair and blue-eyed.

At this distance of time, it may not be unpardonable to touch briefly on another aspect of our mother's youth; indeed, it would hardly be candid to avoid it. From the first she seems to have stirred the hearts of men. Her masters, old and young, fell in love with her almost as a matter of course. Gilded youth and sober middle-age fared no better; her girlhood passed to the sound of sighing.

"My dear," said an intimate friend of the three, speaking of these days, "Louisa had her admirers, and Annie had hers; but when the men saw your mother, they just flopped!"

Among her papers we have found many relics of these days, from the faded epistle addressed, "_à Julie, la respectée, la choisie, l'aimée, la chérie," to the stern letter in which Mr. Ward "desires not to conceal from the Rev. Mr. ---- the deliberate and dispassionate opinion, that a gentleman whose sacred office commanded ready access to his roof, might well have earlier ascertained the views of a widow'd Father on a subject so involving the happiness of his child."

The unhappy suitor's note to Miss Julia is enclosed, and Mr. Ward trusts that "the return will be considered by the Rev. Mr. ---- as finally terminating the matter therein referred to."

Julia had for her suitors a tender and compassionate sympathy. She could not love them, she would not marry them, but she was very sorry for them, and--it must be admitted--she liked to be adored. So she sang duets with one, read German with another, Anglo-Saxon with a third; for all, perhaps, she may have had something the feeling of her "Coquette et Tendre" in "Passion Flowers."

Ere I knew life's sober meaning, Nature taught me simple wiles, Gave this color, rising, waning, Gave these shadows, deepening smiles.

More she taught me, sighing, singing, Taught me free to think and move, Taught this fond instinctive clinging To the helpful arm of love.

The suitors called her "Diva," but in the family circle she was "Jules," or "Jolie Julie." The family letters of this period are full of affectionate cheerfulness.

When "Jolie Julie" is away on a visit, the others send her a composite letter. Louisa threatens to shut her up on her return with nothing to read but her Anglo-Saxon grammar and "Beowulf." ("If that does not give you a distaste for all wolves," she says, "not excepting those Long fellows,[12] I do not know what will!")

[12] Longfellow had lent her "Beowulf."

Annie tells of opening the window in Julia's room and of all the poetical ideas flying out and away.

Emily, her brother's wife, describes Mr. Ward sighing, "Where is my beauty?" as he sits at the table; and the letter closes with a lively picture of the books in the library "heaving their dusty sides in sorrow for her absence."

In describing life at "The Corner," we must not forget the evenings at No. 23, Colonel Henry Ward's house. Uncle Henry and his namesake son (the boy who was to "see death approaching with joy"!) were musical. When Mr. Ward permitted (in his later and more lenient days) an informal dance at "The Corner," the three girls sent for Uncle Henry as naturally as they sent for the hair-dressing and salad-making émigrés; and the stately, handsome gentleman came, and played waltzes and polkas with cheerful patience all the evening.

On Sunday the whole family from "The Corner" took tea with Uncle Henry, and music was the order of the evening. Mr. Ward delighted in these occasions, and was never ready to go home. When Uncle Henry thought it was bedtime, he would go to the piano and play the "Rogue's March."

(Twice flogged for stealing a sheep, Thrice flogged for de_sar_tion! If ever I go for a soldier again, The devil may be my portion!

We hear the fife shrill through the lively air!)

"No! no, Colonel!" Mr. Ward would cry. "We won't march yet; give us half an hour more!" And in affectionate mischief he would stay the half-hour through before marshalling his flock back to "The Corner."

A stern period was put to all this innocent gayety by the death of Mr. Ward, at the age of fifty-three. His life, always laborious, had been doubly so since the death of his wife. Stunned at first by the blow, his strong sense of duty soon roused him to resume his daily responsibilities--with a difference, however. Religion had always been a powerful factor in his life; henceforth it was to be his main inspiration, and he found his chief comfort in works of public and private beneficence.

An earnest patriot, he was no politician; but when his services were needed by city, state, or country, they were always forthcoming. Throughout the series of financial disasters beginning with Andrew Jackson's refusal to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States, and culminating in the panic of 1837, Mr. Ward acted with vigor, decision, and sagacity. His denunciation of the removal of the public deposits from the Bank of the United States by the famous Specie Circular as "an act so lawless, violent, and fraught with disaster, that it would and must eventually overthrow the men and the party that resorted to it," was justified, literally and entirely.

The crisis of 1836-37 called for all the strength, wisdom, and public spirit that the men of the country could show. Mr. Ward labored day and night to prevent the dishonor of the banks of New York.

"Individual effort, however, was vain, and the 10th of May saw all the banks reduced to suspend specie payments; and upon no man did that disastrous day close with deeper mortification than upon him. Personally, and in his business relations, this event affected Mr. Ward as little possibly as any one at all connected with affairs; but, in his estimation, it vitally wounded the commercial honor and character of the city. He was not, however, a man to waste, in unavailing regrets, hours that might be more advantageously employed to repair the evil, and he therefore at once set about the arrangement of measures for inducing and enabling the banks to resume at the earliest possible moment."[13]

[13] The Late Samuel Ward, by Mr. Charles King.

This was accomplished within the year. About the same time the Bank of England sent to Prime, Ward & King a loan of nearly five million dollars in gold. Mr. King says, "This extraordinary mark of confidence, this well-earned tribute to the prudence and integrity of the house, Mr. Ward did not affect to undervalue, and confirming, as it did, the sagacity of his own views, and the results which he had so confidently foretold, it was not lost upon the community in the midst of which he lived."

Our mother never forgot the afternoon when Brother Sam came into her study on his return from Wall Street and cried out to her:--

"Julia, men have been going up and down the office stairs all day long, carrying little wooden kegs of gold on their backs, marked 'Prime, Ward & King' and filled with English gold!"

That English gold saved the honor of the Empire State, and the fact that her father procured the loan was the greatest asset in her inheritance from the old firm.

Mr. Ward did not see the kegs, for he was in bed, prostrated by a severe fit of sickness brought on by his labors for the public honor. The few years that remained to him were a very martyrdom, his old enemy, rheumatic gout, attacking him more and more fiercely; but his spirit was indomitable. He labored almost single-handed to establish the Bank of Commerce, and became its first president, stipulating that he should receive no compensation. What he did receive was his death-warrant. The dampness of the freshly plastered walls of the new building brought on in the spring of 1839 two successive attacks so severe that he could not rally from them. Still he toiled on, giving all his energies to perfect and consolidate the enterprise which he believed would be of lasting benefit to his beloved city.

In October of the same year came another financial crisis. The banks of Philadelphia and the Southern States suspended specie payments, and every effort was made to induce the New York banks to follow suit. Mr. Ward was ill at Newport, but hearing the news he hurried back and threw himself into the conflict, exhorting, sustaining, encouraging.

A friend protested, warning him of the peril to his enfeebled health of such exertions. "I should esteem life itself not unworthily sacrificed," said Mr. Ward, "if by word or deed, I could aid the banks in adhering faithfully to their duty."

For nearly two weeks he labored, till the work was done, his city's honor and fair fame secure; then he went home literally to die, departing this life, November 27, 1839.

Julia was with him when he died, his hand in hers. The beauty of his countenance in death was such that Anne Hall, the well-known miniature painter, begged permission to paint it, and his descendants may still gaze on the majestic features in their serene repose.

Our mother writes of this time: "I cannot, even now, bear to dwell upon the desolate hush which fell upon our house when its stately head lay, silent and cold, in the midst of weeping friends and children."[14]

[14] Reminiscences, p. 53.

Her love for her father was to cease only with her life. She never failed to record his birthday in her diary, with some word of tender remembrance.

Shortly before Mr. Ward's death, Sam and his wife had moved to a house of their own. The five unmarried children would have been desolate, indeed, if left to themselves in the great house: but to the joy and comfort of all, their bachelor uncle, John Ward, left his own house and came to live with them. From this time until his death in 1866, he was a second father to them.

Uncle John! The words call up memories of our own childhood. We see a tall, stalwart figure, clad in loose-fitting garments; a noble head crowned by a small brown scratch wig; a countenance beaming with kindliness and humor. A Manila cheroot is between his lips--the fragrance of one never fails to call up his image--and he caresses an unamiable little dog which he fondly loves. He offers a grand-niece a silk dress if she will make it up herself. This was the "Uncle John" of No. 8 Bond Street, one of the worthies of Wall Street, and uncle, by courtesy, to half New York.

In his youth he had received an injury which deprived him of speech for more than a year. It was feared that he would never speak again; one day his mother, trying to help him in some small matter, and not succeeding to her mind, cried, "I am a poor, awkward, old woman!"

"No, you are not!" exclaimed John Ward; and the trouble was over.

His devotion to his orphan nieces and nephews was constant and beautiful. He desired ardently that the three girls should be good housekeepers, and grudged the amount of time which one of them at least devoted to books and music. To them also he was fond of giving dress-materials, with the proviso that they should make them up for themselves. This they managed to do, "with a good deal of help from the family seamstress."

When Julia published her first literary venture, a translation of Lamartine's "Jocelyne," Uncle John showed her a favorable notice of it in a newspaper, saying: "This is my little girl who knows about books, and writes an article and has it printed, but I wish she knew more about housekeeping."

"A sentiment," she adds, "which in after years I had occasion to echo with fervor."

While Sam was her ideal of youthful manhood, Henry was her mate, the nearest to her in age and in sympathy. The bond between them was close and tender; and when in October, 1840, he died of typhoid fever, the blow fell on her with crushing severity.

"When he closed his eyes," she says, "I would gladly, oh, so gladly have died with him!" And again, "I remember the time as one without light or comfort."

She turned to seek consolation in religion, and--naturally--in that aspect of religion which had been presented to her childish mind as the true and only one. At this time a great Calvinistic revival was going on in New York, and a zealous friend persuaded Julia to attend some of the meetings. In her anguish of grief, the gloomy doctrines of natural depravity, of an angry and vengeful Deity, of a salvation possible only through certain strictly defined channels, came home to her with terrible force. Her deeply religious nature sought the Divine under however portentous an aspect it was presented; her poet's imagination clung to the uplifted Cross; these were days of emotion, of fervor, of exaltation alternating with abasement; thought was to come later.

While under these influences, Julia, now at the head of the household, enforced her Calvinistic principles with rigor. The family were allowed only cold meat on Sunday, to their great discomfort; the rather uninviting midday dinner was named by Uncle John "Sentiment"; but at six o'clock they were given hot tea, and this he called "Bliss." Pious exhortations, sisterly admonitions, were the order of the day. "The Old Bird"--this nom de tendresse had now superseded "Jolie Julie," and was to be hers while her sisters and brothers lived--hovered over the younger ones with maternal anxiety. In the poems and letters of this period, she adopts unconsciously the phraseology of the day.

Being away on a visit, she writes to her sisters: "Believe me, it is better to set aside, untasted, the cup of human enjoyment, than to drink it to the bitter dregs, and then seek for something better, which may not be granted to us. The manna fell from heaven early in the morning, those who then neglected to gather it were left without nourishment; it is early in life's morning that we must gather the heavenly food, which can alone support us through the burden and heat of the day."

The emotional fervor of this time was heightened by a complication which arose from it. A young clergyman of brilliant powers and passionate nature fell deeply in love with Julia, and pressed his suit with such ardor that she consented to a semi-engagement. Fortunately, a visit to Boston gave her time to examine her feelings. Relieved from the pressure of a twofold excitement, breathing a calmer and a freer air, she realized that there could be no true union between her and the Rev. Mr. ----, and the connection was broken off.

The course of Julia's studies had for some years been leading her into wider fields of thought.

In her brother's library she found George Sand and Balzac, and read such books as he selected for her. In German she became familiar with Goethe, Jean Paul, and Matthias Claudius. She describes the sense of intellectual freedom derived from these studies as "half delightful, half alarming."

