Personal sketches and recollections : in a series of familiar letters to a friend, and miscellaneous essays

Preface

In presenting this unpretending volume to that great and discerning family, the public, the author does not come to them beneatn the covert of an apology, or with an excuse for intruding on their notice a book, for she has not a doubt but it will be appreciated by her personal friends and rela tives, beyond its real merits ; and to others, it does not pre tend to possess any great value or interest, or be any consid erable accession to the literary world. Those friends who have flatteringly encouraged me to embody, in book form, some of my newspaper articles, and essays of former years, have my most hearty thanks. The incidents are such as might be expected to occur in the everyday life of one who engages in business which necessitates an exchange of thought and opinion with the multitude.

There is, therefore, nothing remarkable or startling claimed for them. Hoping that these pages may not be wholly useless, or uninteresting to my numerous acquaintances, and others who may chance to read them, I humbly submit them to their

IV PREFACE.

kind indulgence, knowing they will not abide the test of se vere criticism.

If there are any good and noble principles inculcated here, they will survive when she who penned them, will be beyond the reach of praise or censure.

ELOISE M. ABBOTT.

Hopkinton, St. Lawrence Co., N. T., Feb. 18G1.

Introduction

To Miss FIDELIA HADLEY, Milwaukie, Wis.

MY DEAR FIDELIA : — Many thanks for your last letter, which came to me with a hearty welcome, as all previous ones have, indited by the same kind heart. Your continued assurances of a deep and abiding interest in my personal recollections are truly flattering, and bear the pleasing im press of genuine regard. To affect an indifference to the in terest our friends manifest in our feeble efforts would betray a vanity of greater magnitude than to admit the fact, that an occasional smile of approval from loved ones smooth the rough edge of adversity, and sweetens all the toils of life. The memory of such friends is everlastingly enshrined with the heart's most endearing remembrances. But for you to imagine that others would read, with any considerable de gree of interest, what your friend and ' ' most obedient ser vant" has written for your eye alone, is to me but another proof that you are blind to the faults of my indifferent com position.

Hence, your request to have my letters and essays pub lished in book form, came to me with a surprise which, I 1*

VI INTRODUCTION.

have already acknowledged, was a pleasant one ; and you will need no other assurance of the truth of it, when I tell you that I have concluded to comply with your request

Being a distant relative, perhaps, accounts somewhat for your interest in the story of my family history ; and presum ing on your good nature, as formerly, for a veil of charity to be thrown over what will be written hereafter, I wait for time to determine whether it would have been better for all con cerned, had my rehearsals met with a rebuff at your hands.

The authors of books generally see the necessity of just such a book as theirs, " to fill a vacancy long felt in the pub lic mind," and their solicitude is more in behalf of the dear public, whose servant they have reluctantly consented to be come, than in their own.

In one respect, my book is like nearly every other one published in these self-sacrificing times ; — the object of it is, to fill a "vacancy," but that vacancy is in my own purse, and not in the public mind, for that would probably never have suffered a great loss had it not appeared before them. If any books are especially needed by the public in these days, when a " mob of books," as some one has expressed it before me, is being driven by steam from the doors of our presses, Autobiographies of living persons are not of that class, certainly of none but those who have attained a celeb rity.

" What is writ is writ," and if the reader should be led to mistrust by it, that the dollar he has paid me has had more bearing on my motives for writing for his benefit, than feel ings for him, perhaps he has good reason for it.

I have been somewhat amused by reading recently, a criti cism on a book written by a woman in London, entitled,

INTRODUCTION. Vll

" Fruits of Character. Being Twenty-five years Literary and Personal Recollections. By a Contemporary. London : Hurst & Baackett. 1860." The criticism appeared in the " British Saturday Review," of Oct. 13, under the head of " Reviews," in the Editorial department. The article is a lengthy one, and every line cuts like a razor. I have only space for a few extracts, which I give below, that you may see the fate some books meet with from the lions of the press. After all, there is a kind of exultant pleasure to us pigmies, on this side of the water, in the fact that there are silly women so called in the great metropolis of Great Brit ain. It would frighten me into a, resolve never to put pen to paper again, to have my meagre laurels withered and torn with a single blast of such a mighty trumpet.

" The authoress of this work is evidently a well-meaning woman in her way, but she has written a detestably bad book. That she is a well-meaning woman, and has written a bad book, is not much against her, for three well-meaning women out of four write books, and nine out of ten books written by well-meaning women are bad. ****** gne has evidently had a strong desire for many years to know something, how ever little, of persons eminent for different degrees of good ness and merit. She has picked up a kind of intimacy, or managed to bring herself in contact, with persons whose ac quaintance might fairly be an object of ambition to generous and enthusiastic minds. But she has used her acquaintance with them for the worst of all possible purposes. Eminence has no worse penalty attached to it in these days, than that well-meaning women should hook themselves on to its skirts, and then bring all the little gossip they can collect about it in to the light of day. It is a terrible curse on excellence that it should attract to it persons who like to have the excitement

Vlll INTRODUCTION.

of coming in contact with notoriety, and who take advantage of the openness with which their advances are received, to sell their reminiscences, and to distribute their petty measure of praise or blame on characters equally above both. These har pies of private life are always hateful ; but sometimes a book is written in which one of the tribe accumulates all the faults peculiar to the class. The worst qualities which a collection of " Literary and Personal Recollections " can have, are, that it should be empty, fulsome, malevolent, and egotistical ; and these are the precise characteristics that mark these volumes.