Mr. Ward one day had undertaken to read an English translation of "Faust" and came to her in great alarm. "My daughter," he said, "I hope that you have not read this wicked book!" She had read it, and "Wilhelm Meister," too (though in later life she thought the latter "not altogether good reading for the youth of our country"). Shelley was forbidden, and Byron allowed only in small and carefully selected doses.

The twofold bereavement which weighed so heavily upon her checked for a time the development of her thought, throwing her back on the ideas which her childhood had received without question; but her buoyant spirit could not remain long submerged, and as the poignancy of grief abated, her mind sought eagerly for clearer vision.

In the quiet of her own room, the bounds of thought and of faith stretched wide and wider. Vision often came in a flash: witness the moment when the question of Matthias Claudius, "And is He not also the God of the Japanese?" changed from a shocking suggestion to an eternal truth. Witness also the moment when, after reading "Paradise Lost," she saw "the picture of an eternal evil, of Satan and his ministers subjugated, indeed, by God, but not conquered, and able to maintain against Him an opposition as eternal as his goodness. This appeared to me impossible, and I threw away, once and forever, the thought of the terrible hell which till then had always formed part of my belief. In its place I cherished the persuasion that the victory of goodness must consist in making everything good, and that Satan himself could have no shield strong enough to resist permanently the divine power of the divine spirit."

New vistas were opening everywhere before her. She made acquaintance with Margaret Fuller, who read her poems, and urged her to publish them. Of one of these poems, Miss Fuller writes:--

"It is the record of days of genuine inspiration,--of days when the soul lay in the light, when the spiritual harmonies were clearly apprehended and great religious symbols reanimated with their original meaning. Its numbers have the fulness and sweetness of young love, young life. Its gifts were great and demand the service of a long day's work to requite and to interpret them. I can hardly realize that the Julia Ward I have seen has lived this life. It has not yet pervaded her whole being, though I can recall something of it in the steady light of her eye. May she become all attempered and ennobled by this music. I saw in her taste, the capacity for genius, and the utmost delicacy of passionate feeling, but caught no glimpse at the time of this higher mood.... If she publishes, I would not have her omit the lines about the 'lonely room.' The personal interest with which they stamp that part is slight and delicate....

"S. MARGARET FULLER.

"I know of many persons in my own circle to whom I think the poem would be especially grateful."[15]

[15] This manuscript poem was lost, together with many others of the period, a loss always regretted by our mother.

On every hand she met people, who like herself were pressing forward, seeking new light. She heard Channing preach, heard him say that God loves bad men as well as good; another window opened in her soul. Again, on a journey to Boston, she met Ralph Waldo Emerson. The train being delayed at a wayside station, she saw the Transcendentalist, whom she had pictured as hardly human, carrying on his shoulder the child of a poor and weary woman; her heart warmed to him, and they soon made acquaintance. She, with the ardor of youth, gave him at some length the religious views which she still held in the main, and with which she felt he would not agree. She enlarged upon the personal presence of Satan on this earth, on his power over man. Mr. Emerson replied with gentle courtesy, "Surely the Angel must be stronger than the Demon!" She never forgot these words; another window opened, and a wide one.

Julia Ward had come a long way from old Ascension Church, where Peter Stuyvesant, in a full brown wig, carried round the plate, and the Reverend Manton (afterwards Bishop) Eastburn preached sermons "remarked for their good English"; and where communicants were not expected to go to balls or theatres.

The years of mourning over, the Ward sisters took up the pursuits natural to their age and position. Louisa was now eighteen, very beautiful, already showing the rare social gift which distinguished her through life. The two sisters began a season of visiting, dancing, and all manner of gayeties.

The following letter illustrates this period of her girlhood:--

To her sisters

BOSTON (1842). Friday, that's all I know about to-day.

MY DEAREST CHICKS,--

Though I have a right to be tired, having talked and danced for the two last nights, yet my enjoyment is most imperfect until I have shared it with you, so I must needs write to you, and tell you what a very nice time I am having. Last night I went to a party at Miss Shaw's, given to Boz and me, at least, I was invited before he came here, so think that I will only give him an equal share of the honor. I danced a good deal, with some very agreeable partners, and talked as usual with Sumner, Hillard,[16] Longo,[17] etc. I was quite pleased that Boz recognized Fanny Appleton and myself, and gave us a smile and bow en passant. He could do no more, being almost torn to pieces by the crowd which throngs his footsteps, wherever he goes. I like to look at him, he has a bright and most speaking countenance, and his face is all wrinkled with the lines, not of care, but of laughter. His manners are very free and cordial, and he seems to be as capital a fellow as one would suppose from his writings. He circulates as universally as small change, and understands the art of gratifying others without troubling himself, of letting himself be seen without displaying himself--now this speaks for his real good taste, and shows that if not a gentleman born and bred, he is at least a man, every inch of him.

[16] George S. Hillard.

[17] Longfellow.

... I have had hardly the least dash of Transcendentalism, and that of the very best description, a lecture and a visit from Emerson, in both of which he said beautiful things, and to-morrow (don't be shocked!) a conversation at Miss Fuller's, which I shall treasure up for your amusement and instruction. I have also heard (don't go into hysterics!) Dr. Channing once. It was a rare chance, as he does not now preach once in a year. His discourse was very beautiful--and oh, such a sermon as I heard from Father Taylor! I was almost disposed to say, "surely never man spake like this man." And now good-bye. I must shut up the budget, and keep some for a rainy day. God bless my darling sisters. Love to dear Sam and Uncle. Your

DUDIE.

In these days also she first met her future husband.

Samuel Gridley Howe was at this time (1842) forty-one years of age; his life had been a stirring and adventurous one. After passing through Brown University, and the Harvard Medical School, in 1824 he threw in his lot with the people of Greece, then engaged in their War of Independence, and for six years shared their labor and hardships in the field, and on shipboard, being surgeon-in-chief first to the Greek army, then to the fleet. It was noted by a companion in arms, that "the only fault found with him was that he always would be in the fight, and was only a surgeon when the battle was over." He eventually found, however, that his work was to be constructive, not destructive.

The people were perishing for lack of food; he returned to America, preached a crusade, and took back to Greece a shipload of food and clothing for the starving women and children. Having fed them, he set them to work; built a hospital and a mole (which stands to this day in Ægina), founded a colony, and turned the half-naked peasants into farmers. These matters have been fully related elsewhere.[18]

[18] Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe.

Returning to this country in 1831, he took up the education of the blind, which was to be chief among the multifarious labors of his life.

When Julia Ward first met him, he had been for nine years Director of the Perkins Institution for the Blind, and was known throughout the civilized world as the man who had first taught language to a blind deaf mute (Laura Bridgman).

Up to this time a person thus afflicted was classed with idiots, "because," as Blackstone says, "his mind cannot be reached." This dictum had been recently reaffirmed by a body of learned men. Dr. Howe thought otherwise. Briefly, he invented a new science. "He carefully reasoned out every step of the way, and made a full and clear record of the methods which he invented, not for his pupils alone, but for the whole afflicted class for which he opened the way to human fellowship.... His methods have been employed in all subsequent cases, and after seventy years of trial remain the standard."[19]

[19] Memoir of Dr. Samuel G. Howe, by Julia Ward Howe.

Hand in hand with Dorothea Dix, he was beginning the great fight for helping and uplifting the insane; was already, with Horace Mann, considering the condition of the common schools, and forging the weapons for other fights which laid the foundations of the school system of Massachusetts. Later, he was to take up the cause of the feeble-minded, the deaf mute, the prisoner, the slave; throughout his life, no one in "trouble, sorrow, need, sickness, or any other adversity" was ever to call on him in vain.

His friends called him the "Chevalier"; partly because the King of Greece had made him a Knight of St. George, but more because they saw in him a good knight without fear and without reproach. Charles Sumner was his alter ego, the brother of his heart; others of his intimates at that time were Longfellow, George Hillard, Cornelius Felton, Henry Cleveland. This little knot of friends called themselves "The Five of Clubs," and met often to make merry and to discuss the things of life.

The summer of 1842 was spent by Julia Ward and her sisters at a cottage in the neighborhood of Boston, in company with their friend Mary Ward.[20] Here Longfellow and Sumner often visited them, and here Julia first heard of the Chevalier and his wonderful achievement in educating Laura Bridgman. Deeply interested, she gladly accepted the offer of the two friends to drive her and her sisters over to the Perkins Institution. She has described how "Mr. Sumner, looking out of a window, said, 'Oh! here comes Howe on his black horse.' I looked out also, and beheld a noble rider on a noble steed."

[20] Afterward Mrs. Charles H. Dorr. This lady was of no kin to them. She had been betrothed to their brother Henry, and was the lifelong friend of all three sisters.

The slender, military figure, the jet-black hair, keen blue eyes, and brilliant complexion, above all the vivid presence, like the flash of a sword--all these could not fail to impress the young girl deeply; the Chevalier, on his part, saw and recognized the Diva Julia of his friends' description. She has told us "how acquaintance ripened into good-will" between the two.

The Chevalier, eager to push the acquaintance further, went to New York to call on the Diva and her family. In a private journal of the time we find the following glimpse of the pair:--

"Walked down Broadway with all the fashion and met the pretty blue-stocking, Miss Julia Ward, with her admirer, Dr. Howe, just home from Europe. She had on a blue satin cloak and a white muslin dress. I looked to see if she had on blue stockings, but I think not. I suspect that her stockings were pink, and she wore low slippers, as Grandmamma does. They say she dreams in Italian and quotes French verses. She sang very prettily at a party last evening, and accompanied herself on the piano. I noticed how white her hands were."

During a subsequent visit to Boston in the winter of 1842-43, Julia Ward and Dr. Howe became engaged. The engagement was warmly welcomed by the friends of both.

Charles Sumner writes to Julia:--

"Howe has told me, with eyes flashing with joy, that you have received his love. May God make you happy in his heart, as I know he will be happy in yours! A truer heart was never offered to woman. I know him well. I know the depth, strength, and constancy of his affections, as the whole world knows the beauty of his life and character. And oh! how I rejoice that these are all to mingle in loving harmony with your great gifts of heart and mind. God bless you! God bless you both! You will strengthen each other for the duties of life; and the most beautiful happiness shall be yours--that derived from inextinguishable mutual love, and from the consciousness of duty done.

"You have accepted my dear Howe as your lover; pray let me ever be

"Your most affectionate friend,

"CHARLES SUMNER.

"P.S. Sir Huldbrand has subdued the restless Undine, and the soul has been inspired into her; and her 'wickedness' shall cease."

Longfellow's letter to Dr. Howe also has been preserved among the precious relics of the time.

MY DEAREST CHEVALIER,--

From the deepest dungeons of my heart, all the imprisoned sympathies and affections of my nature cry aloud to you, saying "All hail!" On my return from Portland this afternoon, I found your note, and before reading it I read in Sumner's eyes your happiness. The great riddle of life is no longer a riddle to you; the great mystery is solved. I need not say to you how very deeply and devoutly I rejoice with you; and no one more so, I assure you. Among all your friends, I am the oldest friend of your fair young bride; she is a beautiful spirit, a truth, which friendship has learned by heart in a few years. Love has taught you in as many hours!

Of course you seem to be transfigured and glorified. You walk above in the June air, while Sumner and I, like the poor (sprites) in "Faust," who were struggling far down in the cracks and fissures of the rocks, cry out to you, "O take us with you! take us with you!"

In fine, my dear Doctor, God bless you and yours. You know already how much I approve your choice. I went to your office this afternoon to tell you with my own lips; but you were not there. Take, therefore, this brief expression of my happiness at knowing you are so happy; and believe me

Ever sincerely your friend,

LONGFELLOW.

CAMBRIDGE, Feb. 20, 1843.

At the same time Diva writes to her brother Sam:--

"The Chevalier says truly--I am the captive of his bow and spear. His true devotion has won me from the world, and from myself. The past is already fading from my sight; already, I begin to live with him in the future, which shall be as calmly bright as true love can make it. I am perfectly satisfied to sacrifice to one so noble and earnest the day dreams of my youth. He will make life more beautiful to me than a dream....

"The Chevalier is very presumptuous--says that he will not lose sight of me for one day, that I must stay here till he can return with me to New York. The Chevalier is very impertinent, speaks of two or three months, when I speak of two or three years, and seems determined to have his own way: but, dear Bunny, the Chevalier's way will be a very charming way, and is, henceforth, to be mine."

It was not to be supposed that the Chevalier would wait longer for his bride than was absolutely necessary. The wedding preparations were hurried on, most of them being made by Sisters Annie and Louisa, as Julia could not be brought down from the clouds sufficiently to give them much attention. It was hard even to make her choose her wedding dress; but this was finally decided upon, "a white embroidered muslin, exquisitely fine, to be worn over a satin 'slip.'"

The wedding, a quiet one, took place at Samuel Ward's house, on April 23, 1843, and four days later, Chevalier and Diva sailed together for Europe.

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V. TRAVEL

1843-1844; aet. 24-25

... I have been In dangers of the sea and land, unscared; And from the narrow gates of childbed oft Have issued, bearing high my perilous prize (The germ of angel-hood, from chaos rescued), With steadfast hope and courage....

J. W. H.

In the forties it was no uncommon thing for a sister or friend of the bride to form one of the wedding party when a journey was to be taken; accordingly Annie Ward went with the Howes and shared the pleasures of a notable year. She was at this time seventeen; it was said of her that "she looked so like a lily-of-the-valley that one expected to see two long green leaves spring up beside her as she walked."

Horace Mann and his bride (Mary Peabody, sister of Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne) sailed on the same steamer; the friends met afterward in London and elsewhere.

The first days at sea were rough and uncomfortable. Julia writes to her sister Louisa:--

"I have had two days of extreme suffering, and look like the Chevalier's grandmother. To-day I am on deck, able to eat soup and herring, with grog in small doses. Husband very kind, takes good care of me. I am good for nothing, but try to be courageous. Mr. and Mrs. Mann are very loving; she wears a monstrous sunbonnet; he lies down in his overcoat.... Brandy and water are consoling; Dr. won't give us much, though.... I could not get off my boots until last night, I was so ill; I slept all the time, and forgot that Annie was on board.... When you do get married, don't leave in four days for Europe.... Don't forget cake for my orphans.... Mrs. Mann wrote to me yesterday, and recommended lemonade. I wrote back to her, and recommended leeks and onions...."

And again, several days later:--

"Although the ship is very tipsy, and makes my head and hand unsteady, I am anxious to write to you that you may see what a brave sailor I am become, for to write at sea one must be quite well. I am ashamed to have written you so sea-sick a letter near Halifax, but I was then just out of my berth, and very miserable. Since that time, I have not once laid by--we have had some rough days, but I have always held up my head, and eaten my dinner, 'helping myself sang-froidy' to all manner of good things. At first, I could not do without brandy and water, but in a little while I ceased to require it; now I go tumbling about all over the ship, singing at the top of my voice, teasing Chevalier, and comforting the sea-sick.... I live on deck, rain or shine. Annie stays too much in the cabin, which is strewn with sick ladies, and grannies of the other sex, and which ever resounds with cries of 'Mrs. Bean! Mrs. Bean! soda water! Mrs. Bean, soup! Mrs. Bean, gruel with brandy in it! Mrs. Bean, hold my head! Mrs. Bean, wag my jaws!' Mrs. Bean is the stewardess, and an angel....

"Saturday morning. We are now in sight of land, and in smooth water.... Annie and I were getting very much used to the ship, and are just in fine trim for a long voyage. I even miss the rolling and pitching which we have had until to-day, and which made it necessary to walk with great circumspection. You would have laughed to have seen us, going about like tipsy witches. I have had various tumbles. I confess that when the ship rolled and I felt myself going, I generally made for the stoutest man in sight, and pitched into him, the result being various apologies on both sides, and great merriment on the part of the spectators--a little of the old mischief left, you see. The old cow began to smell the land yesterday, she reared and bellowed, and butted at the butcher when he went to milk her. This is her third voyage. I cannot tell you how good my husband is, how kind, how devoted...."

Arriving in London, they took lodgings in upper Baker Street.

This first visit to London was one which our mother always loved to recall. Not only had the pair brought letters to many notabilities, but Dr. Howe's reputation had preceded him, and every reader of Dickens's "American Notes" was eager to meet the man who had brought a soul out of prison.

Julia writes to her sister Louisa (June 17):--

"I have said something,--I can hardly say enough, of the kindness we have received here. London seems already a home to us, and one surrounded by dear friends. Morpeth and his family, Rogers, Basil Montagu, and Sir R. H. Inglis have been our best friends. Sydney Smith also has been kind to us; he calls Howe 'Prometheus,' and says that he gave a soul to an inanimate body. For four mornings, we have not once breakfasted at home. Milnes gave us one very nice breakfast; among the guests was Charles Buller, celebrated here for his wit and various endowments. The two handsomest women I have seen are Mrs. Norton and the Duchess of Sutherland--the former of these rather a haughty beauty, with flashing eye and swelling lip, and dress too low for our notions of propriety--this is common enough here...."

The Doctor was lame (the result of an accident on shipboard), and the Reverend Sydney Smith, one of their earliest visitors, insisted on lending him his own crutches. The Doctor demurred; he was tall, while Canon Smith was short and stout. The crutches were sent, nevertheless. They could not be used, and were returned with thanks; not so soon, however, but that the kind and witty Canon made of the incident a peg on which to hang a jest. He had lost money by American investments; in a letter published in a London paper, after reflecting severely upon the failure of some of the Western States to pay their debts, he added: "And now an American doctor has deprived me of my last means of support!"

Sydney Smith proved genuinely kind and solicitous. He writes to the Doctor:--

"You know as well as I do, or better, that nature charges one hundred per cent for a bad leg used before the proper time, and that if you use it a day sooner than you ought, it may molest you for a month longer than you expect. This being; [sic] if your ladies will trust themselves to me any day, I shall have great pleasure in escorting them in their sight-seeing, and will call upon them with my carriage, if that be possible."

He did take them about a great deal; they dined with him, and passed more than one delightful evening at his house.

Another of their early visitors was Charles Dickens. Not only did he invite them to dine, but he took them to all manner of places unfamiliar to the ordinary tourist: to prisons, workhouses, and asylums, more interesting to the Chevalier than theatre or picture-gallery.

There were even expeditions to darker places, when Julia and Annie must stay at home. Dr. Howe's affair was with all sorts and conditions of men, and the creator of Joe and Oliver Twist, the child of the Marshalsea, could show him things that no one else could. The following note, in Dickens's unmistakable handwriting, shows how these expeditions were managed, and how he enjoyed them:--

MY DEAR HOWE,--Drive to-night to St. Giles's Church. Be there at half-past 11--and wait. One of Tracey's people will put his head into the coach after a Venetian and mysterious fashion, and breathe your name. Follow that man. Trust him to the death.

So no more at present from

THE MASK.

Ninth June, 1843.

Horace Mann was of the party on most of these investigations.

Beside dinners and evening parties, there were breakfasts, with Richard Monckton Milnes (afterward Lord Houghton), with Samuel Rogers,--who gave them plovers' eggs,--and with jovial Sir Robert Harry Inglis, who cut the loaf at either end, giving the guests "a slice or a hunch" at their desire.

This meal, our mother notes, was not "a luncheon in disguise," but a genuine breakfast, at ten or even half-past nine o'clock.

She writes to her sister Louisa:--

"People have been very kind to us--we have one or two engagements for every day this week, and had three dinners for one day, two of which we were, of course, forced to decline. We had a pleasant dinner at Dickens's, on Saturday--a very handsome entertainment, consisting of all manner of good things. Dickens led me in to dinner--waxed quite genial over his wine, and was more natural than I ever saw him--after dinner we had coffee, conversation and music, to which I lent my little wee voice! We did not get home until half-past eleven.... Annie has doubtless told you how we went to see Carlyle, and Mrs. was out, and I poured tea for him, and he handed me the preserves with: 'I do not know what thae little things are, perhaps you can eat them--I never touch them mysel'.' This naturally made me laugh--we had a strange but pleasant evening with him--he is about forty, looks young for that, drinks powerful tea, and then goes it strong upon all subjects, but without extravagance--he has a fine head, an earnest face, a glowing eye.... Furthermore, we have walked into the affections of the Hon. Basil Montagu, and Mrs. Basil--furthermore, Annie and I did went alone to a rout at Mrs. Sydney Smith's, and were announced, 'Mrs. 'Owe hand Miss Vord'--did not know a soul, Annie frightened, I bored--got hold of some good people--made friends, drank execrable tea, finished the evening by a crack with Sir Sydney himself, and came off victorious, that is to say alive. Sir S. very like old Mrs. Prime, three chins, and such a corporosity!...

"Saturday, June 2nd. We have been too busy to write. We dined on Wednesday with Kenyon--present Dickens's wife, Fellows, Milnes and some others--Milnes a pert little prig, but pleasant. À propos, when he came to call upon us, our girl announced him as 'Mr. Miller'--our conversation ran upon literature, and I had the exquisite discrimination to tell him that except Wordsworth, there were no great poets in England now. Fortunately he soon took his departure, and thus prevented me from expressing the light estimation in which I hold his poetry. On Thursday Morpeth gave us a beautiful dinner--thirteen servants in the hall, powdered heads, Lady Carlisle very like Morpeth--Lady Mary Howard not pretty; Duchess of Sutherland, beautiful, but like Lizzie Hogg. They gave us strawberries, the first we have tasted, green peas, pines, peaches, apricots, grapes--all very expensive. We stayed until nearly twelve--they were very gracious--Annie and I are little people here--we are too young(?) to be noticed--we are very demure, and have learned humility. Chev receives a great deal of attention, ladies press forward to look at him, roll up their eyes, and exclaim, 'Oh! he is such a wonner!' I do not like that the pretty women should pay him so many compliments--it will turn his little head! He is now almost well, and so handsome! the wrinkles are almost gone--Yesterday, Sir Robert Inglis gin us a treat in the shape of a breakfast--it was very pleasant, albeit Sir R. is very pious, and a Tory to boot. We had afterward a charming visit from Carlyle--in the evening we went to Landsdowne House, to a concert given by the Marquis--heard Grisi, Lablache, Mario, Standigl, were much pleased--I was astonished, though, to find that our little trio at home was not bad, even in comparison with these stars. They have, of course, infinitely better voices, but hang me if they sing with half the enthusiasm and fire of our old Sam and Cousi, or even of poor Dudy. Grisi's voice is beautifully clear and flute-like--Mario sings si-be-mol and natural with perfect ease. I was most interested in the German Standigl, who sang the 'Wanderer' with wonderful pathos. Lablache thundered away--I must see them on the stage before I shall be able to judge of them. After music we had supper. Willie Wad[21] was indefatigable in our service. 'Go, and bring us a great deal more lemonade!' these were our oft-repeated orders, and the good Geneseo trotted to the table for us, till, as he expressed it, 'he was ashamed to go any more.' Lansdowne is a devilish good fellow! ho! ho! He wears a blue belt across his diaphragm, and a silver star on his left breast--he jigs up and down the room, and makes himself at home in his own house. He is about sixty, with Marchioness to match; side dishes, I presume, but did not inquire. I have just been breakfasting at the Duke of Sutherland's superb palace. I will tell you next time about it. Lady Carlisle says I am nice and pretty, oh! how I love her!..."