" The emptiness of these " Recollections " rises to the level of audacity. There is honor among thieves, and there are recognized limits even of book-making. But the book-making in these volumes is beyond all bounds. Of at least two-thirds of the persons of whose character she pretends to give traits, the authoress has simply nothing to say. She met them in so ciety on one or more occasions, but that was all. Irrelevant remarks, depreciatory of others, and laudatory of herself, car ry her through many difficulties, but sometimes she goes fur ther a-field. She takes the name of a man she has met, and after one or two desultory observations on his personal appear ance, she wanders into descriptions of anything she has ever done or seen, that she may happen to recollect, and which she can pretend to connect by the faintest tie with the person of whom she is speaking."

" Sometimes the authoress praises freely and lengthily, and it is then that her fulsomeness is displayed. The two of her contemporaries, whom she chiefly idolizes, are Mr. Bellew and Mr. Spurgeon. ******** As to Mr. Spurgeon, the au thoress has confidence equally valuable to pour out. This popular preacher is ' unquestionably a short man,' and it is < somewhat singular ' that ' all our popular preachers are short, except Dr. Gumming and Mr. Bellew.' She then, after an ac count of Mr. Spurgeon's career, informs us that his moral character is of unimpeachable purity, that he is happily mar-

INTRODUCTION. IX

ried, and that he has two very fine children — twin-boys — one the miniature resemblance of himself, the other of his wife. We further learn, that these children were born when Mr. Spurgeon was away from home ; and that ordinarily, when he comes home after his day's work, he ' becomes almost exuberant in his gaiety,' rushes up to his wife with ' Come, Susy, give me a kiss ' and tosses the twin babes, one by one, in the air.' There is plenty more in the same style ; and it is a style which, for anything we know, may be acceptable to popular preachers ; but what could be more intolerable to any person of decent taste, than that a woman should go and tell all the world in print, what he does when he comes home to the society of his wife and children ? This offensive pandering to a vulgar curi osity is one of the most flagrant wrongs which can be commit ted on its victims. A lady is asked to a house where a public man lives in private, and she is noting down every action, and every trifling word he does and says, in order to sell her notes to the crowd. Such persons ought to be branded by society, and rigidly excluded from every house where all self-respect is not utterly lost. A guest has no more right to go and print statements about the way her host kisses his wife, than she has to make off with a silver spoon from the dining-table. In both cases she commits a breach of confidence in order to get money. ***** Lastly, the book is one mass of egot ism. The authoress is always giving us to understand how de lightful she is, and how delighted every one is to see her, &c."

School-days; Our foremothers; Mrs. Sanford's letter; Pioneer life in Jeflerson County; My father's library; Periodicals; Parley's Magazine ; Death of Peter Parley 29

Letter IV

My father's general character ; Love of books ; of order ; His farm ; His garden ; Love of flowers ; Religious feelings ; View of death; Marriages; My mother's maiden name; Their burial place; Death of my second sister; Extract from Dr. Franklin's letter to his neice; Eccentricities; Joking propensity; Extracts from his letters, illustrative of it; Extracts from letters of travel; Obituary notice by Rev. E. W.Reynolds 37

Letter V

My mother; The Sheldon family; Rev. Henry Olcott Sheldon; Silas Wright; Life on the farm 50

Letter VI

Childhood and youth; Remembrance of associates; Schools; School-books; Miss Henderson; Ignorance of teachers of physical laws; Reform in these respects; Organic laws 55

Xll TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Letter VII

Schools and school days ; Tyranny of school masters ; a descrip tion of one ; My writing book ; Natural happy life of chil dren; Playing by the way; The general current of my life; The death of au infant; funeral 60

Letter VIII

A great event; Marriage of my eldest sister; Her present place cf residence; Accident; The charms of nature; New teacher for three summers; An advanced maiden lady; Four o'clock school; Her prayer; Not according to St. Paul's directions. 65

Letter IX

Youthful follies; A foolish exhibition: Rebuke; Fable of the lost axe 70

Letter X

Character of the inhabitants in my native town ; The school dis trict ; The school house ; Sandy Creek ; Scenery in its vicin ity; Captain Richardson's orchard; Mr. Mantle's tan-yard; Gliding and hand-sleds; Peculiar charms of Winter; Play-grounds ; Our little seminary of learning destroyed by fire ; Number of families and teachers in that time-honored district; Temperance principles; Gambling; Amusements; Dancing; School exhibitions; Industrious habits: Music; Change of the world in that respect 74