[21] William Wadsworth, of Geneseo.

In another letter she says:--

"I take some interest in everything I see--especially in all that throws light upon human prog. The Everetts[22] have given us a beautiful and most agreeable dinner: Dickens, Mrs. Norton, Moore, Landseer, and one or two others. Rogers says: 'I have three pleasures in the day: the first is, when I get up in the morning, and scratch myself with my hair mittens; the second is when I dress for dinner, and scratch myself with my hair mittens; the third is when I undress at night, and scratch myself with my hair mittens.'..."

[22] Edward Everett was at that time American Minister to England.

Beside this feast of hospitality, there was the theatre, with Macready and Helen Faucit in the "Lady of Lyons," and the opera, with Grisi and Mario, Alboni and Persiani. Julia, who had been forbidden the theatre since her seventh year, enjoyed to the full both music and drama, but "the crowning ecstasy of all" she found in the ballet, of which Fanny Elssler and Cerito were the stars. The former was beginning to wane; the dancing which to Emerson and Margaret Fuller seemed "poetry and religion" had lost, perhaps, something of its magic; the latter was still in her early bloom and grace.

Years later, our mother suggested to Theodore Parker that "the best stage dancing gives the classic, in a fluent form, with the illumination of life and personality." She recalled nothing sensual or even sensuous in the dances she saw that season, only "the very ecstasy and embodiment of grace." (But the Doctor thought Cerito ought to be sent to the House of Correction!)

Among the English friends, the one to whom our parents became most warmly attached was Lord Morpeth, afterwards Earl of Carlisle. This gentleman proved a devoted friend. Not only did he show the travellers every possible attention in London, but finding that they were planning a tour through Wales, Ireland, and Scotland, he made out with great care an itinerary for them, giving the roads by which they should travel and the points of interest they should visit.

Very reluctantly they left the London of so many delights, and started on the prescribed tour, following in the main the lines laid down by their kind friend.

To her sister Louisa

Sunday, July 2.

... We are in Dublin, among the Paddies, and funny enough they are. There are many beggars--you cannot get into the carriage without being surrounded with ragged women holding out their dirty hands, and clamouring for ha'pence--we have just returned from Edgeworthtown; on our way, we walked into some of the peasants' huts. I will tell you about one--it was thatched, built very miserably, had no floor except the native mud; there was a peat fire, which filled the house with smoke--before the fire lay the pig, grunting in concert with the chickens, who were picking up scraps of the dinner, which consisted of potatoes and salt--three families live in it. Two sets of little ragamuffins are sitting in the dirt. Ch. bestows some pence: "God kape your honour--God save ye, wherever ye go, and sure and it's a nice, comfortable looking young woman you have got with you, an uncommon pretty girl" (that is me). Don't they understand the matter, eh? We passed three delightful hours with Miss Edgeworth, in the library in which she wrote all her works--she was surrounded by a numerous and charming family, among others, the last of her father's four wives, whom she calls mother, although the lady must be some ten years her junior. She is herself a most vivacious little lady, about seventy-five years old, but gay and bright as a young girl--she seemed quite delighted with Ch., and conversed with him on many topics in a very animated manner. She has very clear and sound views of things, and takes the liveliest interest in all that goes on around her, and in the world. One of her younger brothers (with a nice Spanish wife) has a nest of very young children, in whom she delights as much as if she had not helped to bring up three sets of brothers and sisters. She said to me: "It is not only for Laura Bridgman that I wanted to see Dr. Howe, but I admire the spirit of all his writings." She gave him some engravings, and wrote her name at the bottom.... At one o'clock, we went to luncheon which was very nice, consisting of meat, potatoes, and preserves.... She made us laugh, and laughed herself. They were saying that American lard was quite superseding whale oil. "Yes," said she, "and in consequence, the whale cannot bear the sight of a pig." Her little nephew made a real bull. He was showing me his rat trap, "and," said he, "I shall kill the rat before I let him out, eh?"...

Dublin, Tuesday. Went to the Repeal meeting at the Corn Exchange. It was held in a small room in the third or fourth story. "A shilling, sir," said the man at the door to my husband.--"What!" replied he, "do ladies pay?"--"Not unless they'd like to become repealers." We passed up--the gentlemen went on to the floor of the room--we went to the ladies' gallery, a close confined place at one end--we were early, and had good seats, for a time at least--we separated, not anticipating the trouble we should have in finding each other again--for the ladies, comprising orangewomen, washerwomen, and I fear, all manner of women, poured in, without much regard to order, decency, and the rights of prior possession--and when O'Connell came in, which was in about three quarters of an hour, they pressed, and pushed, and squeezed, and scolded, as only Irishwomen can do.... The current of female patriotism bore down upon me in a most painful manner--a sort of triangular pressure seemed applied to my poor body which threatened to destroy, not only my centre of gravity, but my very personal identity. I was obliged, I regret to say, to defend myself as I have sometimes done in a quadrille or waltzing circle in New York--I was forced to push in my turn, though as moderately as I could. This was not my only trouble--in the crowd, I had scraped acquaintance with a respectable Irishwoman, who, after various questions, discovered that I was an American, and imagined me at once to be a good Catholic and repealer--so when O'Connell made some allusions to the Americans, she said so as to be heard by several people, who immediately began to look at me with curious eyes--"You shouldn't disturb her, she's an American," and they would for a time cease to molest me.... O'Connell was not great on this occasion--his remarks were rambling and superficial, distinguished chiefly by their familiarity, and by the extreme ingenuity with which the cunning orator disguises the tendencies of the sentiments he vindicates, and talks treason, yet so that the law cannot lay a finger upon him. He had begun his speech when Steele, a brother repealer, entered. He stopped at once, held out his hand to him, saying in a loud tone, "Tom Steele, how d'ye do?" which drew forth bursts of applause. "And is he a good man?" I asked of a lady repealer (whether apple-woman or seller of ginger beer, I know not). "Oh, Ma'am, he is the best cratur, the most charitable, the most virtuous, the most religious man--sure, he goes to the communion every Sunday, and never says no to no one."

The visit to Scotland was all too hasty, the notes are mere brief jottings; at the end she "remembered but one thing, the grave of Scott. In return for all the delight he had given me, I had nothing to give him but my silent tears."

The end of July found the party once more in England. The following letter tells of the unlucky visit to Wordsworth which our mother (after forty-six years) describes from memory in her "Reminiscences" in slightly different terms.

To her sister Louisa

July 29.

... I am very glad to be out of Ireland and Scotland, where we had incessant rains--even the beautiful Loch Katrine would not show herself to us in sunshine. We crossed in an open boat, and had a pony ride of five miles, all in as abominable a drizzle as you would wish to see. The Cumberland Lakes, among which we sought the shrine of Wordsworth, were almost as unaccommodating--in driving to Windermere we got wetted to the skin, and dashed down the steep mountain road in a thick mist, with a pair of horses, so unruly that I supposed the miseries of wet garments would soon be cancelled by that of a broken neck. I prayed to Saint Crispin, Saint Nicholas, and the three kings of Köln, and got through the danger--in the evening we visited Wordsworth, a crabbed old sinner, who gave us a very indifferent muffin, and talked repudiation with Chev. As he had just lost a great deal of money by Mississippi bonds, you may imagine that he felt particularly disposed to be cordial to Americans--and not knowing, probably, that New York is not in the heart of Louisiana, he was inclined no doubt to cast part of the odium upon us. Accordingly Mrs. Wordsworth and her daughter sat at one end of the room, Annie and I at the other. Incensed at this unusual neglect, I made several interjections in a low tone for Annie's benefit (my husband allows me to swear once a week)--at length, good Townsend-on-Mesmerism came to my relief, and kindly talked with me for an hour or more--he is a charming person, and rides other people's horses as well as his own hobby. He dislikes England, and lives principally in Germany. Kind Heaven, at the termination of the evening, sent me an opportunity of imparting a small portion of the internal pepper and mustard which had been ripening in my heart during the whole evening. The mother and daughter beginning to whine to me about their losses, I told them that where one Englishman had suffered, twenty Americans were perhaps ruined. They replied, it was hard they should suffer for the misfortunes of another country. "And why," quoth I, "must you needs speculate in foreign stocks? Why did you not keep your money at home? It was safe enough in England--you knew there was risk in investing it so far from you--if we should speculate in yours, we should no doubt be ruined also." This explosion, from my meek self, took the company somewhat by surprise--they held their tongues, and we departed....

From England the travellers had meant to go to Berlin, but the King of Prussia, who eleven years before had kept Dr. Howe in prison au secret for five weeks for carrying (at the request of General Lafayette) succor to certain Polish refugees, still regarded him as a dangerous person, and Prussia was closed to him and his. This greatly amused Horace Mann, who wrote to the Doctor, "I understand the King of Prussia has about 200,000 men constantly under arms, and if necessary he can increase his force to two millions. This shows the estimation in which he holds your single self!"

Years later, the King sent Dr. Howe a gold medal in consideration of his work for the blind: by a singular coincidence, its money value was found to equal the sum which the Doctor had been forced to pay for board and lodging in the prison of Berlin.

Making a détour, the party journeyed through Switzerland and the Austrian Tyrol, spent some weeks in Vienna, and a month in Milan, where they met Count Gonfalonieri, one of the prisoners of Spielberg. Julia had known two of these sufferers, Foresti and Albinola, in New York, where they lived for many years, beloved and respected. Hearing the talk of these men, and seeing Italy bound hand and foot in temporal and spiritual fetters, she was deeply impressed by the apparent hopelessness of the outlook for the Italian patriots. By what miracle, she asked herself long afterward, was the great structure overthrown? She adds, "The remembrance of this miracle forbids me to despair of any great deliverance, desired and delayed. He who maketh the wrath of men to serve Him, can make liberty blossom out of the very rod that the tyrant [wields]."

Southward still they journeyed, by vettura, in the old leisurely fashion, and came at last to Rome.

The thrill of wonder that Julia felt at the first sight of St. Peter's dome across the Campagna was one of the abiding impressions of her life; Rome was to be one of the cities of her heart; the charm was cast upon her in that first moment. Yet she says of that Rome of 1843, "A great gloom and silence hung over it."

The houses were cold, and there were few conveniences; but Christmas found the Howes established in the Via San Niccolo da Tolentino, as comfortably as might be. Here they were joined by Louisa Ward, and here they soon gathered round them a delightful circle of friends. Most of the forestieri of Rome in those days were artists; among those who came often to the house were Thomas Crawford, Luther Terry, Freeman the painter and his wife, and Törmer, who painted a portrait of Julia. The winter passed like a dream. There were balls as gorgeous as those of London, with the beautiful Princess Torlonia in place of the Duchess of Sutherland; musical parties, at which Diva sang to the admiration of all. There were visits to the galleries, where George Combe was of the party, and where he and the Chevalier studied the heads of statues and busts from the point of view of phrenology, a theory in which both were deeply interested. They were presented to the Pope, Gregory XVI, who wished to hear about Laura Bridgman. The Chevalier visited all the "public institutions, misnamed charitable,"[23] and the schools, whose masters were amazed to find that he was an American, and asked how in that case it happened that he was not black!

[23] S. G. H. to Charles Sumner.

In her "Reminiscences" our mother records many vivid impressions of these Roman days. She had forgotten, or did not care to recall, a certain languor and depression of spirits which in some measure dimmed for her the brightness of the picture, but which were to give place to the highest joy she had yet known. On March 12, her first child was born, and was christened Julia Romana.

There are neither journals nor letters of this period; the only record of it--from her hand--lies in two slender manuscript books of verse, marked respectively "1843" and "1844." In these volumes we trace her movements, sometimes by the title of a poem, as "Sailing," "The Ladies of Llangollen," "The Roman Beggar Boy," etc., sometimes by a single word written after the poem, "Berne," "Milan."

From these poems we learn that she did not expect to survive the birth of her child; yet with that birth a new world opened before her.

He gave the Mother's chastened heart, He gave the Mother's watchful eye, He bids me live but where thou art, And look with earnest prayer on high.

* * * * *

Then spake the angel of Mothers To me in gentle tone: "Be kind to the children of others And thus deserve thine own!"

When, in the spring of 1844, she left Rome with husband, sister, and baby, it seemed, she says, "like returning to the living world after a long separation from it."

Journeying by way of Naples, Marseilles, Avignon, they came at length to Paris.

Here Julia first saw Rachel, and Taglioni, the greatest of all dancers; here, too, she tried to persuade the Chevalier to wear his Greek decorations to Guizot's reception, but tried in vain, he considering such ornaments unfitting a republican.

The autumn found them again in England, this time to learn the delights of country visiting. Their first visit was to Atherstone, the seat of Charles Nolte Bracebridge, a descendant of Lady Godiva, a most cultivated and delightful man. He and his charming wife made the party welcome, and showed them everything of interest except the family ghost, which remained invisible.

Another interesting visit was to the Nightingales of Embley. Florence Nightingale was at this time a young woman of twenty-four. A warm friendship sprang up between her and our parents, and she felt moved to consult the Doctor on the matter which then chiefly occupied her thoughts. Would it, she asked, be unsuitable or unbecoming for a young Englishwoman to devote herself to works of charity, in hospitals and elsewhere, as the Catholic Sisters did?

The Doctor replied: "My dear Miss Florence, it would be unusual, and in England whatever is unusual is apt to be thought unsuitable; but I say to you, go forward, if you have a vocation for that way of life; act up to your inspiration, and you will find that there is never anything unbecoming or unladylike in doing your duty for the good of others. Choose your path, go on with it, wherever it may lead you, and God be with you!"

Among the people they met in the autumn of 1844 was Professor Fowler, the phrenologist. This gentleman examined Julia's head, and made the following pronunciamento:--

"You're a deep one! it takes a Yankee to find you out. The intellectual temperament predominates in your character. You will be a central character like Henry Clay and Silas Wright, and people will group themselves around you."

Now Julia could not abide Professor Fowler.

"Oh, yes!" she snapped out angrily. "They've always been my models!"

"The best things you do," he went on, "will be done on the spur of the moment. You have enough love of order to enjoy it, but you will not take the trouble to produce it. You have more religion than morality. You have genius, but no music in you by nature."

Fifty years later these words were fresh in her memory.

"I disliked Mr. Fowler extremely," she said, "and believed nothing of what he said; nevertheless, most of his predictions were verified. I had at the time no leading in any of the directions he indicated. I had been much shut up in personal and family life; was a person rather of antipathies than sympathies. His remarks made no impression. Yet," she added, "I always had a sense of relation to the public, but thought the connection would come through writing."

Apropos of Mr. Fowler's "more religion than morality," she said: "Morality is a thing of the will; we may think differently of such matters at different times. What he said may have been true."

Then the twinkle came into her eyes: "When Mr. William Astor heard of my engagement, he said, 'Why, Miss Julia, I am surprised! I thought you were too intellectual to marry!'"

Another acquaintance of this autumn was the late Arthur Mills, who was through life one of our parents' most valued friends. He came to America with them; in his honor, during the voyage, Julia composed "The Milsiad," scribbling the lines day by day in a little note-book, still carefully preserved in the Mills family.

The first and last stanzas give an idea of this poem, which, though never printed, was always a favorite with its author.

My heart fills With the bare thought of the illustrious Mills: That man of eyes and nose, Of legs and arms, of fingers and of toes.

* * * * *

To lands devoid of tax Goeth he not, armed with axe? Trees shall he cut down, And forests ever? Tame cataracts with a frown? Grin all the fish from Mississippi River? (My style is grandiose, Quite in the tone of Mills's nose.)

* * * * *

Harp of the West, through wind and foggy weather We've sung our passage to our native land, Now I have reached the terminus of tether, And I must lay thee trembling from my hand. That hand must ply the ignominious needle, This mind brood o'er the salutary dish, I must grow sober as a parish beadle, And having fish to fry, must fry my fish. Some happier muse than mine shall wake thy spell, Harp of the West, oh Gemini! farewell!

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VI. SOUTH BOSTON

1844-1851; aet. 25-32

THE ROUGH SKETCH

A great grieved heart, an iron will, As fearless blood as ever ran; A form elate with nervous strength And fibrous vigor,--all a man.

A gallant rein, a restless spur, The hand to wield a biting scourge; Small patience for the tasks of Time, Unmeasured power to speed and urge.

He rides the errands of the hour, But sends no herald on his ways; The world would thank the service done, He cannot stay for gold or praise.

Not lavishly he casts abroad The glances of an eye intense, And did he smile but once a year, It were a Christmas recompense.

I thank a poet for his name, The "Down of Darkness," this should be; A child, who knows no risk it runs, Might stroke its roughness harmlessly.

One helpful gift the Gods forgot, Due to the man of lion-mood; A Woman's soul, to match with his In high resolve and hardihood.

J. W. H.

The name of Laura Bridgman will long continue to suggest to the hearer one of the most brilliant exploits of philanthropy, modern or ancient. Much of the good that good men do soon passes out of the remembrance of busy generations, each succeeding to each, with its own special inheritance of labor and interest. But it will be long before the world shall forget the courage and patience of the man who, in the very bloom of his manhood, sat down to besiege this almost impenetrable fortress of darkness and isolation, and, after months of labor, carried within its walls the divine conquest of life and of thought.

J. W. H., Memoir of Dr. Samuel G. Howe.

In September, 1844, the travellers returned to America and took up their residence at the Perkins Institution, in South Boston, in the apartment known as the "Doctor's Wing."

At first, Laura Bridgman made one of the family, the Doctor considering her almost as an adopted child. His marriage had been something of a shock to her.

"Does Doctor love me like Julia?" she asked her teacher anxiously.

"No!"

"Does he love God like Julia?"

"Yes!"

A pause: then--"God was kind to give him his wife!"

She and Julia became much attached to each other, and were friends through life.

Julia was now to realize fully the great change that had come in her life. She had been the acknowledged queen of her home and circle in New York. Up to this time, she had known Boston as a gay visitor knows it.

She came now as the wife of a man who had neither leisure nor inclination for "Society"; a man of tenderest heart, but of dominant personality, accustomed to rule, and devoted to causes of which she knew only by hearsay; moreover, so absorbed in work for these causes, that he could only enjoy his home by snatches.

She herself says: "The romance of charity easily interests the public. Its laborious details and duties repel and weary the many, and find fitting ministers only in a few spirits of rare and untiring benevolence. Dr. Howe, after all the laurels and roses of victory, had to deal with the thorny ways of a profession tedious, difficult, and exceptional. He was obliged to create his own working machinery, to drill and instruct his corps of teachers, himself first learning the secrets of the desired instruction. He was also obliged to keep the infant Institution fresh in the interest and goodwill of the public, and to give it a place among the recognized benefactions of the Commonwealth."

From the bright little world of old New York, from relatives and friends, music and laughter, fun and frolic, she came to live in an Institution, a bleak, lofty house set on a hill, four-square to all the winds that blew; with high-studded rooms, cold halls paved with white and gray marble, echoing galleries; where three fourths of the inmates were blind, and the remaining fourth were devoting their time and energies to the blind. The Institution was two miles from Boston, where the friends of her girlhood lived: an unattractive district stretched between, traversed once in two hours by omnibuses, the only means of transport.

Again, her life had been singularly free from responsibility. First her Aunt Francis, then her sister Louisa, had "kept house" in Bond Street; Julia had been a flower of the field, taking no thought for food or raiment; her sisters chose and bought her clothes, had her dresses made, and put them on her. Her studies, her music, her dreams, her compositions--and, it must be added, her suitors--made the world in which she lived. Now, life in its most concrete forms pressed upon her. The baby must be fed at regular intervals, and she must feed it; there must be three meals a day, and she must provide them; servants must be engaged, trained, directed, and all this she must do. Her thoughts soared heavenward; but now there was a string attached to them, and they must be pulled down to attend to the leg of mutton and the baby's cloak.

This is one side of the picture; the other is different, indeed.

Her girlhood had been shut in by locks and bars of Calvinistic piety; her friends and family were ready to laugh, to weep, to pray with her; they were not ready to think with her. It is true that surrounding this intimate circle was a wider one, where her mind found stimulus in certain directions. She studied German with Dr. Cogswell; she read Dante with Felice Foresti, the Italian patriot; French, Latin, music, she had them all. Her mind expanded, but her spiritual growth dates from her early visits to Boston.

These visits had not been given wholly to gayety, even in the days when she wrote, after a ball: "I have been through the burning, fiery furnace, and it is Sad-rake, Me-sick, and Abed-no-go!" The friends she made, both men and women, were people alive and awake, seeking new light, and finding it on every hand. Moreover, at her side was now one of the torch-bearers of humanity, a spirit burning with a clear flame of fervor and resolve, lighting the dark places of the earth. Her mind, under the stimulus of these influences, opened like a flower; she too became one of the seekers for light, and in her turn one of the light-bringers.

Among the poems of her early married life, none is more illuminating than the portrait of Dr. Howe, which heads this chapter. The concluding stanza gives a hint of the depression which accompanied her first realization of the driving power of his life, of the white-hot metal of his nature. She was caught up as it were in the wake of a comet, and whirled into new and strange orbits: what wonder that for a time she was bewildered? She had no thought, when writing "The Rough Sketch," that a later day was to find her soul indeed matched with his, "in high resolve and hardihood": that through her lips, as well as his, God was to sound forth a trumpet that should never call retreat.

In her normal health she was a person of abounding vitality, with a constitution of iron: as is common with such temperaments, she felt a physical distaste to the abnormal and defective. It required in those days all the strength of her will to overcome her natural shrinking from the blind and the other defectives with whom she was often thrown. There is no clearer evidence of the development of her nature than the contrast between this mental attitude and the deep tenderness which she felt in her later years for the blind. After the Doctor's death, they became her cherished friends; she could never do enough for them; with every year her desire to visit the Perkins Institution, to talk with the pupils, to give them all she had to give, grew stronger and more lively.

Of the friends of this time, none had so deep and lasting an influence over her as Theodore Parker, who had long been a close friend of the Doctor's. She had first heard of him in her girlhood, as an impious and sacrilegious person, to be shunned by all good Christians.

In 1843 she met him in Rome, and found him "one of the most sympathetic and delightful of men"; an intimacy sprang up between the two families which ended only with Parker's life. He baptized the baby Julia; on returning to this country, she and the Doctor went regularly to hear him preach. This she always considered as among the great opportunities of her life.

"I cannot remember," she says, "that the interest of his sermons ever varied for me. It was all one intense delight.... It was hard to go out from his presence, all aglow with the enthusiasm which he felt and inspired, and to hear him spoken of as a teacher of irreligion, a pest to the community."

These were the days when it was possible for a minister of a Christian church, hearing of Parker's dangerous illness, to pray that God might remove him from the earth. To her, it seemed that "truly, he talked with God, and took us with him into the divine presence."

Parker could play as well as preach; she loved to "make fun" with him. Witness her "Philosoph-Master and Poet-Aster" in "Passion Flowers." Parker's own powers of merrymaking appear in his Latin epitaph on "the Doctor" (who survived him by many years), which is printed in the "Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe."

She used in later years to shake her head as she recalled a naughty mot of hers apropos of Parker's preaching: "I would rather," she said, "hear Theodore Parker preach than go to the theatre; I would rather go to the theatre than go to a party; I would rather go to a party than stay at home!"

A letter to her sister Annie shows the trend of her religious thought in these days.

Sunday evening, December 8, 1844.

DEAR ANNIE,--

Do not let the Bishop or Uncle or any one frighten you into any concessions--tell them, and all others that, even if you agree with them in doctrine, you think their notion of a religious life narrow, false, superficial. You owe it to truth, to them, to yourself, to say so. I think perfect and fearless frankness one of our highest duties to man as well as to God. Only see how one half the world pragmatically sets its foot down, and says to the other half, "Be converted, my opinion is truth! I must be right and you must be wrong,"--while the other half timidly falters a reluctant acquiescence, or scarce audible expression of doubt, and continues troubled and afraid and discontented with itself and others. Let me never think of you as in this ignominious position, dear Annie. Do not think that I misapprehend you. I know you do not agree in doctrine with me, but I know too that you do not feel that you can abandon your life and conscience to the charge and guidance of such a man as Eastburn, or as Uncle Ben. Do not, therefore, be afraid of them, but let their censure be a very secondary thing with you--while your life is the true expression of your faith, whom can you fear? You are accountable to man for the performance of the duties which affect his welfare and well-being--for those which concern your own soul, you are accountable to God alone. A man, though with twenty surplices on his back and twenty prayer books in his hand, can no more condemn than he can save you.... There may be a hell and a heaven, and it may be good for most people, for you and me, too, if you choose to think that it is so. But there is a virtue which rises above such considerations--there are motives higher than personal fear or hope--the love of good because it is good, because it is God's and nature's law, because it is the secret of the beautiful order of things, because they are blessed by your virtuous deeds and pure thoughts--because every holy, every noble deed, word, or thought helps to build up the ruins of the world, and to elevate our degraded humanity. Those who propose to you hell and heaven as the great incentives to right, appeal merely to your natural love of personal advantage--those who hold up to you a God now frowning and indignant, now gracious and benignant, appeal simply to your natural cowardice, to your natural love of approbation. Does one love God for one's own advantage? One loves Him for His perfection, and if one loves Him, one keeps His commandments. Abandon, I pray you, the exploded formula of selfishness!... I think one should be capable of loving virtue, were one sure even that hell and not heaven would be its reward.

The benedictions of the Sermon on the Mount are very simple--no raptures, no ecstasies are promised. Blessed are all that seek the good of others and the knowledge of truth--blessed, simply that in so doing they obey the law of God, imitate His character, and coming nearer and nearer to Him shall find Him more and more in their hearts. One word about Unitarians. It is very wrong to say that they reject the Bible, simply because they interpret it in a different manner from the (so-called) orthodox, or that they reject Christ, because they understand him in one way, and you in another--while they emulate his wonderful life, while they acknowledge his divine mission, and the divine power of his words, why should they be said to despise him?...

During the years between 1843 and 1859, her life was from time to time shadowed by the approach of a great joy. Before the birth of each successive child she was oppressed by a deep and persistent melancholy. Present and future alike seemed dark to her; she wept for herself, but still more for the hapless infant which must come to birth in so sorrowful a world. With the birth of the child the cloud lifted and vanished. Sunshine and joy--and the baby--filled the world; the mother sang, laughed, and made merry.

In her letters to her sisters, and later in her journals, both these moods are abundantly evident. At first, these letters are full of the bustle of arrival and of settling in the Institution.

"I received the silver.... The soup-ladle is my delight, and I could almost take the dear old coffee-pot to bed with me.... But here is the most important thing.

"MY TRAGEDY IS LEFT BEHIND!... My house ... in great confusion, carpets not down, curtains not up, the devil to pay, and not a sofa to ask him to sit down upon...."

She now felt sadly the need of training in matters which her girlhood had despised. (She could describe every room in her father's house save one--the kitchen!) The Doctor liked to give weekly dinners to his intimates, "The Five of Clubs," and others. These dinners were something of a nightmare to Julia, even with the aid of Miss Catherine Beecher's cookbook. She spent weeks in studying this volume and trying her hand on its recipes. This was not what her hand was made for; yet she learned to make puddings, and was proud of her preserves.

Speaking of the dinner parties, she tells of one for which she had taken special pains, and of which ice-cream, not then the food of every day, was to form the climax. The ice-cream did not come, and her pleasure was spoiled; she found it next morning in a snowbank outside the back door, where the messenger had "dumped" it without word or comment. "I should laugh at it now," she says, "but then I almost wept over it."

Everything in the new life interested her, even the most prosaic details. She writes to her sister Louisa:

"Our house has been enlivened of late by two delightful visits. The first was from the soap-fat merchant, who gave me thirty-four pounds of good soap for my grease. I was quite beside myself with joy, capered about in the most enthusiastic manner, and was going to hug in turn the soap, the grease, and the man, had I not remembered my future ambassadress-ship, and reflected that it would not sound well in history. This morning came the rag-man, who takes rags and gives nice tin vessels in exchange.... Both of these were clever transactions. Oh, if you had seen me stand by the soap-fat man, and scrutinize minutely his weights and measures, telling him again and again that it was beautiful grease, and he must allow me a good price for it--truly, I am a mother in Israel."

Much as the Doctor loved the Perkins Institution, he longed for a home of his own, and in the spring of 1845 he found a place entirely to his mind.

A few steps from the Institution was a plot of land, facing the sun, sheltered from the north wind by the last remaining bit of "Washington Heights," the eminence on which Washington planted the batteries which drove the British out of Boston. Some six acres of fertile ground, an old house with low, broad, sunny rooms, two towering Balm of Gilead trees, and some ancient fruit trees: this was all in the beginning; but the Doctor saw at a glance the possibilities of the place. He bought it, added one or two rooms to the old house, planted fruit trees, laid out flower gardens, and in the summer of 1845 moved his little family thither.

The move was made on a lovely summer day. As our mother drove into the green bower, half shade, half sunshine, silent save for the birds, she cried out, "Oh! this is green peace!" The name fitted and clung: "Green Peace" was known and loved as such so long as it existed.

This was the principal home of her married life, but it was not precisely an abiding one. The summers were spent elsewhere; moreover, the "Doctor's Wing" in the Institution was always ready for habitation, and it often happened that for one reason or another the family were taken back there for weeks or months. Two of the six children, Florence and Maud, were born at the Institution; the former just before the move to Green Peace. She was named Florence in honor of Miss Nightingale. The Doctor had ardently desired a son; finding the baby a girl, "I will forgive you," he cried, "if you will name her for Florence Nightingale!" Miss Nightingale became the child's godmother, sent a golden cup (now a precious heirloom), and wrote as follows:--

EMBLEY, December 26.

I cannot pretend to express, my dear kind friends, how touched and pleased I was by such a remembrance of me as that of your child's name.... If I could live to justify your opinion of me, it would have been enough to have lived for, and such thoughts, as that of your goodness, are great thoughts, "strong to consume small troubles" which should bear us up on the wings of the Eagle, like Guido's Ganymede, up to the feet of the God, there to take what work he has for us to do for him. I shall hope to see my little Florence before long in this world, but if not, I trust there is a tie formed between us, which shall continue in Eternity--if she is like you, I shall know her again there, without her body on, perhaps the better for not having known her here with it.

Letters to her sisters give glimpses of the life at Green Peace during the years 1845-50.

To her sister Louisa

... I assure you it is a delightful but a terrible thing to be a mother. The constant care, anxiety and thought of some possible evil that may come to the little creature, too precious to be so frail, whose life and well-being the mother feels God has almost placed in her hands! If I did not think that angels watched over my baby, I should be crazy about it.

To the same

My trouble has been Chev's illness.... He was taken ill the night of his return, and established himself next morning on the sofa, to be coddled with Cologne, and dieted with peaches and grapes, when lo, in an hour more, no coddling save that of (Dr.) Fisher, no diet save ipecac and werry thin gruel--chills, nausea, and blue devils. Bradford to watch by night, Rosy and I by day; Fisher and I sympathizing deeply in holding the head of a perfectabilian philanthropist. I making myself active in a variety of ways, bathing Chev's eyes with cologne water by mistake instead of his brow, laying the pillow the wrong way, and being banished at last in disgrace, to make room for Rosa.

Am I not the most unfortunate of human beings? Devil a bit! I enjoy all that I can--have I not milk for the baby, and the baby for milk? Cannot Julia make arrowroot pudding and cold custard? Can I not refresh myself by looking into Romana's sapphire eyes, with their deep dark fringe? Is there no balm in Gilead, is there no physician there? Yea, thou, oh Bradford, art the balm, thou, oh Fisher, art the physician! Food also is there for cachinnation, that chief duty of man--Quoth Chev this morning, lifting up his feeble voice and shaking his dizzy head: "Oh, oh, if I had fallen sick in New York, and old Francis had bled me, you would not have seen me again...."

Florence's name is Florence Marion--pretty, n'est-ce pas?...

Farewell, my own darling. Your JULES.

Well, life am strange! I am again cookless. I imprudently turned old Smith off and took a young girl, who left me in four days. Why? Her lover would not allow her to stay in a family where she did not sit at table with the lady. I had read of such things in Mrs. Trollope, and thought them quite impossible. In the place from which I took her, she had done all the cooking, washing and chamber work of the house--was, in fine the only servant, for the compensation of six dollars a month. But then, she sat at table!!! oh, ho!

To the same

SOUTH BOSTON, April 21, 1845.

... The weather here is so gloomy, that one really deserves credit for not hanging oneself!... I passed last evening with ----. Chev was going to a "'versary," left me there at about seven, and did not come for me until after ten. Consequence was, I got heartily tired of the whole family, and concluded that bright people without hearts were in the long run less agreeable than good gentle people without wits--glory on my soul, likewise also on my baby's soul, which I am!

To the same[24]

[24] Louisa Ward married Thomas Crawford in 1844, and lived thereafter in Rome.

SOUTH BOSTON, November, 1845.

MY DARLING WEVIE,--

The children have been so very obliging as to go to sleep, and having worried over them all day, and part of the evening, I will endeavor to give you what is left of it. When you become the mother of two children you will understand the value of time as you never understood it before. My days and nights are pretty much divided between Julia and Florence. I sleep with the baby, nurse her all night, get up, hurry through my breakfast, take care of her while Emily gets hers, then wash and dress her, put her to sleep, drag her out in the wagon, amuse Dudie, kiss, love and scold her, etc., etc.... Oh, my dear Wevie, for one good squeeze in your loving arms, for one kiss, and one smile from you, what would I not give? Anything, even my box of Paris finery, which I have just opened, with great edification. Oh, what headdresses! what silks! what a bonnet, what a mantelet! I clapped my hands and cried glory for the space of half an hour, then danced a few Polkas around the study table, then sat down and felt happy, then remembered that I had now nothing to do save to grow old and ugly, and so turned a misanthropic look upon the Marie Stuart garland, etc., etc. You have certainly chosen my things with your own perfect taste. The flowers and dresses are alike exquisite, and so are all the things, not forgetting Dudie's little darling bonnet. But I fear that even this beautiful toilette will hardly tempt me from my nursery fireside where my presence is, in these days, indispensable. I have not been ten minutes this whole day, without holding one or other of the children. I have to sit with Fo-fo on one knee and Dudie on the other, trotting them alternately, and singing, "Jim along Josie," till I can't Jim along any further possibly. Well, life is peculiar anyhow. Dudie doesn't go alone yet--heaven only knows when she will. Sunday evening. I wore the new bonnet and mantelet to church, to-day:--frightened the sexton, made the minister squint, and the congregation stare. It looked rather like a green clam shell, some folks thought. I did not. I cocked it as high as ever I could, but somehow it did plague me a little. I shall soon get used to it. Sumner has been dining with us, and he and Chev have been pitying unmarried women. Oh, my dear friends, thought I, if you could only have one baby, you would change your tune.... Heaven grant that your dear little child may arrive safely, and gladden your heart with its sweet face. What a new world will its birth open to you, an ocean of love unfathomed even by your loving heart. I cannot tell you the comfort I have in my little ones, troublesome as they sometimes are. However weary I may be at night, it is sweet to feel that I have devoted the day to them. I am become quite an adept in washing and dressing, and curl my little Fo-fo's hair beautifully. Tell Donald that I can even wash out the little crease in her back, without rubbing the skin off....

To her sister Annie[25]

[25] Before the marriage of the latter to Adolphe Mailliard.

1846.

My poor dear little Ante-nuptial, I will write to you, and I will come to you, though I can do you no good--sentiment and sympathy I have none, but such insipidity as I have give I unto thee.... Dear Annie, your marriage is to me a grave and solemn matter. I hardly allow myself to think about it. God give you all happiness, dearest child. Some sufferings and trials I fear you must have, for after all, the entering into single combat, hand to hand, with the realities of life, will be strange and painful to one who has hitherto lived, enjoyed, and suffered, en l'air, as you have done.... To be happily married seems to me the best thing for a woman. Oh! my sweet Annie, may you be happy--your maidenhood has been pure, sinless, loving, beautiful--you have no remorses, no anxious thought about the past. You have lived to make the earth more beautiful and bright--may your married life be as holy and harmless--may it be more complete, and more acceptable to God than your single life could possibly have been. Marriage, like death, is a debt we owe to nature, and though it costs us something to pay it, yet are we more content and better established in peace, when we have paid it. A young girl is a loose flower or flower seed, blown about by the wind, it may be cruelly battered, may be utterly blighted and lost to this world, but the matron is the same flower or seed planted, springing up and bearing fruit unto eternal life. What a comfort would Wevie now be to you--she is so much more loving than I, but thee knows I try. I have been better lately, the quiet nights seem to speak to me again, and to quicken my dead soul. What I feel is a premature old age, caused by the strong passions and conflicts of my early life. It is the languor and indifference of old age, without its wisdom, or its well-earned right to repose. Sweetie, wasn't the bonnet letter hideous? I sent it that you might see how naughty I could be....

* * * * *

The Doctor's health had been affected by the hardships and exposures of his service in the Greek Revolution, and his arduous labors now gave him little time for rest or recuperation. He was subject to agonizing headaches, each of which was a brief but distressing illness. In the summer of 1846 he resolved to try the water cure, then considered by many a sovereign remedy for all human ailments, and he and our mother spent some delightful weeks at Brattleboro, Vermont.

To her sister Louisa

August 4, 1846.

DEAREST WEVIE,--

... We left dear old Brattleboro on Sunday afternoon, at five o'clock, serenely packed in our little carriage; the good old boarding-house woman kissed me, and presented me with a bundle, containing cake, biscuits, and whortleberries.... Two calico bags, one big and one little, contained our baggage for the journey. Chev and I felt well and happy, the children were good, the horses went like birds, and showed themselves horses of good mettle, by carrying us over a distance of one hundred miles in something less than two days, for we arrived here at three o'clock to-day, so that the second 24 hours was not completed. Very pleasant was our little journey. We started very early each morning, and went ten or twelve miles to becassim;[26] the country inns were clean, quiet and funny. We had custards, pickles, and pies for breakfast, and tea at dinner. Oh, it was a good time! At Athol, I found a piano, and sat down to sing negro songs for the children. A charming audience, comprising cook, ostler, and waiter, collected around the parlour door, and encouraged me with a broom and a pitchfork. Well, it was pleasant to arrive at our dear Green Peace, or Villa Julia, as they call it. We found everything in beautiful order, the green corn grown as high as our heads, and ripe enough to eat, the turkey sitting on eleven eggs, the peahen on four, six young turkeys already growing up, and two broods of young chickens.

[26] Breakfast.

Peas, tomatoes, beans, squashes and potatoes, all flourishing. Our garden entirely supplies us with vegetables, and we shall have many apples and pears. Immediately upon my arrival, I found the box and little parcel from you. You may imagine the pleasure it gave me to receive, at this distance, things which your tasteful little fingers had worked.... I am rather ashamed to see how beautiful your work is, when mine is as coarse as possible. In truth, I am a clumsy seamstress, but I make good puddings, and the little things I make do well enough here in the country.... August 15th. I have passed eleven quiet and peaceful days since I got so far with my letter. My chicks have been good, and my husband well. My household affairs go on very pleasantly and easily nowadays. My good stout German girl takes care of the chicks and helps a little with the chamber work. My little Lizzie does the cooking, all but the puddings which I always make myself, so I keep but two house servants. The man takes care of the horses, drives and keeps the garden in excellent order. I make my bed and put my room in order as well as I can. I generally wipe the dishes when Lizzie has washed them, so you see that I am quite an industrious flea. I have made very nice raspberry jam and currant jelly with my own hands.... Felton came to tea last evening. He was pleasant and bright. He will be married some time in November. Hillard, too, has been to see me. Yesterday was made famous by the purchase of a very beautiful piano of Chickering's manufacture. The value of it was $450, but the kind Chick sold it to us at wholesale price. It arrived at Green Peace to-day, and has already gladdened the children's hearts by some gay tunes, the rags of my antiquated musical repertory. You will be glad, I am sure, to know that I have one at last, for I have been many months without any instrument, so that I have almost forgotten how to touch one.... My mourning [for a sister-in-law] has been quite an inconvenience to me, this summer. I had just spent all the money I could afford for my summer clothes, and was forced to spend $30 more for black dresses.... The black clothes, however, seem to me very idle things, and I shall leave word in my will that no one shall wear them for me....

To the same

BORDENTOWN, August, 1846.

... Sumner and Chev came hither with us, and passed two days and nights here. Chev is well and good. Sumner is as usual, funny but very good and kind. Philanthropy goes ahead, and slavery will be abolished, and so shall we. New York is full of engagements in which I feel no interest. John Astor and Augusta Gibbs are engaged, and are, I think, fairly well matched. One can only say that each is good enough for the other.

These were the days when Julia sang in her nursery:

"Rero, rero, riddlety rad, This morning my baby caught sight of her Dad, Quoth she, 'Oh, Daddy, where have you been?' 'With Mann and Sumner a-putting down sin!'"

To her sister Annie

August 17, 1846.

MY DEAR DARLING ANNIE,--

... After seeing the frugal manner in which country people live, and after deriving great benefit from hydropathic diet, Chev and I thought we could get along with one servant less, and so we have no cook. Lizzie[27] cooks, I make the pudding, we have no tea, and live principally upon vegetables from our own garden, hasty pudding, etc. I make the beds and do the rooms, as well as I can. We get along quite comfortably, and I like it very much--the fewer servants one has, the more comfort, I think.... I have plenty of occupation for my fingers. My heart will be much taken up with my babies; as for my soul, that part of me which thinks and believes and imagines, I shall leave it alone till the next world, for I see it has little to do in this....

Good-bye. Your own, own

DUDIE.

[27] The nurserymaid.

To her sister Louisa

BOSTON, December 1, 1846.

Dearest old absurdity that you are, am I to write to you again? Is not my life full enough of business, of flannel petticoats, aprons, and the wiping of dirty little noses? Must I sew and trot babies and sing songs, and tell Mother Goose stories, and still be expected to know how to write? My fingers are becoming less and less familiar with the pen, my thoughts grow daily more insignificant and commonplace. What earthly good can my letters do to anyone? What interesting information can I impart to anyone? Not that I am not happy, very happy, but then I have quite lost the power of contributing to the amusement of others....

To her sister Annie

1845 or 1846.

... I visited my Mother Otis[28] on Thursday evening, and had a pleasant time. I went alone, Chev being philanthropically engaged--party being over, I called for him at Mr. Mann's, but they were so happy over their report that they concluded to make a night of it, and I came home alone. Chev returned at one, quite intoxicated with benevolence....

[28] Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis.

Finding that the isolation of South Boston was telling seriously upon her health and spirits, the Doctor decided on a change, and the winter of 1846 was spent at the Winthrop House in Boston.

To the same

Monday morning, 1846.

MY DEAREST, SWEETEST ANNIE,--

... I have neglected you sadly this winter, and my heart reproaches me for it.... It has been strange to me, to return to life and to feel that I have any sympathy with living beings.... I have been singing and writing poetry, so you may know that I have been happy. Alas! am I not a selfish creature to prize these enjoyments as I do, above almost everything else in the world? God forgive me if I do wrong in following with ardor the strongest instincts of my nature, but I have been doing wrong all my life, in some way or other. I have been giving a succession of little musical parties on Saturday evenings, and I assure you they have been quite successful. I have to be sure only my little parlour in the Winthrop House, but even that is larger than the grand saloon at S. Niccolo da Tolentino which managed to hold so much fun on Friday evenings. I have found some musical friends to sing with me--Lizzie Cary, Mrs. Felton, Mr. Pelosos and William Story, of whom more anon.... Agassiz, the learned and charming Frenchman, is also one of my habitués on Saturday evenings, and Count Pourtalés, a Swiss nobleman of good family, who has accompanied Agassiz to this country! I illuminate my room with a chandelier and some candles, draw out the piano into the room, and order some ice from Mrs. Mayer's--so that the reception gives me very little trouble. My friends come at half-past eight and stay until eleven. I do not usually have more than twenty people, but once I have had nearly sixty, and those of the best people in Boston. Chev is very desirous of having a house in town, and is far more pleased with my success than I am. My next party will be on the coming Saturday. It is for Lizzie Rice and Sam Guild who are just married. Am I not an enterprising little woman?... Dear Annie, I am anxious to be with you, that I may really know how you are, and talk over all the little matters with you.... I always feel that this suffering must be some expiation for all the follies of one's life, whereupon I will improvise a couplet upon the subject.

Woman, being of all critters the darn'dest, Is made to suffer the consarn'dest.

To her sister Louisa

May 17, 1847.

MY SWEETEST BEAUTIFULLEST WEVIE,--

... I have not written because I have been in a studious, meditative, and most uncommunicative frame of mind, and have very few words to throw at many dogs. It is quite delightful to take to study again, and to feel that old and stupid as one may be, there is still in one's mind a little power of improvement.... The longer I live the more do I feel my utter childlike helplessness about all practical affairs. Certainly a creature with such useless hands was never before seen. I seem to need a dry nurse quite as much as my children. What useful thing can I possibly teach these poor little monkeys? For everything that is not soul I am an ass, that I am. I have now been at Green Peace some six weeks, and it is very pleasant and quiet, but oh! the season is so backward; it is the 17th of May, and the trees are only beginning to blossom. Every day comes a cold east wind to nip off my nose, and the devil a bit of anything else comes to Green Peace. I am thin and languid. I have never entirely recovered from my fever,[29] but my mind is clearer than it has ever been since my marriage. I am able to think, to study and to pray, things which I cannot accomplish when my brain is oppressed....

[29] She had had a severe attack of scarlet fever during the winter.

Boston has been greatly enlivened during the past month by a really fine opera, the troupe from Havana, much better than the N. Y. troupe, with a fine orchestra and chorus, all Italians. The Prima Donna is an artist of the first order, and has an exquisite voice. I have had season tickets, and have been nearly every night. This is a great indulgence, as it is very expensive, and I have one of the best boxes in the house, but Chev is the most indulgent of husbands. I never knew anything like it. Think of all he allows me, a house and garden, a delicious carriage and pair of horses, etc., etc., etc. My children are coming on famously. Julia, or as she calls herself, Romana, is really a fine creature, full of sensibility and of talent. She learns very readily, and reasons about things with great gravity. She remembers every tune that she hears, and can sing a great many songs. She is very full of fun, and so is my sweet Flossy, my little flaxen-haired wax doll. I play for them on the piano, Lizzie beats the tambourine, and the two babies take hold of hands and dance. "Is not your heart fully satisfied with such a sight?" you will ask me. I reply, dear Wevie, that the soul whose desires are not fixed upon the unattainable is dead even while it liveth, and that I am glad, in the midst of all my comforts, to feel myself still a pilgrim in pursuit of something that is neither house nor lands, nor children, nor health. What that something is I scarce know. Sometimes it seems to me one thing and sometimes another. Oh, immortality, thou art to us but a painful rapture, an ecstatic burthen in this earthly life. God teach me to bear thee until thou shalt bear me! The arms of the cross will one day turn into angels' wings, and lift us up to heaven. Don't think from this rhapsody that I am undergoing a fit of pietistic exaltation. I am not, but as I grow older, many things become clearer to me, and I feel at once the difficulty and the necessity of holding fast to one's soul and to its divine relationships, lest the world should cheat us of it utterly.

To her sister Annie

June 19 [1847], GREEN PEACE.

MY DEAREST LITTLE ANNIE,--

... Boston has been in great excitement at the public debates of the Prison Discipline Society, which have been intensely interesting. Chev and Sumner have each spoken twice, in behalf of the Philadelphia system, and against the course of the Society. They have been furiously attacked by the opposite party. Chev's second speech drew tears from many eyes, and was very beautiful. Both of Sumner's have been fine, but the last, delivered last evening, was masterly. I never listened to anything with more intense interest,--he held the audience breathless for two hours and a half. I have attended all the debates save one--there have been seven.

To her sister Louisa

July 1, 1847.

MY DEAREST OLD WEVIE,--

I should have written you yesterday but that I was obliged to entertain the whole Club[30] at dinner, prior to Hillard's departure. I gave them a neat little dinner, soup, salmon, sweetbreads, roast lamb and pigeon, with green peas, potatoes au maitre d'hotel, spinach and salad. Then came a delicious pudding and blanc-mange, then strawberries, pineapple, and ice-cream, then coffee, etc. We had a pleasant time upon the whole. That is, they had; for myself it is easy to find companions more congenial than the Club. Still, I like them very well. I had last week a little meeting of the mutual correction club, which was far pleasanter to me. This society is organized as follows: Julia Howe, grand universal philosopher; Jane Belknap, charitable censor; Mary Ward, moderator; Sarah Hale, optimist. I had them all to dinner and we were jolly, I do assure you. My children looked so lovely yesterday, in muslin dresses of bright pink plaid, made very full and reaching only to the knee, with pink ribbands in their sleeves....

[30] The Five of Clubs. See ante.

How I do wish for you this summer. My little place is so green, my flowers so sweet, my strawberries so delicious--the garden produces six quarts or more a day. The cow gives delicious cream. I even make a sort of cream cheese which is not by any means to be despised. Do you eat ricotta nowadays? Chev gave me a little French dessert set yesterday, which made my table look so pretty. White with very rich blue and gold. Oh, but it was bunkum! Dear old Wevie, you must give me one summer, and then I will give you a winter--isn't that fair? Chev promises to take me abroad in five years, if we should sell Green Peace well. They talk of moving the Institution, in which case I should have to leave my pretty Green Peace in two years more, but I should be sad to leave it, for it is very lovely. I don't know any news at all to communicate. The President[31] has just made a visit here; he was coolly but civilly received. His whole course has been very unpopular in Massachusetts, and nobody wanted to see the man who had brought this cursed Mexican War upon us. He was received by the Mayor with a brief but polite address, lodgings were provided for him, and a dinner given him by the city. But there was no crowd to welcome him, no shouts, no waving of handkerchiefs. The people quietly looked at him and said, "This is our chief magistrate, is it? Well, he is très peu de chose." I of course did not trouble myself to go and see him.... I send you an extract from a daily paper. Can you tell me who is the authoress? It has been much admired. Uncle John was very much tickled to see somebody in print. Try it again, Blue Jacket.

[31] James K. Polk.

* * * * *

The wayward moods shown in these letters sometimes found other expression. In those days her wit was wayward too: its arrows were always winged, and sometimes over-sharp. In later life, when Boston and everything connected with it was unspeakably dear to her, she would not recall the day when, passing on Charles Street the Charitable Eye and Ear Infirmary, she read the name aloud and exclaimed, "Oh! I did not know there was a charitable eye or ear in Boston!" Or that other day, when having dined with the Ticknors, a family of monumental dignity, she said to a friend afterward, "Oh! I am so cold! I have been dining with the Tête Noir, the Mer(e) de Glace, and the Jungfrau!"

It may have been in these days that an incident occurred which she thus describes in "A Plea for Humour": "I once wrote to an intimate friend a very high-flown and ridiculous letter of reproof for her frivolity. I presently heard of her as ill in bed, in consequence of my unkindness. I immediately wrote, 'Did not you see that the whole thing was intended to be a burlesque?' After a while she wrote back, 'I am just beginning to see the fun of it, but the next time you intend to make a joke, pray give me a fortnight's notice.' It was now my turn to take to my bed."

In September, 1847, a heavy sorrow came to her in the death of her brother Marion, "a gallant, gracious boy, a true, upright and useful man." She writes to her sister Louisa: "Let us thank Him that Marion's life gave us as much joy as his death has given us pain.... Our children will grow up in love and beauty, and one of us will have a sweet boy who shall bear the dear name of Marion and make it doubly dear to us."

This prophecy was fulfilled first by the birth, on March 2, 1848, of Henry Marion Howe (named for the two lost brothers), and again in 1854 by that of Francis Marion Crawford.

The winter of 1847-48 was also spent in Boston, at No. 74 Mount Vernon Street; here the first son was born. The Doctor, recording his birth in the Family Bible, wrote after the name, "Dieu donné!" And, his mind full of the Revolution of 1848 in France, added, "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!"

On April 18 she writes: "My boy will be seven weeks old to-morrow, and ... such a darling little child was never seen in this world before.... I shall have some fears lest his temperament partake of the melancholy which oppressed me during the period of his creation, but so far he is so placid and gentle, that we call him the little saint.... I have seen little of the world since his birth, and thought still less. I shall try to pursue my studies as I have through this last year, for I am good for nothing without them. I will rather give up the world and cut out Beacon Street, but an hour or two for the cultivation of my poor little soul I must and will have...."

To her sister Annie

[1848.]

DEAREST ANNIE,--

... My literary reputation is growing apace. Mr. Buchanan Read has written to me from Philadelphia to beg some poetry for a book he is about to publish, and I am going to hunt up some trash for him in the course of the week. I find that my name has been advertised in relation to Griswold's book[32]--people come to ask Chev if that Mrs. Howe is his wife. I feel as if I should make a horribly shabby appearance. Do tell me if Griswold liked the poems....

[32] Female Poets of America.

To the same

Sunday, December 15, 1849.

... I do want to see you, best Annie, and to have a few long talks with you about theology, the soul, the heart, life, matrimony, and the points of resemblance between the patriarch Noah and Sir Tipsy Squinteye. Those talks, madam, are not to be had, so instead of the rich crême fouettée of our conversation, we will take an insipid water-ice of a letter together, the two spoons being ourselves, the sugar, ice and lemon representing our three husbands, all mixed up together, the whole to be considered good when one can't get anything better. I will be hanged, however, if you shall make me say which is which.

I pass my life after a singular manner, Annie. I am in the old room, in the old house, even in the old dressing-gown, which is of some value, inasmuch as it furnishes my rent. I am in the old place, but the old Dudie is not in me; in her stead is a spirit of crossness and dullness, insensible to all the gentler influences of life, knowing no music, poetry, wit, or devotion, intent mainly upon holding on to the ropes, and upon getting through the present without too much consciousness of it.... All society has been paralyzed by the shocking murder of Dr. Parkman. There has perhaps never been in Boston so horrible and atrocious an affair. The details of the crime are too heart-sickening to be dwelt upon. There can scarcely be a doubt of the guilt of Dr. Webster--the jury of inquest have returned a verdict of guilty, but he has still a chance for his life, as his trial in court does not come on for some months. The wisest people say that he will be convicted and hanged. I saw Dr. Parkman two or three days before he was missing--he was an old friend of Chev's.... I have not been able to see much company, yet we have had a few pleasant people at the house, now and then. Among these, a Mr. Twisleton, brother of Lord Saye and Sele, the most agreeable John Bull I have seen this many a day, or indeed ever....

The winter of 1849-50 was also spent at No. 74 Mount Vernon Street. Here, in February, 1850, a third daughter was born, and named Laura for Laura Bridgman. In the spring, our parents made a second voyage to Europe, taking with them the two youngest children, Julia Romana and Florence being left in the household of Dr. Edward Jarvis.

They spent some weeks in England, renewing the friendships made seven years before; thence they journeyed to Paris, and from there to Boppart, where the Doctor took the water cure. Julia seems to have been too busy for letter-writing during this year; the Doctor writes to Charles Sumner of the beauty of Boppart, and adds: "Julia and I have been enjoying walks upon the banks of the Rhine, and rambles upon the hillside, and musings among the ruins, and jaunts upon the waters as we have enjoyed nothing since we left home."

He had but six months' leave of absence; it was felt by both that Julia needed a longer time of rest and refreshment; accordingly when he returned she, with the two little children, joined her sisters, both now married, and the three proceeded to Rome, where they spent the winter.

Mrs. Crawford was living at Villa Negroni, where Mrs. Mailliard became her companion; Julia found a comfortable apartment in Via Capo le Case, with the Edward Freemans on the floor above, and Mrs. David Dudley Field on that below.

These were pleasant neighbors. Mrs. Freeman was Julia's companion in many delightful walks and excursions; when Mrs. Field had a party, she borrowed Mrs. Howe's large lamp, and was ready to lend her tea-cups in return. There was a Christmas tree--the first ever seen in Rome!--at Villa Negroni; "an occasional ball, a box at the opera, a drive on the Campagna."

Julia found a learned Rabbi from the Ghetto, and resumed the study of Hebrew, which she had begun the year before in South Boston. This accomplished man was obliged to wear the distinctive dress then imposed upon the Jews of Rome, and to be within the walls of the Ghetto by six in the evening. There were private theatricals, too, she appearing as "Tilburina" in "The Critic."

Among the friends of this Roman winter none was so beloved as Horace Binney Wallace. He was a Philadelphian, a rosso. He held that "the highest effort of nature is to produce a rosso"; he was always in search of the favored tint either in pictures or in living beings. Together the two rossi explored the ancient city, with mutual pleasure and profit.

Some years later, on hearing of his death, she recalled these days of companionship in a poem called "Via Felice,"[33] which she sang to an air of her own composition. The poem appeared in "Words for the Hour," and is one of the tenderest of her personal tributes:--

For Death's eternal city Has yet some happy street; 'Tis in the Via Felice My friend and I shall meet.

[33] Formerly part of the Via Sistina.

In the summer of 1851 she turned her face westward. The call of husband, children, home, was imperative; yet so deep was the spell which Rome had laid upon her that the parting was fraught with "pain, amounting almost to anguish." She was oppressed by the thought that she might never again see all that had grown so dear. Looking back upon this time, she says, "I have indeed seen Rome and its wonders more than once since that time, but never as I saw them then."

The homeward voyage was made in a sailing-vessel, in company with Mr. and Mrs. Mailliard. They were a month at sea. In the long quiet mornings Julia read Swedenborg's "Divine Love and Wisdom"; in the afternoons Eugène Sue's "Mystères de Paris," borrowed from a steerage passenger. There was whist in the evening; when her companions had gone to rest she would sit alone, thinking over the six months, weaving into song their pleasures and their pains. The actual record of this second Roman winter is found in "Passion Flowers."

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